CULTURE OF PEOPLE OF SOUTHEASTERN PANAMA 73 



at the point of emergence of the tubular neck piece duplicated in 

 the flaring margin of identical proportions. 



WOOD CARVING 



Significance of the wood-carver's art in Darien. — The wood- 

 carver's art is well developed in southeastern Panama. The Choco 

 Indians prefer to emploj' the light, soft, pulpy balsa wood 

 {O chroma limonensis), while the Cuna tribes of the upper river val- 

 leys, and the Tule of the Caribbean coast usually employ varieties 

 of mahogany, such as the red colored " snakewood," and the semi- 

 hard woods. The development of an ornamental motive and tech- 

 nique sometimes determines the medium or agency whereby they 

 may be applied. The origin of the ornamental design itself, how- 

 ever, may be explained when the associations and ideas underlying 

 the choice of a particular design or medium of artistic expression 

 are appreciated. The aborigines of Darien possess a mental horizon 

 that peoples the environment with innumerable spirits, mostly of 

 an evil and malicious nature. Such conditions demand recourse to 

 an ever-ready antidote powerful enough to ward off the evil effects 

 of the spirits' presence. Conventionalized amulets and charms con- 

 sisting of any portable agency or object associated with some known 

 or imaginary qualities are efficacious. Sometimes, as in Darien, a 

 magical talent may be shaped more easily from wood than from 

 stone or some other material. In this way originates the wood- 

 carver's art among the local aboriginal tribes. Heraldic or totemic 

 designs are found in the applique work on clothing, but similar 

 animal representations and modelings of life forms, when carved 

 in wood, are primarily a phase of primitive medicine and are con- 

 nected with magical practices in which the carved figure acts as a 

 proxy for the medicine. 



A second motive of the wood carver is to represent the insignia 

 of command as shared by the chiefs, leles or medicine men, and other 

 head men. A third group of wood carvings is related to the activi- 

 ties of children, and consists of a miscellaneous group of children's 

 toys. When an art has passed its incipient stages a development re- 

 sults along activity lines that were not instrumental in shaping 

 its early growth. The child imitates the activities of the adult 

 and employs toys representative of those activities. As a, final 

 development one may expect to find, and does find, application of 

 a technique that originated and reached its previous development 

 in wood carvings, employed in the decorative design on pottery and 

 other materials, so that it becomes possible to identify as typical of 

 the areas, that is, southeastern Panama, a unity in artistic produc- 

 tion : " First, with reference to the method of realization, as plastic or 



