ROTH] DEFORMATION, DECORATION, ORNAMENTS, CLOTHES 443 
547. The material of the various decorations or coverings for the 
loins and adjacent parts was either bark, cotton, hair, seeds, or beads, 
and oceasionally palm leaves, jaguar skin, etc. Among the Warrau of 
this colony the women wore a cord with a piece of the bark of the 
kakaralli beat soft, and fastened fore and aft (HiB, 329). A more 
detailed description of the article used by the same people is given 
by Schomburgk. The woman’s apron was of flexible bark; its upper 
border was tucked over a string tied across her hips. From above 
down it became narrower and narrower until it ended in a shred, 
about the thickness of one’s thumb, which, passed between the legs, 
was fixed into the string behind (SR, 1, 194). The Surinam Forest 
Indians, among them the Wajakoele (Wayakuli), similarly covered 
themselves with manbarakrak (Lecythis ollaria) bark (PEN, 1, 95). 
On the Orinoco the Warrau men would seem to have used a piece of 
bast sheath of the ite palm for a covering; women employed a bundle 
of ite shreds (G,1,146). The Uaupes River Indian men wore this 
covering in similar fashion—a small piece of tururi [bark] passed 
between the legs and twisted onto a string round the loins (ARW, 342; 
Cou, 1,170). The Taruma wore bark even in Coudreau’s day (Cou, 
1, 347). He mentions women’s bark aprons with the Waiwai, etc. 
(Cou, m1, 357), and says that, among the Wapishana, the length of 
the bark “lap” (tururi) was, to a certain extent, a guide to the im- 
portance of the wearer (Cou, 11, 317). Still more recently there have 
been described men’s bast aprons, variously painted, used for danc- 
ing purposes on the upper Rio Negro, e. g., the Tiquie River (KKG,1, 
289). 
548. At Santo Domingo, on the first arrival of the Europeans, 
while the island men, as already mentioned, went about naked, the 
women wore a covering of cotton which they bound around their 
hips, while others used grass and leaves of trees. This covering of 
cotton was called nagua by those Indians, from which the Spanish 
word enagua, meaning the inner white skirt of a woman’s dress, is 
derived (DAC, 452). On the mainland, cotton cloth, and subse- 
quently linen, was employed. Among the Oyampi males a native- 
woven strip of white cotton cloth (1.40 meters long, 34 cm. wide at 
the center, and 45 cm. at the extremities) is placed at its middle be- 
tween the thighs, while its ends are passed under a small cotton 
waistband, falling over it in front and behind. It was ornamented 
with black stripes forming arabesques and fringes, the black colora- 
tion being effected by dipping the cotton before’ weaving into an 
infusion made with the leaves of a creeper (Cr, 213). These cover- 
ings among this same people have been noted by other travelers (e. g., 
Cou, 11, 436). In our own colony the native cloth [of the Carib], 
supported by a cord around the loins and adorned with tassels at 
