INDIAN TRIBES OF BRAZIL. 3&9 



(tig. 15). The hair is cut square across the forehead and allowed to 

 hang down the neck. They pierce the lips and the septum of the nose, 

 ordinarily wearing- plugs of wood in the orifices, but are said to don 

 tusks of wild animals on feast days. When the}' were given rum they 

 carefully pressed in the plugs so as to lose none of the drink. 



The average height of several men measured was 5 feet 2^ inches. 



They with the other Purus tribes cultivate a little tobacco, which 

 they only use as snuff. The green leaves are toasted over the tire and 

 powdered in little mortars made of the case of the Brazil nut (Plate 8, 

 tig. 3) and then mixed with ashes. The ashes from the hulls of the 

 fruit of the chocolate bean are used for this purpose. They inhale the 

 snuff through a pair of hollow bones of a bird's leg (Plate S, tig. 1). 

 These are fastened side by side with a braid of cotton thread, and the 

 upper ends are rounded with beeswax to tit. the nostrils. A quarter or 

 half teaspoonful of snuff is placed in the palm of the hand or in a clam 

 shell and drawn up with one or two long breaths. The snuff box is 

 made of a river shell to which a neck formed of bone has been cemented 

 (Plate 8, tig. 2). They are said to make a fermented drink from fruits, 

 but this was not seen. 



They pass much of their lives in their canoes; these are narrow dug- 

 outs 12 or 11 feet in length, and sharp at both ends (Plate 9). Their 

 paddles, instead of being round-bladed like those of the Tapuios, are 

 long and narrow. 



The great level sand bars along the river are made use of by them 

 in towing their canoes on their voyages upstream. A Paumarl would 

 be frequently seen walking along the edge of the bar towing his canoe, 

 holding his family and all his possessions, to new fishing grounds, his 

 wife sitting in the stern with a steering paddle holding the canoe from 

 the shore. 



They live in little oven-shaped huts, so low that they have to get on 

 their hands and knees to enter them. These are made of long, narrow 

 palm-leaf mats, spread over a framework of sticks bent and stuck into 

 the ground at both ends. The mats are carried in their canoes, .so that 

 thev 7 always have their houses with them. Their more permanent 

 villages on the inland lakes are made of houses of the same kind. 



When the water rises over the sand liars in tin 1 rainy season they 

 move their villages upon large rafts anchored in the lakes. These 

 rafts are made of logs of light timber on which a floor of strips of 

 palm wood is tied with vines. On this they remain, rising and falling 

 with the flood and its ebb until the dry season uncovers the sand bars 

 again. They have a tradition accounting for this curious custom. 

 Long ago the people of their tribe built their villages only on the land 

 like the other tribes, but one } 7 ear the Hood rose to a much greater 

 height than usual, covering the sand bars, and then the lowland, and 

 finally the terra firma. The people climbed into the trees, and lived 



