The paint is never allowed to work off entirely; fresh designs are superimposed before the original has quite disappeared. The women always paint themselves for a dance, and dances are so frequent that before the coat of paint is worn away another festivity will be in prospect, and fresh decorations have to be considered. They also paint on other occasions than a dance.
With regard to the designs the photographs give a truer notion than any possible description of the variations and tribal fashions. The independent Andoke have no fixed pattern, but their lines appear to be more flowing. A good example is the fourth figure in [Plate XXI.] The body in this case was coated with a purple paint, leaving only a broad seam down the middle unpainted. This design is not seen elsewhere; it is peculiar to the Andoke. In one dance I saw they painted themselves with what were intended to be representations of their Witoto neighbours. I saw also the Andoke got up for a dance covered with weapons painted in my honour, boots, trousers, and dresses all suggested. Purple paint predominated, and the effect was a rough copy of my own apparel in paint.
PLATE XXI.
ANDOKE GIRLS
The patterns are regular; the most highly finished ones are executed with an eye to the lines of the figure, and some, as for example those shown in the accompanying group of Okaina women, are of complicated if crude design. The Okaina designs are certainly the most elaborate that I met with, but it is to be noted that in no case do the women attempt to hide, disguise, or paint that portion of the body which most peoples are the first to cover, and which even among these tribes is never exposed by the males.[89]
The effect of paint on the legs of women wearing tight ligatures is, as Robuchon very aptly remarked, to give them the semblance of small balcony pillars. Among the less particular—the Witoto especially being the more lax in this as in all other matters—the regular designs are not attempted, and paint is daubed crudely on the body in smears and splotches, with a result that is bizarre in the extreme.
The men are painted by their women before a dance, but never in the intricate patterns and variety of colour used by the ladies of the community themselves.
On one occasion among the Okaina three of the old women of the tribe were sent to me with purple paint, to paint me for the festivity. The Andoke men seem more given to painting themselves than the men of other tribes, and always use purple paint. A common device is a lizard, some nine inches long, painted on the back and in front on the middle of the chest. But painting is not a universal custom among the men as with the women. I do not remember, for instance, to have seen a Witoto man painted.