298 Notes on a forest race called Puitooas or Juanga. [No. 4. 



The effect of such a, costume on the spectator who sees a woman 

 rustling along in it for the first time, is, as may be supposed, ludicrous 

 in no ordinary degree, but it is in the dance that its absurdity is 

 most conspicuous. The Puttooa women are in the habit of dancing 

 m a circle to the noise of a large drum beat by the men. They 

 move round and round in the same measured step, occasionally 

 advancing towards the musicians and then retreating, the body bent 

 forward in what the Melbourne Secretary would call, a recumbent 

 posture, the left hand holding the end of the necklace and the right 

 hanging down. In this position, it will be readily understood the 

 stiff bundle of twigs in front necessarily presses inconveniently 

 against the legs. It is therefore, disposed of by being thrust 

 between them. This again as a natural consequence raises up the 

 branch behind, the limp ends of the twigs go bobbing up and down 

 with the motions of the dancers, and when fifteen or twenty women 

 are attitudinising together, the scene becomes as grotesque, as it is 

 possible to conceive. The accompanying sketch gives an excellent 

 idea of it. The attitudes are not in the least exaggerated. 



Of the history of their tribe the Puttooas know little. Some of 

 them informed me that the Tributary Mehal of Keonjur was the 

 original seat of their race, but the majority seemed to have no idea 

 that their ancestors had ever resided in any other lands than those 

 they now occupy. 



Their villages are small, seldom containing more than six or eight 

 families. Their houses are of the same material as those of the 

 peasantry around them — thatched huts of wattle and dab, but they 

 are poor and mean in comparison. I found there was a belief 

 among the people of my office that the sexes occupied separate 

 houses in the villages, but this is certainly not the case. Each 

 family appeared to have its own dwelling. The site selected for the 

 village is generally some opening in the forest. The one which I 

 visited in company with Major Strange was situated in a very pretty 

 spot on the skirt of the jungle whence the eye wandered over a 

 small cultivated valley — the out-fields of a distant Ooriya village — 

 to the huge mass of the Satsujea mountain, which threw the shadows 

 of its peaks across from a height of some 1800 feet. The village 

 itself was simply a small square surrounded by six miserable looking 



