WHOLE VOL. ARAUCANIAN CHILD LIFE — HILGER 309 



MEASUREMENTS OF TIME 



Time of day today is generally told as formerly : On sunny days, in 

 the open, it is reckoned quite accurately by the position of the sun ; 

 not so accurately by the length of shadows cast by stationary objects, 

 such as houses or trees. "If shadows are short, it must be nearly 

 midday." Indoors, time is told by the location of sunrays as they 

 shine through crevices and fall upon designated fixed places, such as a 

 stone at the fireplace or the foot of a sapling in the framework of 

 the house. Allowance was made for the shifting of the sunbeams 

 as the seasons progressed, "but the sunrays are always either on the 

 rock or to the right or the left of it." A 59-year-old woman knew 

 where sunbeams could be expected to be when the time of day was 

 halfway between sunrise and noon, at noon, and halfway between 

 noon and sunset. 



Kolupan noted that the only time of day that can be accurately told 

 is midday, since the sun is then at zenith. He then said that an 

 Austrian Tyrolese had taught him to tell time by noticing the location 

 of the shadow of his long finger in the palm of his hand when he 

 folded the finger across the palm. "If the shadow of my finger falls 

 directly below the finger, it is midday; if the end of the shadow falls 

 on this crease in my palm, it is between 5 and 6 o'clock in the even- 

 ing. This is not an old Araucanian custom." 



When there is no sun, time is merely guessed at. A 70-year-old 

 woman hurried her four grandsons off to school, during an interview 

 on a rainy day, when she learned it was 1 1 a.m. ; they had been sitting 

 by, listening in. "When the sun does not shine, we do not know the 

 time of day," commented the grandmother. "On such days our chil- 

 dren are sometimes late for school and sometimes too early." Time 

 for meals was told by hunger. 



Kolupan and a man in his seventies named the parts of the day, but 

 they agreed on one word only, namely, that for midday : both called it 

 rar)i antii. Kolupan divided the day as shown in table 8. The man in 

 his seventies divided the day into ule (morning), raqi antii (midday), 

 rupa antii (sun is passing), and epe lesu antii (evening). Both agreed 

 that the time of night (akipun) is told by the position of two constella- 

 tions, the guanaco (I'uan) and the rhea (choike). (See table 2 for 

 Chilean Araucanian names of divisions of the day.) 



Days were not named ; nor were they grouped into weeks. If count 

 had to be kept of days, a knot was tied into a thong or string "each 

 day when we got up in the morning." A period of several weeks' 

 time was reckoned by the moon. A worker, for example, who hired 

 out at harvest time took notice of the shape of the moon on the day 



