ROTH] RESTRICTIONS 297 



349. Unlike what might have been expected from a consideration 

 of other savage races, even so near as tliose of North America, there 

 seems to be no record of the taboo of the so-called totem-animal, 

 but I can not assume for this reason that such taboo is, or was, non- 

 existent. As a matter of fact, during the whole course of my anno- 

 tation of all available literature relative to the Guiana Indians, I 

 can find but one statement bearing on the question and that in the 

 negative. Tins is from Crevaux (.523). On the Guaviar, a branch 

 of the Orinoco, he found an Indian who, although a Piapoco (i. e. 

 Toucan), liad no qualnas about killing the bii-d after wliich his 

 tribe was named. ^Ul the other references are of doubtful totemic 

 significance. 



250. Certam indigenous animals are not to be eaten, apparently 

 for no assignable cause. On the Moruca, the .Vrawaks do not use 

 the flesh of the Palamedea comuta Linn., although they employ the 

 tail feathers for aiTow-barbs (ScR, ii, 457). While the Makusis 

 touch the flesh of the ant-bear only when forced by want, the Caribs 

 regard it as the greatest delicacy (ScR, ii, 434). So also theUaupes 

 Indians do not eat the large wild pig (Dicotijles lahiaius), the anta 

 {Tapirus americanus), or the white-rumped mutun {Crax glohicera'i) 

 (ARW, 337). In the Pomeroon when men kill a bush-hog or any 

 other anhnal that happens to contain young, there are always to be 

 found Indians who will not touch the llesh. Other animals will be 

 avoided for more or less defined reasons. Thus, the savamiah pewit 

 (Vanellas cayennensis) is never eaten by Indians, as they say that par- 

 taking of its flesh produces deafness (Bro, 104). At Carichana, near 

 River Met a, Orinoco, the Piaroas said that the people of their tribe in- 

 fallibly die wlieii they eat of the manati (AVH, ii, 492). In Surinam, 

 an old Trio informed de Goeje that he would never eat the head of a 

 quatta monkey, because his mother had told him that he would get 

 gray hair like it, and women consider gray hair hateful (Go, 22). 

 Though hog and turtle were abundant on the islands, the Caribs 

 there eat neither, for the assigned reasons that their eyes might 

 become small like the former animal, that they might participate in 

 the clumsiness and stupidity of the latter (RoP, 465). The attributes 

 of the animal eaten could be transferred by ingestion not only to the 

 pereon eating [compare ingestion of human flesh to obtain attributes 

 of the deceased, in Sect. 77], but even to the chdd of such pereon 

 (Sect. S79). The Zaparo Indians of the Napo River (upper Amazon) 

 are " very particular in their diet : unless from necessity, they will, in 

 most cases, not eat any heavy meats such as tapir and peccary, but 

 confine themselves to birds, monkeys, deer, fish, etc., principally 

 because they argue that the heavier meats make them also unwieldy, 

 like the animals who supply the flesh, impedmg their agihty and 

 unfitting them for the chase" (AS, 168). On the upper Amazon the 



