novH] GAMES, SPORTS, AND AMUSEMENTS 479 
the wampang or first-comer is the one to force the entry. After 
the race there is a rest, while drink is handed round, and next the 
hosts welcome the runners with the tukui dance, in which all join. 
The runners generally get in at about 9 or 10 o’clock in the morning, 
and the humming-bird dance goes on for a time, perhaps to midday. 
The element of rivalry enters into these foot races, and as the win- 
ner becomes known as the strong man, his championship is challenged 
by men of other villages. In former days this led to a series of fes- 
tivities during those latter months of the rains which might be 
called the harvest months. Early in the afternoon the runners go 
out and wash off the chalk and dress up with a tippet of black powis 
feathers, and substitute the maraka (rattle) for the kawa_ seeds. 
When the changes have been completed, they dance outside the drink 
house and round it before entering. 
592. This dance, for which there are special songs, is called the 
warapang, a word which may signify another bird, but there is no 
certainty about it. The hosts join them in another dance, turning in 
and out among them. This other dance is the muruwa, a word which 
I believe may mean the troupial, another bird with a long, dependent 
nest. Here the dancers carry a long bamboo, around which are 
twined the kawa seeds, instruments known as warrungga (sec. 576), 
and these they strike on the ground. I agree with the opinion of my 
clerical collaborator in this series of songs that the words may be 
influenced by the nature of the country and the time of the year, for 
they sing of white quartz, water measurers, birds, beasts, fishes, trees, 
flowers, and take up almost the whole natural history of the place. 
593. The difficulty of satisfactorily accounting for the inclusion 
and correlation of such apparently disconnected material in the sub- 
ject matter of the song as a whole similarly meets us with the special 
objects and apparatus that may be brought into requisition for the 
due observance of the dance. Thus, in the tukui and parishara 
series one is at a loss to account for the occasional introduction of the 
head of a karuata (species of bush hog) carried in dancing proces- 
sion, or for the perhaps more common headdress of howler-monkey 
skin for certain of the dancers. On the other hand, there is a prob- 
able explanation of their bemg remnants of the various animal 
dances still met with throughout the Guianas. One of the strangest 
of these among the old-time Surinam Carib was the general animal 
dance, where every performer, male and female, represented a differ- 
ent kind of animal or bird. ‘Penard describes how each carried a 
stick with the head of an animal or bird on it, and had decorated 
himself besides with feathers or had painted himself. Men and 
women chased in and out amongst each other, and at the same time 
imitated the movements and cries of the kind of animal they rep- 
