Primitive Games. 285 



Whips and whistles are essential implements to the 

 macquari game. Whether the other instruments which I 

 have now to describe are also essential, or whether they 

 really belong to some other game, perhaps more than 

 one, which has in some way, now-a-days, got mixed up 

 with the macquari, I know not. But I have seen the 

 following all used, 



The honore — named from the Arawak name for the 

 heron (Ardea cocoi) — is also a rough, very rough, 

 wooden representation of a bird. It is used always by 

 the women, and sometimes by the men, in place of the 

 macquari whip — the blow given with it being of course 

 merely formal and not severe.* 



A large bundle of aeta fibre is tied up to imitate the 

 shape, in natural size, of a sloth. The two front limbs 

 of this creature are tied together at the toes, in such a 

 way that when the loop thus made is slipped over the 

 neck of one of the players it hangs down his back like a 

 sloth hanging by its front legs round his neck. The idea 

 which underlies this is obscure to me, unless, as 

 seems possible, it attributes a sort of badge of dis- 

 grace to any player who may in some way be a defaulter 

 in the game. 



Rattles, or shak-shaks, made of small round gourds, 

 enclosing some pebbles, are mounted at theend of very long 

 sticks (8 or 9 feet) and are adorned with tassels of aeta fibre. 

 One of these is provided for each female player. 



* Mr. Dance, in his Guianese Log-book already quoted, page 273, 

 alludes to the " Honora — the crane or heron dance" as distinct from the 

 macquari. He may be right ; and, in that case, it must be understood 

 that the honore element which I saw in the macquari was only 

 accidentally mixed up with the true ritual of the latter game, 



