ROTH ] DEFORMATION, DECORATION, ORNAMENTS, CLOTHES 44] 
row of loops (B) being temporarily kept in position by means of the 
left thumb and fingers. On completion of the fourth loop the two 
strands are worked singly (C), the one being slipped around the 
base of the first loop of the first row, and the other around that of the 
second one, so as to form the first two loops of the second row, care 
being taken at the same time that each strand passes over itself as 
well as over its fellow (D). The process is thus continued (E) until 
such time as a sufficient length is obtained, when, after removal from 
the pencil, it is securely tied at both extremities. I have also seen 
these people with similarly constructed belts made of six loops. In 
cotton, the Arekuna made them with as many as 15 (sec. 54). 
545. The Patamona have a similar hollow cylindrical belt, likewise 
made of kamwarri around a wooden pencil, but in this case plaited of 
eight strands (pl. 153 B), in four pairs of two each. Its commence- 
ment is shown in the diagram (fig. 230 F) and care must be taken in 
its subsequent manufacture that four strands are always maintained 
on either side of the stick and that the strand nearest the starting 
point alway passes underneath the stick so as to emerge between the 
second and third strands of the opposite side. 
546. Loin cloths, aprons, laps, and skirts.—For decency’s sake, as 
Gumilla tells us, the missionaries distributed clothing, especially 
among the women, but in vain. They fling it into the river or hide it, 
but do not cover themselves, and when remonstrated with, they reply 
“We do not cover ourselves, because it gives us shame.”... They rec- 
ognize shame and bashfulness, but the signification of the terms is 
changed. . . . They feel abashed at being clothed (G, 1, 122). Har- 
court, on the Oyapock River, Cayenne, in the early seventeenth cen- 
tury, describes the people as “all naked, both men and women; and 
this I observed among them that although the better sort of men 
(especially the Yaios) doe cover their privities, by wearing over 
them a little peece of cotton cloth, pretily woven after their manner; 
yet did I never see any of their women covered in any part, either 
above or beneath the waste, albeit they daily conversed amongst us, 
but were all (as the plaine proverb is) even starke belly naked ” 
(HR, 362). Davies, on the Amazon a few years later, speaks of the 
Indians being altogether naked, both men and women having not so 
much as one thread about them to cover any part of their nakedness 
(DW, 414). Van Berkel, on the Berbice, about half a century sub- 
sequently, says that the men (Warrau) are much more jealous but 
nevertheless more impudent, running mostly without a lap to cover 
their nakedness, which they hoist up by the head towards the belly 
with a little band tied fast around the body behind (BER, 67). Be- 
yond these (Akawai) Indians (in the interior), says Bancroft, are 
60160°—24—_29 + 
