412 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1934 



The meat of game is cooked; fish are roasted. Tobacco is culti- 

 vated for local use, not for trade purposes. 



The crafts of Gran Chaco tribes are represented by carrying- 

 pouches of netted fiber, and by finer gourd and calabash receptacles. 

 Women dress themselves in a blanket of woven cotton bearing deco- 

 rative patterns representing trails, palm-trees, snake-skins, or real- 

 istic objects drawn from nature. This robe may be suspended from 

 the waist or shoulder, depending on weather variations. Sandals 

 of rawhide are worn as a protection against thorns and briers. There 

 is also a ceremonial sandal of antbear skin, A skirt of sewn skins 

 is worn for everyday use. Men wear sandals of rawhide and a 

 fringed girdle of skin. 



Festival attire is the order of the day throughout the Gran Chaco 

 and Amazonia generally. Headdresses and girdles of parrot, macaw, 

 duck, and rhea feathers, belts with pendant deer hoofs or snail 

 shells, girdles of seeds and human hair, and pendants of antbear 

 claws and hollow bones are affected. Necklaces of bright-colored 

 seeds, trade glass beads, turtle bones, and animal teeth are much in 

 evidence. 



DIFFUSION OF CULTURE TRAITS 



There is practically no break in the complex of mountains ex- 

 tending along the western front of the American continents, so that 

 it would be possible from a geographical standpoint for Indian 

 tribes accustomed to living in a temperate environment to continue 

 in their migrations southward from the North American to the 

 South American highlands. The complex of culture traits center- 

 ing about the use of the loom, the possession of Isthmian gold, and 

 pottery techniques, the raising of domesticated plants, notably maize, 

 potatoes, and cotton, could continue uninterruptedly as the higher- 

 cultured peoples pushed southward. 



The intrusion southward into Panama of Nahua culture traits is 

 counterbalanced by the linguistic penetration northward into Panama 

 and Costa Rica of Colombian Choco and Cuna stock languages. In 

 the West Indies occurred the historic linguistic, cultural, and physical 

 penetration of South American Arawak and Carib stocks from the 

 Orinoco area. These immigrants were preceded by an earlier, cruder 

 people, the Ciboneyes, whose original home in North or South Amer- 

 ica remains an unsolved puzzle, a hang-over from Solutrean days 

 according to Harrington. It is likely that the insalubrious Isthmian 

 belt, a sinuous mountain and jungle stretch many hundred miles in 

 length, did not long detain immigrating tribes from the north accus- 

 tomed to a more temperate upland valley climate. At any rate 

 they built no stone palaces and temples in the Isthmian jungle. The 



