l80 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I33 



llama — the llama was an animal that lived around in the Mapuche 

 country then ; it was like a sheep, he said, but its pelt was not as heavy 

 as a sheep's. They pulled off the ears of the grass by hand, collected 

 them on the pelts, folded the pelts, and each man carried peltfuls of 

 them home, slung across his shoulder. They collected heads of the 

 wheat in the same way in those days, and we sometimes collect it in 

 the same manner today." 



A 19-year-old girl in Cofiaripe collected wheat by this method 

 while I was there. Her family's 1946 stored wheat supply had been 

 depleted, and the grain in the fields was not ready to be harvested — 

 only scattered ears had ripened. The girl walked through the wheat 

 field (pi. 47, i), grasped a few ripened ears here and a few there 

 with each hand (little finger toward the earth), broke the ears off the 

 stalk, and when a hand could hold no more, dropped them into a 

 basket which she was carrying on her arm. When the basket was 

 nearly full, she straddled the handle and packed the ears down with 

 both feet, and when it could hold no more, she walked home. There 

 she poured a portion of the ears into a wooden dish, placed the dish 

 on the ground close to a tree trunk, stepped on the grain, supporting 

 herself by clutching the ends of two branches on the trunk of a tree, 

 and threshed the grain with her feet (pi. 47, 2). Threshing grain 

 in this manner is called fiuwiiir)en. The movements of her feet, used 

 alternately for probably three movements, were quick and somewhat 

 rhythmic. With each movement she brought the ears of grain into the 

 middle of the dish by means of her toes and the side of the 

 foot. "When my mother nuwinrjen, she sings a song; I don't know 

 the words, but I can hum the melody." And she did. After some time 

 she emptied the wooden dish into a winnowing tray, shook the tray, 

 and then by brushing the surface with her hand sorted out ears that 

 were not completely threshed. Such ears she threw back into the 

 wooden dish to be threshed. The kernels she poured into a basket 

 (pi. 47, 3). She then threshed the remainder of the ears. The thresh- 

 ing of the entire harvest was completed in three installments. Next she 

 walked into an open space to winnow the kernels — a place evidently 

 used for that purpose, for chaff and dry pea shells were lying about. 

 She had barely begun to winnow when small pigs came to eat the 

 refuse. Noticing the direction of the wind, she sat on a log with her 

 back toward it, poured kernels onto the winnowing tray, and then with 

 intriguing skill she shook the kernels simultaneously up and down, 

 forward and back, and from side to side, focusing her eyes on the 

 farther edge of the tray where the kernels began to collect as they 

 separated from the chaff. When a goodly number had collected there. 



