238 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



A rather comely young woman, carrying on her back a 

 wickerwork basket, or creel, supported by a forehead band, 

 and accompanied by a small child, was with them. At 

 the village there were a number of men, women, and chil- 

 dren. Although as completely naked as the others we 

 had met, the members of this band were more ornamented 

 with beads, and wore earrings made from the inside of 

 mussel-shells or very big snail-shells. They were more 

 hairy than the ones we had so far met. The women, but 

 not the men, completely remove the hair from their bodies 

 and look more, instead of less, indecent in consequence. 

 The chief, whose body was painted red with the juice of a 

 fruit, had what could fairly be styled a mustache and im- 

 perial; and one old man looked somewhat like a hairy 

 Ainu, or perhaps even more like an Australian black fel- 

 low. My companion told me that this probably repre- 

 sented an infusion of negro blood, and possibly of mulatto 

 blood, from runaway slaves of the old days, when some of 

 the Matto Grosso mines were worked by slave labor. 

 They also thought it possible that this infiltration of Afri- 

 can negroes might be responsible for the curious shape of 

 the bigger huts, which were utterly unlike their flimsy, 

 ordinary shelters, and bore no resemblance in shape to 

 those of the other Indian tribes of this region; whereas 

 they were not unlike the ordinary beehive huts of the 

 agricultural African negroes. There were in this village 

 several huts or shelters open at the sides, and two of the 

 big huts. These were of closely woven thatch, circular in 

 outline, with a rounded dome, and two doors a couple of 

 feet high opposite each other, and no other opening. There 

 were fifteen or twenty people to each hut. Inside were 



