BOWS AND ARROWS IN CENTRAL BRAZIL. 575 



ments, the plan to interest them in the cultivation of the soil did not 

 succeed. They remained hunters as before, and only acknowledged 

 with sufferance a guardianship on tlie part of tlie Government while 

 advantages accrued to them in this way. Their support was abun- 

 dantly cared for, so that they themselves were not brought to want for 

 food or any other necessaries of life. But the hunting and lishing 

 went on in spite of their common occupation. When these no longer 

 served them as a means of livelihood they were pursued as sport. The 

 reduction of the two groups happened at quite different times. While 

 the Bororo of the west were already settled in the first half of the 

 century, the other half extended for a long time hunting and pillaging 

 through the camps before it was possible to bring them to remain for 

 some years on the Lorenzo. 



The three collections from the Bororo — that of batterer in Vienna, 

 that of Rhodes and of Von den Steinen in Berlin — are from the two 

 sections of the Bororo after their separation and, excepting the Bororo 

 of Cabacal, after their subjugation. There is wanting the type of 

 weapon of the Bororo from the olden time when they were united. 

 Still it is possible to reconstruct the common type, partly, since from 

 both groups pieces of the same type are in hand. Through this it must 

 be accepted that in the Von den Steinen collection of the year 1888, 

 shortly after the settlement of the eastern branch, this type partly 

 returned, and in the batterer collection of the western Bororo (collected 

 in 1827) it is to be seen that only the eastern Bororo continued the 

 original common type after the separation, and have only through com- 

 merce with their neighbors on the Araguay adopted varietal forms. 

 The much longer absence of association of the eastern Bororo in com- 

 parison with the western substantiates this view, while much feebler 

 associations with culture and with other tribes would render possible 

 and easy a constancy in the making of weapons which are perfectly 

 sacred to them as their crowning peculiarity. Let us examine, there- 

 fore, first, most carefully, the bows and arrows that Von den Steinen 

 collected in the year 1888 in the colony of Thereza Christiana (PI. LX, 

 figs. 1 to 9), newly established in 1887, from the point of view that we 

 have here to do with a purely hunter folk whose peculiarities culture 

 could not have wiped out. 



The bow was their most precious possession as the only means of 

 livelihood. This belief finds its expression in the estimation in which it 

 was held. Von den Steinen says (op. cit., p. 502) that after the bow 

 and arrow of a head of a family are burnt up in the funeral fire along 

 with the household stuff, the survivors receive from friends bows and 

 arrows as pledges for the foundation of a new household. Arrows, 

 moreover, furnish the present of the lover to the girls and women of the 

 ranchao, by whom they are given over to their brothers. With arrows 

 and especially shaped bows the fortunate slayer of a jaguar would be 

 distinguished, and arrows furnish the medium of exchange for cotton 



