Cuarrer XXIII 
GAMES, SPORTS, AND AMUSEMENTS 
Drink, dance, and debauchery (583). 
Dances restricted to special circumstances (584). 
Harvest dance (585). 
Humming-bird, parishara, etc., series of dances (586-590). 
Foot races (591); and remaining dances of the series (592). 
Dances with special apparatus, decorations (593) ; and without them (594). 
Females and dancing (595). 
Words of certain songs (596, 597). 
Story telling (598-601). 
Ball, play (602-606). 
Wrestling (607) ; and shield game (608). 
Children’s games: Bows and arrows (609, 610) ; charades (611) ; wax and clay 
modeling (612); hide and seek (613); dolls (614); tops (615); blow-guns 
(616) ; catchers (617) ; stilts (618) ; buzzers (619) ; rattles (620) ; leaf-strand 
figures (621); water games (622). 
583. Every Indian party, from a private “social” to a pubtic 
ceremonial, is practically a drinking bout, interspersed with more or 
less music, and its necessary corollary, a dance. The refusal of a 
drink is regarded as a willful sign of contempt, and may engender 
indelible distrust. But what are our [German] notorious drinking 
bouts as compared with those of the Guiana Indians! I saw men, 
says Schomburgk, emptying at one draught calabashes that certainly 
contained from 2 to 3 quarts, hurry off to a tree where they will 
squeeze in their stomachs so as to vomit its contents, and directly 
afterwards accept from the hand of the woman waiting for them the 
newly filled calabash, the contents of which they will again guzzle 
at one pull. In the drinking of paiwarri, the Indian is never satisfied, 
and here also the dance and song, if one can still apply that name to 
a dissolute row, continues until the intoxicating liquor is drained to 
the last drop (SR, 1, 207). The majority of the dances bear certain 
relations with birds and animals after which they may be named, 
while not a few may be connected with human beings and spirits, but 
the exact nature of the connection or relationship is at present in 
many cases doubtful. In general terms it may be stated that without 
drink there is never any dancing, which will continue so long as the 
former lasts, and thus a dance may often continue a couple of nights, 
including the intervening day. ‘The entertainment, whatever its 
nature, generally begins and ends with a deafening yell; in the 
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