60 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 50 



eujoy the sport. The fighters tumble, kick, and bite, and scratch 

 with the poisonous spur or spine from the tail of a fish similar to 

 the skate secured to their little fingers. Their endurance is mar- 

 velous and the fight may continue many hours, sometimes nearly 

 all day, both parties constantly uttering their yells. The defeated 

 party leaves the village, and the woman becomes the victor's prize. 

 The Bororo, like most other savage men, look to nature to fur- 

 nish them with nearly all their food. About the only thing they 

 cultivate is a little yellow corn, and even this with great difficulty, 

 for they have no steel instruments. They are communistic, and 

 therefore little inclined to attempt anything extensive in the way of 

 agriculture or to provide a stock of food, for if one family should do 

 this, it would only be to divide the harvest with the rest of the com- 

 munity and leave themselves with nothing for the morrow. There 

 is thus no incentive for labor except when hunger drives them in 

 search of food. The Bororo is therefore acquainted with about 

 everything edible in his environment, and he knows when and 

 where and how to obtain it. The river is by far his most important 

 source of supply, and when fish are abundant in December, January, 

 and February he grows fat. The rest of the year he is obliged to 

 look largely to the woods for food, though he is a more expert 

 fisherman than hunter, and individual families wander abroad 

 through bush and forest along the rivers. As to fruit and vege- 

 tables, the palm is his never failing friend. It will always provide 

 him with something when naught else can be found. At every 

 season of the year he may obtain the white cheese-like heart of a 

 diminutive palm. The fibrous trunk of two or three other varieties, 

 pounded and wrung out, gives a starchy, liquid-like milk which, 

 when boiled in a clay pot and mixed with the yellow fruit of the 

 burity, makes good soup ; or he may dry the starch and make it 

 into bread. Another palm, called burity by the Brazilians, yields a 

 yellow fruit bigger than a very large plum, which he eats with a 

 relish, though we considered it very insipid. Still another species 

 furnishes an unfailing supply of nuts about the size of a goose egg. 

 This he throws into the fire for a few minutes, then removes the 

 thin outer shell, and scrapes off and eats a thin insipid substance 

 very much like the inner bark of the slippery elm. He then splits 

 open the remainder of the thick shell and obtains a white woody 

 kernel, which he eats raw or pounds in a wooden mortar and makes 

 into a loaf to be wrapped in a large leaf and baked into bread in the 

 ashes. This is considered quite a delicacy. The palm also fur- 

 nishes material for his bows and for the shafts of his arrows. The 



