CULTURE OF PEOPLE OF SOUTHEASTERN PANAMA 105 



at or before puberty; at the same time the little boy is given his 

 first breech clout or " antia," (pi. 12). 



Wafer describes the methods employed in weaving, as follows: 



Girls draw strings out of bark, and beat silk-grass, for tbread cordage, 

 and nets. They pick the cotton also, and spin it for their mothers' weaving. 

 For weaving, the women make a roller of wood, about 3 foot long, turning 

 easily about between two posts. About this they place strings of cotton, 

 of 3 or 4 yards long at most, but oftener less, according to the use the cloth 

 is to be put to, whether for a hammock, or to tie about their waists, or for 

 gowns, or for blankets to cover them in their hammocks, as they lie in 

 them in their houses ; which are all the uses they have for cloth ; and they 

 never weave a piece of cotton with a design to cut it, but of a size that shall 

 just serve for the particular use. The threads thus coming from the roller 

 are the warp ; and for the woof they twist cotton yarn about a small piece 

 of Macaw-wood, notched at each end ; and taking up every other thread 

 of the warp with the fingers of one hand, they put the woof through with 

 the other hand, and receive it out on the other side. And to make the threads 

 of the woof lie close in the cloth, they strike them at every turn with a long 

 and thin piece of Macaw-wood like a ruler, which lies across between the 

 threads of the warp for that purpose. 



Pieces of bark cloth were formerly much utilized by the Darien 

 Indians as clothing and for various other purposes, such as mats, 

 bedding, breech clouts, and women's short skirts. Its use has largely 

 been superseded by cheap calico cotton prints secured in trade or 

 by cotton cloth made on native looms from the native tree cotton. 



A bark-cloth fiber mat (Cat. No. 327458, U.S.N.M., pi. 19), 

 '' ikkor," (Tule), " damagua," (Choco), from the palm tree of the 

 same name is made by the Choco of south Darien from the bast 

 or inner bark of a palm tree and used by them to sleep on and as 

 floor coverings. The dimensions of the mat are 178 cm. (6S.5 in.) 

 in length by 91 cm. (35.4 in.) in width. It is decorated on one side 

 only, the other is a dull white color. The decorative design embodies 

 the characteristic Choco patterns. One-half of the decorated sur- 

 face consists of parallel lines dyed in black color crossing with an- 

 other series of similar parallel lines at diagonals, so as to form 

 diamond-shaped open spaces of the natural straw color, some of 

 which, in series of two blocks each, have been filled in with smaller 

 diamond-shaped blocks of black dye. 



The other half of the decorated surface is equally divided into 

 two sectors separated by means of heavy lines in black. It is filled 

 with two series of semicircular figures, each figure composed of three 

 concentric black semicircular lines. The inner semicircular figure of 

 the series next to and terminated by the heavy black lines defining 

 this section is filled with a smaller circle of solid black color. 



The remaining fourth of the decorated surface represents a third 

 motive of Choco art, that of a series of parallel zigzag black lines 

 filled in with solid blocks of black color. The zigzag lines meet 



