4<h POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



hard wood, are styled war-arrows, while a fourth kind, the only one 

 having a metal point, is reserved for the tapir. 



In hunting this animal — an important feature in the life of the 

 young Caingua — they display all their knowledge and all their skill. 

 Perched on high trees or hidden in the underwood, they wait for the 

 animal to pass, and wound it mortally with their steel-pointed arrows. 

 A merciless pursuit then begins, and does not end till the timid, 

 harassed pachyderm dies of exhaustion. The chase of the jaguar is 

 more perilous, and sometimes ends in a fight at close quarters. 



The Caingua also set traps, and sometimes travel for hours in the 

 underbrush to visit them, with their arms in their hands and their 

 provisions in their bocco, or basket made of caragudto fibers, which 

 they carry slung over their shoulders. When game is scarce, or in- 

 dolence keeps them in their lodges, they hunt the rats and field mice 

 that swarm in their winter's provisions; the victims, slain with sticks, 

 are immediately put upon the fire just as they are, and devoured on 

 the spot. 



Work in the house and the fields devolves upon the women. 

 They carry their burdens on their backs in a pretty basket. They 

 make blackish earthen vessels out of a clay which they go a consid- 

 erable distance to get. Another finer earth is the material of a pipe 

 in which the husband smokes the leaves of a wild tobacco. Contrary 

 to the Paraguayans, the women do not smoke. In one family we 

 saw a horn spoon like that of the Lengua Indians of the Chaco. 

 Aside from the dogs and the hens which only the rich possess, the 

 Caingua have no domestic animals. The parrots which are seen 

 quite numerously in the villages, tied by one foot to a light clog, are 

 there only as a reserve for the kitchen. 



The only formality which the swain has to go through to get 

 the hand of his promised one is to kill a tapir, an act by which he 

 proves that he will be capable of supporting his prospective family. 

 The death of a tapir under such conditions is quite an event; the 

 whole tribe assembles at the carcass, and a scene of gluttony begins 

 that does not cease till nothing is left but the skin and bones of the 

 "great beast." That is the only ceremony of marriage. The 

 Caingua is usually monogamous, but polygamy is allowed. Mar- 

 riages of relatives are carefully avoided. After > confinement, the 

 young mother has a rest of a few days before resuming her servile 

 task. She carries the newborn infant in a scarf, or sort of little 

 hammock slung over her shoulders. She does not think of weaning 

 it for a year and a half or two years, while the child has already been 

 exercised in arms with miniature bows. Ideas of cleanliness seem 

 foreign to the women as well as to the men, and it is a lucky chance 

 that will induce them to comb their magnificent heads of hair. 



