628 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
head placed over the house, and if more deaths occur there the place 
is burned to the ground. Among some tribes, also, the dead are put 
in hammocks? with provisions for the journey, kept fresh by the 
friends of the dead till the cords of the hammock rot, when the spirit 
is held to have reached the other land. When the Cunas travel, they 
take no provisions, but live on the crops of their neighbors, a perfectly 
correct proceeding in their code. All more or less take part in trade 
and at certain times voyage in small numbers to Colon and Panama 
or to nearer places with coffee, cocoa, cocoanuts, rubber, and ivory 
nuts, getting in return cloth, arms, and implements. The effect of 
the traffic has been to modify their primitive customs. (Valdes refers 
here evidently especially to the Cunas of San Blas.) 
Other customs, from different sources, have been noted regarding 
the Cunas and are important to a better knowledge of these Indians. 
Soothsaying and sorcery played a large part in their lives, accord- 
ing to Wafer, Reclus, and others. Sometimes for days these sor- 
cerers would shut themselves up in a small hut, shrieking and 
screaming above the noise of the drums, often imitating the cries 
of animals, as when a king beast disturbs the quiet of the jungle. 
After they emerged in a half-hypnotized condition, they could, 
with marvelous certainty, predict future events and the like. Drink- 
ing has always been indulged in to a great extent by these Indians, 
whose native beverage is chica, made by the old women of the tribe, 
who sit about in a circle chewing yam roots or cassava and expecto- 
rating it into a large bowl. It is fermented by the saliva, and set 
away to be taken through a further process later. In all festivities 
the chica forms a principal part, but the men never allow the women 
to drink, or even to eat, with them. When helpless from liquor the 
men stretch out in hammocks and are fanned and sprinkled with 
cold water by their wives. Tobacco is used by the Darien Indians 
in a peculiar way, and extensively so by men and women alike. The 
leaves are rolled up in long hollow twists, and the lighted end placed 
inside the mouth. They usually smoke in parties of four or five, 
sitting about in a circle, and blowing the smoke into each other’s 
faces. An oath that is most binding among the Cunas is “sworn by 
the tooth,” and their custom of saluting each other with backs 
turned is likewise a remarkable one. 
SAN BLAS INDIANS. 
The San Blas .or Manzanillo Indians, appearing occasionally as 
they do at Colon, afford an opportunity to study the Cuna at close 
*In Comagre and other provinces the bodies of the caciques were embalmed 
by placing them in a cane hurdle, hanging them up by cords or placing them 
on a stone or log, and around or below the body they made a slow fire of fine 
herbs at such a distance as to dry it gradually, till only skin and bone remained 
(24). 
