438 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [BTH. ANN. 38 
After the tree has been felled the outer bark is removed and the inner 
bark hammered until it can easily be slipped off the tree. The 
thicker stems furnish the body, the thinner ones the sleeves, which 
are sewed on; this is the only sewing of the clothes (SR, 1, 403). 
The manufacture of this hammered bark cloth was also known to the 
Warrau (sec. 547) and to tribes of the upper Rio Negro and upper 
branches of the Amazon, who utilize it in the manufacture of 
dresses for the mask dances (KG, 1, 117). 
540. Armlets are generally worn, but any suggestion “that they 
represent a permanent constriction of the flesh which used formerly 
to be made around the arm” (IT, 197) or “that they are employed 
for the purpose of enlarging the muscles” (BB, 247), similar delu- 
sions to which have been expressed by many an otherwise level- 
headed observer in the case of leg bands, is as ridiculous as it is 
physiologically impossible. The Maopitvan were seen with arm 
bands made of palm leaves . . . painted with hieroglyphics. Under 
these bands were stuck the tail feathers of the blue macaw with the 
plumes up, so that their tips were 5 or 6 inches higher than the 
‘ head (SR, 1, 472). The Oyana use similar palm-leaf armlets (GOE, 
pl. 1, fig. 17). The Waiwai had theirs made of bark (Cou, 11, 379). 
Maiongkong women had cords of human hair on the upper arm and 
wrist and around the neck (SR, 1, 403)—armlets of their own hair 
(SR, 1, 403); similarly with the men (ScF, 228). Guinau men 
wore around their ankles, knee joints, and arms, braids of their own 
hair, while some wore beads like the women (ScF, 225). The 
women [Caberre and many Carib] ... adorn their arms, neck, 
waist, and legs with a large number of threads of quiripa, 1. e., 
threads of very minute beads which they make with great dexterity 
from a snail shell . . . Those who can obtain them, load themselves 
with glass beads (G, 1, 125). The Arekuna also often wear armlets 
of threaded circular pieces of shell (EU, 291). Arawak women, on 
festival occasions, etc., likewise [in addition to the painting] wear 
long strings of small beads of different colors closely wound around 
their wrists, arms, ankles, and above the calves of their legs (BA, 
275). I have observed similar practices among Patamona, Arekuna, 
Makusi, and Wapishana women. Jt must be remembered that men 
are not averse to wearing glass beads. Armlets may be in the form 
of a simple cotton cord, but especially in the case of Carib, Arekuna, 
Patamona, and Makusi males (pl. 152), they take on that of a 
more or less broad woven cotton band encircling the arm and fur- 
nished at its junction in front with a flat circular disk of bone, shell, 
or metal, through the central aperture in which their suspensory 
strings pass to hang down in long, loose, more or less decorated 
ends. Such disks the Makusi call apéta; the Akawai call them 
