roTH] DEFORMATION, DECORATION, ORNAMENTS, CLOTHES 425 
Face paintings of the Tukano (Betoya stock) have been described 
and recorded from the upper Rio Negro (KG, 1, 247). At the time 
of the visit paid by Columbus to Santo Domingo, when the islanders 
(Arawak) wished to appear full dressed, both men and women 
painted themselves, some black, others white and red, and different 
combinations of colors, in so many devices that the effect produced 
was very laughable (DAC, 452). 
514. Body feathering.—In addition to, and simultaneous with, the 
painting of the body on the lines just indicated there are records 
under similar circumstances of body feathering. The Arawak like- 
wise stick a great number of small, fine feathers of different colors 
on different parts of the body by the help of the balsam called arre- 
cocerra (BA, 274). On the Orinoco, among the Caberre (Arawak 
stock) and many Carib, the flute players and drummers and all 
those who were appointed to direct the dances came out much more 
gorgeously, because in addition to the patterns which the sticky 
carana had left on their bodies they stuck on a variety of exquisite 
feathers in regular lines, white, red, and other colors (G, 1, 124). 
Among the Carib Islanders the most genteel of the men rubbed 
their body over with a sort of gum and then blew upon it the down 
of different birds (RO, 510). White feather down was also em- 
ployed in Surinam, apparently as part of the war decoration (sec. 
757). The feather down on the frontal pigment daub of the Makusi 
(sec. 515) must not be forgotten. 
515. They [Indians generally] dress their hair with crab oil, which 
is of so acrid a nature that no vermin, not even the mosquito, will 
venture near it. Formerly they used to smear their bodies with 
the same oil (DF, 239). In the settled districts this crab oil for the 
hair would seem to be now replaced by coconut. oil, of which there is 
no evidence, however, that the natives ever manufactured it for 
themselves. At the merrymakings of the Berbice River Arawak, in the 
very early times, the men’s hair was cleverly decorated and plaited, 
and mingled with strings of beads, from the ends of which hung 
little images and plates that swung along the naked backs (BER, 23). 
In later times we read that Arawak women wear long hair, plaiting 
it and tying it in rolls on the crown of the head, and sometimes it is 
rolled around a silver bodkin (StC, 1, 309) or a broad silver plate, to 
be replaced at times by a shell, a fishbone, tiger tooth, ete. (St, 1m, 189), 
or a wooden skewer (StC, 1, 273). That of the men is cut short by 
means of half a calabash or basin, which is put on their heads, and all 
the hair that comes below the edge is cut off with a coarse common 
knife, and thus formed into a regular circle (StC, 1, 309). So among 
the Atorai and Wapishana, both of them Arawak stocks, the mates 
keep their hair cut straight behind in a line with the lobes of the 
60160°—24——_28 
