AMONG THE YURACARE INDIANS 307 



wearing apparel and casts herself upon his body, where she 

 remains weeping and lamenting until the time of the funeral, 

 which is a day or two later. All the women squat in a 

 circle around the deceased, raise their voices in sorrowful 

 wails, and recount the heroic deeds and good characteris- 

 tics of the dead. The men drink casire and dig a deep hole 

 in the ground; when the time for the burial arrives the 

 body is carefully deposited therein, together with all his 

 possessions, and the wife's clothing is placed on top, after 

 which the earth is thrown in. 



The weapons of this tribe consist entirely of bows made 

 of c/icwto-palm wood, five or six feet high, and various 

 kinds of arrows. The shaft of the latter is always com- 

 posed of slender bamboo, but the points vary greatly; thus 

 for large game there is a long double-edged blade of another 

 variety of bamboo; slender, barbed points of chonta are 

 used for birds, and a long, sharp spike of palm-wood for 

 fish. They are wholly ignorant of the use of the deadly 

 curare poison. 



We were fortunate in timing our visit to the Chimore 

 for the dry season. Additions were being made to the 

 already large areas under cultivation, and for this purpose 

 the Indians were cutting down forest. They were required 

 to work four days each week, the remaining three being 

 devoted to fishing and hunting. All the men and boys 

 participated in this work and seemed to enjoy it thoroughly. 

 At first the undergrowth was removed; this naturally led 

 to the discovery of many strange animals, all of which 

 were promptly brought to us for examination. The num- 

 ber and variety of snakes was astonishing; even after hav- 

 ing spent years in a similar type of country, I had never 

 suspected that so many existed, which shows how incon- 

 spicuous they are until one actually goes over the ground 

 with a comb, as it were. They captured green boas, several 

 species of the fer-de-lance, and many others which we did 

 not recognize. Some of them were poisonous, and others 

 were innocuous. Among the former was one which in ap- 



