PLATE XLII.
ANATTO, BIXA ORELLANA, A RED DYE, OR PAINT, IS MADE FROM THE SEED
The entertainment demands elaborate preliminaries. When any such carnival is on hand the old women of the tribe for days previously are busied making cassava, and with the preparation of kawana or other appropriate drinks. The amount of liquid refreshment necessary for a large dance is enormous, in view of the custom by which the liquor-logged native simply steps aside, and by the insertion of a finger down the throat is speedily ready for a further supply. During the four or five days that a dance continues only the old men among the Turuka will eat anything, and that nothing more substantial than manioc starch; the dancers merely drink hashiri.
Nor is the inner man only to be considered. All sartorial treasures, the feathers and necklaces of the men, the beaded girdles of the women, are taken from their receptacles, the wardrobes in the rafters of the maloka. The men—for the Amazonian male reserves to himself the greatest brilliance of attire on occasions of ceremony—array themselves in their feather tiaras, with necklaces, armlets, and sounding garters of polished nuts. The maidens and matrons also apply themselves to the elaboration of their toilets. No court dressmaker ever gave more anxious thought to the fashioning of chef-d’œuvre in silk and brocade than do these dusky daughters of Eve to the tracing of circles, angles, bands, and frets upon their naked skins. Coquetry is as essential an accompaniment of the savage dance, in the unmapped bush of the Amazons, as in a garlanded ballroom of Mayfair. The most vain of English beauties probably spends less time over her adornment for any function than do these young women as they squat in chattering crowds over the calabashes of vegetable dye, white, scarlet, black, or purple, with which they trace upon each other the cunning patterns that make their only dresses.
When these preparations are satisfactorily advanced the chief, or some one in authority, despatches his invitations, no formal cards entrusted to a postman, but a summons mysterious as a Marconigram, and imperious as a writ of the High Court. The chief takes his stand between the manguare, the signal drums slung from the rafters of the great house, and with the rubber-headed drumstick he beats out as message sonorous notes that travel to every Indian within eight or nine miles. This summons is no mere manipulation of the four notes which constitute the range of the instrument, but an articulate message to convey the time, the place, and the purpose of the meeting to the initiated.
PLATE XLIII.
HALF GOURDS DECORATED WITH INCISED PATTERNS, MADE BY WITOTO NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE KARA PARANA RIVER
DUKAIYA (OKAINA) RATTLE MADE BY NUTSHELLS