372 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1901. 



was provided with an old percussion-cap box or river shell for a snuff 

 box and a hollow bone of a bird's leg, one end of which was rounded 

 with beeswax and placed in the nostril and the snuff drawn through it. 

 Snuff taking was a matter of importance, two persons being necessary 

 for its proper performance. (Plate 5.) One poured perhaps a quarter 

 of a teaspoonful of the greenish stuff into the palm of his hand, which 

 he then held out to his neighbor, who bent over and with one end of 

 the nose bone in his nostril passed the other along the edge of the snuff, 

 drawing it up with deep breaths. 



As night came on pieces of resin were set on fire and placed on 

 upturned earthen pots in each shed for light. Soon two or three of 

 the 3 T oung men started a monotonous chant, and Pedro Bom, who had 

 already taken snuff with his old enemies, to further show his good will, 

 struck in with a few words of the chorus. Sefior Joao now opened 

 my bale of goods, and soon the whole tribe was gathered round admir- 

 ing the little looking-glasses and bright-colored handkerchiefs and 

 beads. Finding I would trade for anything they possessed, the 

 women began taking off their bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and 

 tangas and exchanging them for handkerchiefs and looking-glasses. 

 The young men brought out a fine blowgun and bundle of bows and 

 arrows, and the }"ounger chief pulled out the hollow wooden cylin- 

 der in his nose with the red macaw's feather and traded it for a little 

 looking-glass and his earplugs for some fishhooks. Even old Schau 

 Assuc sold his mortar and pestle for making snuff and a prett}^ coronet 

 of toucan's feathers, and his wife pulled off a string of monke3 T, s teeth 

 from her neck and the mother-of-pearl disks from her ears and her 

 bark armlet, and then a beautiful girdle of little river shells, her baby's 

 onty ornament. (Plate 4.) 1 also purchased the clay kettle in which 

 my supper was cooked, and finally an old bark hammock. With this 

 I seemed to have procured a complete assortment of all their worldly 

 goods. 



Leocardo had hung my hammock and mosquito net under Schau 

 Assuc's shed, and I now took refuge under it from the mosquitoes, 

 which came in swarms as the fires went down. The children had long 

 ago gone to sleep in the hammocks, but I was awakened by their cry- 

 ing, and I saw Schau Assuc taking down his hammock and with his 

 Avife dragging their children into the woods followed Iry the rest, so that 

 soon I was the onlj r occupant of the village. This seemed to be a com- 

 mon occurrence with this people, to dash into the w T oods at night and 

 sleep under the trees or in little sheds made for the purpose, thus 

 escaping the mosquitoes, which swarm into the clearings at that time. 

 In the morning at daybreak the people returned to the village. 



Kitanii e'h now brought a string of skulls of the black peccary to show 

 me what a great hunter he was, and then he gave me an object lesson 

 in their method of hunting. First he showed how they used the blow 

 gun. Taking a broad belt of bark,. he drew it closely about his body 



