220 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL, 1 33 



warmth as well. Additional light is sometimes furnished by burning 

 wicks of twisted threads placed in bottles or tin cans containing kero- 

 sene. A lighted sliver of wood helps one find things in dark places in 

 the ruka. If light is needed on the outside of the ruka, or when one 

 needs to walk any distance at night, "like going for medicines for the 

 sick," the end of a piece of wood is set on fire at the fireplace and 

 as one walks, it is whirled in a circle at arm's length to keep it burning. 

 "We were brought home that way one pitch dark night after caring 

 for a sick person," said a non-Araucanian herbalist. "The light keeps 

 pumas away, too." On Christmas Eve one could see such firebrands 

 being whirled by leaders of groups of persons coming to Midnight 

 Mass. 



Almost without exception ruka seen during the present study were 

 orderly and clean, and so were the yards about them. Children were 

 expected to keep everything in its proper place when not in use; if 

 they neglected to do this, their attention was called to it. A lo-year- 

 old Alepue boy was seen putting back an ax, which he had used to 

 slice down a block of wood from which he was making a top, into the 

 exact place from which he had taken it. A 13-year-old Conaripe boy 

 slid off his horse when he came home from an errand, which had 

 taken several hours, removed the saddle, and at once carried it into 

 its corner in the ruka. Dishes, after being washed at the brook, or in 

 water brought from there, were put in their proper places to dry. 



Sweeping, both inside and outside the ruka, is done with a broom 

 made of esparto tied to a wooden handle with tender shoots of voqui. 

 The yard outside of the ruka is also swept with a leafy branch of a 

 tree or shrub. Whiskbrooms, used in cleaning kettles, pottery, and 

 bellies of fish, are made in the same manner as the broom. A Conaripe 

 girl, about to tidy up the yard, shooed away the chickens, chased the 

 pigs, and then with a leafy 5-foot branch vigorously swept the ground 

 near and between the two ruka occupied by her family. "Most cer- 

 tainly one does not use this type of broom inside the ruka! This 

 enormous thing ! No, not this !" she said, somewhat annoyed, when 

 asked if it were so used. 



Household furnishings are very simple; they are meager, but ade- 

 quate. Unless the family has a ruka for sleeping purposes, persons 

 sleep in corners or along walls on sheep pelts either on the floor of the 

 ruka or on low platform beds of planks. A non-Araucanian Alepue 

 area herbalist had seen a row of children, each rolled in a blanket, 

 asleep on pelts on the ground in the ruka used for sleeping. They 

 were placed head to feet, alternately. Two adult men were sleeping 

 in the same position on a platform bed, each rolled in a blanket. Sheep 



