14 



INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY- — PUBLICATION NO. 10 



TOOLS 



The digging stick (siri) — the only agricultural 

 tool — is made by the men from chonta palm. 

 After a section of wood has been removed from 

 the tree, it is planed to the desired shape with a 

 mollusk shell called urukwa. The digging stick is 

 about 3 feet in length, 3 inches in width, and about 

 an inch in thickness. The bottom end is sharp- 

 ened so as to make it a more effective tool. The 

 digging stick is used principally in planting and 

 tilling, in grinding corn, in digging out clay for 

 pots, and in extracting palm cabbage and honey. 



The Siriono construct a gouging tool by hafting 

 an incisor tooth of an agouti or paca onto a femur 

 of a howler monkey. This tool is employed 

 principally to gouge out the nock in the reinforcing 

 plug which is inserted in the feathered end of the 

 arrow. In using the tool the handle is grasped in 

 the right hand with the tooth down. The plug 

 is held in the left hand, and the tool is worked back 

 and forth over it until a groove large enough to 

 hold the bowstring is made. This tool is also 

 employed in making holes in the root ends of the 

 animal teeth from which necklaces are strung. 



Some mention should also be made of the use of 

 a mollusk shell, called urukwa, and a mussel shell, 

 called hitai, as tools. The former is used by the 

 men as a plane in making digging sticks, spindles, 

 and bows, while the latter is employed by the 

 women to smooth out the clay when making pots. 

 The mandible (with teeth) of the palometa fish 

 also serves as a tool, being employed to sever the 

 aftershafts of the feathers glued on arrows. Any 

 piece of bamboo serves for a knife, but no work is 

 done in bone, horn, shell, stone, or metal. Euro- 

 pean axes and machetes have been introduced to 

 those bands which have had contact, but under 

 aboriginal conditions European tools are rarely 

 encountered. 



WEAPONS 



The bow (ngidd) and arrow are the only weapons 

 manufactured or used by the Siriono. Every 

 adult male possesses a bow and arrows which he 

 makes himself. So important are these weapons 

 that when not hunting, a man, if busy, is most 

 frequently observed making a new arrow or re- 

 pairing an old one broken on the last hunt. A 

 man's bow and arrows, in fact, are his inseparable 

 companions. When he is asleep in the house they 

 rest upright against the frame pole to which his 



hammock is tied, and when he is walking in the 

 forest he is invariably seen with his bow and a 

 bundle of arrows over his right or left shoulder, 

 points facing ahead, in quest of game. 



The wood from which the bows are made is a 

 variety of chonta palm, called siri. This tree, 

 when mature, is about 12 inches in diameter and 

 has a layer about 2 inches thick of very hard, 

 black wood just underneath the bark. It is from 

 this layer that the bow is constructed. Although 

 the material is relatively abundant in the environ- 

 ment, before making a new bow a hunter will 

 search for some time to locate a chonta tree which 

 has the appearance of being of proper maturity and 

 hardness. It is a rare tree that has just the right 

 qualities. The wood must be firm and resilient 

 and must withstand the. maximum pulling strength 

 of the hunter without breaking. Frequently I 

 have seen a man spend a couple of days in the 

 construction of a bow only to have it snap on the 

 first pull. 



After a suitable tree has been sighted it is 

 felled. I have never seen this done other than 

 with an ax, but one of my oldest informants told 

 me that he had known chonta palms to be felled 

 by building a fire against the trunk until the hard 

 layer had been burned through and then pushing 

 the tree over. When a tree has been felled, a 

 section of the circumference of the trunk, about 4 

 inches wide and as long as the hunter wants his 

 bow to be, is cut out. Other smaller pieces of 

 chonta may also be removed at this time, as this 

 material is likewise indispensable in the con- 

 struction of arrows. 



Once the material has been taken out, work on 

 the construction of the bow begins almost at once, 

 before the wood dries out. Bows are plain and 

 are made of a single stave. The making of a bow 

 is a laborious process, as it is fashioned almost 

 entirely by using mollusk shells, called urukwa, to 

 plane the wood down. A small hole is first made 

 in the surface of one of these mollusk shells. The 

 edges around the hole are then worked downward 

 with the grain, and the section of wood is gradually 

 planed to the desired shape. If a man possesses a 

 machete, he may first use this to give the bow its 

 approximate shape by roughly tapering the horns, 

 but the finishing is always done with the shell to 

 avert the danger of splitting the wood. In 

 planing down a bow it is held securely on the 

 ground between the big and the second toe. 



