ror] MARRIAGE, POLYGAMY, DIVORCE, WORK 679 
without teeth a young man—they have a great liking for the old 
witches” (PBR, 251). A similar trait has been reported by Gumilla 
from the Orinoco Otomac: “ When their young men arrive at a 
marriageable age they hand over to them the oldest widows in the 
place for wives, and when they are left widowers they give them 
a young girl. The principal’ reason which the captains give in 
approval, and for the utility, of this custom I am unable to state 
for decency’s sake. The second reason is sensible enough. To marry 
a boy and a girl is to join a pair of fools who don’t know how to 
conduct themselves, whereas by marrying the young man to the old 
woman she teaches him as to how the house has to be managed and 
how he must work to live. When he becomes a widower and marries 
a young girl, she benefits by his instructions ” (G, 1,175). Examples 
of the custom of taking an old woman for a first wife and contem- 
poraneously a comparatively young one for a second are found 
recorded throughout the Guianas. The latter may be but a child 
of 6 or 7, perhaps younger, who subserves the former in all domestic 
employments until the time of puberty, when she also will cohabit 
with the husband. As might have been expected, and as is seen 
among other savage races, the net result of the older women being 
handed over to the younger men is that the older men are generally 
blessed with the younger wives. 
883. Wallace says of the Uaupes River Indians that they do not 
often marry with relations or even neighbors, preferring those from 
a distance or even from other tribes (ARW, 346). 
884. Both Crévaux and De Goeje (GO, 18) report a certain ordeal 
to be undergone by the male aspirants for marriage at the Maraké 
ceremony among the Oyana and Apaliii (Cr, 307) of Cayenne. This 
consists in the main of submitting without a murmur to the stinging 
of certain ants or wasps, for which purpose the insects are held in 
frames (pl. 180 B) of bizarre shape, fringed with feathers, and repre- 
senting crabs, bush-spirits, fish, quadrupeds, and birds (GO, pl. 11; 
GOK, pl. 1m). The victims invariably faint and are carried to 
their hammock in a shed, where they have to remain 15 days, eating 
only a little dry cassava and small fish roasted on ashes (Cr, 245- 
250). Other tribes have different methods for demonstrating the 
fitness of the man for marriage. Thus with the Makusi, as with 
the Warrau and Waika, he must, within a given period, clear a cer- 
tain measured piece of land to serve afterwards as a provision field 
(SR, 1, 316). The same holds good among the Arawak as one of the 
preliminary conditions, others being the shooting of so many bush 
hog, and, most important of all among these people, a special test 
of skill in shooting an arrow into the woodpecker’s nest (WER, v1, 
sec. 277). A similar target test is met with among the Uacarra (Ara- 
