a - 
nore] ANIMAL FOOD 179 
then the necessary chain of conditions-to insure good luck is incom- 
plete without the application of the many attraction charms, or binas 
(WER, v1, sec. 233. Consult PEN, 1,ch. XVIT). 
163. The usual Indian method of cooking all animal food is by 
boiling it either with water or the juice of “poison” cassava, to 
which they add such a quantity of red pepper as would instantly 
excoriate the mouth of a person unaccustomed to its use (BA, 323 
Meat can thus be preserved “ moist ” almost indefinitely by keeping it 
soaked with this boiled poison juice, or “cassarip,” and peppers, and 
boiling it daily—the ordinary form of what is known as “ pepper 
pot.” Meat can be likewise preserved “dry” by smoking it from 
time to time on the so-called barbecue, boucan, babracote, etc. The 
Wapishana, Atorai, and Taruma boucan their deer and tapir meat, 
and after drying well and removing the bones they pound it up in a 
mortar and serve it dry. The ordinary corn mortar can be utilized 
for the purpose, but a special one is occasionally employed (JO). It 
is said that the better to preserve the flesh of birds these are some- 
times boiled previous to barbecuing. To prepare any larger sized 
bird, as powis, for the table, it will be dressed by a woman as fol- 
lows: The feathers are all plucked, except from the head, and the 
bird tied up by the neck at a height of about 3 feet to a strong staff 
stuck vertically into the ground. The cook (in this particular in- 
stance a Makusi) first of all cut off the toes, then the drumsticks, 
and next the thighs; the wings then followed suit. On sticking her 
knife into the bird’s crop, and twisting it around once or twice, 
the various seeds, ete., that had been swallowed fell onto the ground. 
With a vertical cut down and along each shoulder and side the 
“breast ” was removed in one piece. The whole of the entrails were 
now extracted in one mass by a careful manipulation with the hands, 
and the heart and liver thrown into the cooking pot. The back was 
next divided from the neck, and this finally divided from the head. 
On the Oyapock River the Oyambi Indians, after smoking the tapir 
meat on the boucan, bury it in the ground with leafy branches be- 
neath and many leaves above (Cr, 199). When salt is available, the 
fish, where the size warrants it, is cut open and cleaned, its sides 
slashed with vertical cuts, the salt well rubbed in, and then dried in 
the sun. Small fish are generally wrapped in banana, Sc/taminea, 
etc., leaves, tied up, and roasted (App, mu, 304, 5387). The Indians 
throughout the upper Orinoco fry their fish, dry them in the sun, 
and reduce them to powder without separating the bones. Von Hum- 
boldt describes having seen masses of 50 or 60 pounds of this fish 
flour (manioc de pescado) which resembles that of cassava. When it 
is wanted for eating, it is mixed with water and reduced to a paste 
(AVH, 1, 454). Wapishana pound the fish, mix it with salt, and 
