Primitive Games. 281 



tunately was standing by, had to be most closely guarded. 

 One monkey I even saw taking in, and spitting out, 

 mouthfuls of salt and then of red peppers (Capsicums). 

 At last, everything within reach having been either des- 

 troyed or removed, the captives took to fighting each 

 other, in one heaving heap of humanity. And the whole 

 mighty uproar only ceased when all were literally too 

 tired to do more. Then rest and refreshment, in the 

 shape of paiwarie, followed — and the usual good humour 

 reigned everywhere. 



The whipping game, called macquari, of the Arawaks 

 is a very curious performance, to the most essential fea- 

 ture of which, the mutual whipping, I know of no exact 

 parallel from among any other people. If, as seems pro- 

 bable, the origin of the game is due to a natural instinct 

 of primitive man tending to the cultivation and exhibition 

 of a habit of endurance of physical pain, analogies may 

 be drawn between this game and all of the many habits 

 of self-torture practised, and most stoically endured, by 

 almost all people below a certain stage of civilization. 

 A glance at a picture in Vol. I., p. 169, of " Catlin'S 

 North American Indians" — which picture, I may warn 

 those of weak nerves, is of rather a blood-curdling 

 nature — will suffice to give an idea of the extent to 

 which this habit of self-torture has, among certain 

 people, been carried. But I am not aware that elsewhere 

 than among the Arawaks this habit has taken the par- 

 ticular form of extremely severe mutual whipping carried 

 on simultaneously with extreme jollification. 



Before describing the game, I must allude to the fact 

 that both BKETT and SCHOMBURGK write of it as in 

 some sort a funeral rite, as only practised in celebration, 



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