42 BULLETIN 134, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



when it is skimmed off with a wooden or calabash vessel and stored 

 away in pottery jugs or glass bottles. This oil is valued for use 

 in frying fish. The young, juicy coconuts are plucked from the tree 

 before they are ripe, as the ripe nuts fall to the ground and some- 

 times are split open. Fish are sometimes preserved by rubbing 

 salt into the scraped flanks and then drying them on a slab frame 

 over an open fire. 



An admixture of grated coconut meat and cornmeal sweetened 

 with sugar-cane juice is shaped into a long roll and baked on an open 

 stove. A form of " sugar plum " is made of corn meal boiled in 

 a solution of sugar-cane juice until the mixture thickens. Sugar- 

 cane sirup, made by boiling the raw sugar-cane juice for several 

 hours, is a staple article in the Tule diet. 



Permanent fire for cooking is kept in the corner of the house 

 reserved for it or in the separate cook house. The fire is kept by 

 placing four logs with their ends meeting at right angles. When 

 the fire has burned the projecting ends, the logs are again pushed 

 together, so that the fire is continually burning. A rack is fash- 

 ioned over the fire logs for smoking meat or fish. 



Food is consumed without any seasoning other than salt. Most 

 of the food is boiled in water. A hawk, for example, will be picked 

 and cleaned and boiled. The head and legs are not cut off but are 

 left protruding to serve as a handle, as there are no forks available. 

 A large quantity of tobacco is smoked by the entire population, 

 heavy plug tobacco sold by the trader is the kind of tobacco most 

 nommonly smoked. 



Agriculture. — Lionel Wafer, in his book previously cited, men- 

 tions planting and care for crops as being particularly the work 

 of women. The men first clear the plantations and bring them into 

 order, but the women care for them afterwards. As Wissler has 

 pointed out, agriculture is primarily the task of women throughout 

 aboriginal America, except in those areas where, as in southwestern 

 United States, the chief dependence for food supplies rests on 

 agriculture. 



At the present time both men and women work in the field at 

 harvest time. With the Tule planting and harvesting is carried on 

 in a cooperative manner, all working together in season and stimu- 

 lating one another to increased efforts in a competitive and socialized 

 undertaking. In southeastern Panama corn is planted in April and 

 harvested in September or October. Wafer writes : " I saw the 

 maize of the preceding harvest laid up in the husk in their houses. 

 They use flour on many occasions; parching the corn and grinding 

 it between two stones, as chocolate is made." An upper and a nether 

 grinding or mealing stone (Cat. No. 327579, U.S.N.M.), were col- 

 lected by the Marsh-Darien expedition and are now in the National 



