METAL. 



217 



missing. The chelipeds or front legs armed with large claws also function as 

 the man's arms and are lifted as if to seize the ears. In order to emphasize their 

 human attributes, they are each supplied with two arm-bands or bracelets. The 

 only other articles of adornment or apparel are the crown and the anklets. The 

 correct number of toes may be counted on the feet, which are hammered rather 

 thin and to which serpent heads are attached. The human features are large, 

 the nose being characteristically so. This crab-god holds in his mouth the lower 

 half of a human leg severed at the knee an interesting fact, the significance of 

 which can only be surmised (see also fig. 350). The crab's body being hollow and 

 supplied with a small ball of copper serves as a bell. The dorsal view reveals 

 a slit or opening, in shape like a horseshoe, the tongue of metal outlined by it 

 looking for all the world like the turned-under tail of a crab, but it is fastened 

 to the anterior end, perhaps in order to emphasize the fundamental structure of 

 the bell. 



Other deities with mixed attributes also occur, the bird-god being one. An 

 example from the Heye collection is seen in figure 369. The body is human ; 

 the head that of a bird. There is the customary flat- 

 tened bar at the top and bottom. To emphasize the 

 bird attributes, six additional bird heads are attached 

 to the figure, two of these taking the place of hands 

 and the other four attached to the bars at the head and 

 feet, respectively, as was previously seen in two groups 

 of the alligator-god (see PI. XLVIII, fig. g ; and text- 

 fig. 366). 



Another figurine in the Heye collection probably refers 

 to the same deity (fig. 370). Here however the human 

 attributes are minimized. In what would otherwise be a 

 complete bird form, human arms and hands simply take 

 the place of wings. There is the usual wide-spreading, 

 slightly forked tail. The head and its ornament are the 

 same as in the preceding figurine, but the two additional 

 inverted bird heads are not worked out in detail. 



In these Chiriquian deities with human attributes, it is generally the latter that 

 dominate. That is so say, the body and extremities are usually human, and the 

 head, animal; in other words, a man with an animal mask, and with ornaments 

 representing parts of the animal in question or of some other. The reverse is 

 true in one specimen belonging to the Heye collection (fig. 371). Here the head, 

 breast and arms are human, and the body and lower extremities avian. The 

 tail being much reduced in size, the bird characters are not evident at first glance. 

 In order to further emphasize these, a bird foot is the central feature of the elaborate 

 head-dress and the human hands are replaced by bird feet. Two conventional- 

 ized bird heads are also placed at the sides of the body and serve as supports 

 for the elbows. 



Among the Chiriquian antiquities exhibited by Captain Dow before the American 

 Ethnological Society, nearly fifty years ago, was a gold image with attributes 

 suggesting the foregoing. It was " in the form of a man, holding a bird in each 

 MEMOIRS CONN. ACAD., Vol. III. 



Fig. 369. Gold image rep- 

 resenting the parrot-god. 

 Heye collection. '/' 



