Manufactures among the Issa-Japura tribes are not numerous. These Indians have no textile fabrics; they neither spin nor weave; everything is done by finger-work, and the local substitutes for woven goods are beaten bark-cloth and netted or plaited palm-fibre. This, as a rule, is in its natural colour, as very little dye is ever employed. There is no leather working. The only use made of the skins of animals, I ever discovered, was that some Menimehe tribes had large round shields of tapir hides, two to five hides superimposed one on another;[98] the medicine-men make garments of the same leather; while the medicine-pouch is often made of the unshorn skin of the jaguar. Leather thongs are sometimes employed for tying purposes, such as securing an axe-haft, and on the north of the Japura to string a bow, but the ubiquitous fibre and liana are in more general use.
Glass is unknown to the Indian, but every tribe makes its own pottery. Earthenware pots are used by all Indians for cooking. The best are manufactured by the Menimehe women, and are distinguished by the red and black colouring. This is obtained by the use of certain juices extracted from the bark of a tree. These handsome, well-finished pots are a great article of barter, and are exchanged for other products of friendly tribes. Thus they are to be found at far distances from where they are made on the northern bank of the Japura. It amounts to a trade, distinct if unorganised.
Pottery-making is the sole province of the women in any tribe, earthenware appertaining to the culinary department which is their special sphere. The pots, entirely made and shaped by hand, when finished are beautifully symmetrical, though the Indian potters possess nothing approximating to a wheel.[99] Squatting on the ground the women work and mould the clay, and rub it between their hands into long cylinders very much like plug tobacco. These are coiled round and round and kneaded into a previously constructed shape; or the women will prepare a circular hole in the ground and mould the clay into that. The plastic coils are then worked round with any hard thing that is handy—a bone or a piece of wood. When the vessel is built up to the size intended it is carefully rubbed before it is set out to dry in the sun. Finally, hot ashes are heaped over the pots, which are baked slowly and polished afterwards.
The clay used is commonly to be found on the river-banks, and with it the Indians mix wood ashes, either to stiffen it or, as Crevaux suggests,[100] to render the finished article more porous, so that its contents are kept cool by evaporation. This pottery is known as caraipé ware, from the fact that the ashes of the caraipé bark are preferred for its manufacture.[101] In some districts vessels of even a very large size are made of it,[102] but I never saw any big pots either imported or made locally in the Issa-Japura valleys. The large vessels used for making kawana by these tribes consist merely of huge strips of the inner bark of the tree, riveted together with thorns or spines, and set upright on a hard earthen surface; or else a section of a great tree trunk is hollowed out to make a trough. Large flat plates to bake the cassava cakes on are made of earthenware, but very often only wooden platters are used.
PLATE XXIV.
BORO CASSAVA-SQUEEZER.
(a) LOOP AT END
Women are not the tribal potters alone; they are also the chief basket-makers, though on occasions the men will make baskets. Both Karahone and Boro Indians excel in basket-making, though all tribes are skilful enough at it. If you give an Indian anything to carry he never dreams of holding it in his hands if it will allow of other carriage. He either winds a strip of bark-fibre round his head to make a sling in which to place it, or, if it were anything that did not admit of easy adjustment—as, for instance, fruit—he gathers some green palm leaves, and in about five minutes has plaited them, on a foundation of two rods, into a long and deep square basket, which is thrown away at the end of the march. Such quickly made baskets are continually in use, but the tribes also construct more elaborate ones that can be utilised for more than immediate purposes. In every maloka may be seen baskets of plaited bark-fibre and of plaited cane,[103] usually white, but sometimes with an interwoven and regular pattern in black cane. The Resigero make bottle-shaped baskets as receptacles for edible ants. A large basket is carried on the back, slung from the forehead with the customary band of bark-fibre.
Quite as important as the pottery is the manufacture of hammocks.[104] This again is done by the women of the tribes. It is woman’s, that is to say light, work. All these tribes make them on the same principle and in the same way, the only difference in the hammocks of different tribes is the spacing of the cross-threads. This, according to Hamilton Rice, is a tribal distinction, each group of tribes having an individual spacing.[105] The material used is curana string or palm-fibre. To prepare this the women take the pinnate leaflets of the Chambiri palm[106] and fold over each strip at its broadest part. They grip it tightly and shred it down with the thumb and forefinger. The fibre thus procured is then twisted into a cord by rolling it tightly and hard against the naked thigh.