CULTURE OF PEOPLE OP SOUTHEASTERN PANAMA 129 



sticks, but have no stone work or buildings. They possess agri- 

 cultural traditions, both men and women sharing the labor in the 

 fields, where they raise maize, cassava (yuca), plantains, and yams; 

 they trade with neighboring tribes in hammocks, which they weave, 

 and in gold; and with the Panamanian coast towns in coconuts y 

 turtle shell, ivory nuts, and bananas. No domestic animals for draft 

 and transport; dyeing limited, but wearing of sandals and loom 

 weaving of cloth from native grown cotton generally practiced: 

 realistic wood carving of life forms; conventionalized art design 

 on textiles in applique work, formerly totemic; art designs in close 

 twill weave, but also openwork basketry; former organization of 

 matrilinear clans with hereditary property rights passing through 

 the female line; tribal and clan confederacies, compact and highly 

 organized. No copper, but a rudimentary culture in silver and 

 gold; no metal alloys or iron casting; tobacco smoking in form of 

 pipes and cigars, but no coca chewing; chicha brewed from maize, 

 palm fruit, and yuca; fishing rather than hunting an auxiliary to 

 agriculture; multiple trident fish arrows; blowgun superseded by 

 iron arrowhead and spear; a partially developed caste system, al- 

 though individual merit recognized in popular election of chiefs; 

 barricaded community council houses; women potters; monogamous 

 marriages; no evidences of books or calendars; numerical system 

 and mnemonic pictographic writing developed; no sacrifices to sun 

 or moon goddess, but large number of bad and good spirits recog- 

 nized and modeled in art images; sorcerers and healers intimately 

 associated with conventional art designs; wood carvings of mythi- 

 cal spirit healers in European garb; diffusion of concept of white 

 messianic teacher and of a flood myth general. 



The historical factor, that is, the coming of the white man and 

 the consequent closing to the Tule of all ethnic relations with the 

 western Panamanian tribes, is comparatively recent. That in pre- 

 Columbian times the influence of Maya culture was strong is ap- 

 parent from a tabulation of culture traits similar to those of the 

 Maya, which survive after centuries of cultural infiltration from the 

 tropical lowlands of South America. The area occupied by the 

 Cuna and Tule is gradually shrinking before the devastating inroads 

 on the population of epidemics and the encroachment by Negroes 

 and white Panamanians from the east and west. 



The Choco Indians are taller in stature than the Cuna. and have 

 a correspondingly higher head index ; they are not subject to partial 

 hereditary albinism, which is common among the Tule of the Carib- 

 bean slope. Their facial features and physical characters generally 

 resemble those of the Indians of the South American Guiana tribes. 



