312 ANIMISM AND FOLK-LORE OF GUIANA INDIANS [RTii. ANN. ;{0 



and striking of the symptoms have passed she can come down from her 

 height, and occupy a small place partitioned off in the darkest corner 

 of the hut (ScR, ii, 315). So also in Cayenne, the girl's hammock 

 was slung high up to the ridge of the Icarhet (PBa, 225). On the 

 upper Amazon, she is similarly banished to the girao [an overhead 

 staging mside the oblong hut] under the smoky and filthy roof (HWB, 

 383). She must not go near water until when the period is past; her 

 mother bathes her in the closed room. If, during the day, the Arawak 

 girl wishes to micturate she must do so into a goblet, which she empties 

 after dark in the bush. When she thus similarly goes to ease herself, 

 she must be accompanied by her mother, and must take with her a 

 lighted fire-stick, which otherwise would not be used. The Makusi gu'l 

 uses a fire which she herself has to light, and alone gets the benefit of. 

 For ten days she cooks her cassava meal in her own pot at her own 

 fire. Pots and drmking vessels that she has used are broken, and the 

 chips buried (ScR, ii, 316). The Ai-awak girl must not comb her hair, 

 but must let it hang loose until such time as her mother combs it 

 after bathing her when the event is over. The Warrau matron (or 

 the father sometimes) crops her (or his) daughter's hair; the Carib girl 

 has hers burned off (ScR, ii, 431). On the Aiary River (Rio Negro), 

 the hair cut from a girl at menstruation is used for head and dance 

 ornaments by the men (KG, i, 181; ii, 253). 



273. As a rule the puberty ordeal is brought to a conclusion with a 

 drink-and-dance party, in which the girl herself neither drinks nor 

 dances, though she constitutes of course the central object of attrac- 

 tion. If an Arawak, she is brought out of the closed room by a 

 middle-aged man, and shown in her decorations to the assembled 

 guests; she then takes her seat on a stool especially made for her, 

 shaped like a crocodile or a "tiger." Previous to these festivities 

 her brother or father has killed a hummingbird, dried it, and cut it 

 up into very small pieces. Every visitor, male or female, now gets a 

 bit of this on a small piece of cassava, the idea being that when the 

 girl grows older she will obtain her share of any of the good things 

 that the other people may possess. The Warrau young woman is 

 decked vnih beads and the wliite feather-down of various birds, as 

 Crax and Ardea, apparently stuck with some gummy substance to the 

 smooth head [the hair having been cut], and the arms and legs (ScR, i, 

 1G8). The Caribs paint her red all over. In place of the stool they 

 would seem to have employed a stone or ( ?) plate (ScR, ii, 431). 



374. The followang are the ordeals regularly undergone by Arawak 

 women at subsequent menstruations, and which I understand are 

 undergone, to a greater or less extent, by women of other tribes 

 also, for example, the Warraus. The girl takes up her quarters in a 

 separate logic or banab, distinguishable from all other structures by the 

 suspended bunches of waste ite shreds. She lies in a smaller ham- 



