norH] DEFORMATION, DECORATION, ORNAMENTS, CLOTHES “419 
e. g., among the Oyana there was no depilation of these parts (GO, 2), 
while in those comparatively rare instances where the custom was 
peculiar to the one sex it would appear to have been the women who 
practiced it. On the Berbice the instrument used for eradicating the 
hairs was a small piece of wood partially split. Those who inter- 
mixed with the colonists often employed a bit of wire twisted into a 
spiral form (Pnk, 1, 518). Elsewhere the hair, seized between the 
thumb and a bamboo strip, —— pit 
Cae oN ae THK 
was pulled out or broken 
with a seesaw movement eo! aio \ rea Ll 
(Cr, 211). In Surinam, jf? ..  —-- \] ty yi 
a \ 
‘ 
apparently among Carib ( Ne 
(AK, 130), and on the 
Rupununi, among the Ma- 
Iusi (SR, 1, 365), it was \ox 
extracted with two mussel 
shells. No adequate rea- 
son for this widely ex- par, 
tended practice of depila- iN 
tion has hitherto been tie! © 
forthcoming. One author ¢ 
D 
{i —— 
talks of the Indians pos- 4) “ ™ \ } 
sessing an idea that it is \ as f 
more becoming not to 4 Oe 
have any hairs except CSD 
upon the head (Pnk, 1, G D 
518) ; another, that it was 
connected with the idea of 
cleanliness (FE, 45). _—_—- 
509. Among the Ara- —< 
wak (SR, 1, 148, 151), a 
Warrau (SR, 1, 167), and 
not a few of the Carib 
stock of tribes, both sexes 
had their countenances more or less tattooed, an operation apparently 
performed soon after birth or in early childhood, the parts usually 
chosen being in proximity to the mouth and over the eyebrows, 
situations which, as already mentioned, were normally depilated, 
but occasionally other parts of the body were tattooed. With 
the Arawak and Warrau, as can occasionally be observed among 
the few very aged males and females still surviving on the Pome- 
roon and Moruca, there extend from the mouth to the temples 
one or two curved lines something like a curled-up mustache (fig. 
999 A), while from each horizontal line over the eyebrows there 
(e 
Fic. 229.—Examples of face and arm tattoo, 
