WHOLE VOL. ARAUCANIAN CHILD LIFE — HILGER 227 



The spinner is seated on a low bench while spinning. Around her 

 left arm, in loose fashion, she has wound one of the elongated wads. 

 The upper end of the spindle is held casually in her right hand, while 

 the lower end rests on the ground near her side. With her index 

 fingers and thumbs she pulls some of the wad into a strand of workable 

 thickness, and long enough to reach comfortably from the left hand to 

 the spindle. Then, with a twist of the finger tips of the right hand, she 

 sends the spindle rotating (anticlockwise) in midair. The strand of 

 wool now becomes yarn. She undoes the slipknot in the groove of the 

 spindle (which has kept the yarn already on the spindle from un- 

 winding), rotates the spindle again in midair, and thereby winds the 

 newly spun yarn onto the spindle. She again secures the yarn on the 

 spindle with a slipknot in the groove and then repeats the process of 

 spinning. 



Spun yarn is twirled as a single strand or two strands together, 

 depending upon the use to be made of it. Yarn intended for clothing 

 must be finer and is therefore more firmly twirled than that intended 

 for household articles, such as blankets, lama, and choapino. "For 

 instance, there is no use weaving a poncho with yarn like this [just 

 spun] ; it must be made durable by twirling. It must be tightly twirled 

 or it will not shed rain, or keep out those blasting winds." Men often 

 help to twirl ; so do older boys and girls. 



An informant demonstrated twirling two strands of yarn that she 

 intended to weave into a poncho. She unrolled several feet of yarn 

 from each of two spindles, and prevented more from unrolling by 

 means of a slipknot in the groove of each spindle. Letting both spin- 

 dles rest on the ground, she rolled a strand of one spindle the full 

 length of her right hand over her left wrist. She repeated this several 

 times, and then held the end of it between her teeth to keep it from 

 unwinding while she dealt in the same manner with a strand of the 

 other spindle. This done, she brought the two ends together, held 

 them between an index finger and thumb, and suspended both spindles 

 in midair. The rotating spindles twisted the two strands of yarn into 

 one. Since she wanted tightly twirled yam, she now rested the lower 

 ends of the spindles on the ground, relaxed them, and suspended them 

 again. As they spun again, the yarn was twisted tighter. Upon ex- 

 amination, she found the yarn not sufficiently twirled, for she re- 

 marked, "I want to use this yarn to weave a poncho for my husband," 

 so she twirled it a third time. She twirled the remainder of the two 

 spindles and then wound the twirled yarn onto an empty spindle from 

 which it was later wound into a ball. When making a ball, the spindle 



