130 BULLETIN 134, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The linguistic stock to which the Choco belong is distinct but 

 similar to the Chibchan stock language in Colombia. Culturally, 

 the Choco possess a number of traits strikingly typical of the Venez- 

 uelan and Guiana Carib and Arawak. 



Fishing rather than hoe culture prevails; forest-grown foods, 

 such as yuca (Mamihot esculenta), yams, and plantains are grown; 

 cane and thatch houses built, but walls are not wattled ; one family 

 rather than multiple dwellings, as among the Tule; polygamous 

 marriages; hereditary property rights through male descent; no 

 loom work, but scanty clothing of bark cloth; preference for silver 

 rather than gold ornaments; no tattooing, but bodily painting gen- 

 eral. Decorative arts find expression in conventionalized wood carv- 

 ings of household and other spirit or god images; life form pat- 

 terns conventionalized in basketry design; dyeing in black caruto 

 pigment from juice of lana fruit, and in red anatto (Bixa orellana), 

 on bark cloth, matting, basketry, and wood carving; bodily orna- 

 mentation with multiple strands of beads, seeds, and teeth; no nose 

 rings worn, but earplugs and silver pendants; basketry headdress 

 and coronets worn by women in dance. Musical instruments of per- 

 cussion, such as shell drum, but no pan's pipes or wind-blown 

 instruments similar to the Tule. No compact tribal organization 

 or village settlements ; population less dense than on San Bias coast ; 

 less pride in purity of tribal blood, resulting in less hostile contact 

 and wars with surrounding peoples, but leading to hybridization 

 with advancing Negro elements instead. 



Ethnic relationships to Central and South American cultures. — 

 Summarizing in a general way the material culture of aboriginal 

 southeastern Panama as contrasted with that of northern Central 

 America some generalizations may be made. Wherever the culture 

 traits of the Choco differ from those of the Tule and Cuna it is 

 the latter stock rather than the former that represents a marginal 

 culture related to that of the Maya on the north and of the Andean 

 peoples on the south. Most of the traits possessed by both the Ca- 

 ribbean slope tribes, Cuna and Tule, and by the Choco of the south- 

 ern isthmian slope are typical of the South American lowland for- 

 est culture of the Caribs and Arawaks. The stone arrowheads and 

 feathered shafts of northern Central America are supplanted by 

 arrows with heavy foreshafts. Former employment of poisoned 

 blowgun darts to stun game general; travel and transport entirely 

 by boat : much hexagonal weave openwork and lapped-edge basketry ; 

 loomwork, but also beaten bark breech clouts and aprons; pottery 

 coarse and crude ; calabash sieves and drinking vessels ; vocal rather 

 than instrumental music; polygamy; purification of menstruating 

 women ; traces of the couvade, divination, and use of the bull roarer ; 

 but absence of masks, books, calendars, temples, kings, coca chewing. 



