The Mundurucus.
One of the largest semi-civilised tribes inhabiting the banks of the Tapajos are the Mundurucus. They are noted for tattooing their bodies more completely than any other tribe. The whole body is covered with straight lines in diagonal patterns from the mouth downwards, the upper part being left free. Some of the women, whose bodies are ornamented in the same fashion, have lines round their eyes, which look as if they were intended to represent a pair of spectacles. Even these marks, however, do not destroy the soft drooping look of the eyes common to Indian women. The countenances of some of the men are fine; the face, bold, solid, and square, possessing a passive dignity, with a look of tranquillity which appears immovable.
The more elaborate style of tattooing is only practised by the chiefs, as a mark of their birth and rank. It requires ten years to complete the whole process. The colour is introduced by fine puncturings over the surface—a painful process, which causes swelling and inflammation.
They are among the most warlike Indians of the Amazon, and keep the neighbouring and less civilised tribes on their good behaviour. They are expert agriculturists, and construct canoes and hammocks. They generally make a foray every year on an adjoining tribe,—the Parentintins,—when they kill the men, whose heads they preserve by drying and smoking, while they take the women and children for slaves. They have regular villages of conical huts, the walls and framework filled in with mud and thatched with palm-leaves. In the centre is a large hut in which the fighting men sleep, with their weapons ready for use. It is ornamented within with the dried heads of their enemies. They have of late years greatly decreased in numbers.
Some thirty tribes or families are found on the River Uapes. The men wear their hair in a long tail hanging down the middle of the back, while the women wear it loose, and cut to a moderate length. The only dress worn by the men is a small piece of matting passed between the legs, and secured round the loins by a string. The women wear none whatever, but paint their bodies in regular patterns,—generally red, yellow, and black colours. The only ornament worn by the women is a bracelet on the wrist; while below the knee a garter is fastened from infancy, for the purpose of swelling out the calf.
The men, however, adorn themselves in a variety of ways. Their hair is carefully parted and combed on each side. The young men, especially, wear it in long locks on either side of their necks, with a comb stuck on the top of the head—their feminine appearance being greatly increased by the large necklaces and bracelets of beads which they wear, and by their custom of pulling out every particle of hair from their beard. As these feminine-looking warriors always carry their large shields before them, it was but natural, when the Spaniards saw them, or other tribes similarly adorned, that they should have supposed them to be women. When, also, they saw in the distance parties of unadorned persons carrying burdens, they took them to be slaves captured in war. This, no doubt, was the origin of the fable of nations of Amazons found on the banks of the river.
General Character of the Natives.
Sometimes these natives wear circlets of parrot and other gay feathers on their heads, as well as armlets and leg ornaments of the same materials. Some of these tribes have the horrible custom of baking the bodies of their dead after they have become decomposed, till only a black carbonaceous mass is left. This is pounded, and mixed with an intoxicating liquor, called caxiri, in vats made out of hollow trees. The relatives having been invited, the whole company drink the mixture, under the belief that the virtues of the deceased will thus be transmitted to them. Some of them are cannibals, and make war for the express purpose of procuring human flesh. They smoke dry what they cannot at once consume, thus preserving it a long time for food. They have no definite idea of a God; but they dread an evil spirit, whom they believe delights in afflicting them, and is the cause of death.
Their houses hold a number of families; sometimes a whole tribe. They are upwards of 120 feet long, 80 feet broad, and 30 feet high. The plan is a parallelogram, with a semicircle at the further end. A passage twenty feet wide leads from one end to the other; while, on the sides, are partitions, like the stalls in an old-fashioned public room of an inn, each of which is inhabited by a separate family. The chief, or tushaúa, resides at the semicircular end, where he has a private entrance. The furniture consists of hammocks, with various pots and cooking utensils made of clay, as well as baskets. Their canoes are formed out of a single tree, hollowed and forced open by cross-pieces. Some are forty feet in length. The dead are nearly always buried in the houses: a large house having sometimes one hundred graves in it.
From the Rio Negro to the Andes there is a large region, inhabited entirely by savages of whom little is known, except that they are mostly cannibals, and kill all their first-born children. On the other side of the Amazon also is a still larger tract of virgin forest, where not a single civilised man is to be found.