132 VOYAGE UP THE TAPAJOS. Chap. 1L 
tural Indians. These campaigns begin in July, and last 
throughout the dry months ; the women generally ac- 
companying the warriors to carry their arrows and jave- 
lins. They had the diabolical custom, in former days, 
of cutting off the heads of their slain enemies, and pre- 
serving them as trophies around their houses. I 
believe this, together with other savage practices, has 
been relinquished in those parts where they have had 
long intercourse with the Brazilians, for I could neither 
see nor hear anything of these preserved heads. They 
used to sever the head with knives made of broad 
bamboo, and then, after taking out the brain and 
fleshy parts, soak it in bitter vegetable oil (andiroba), 
and expose it for several days over the smoke of a fire 
or in the sun. In the tract of country between the 
Tapajos and the Madeira, a deadly war has been for » 
many years carried on between the Mundurucus and 
the Araras. I was told by a Frenchman at Santarem, 
who had visited that part, that all the settlements 
there have a military organization. A separate shed 
is built outside of each village, where the fighting men 
sleep at night, sentinels being stationed to give the alarm 
with blasts of the Ture on the approach of the Araras, 
who choose the night for their onslaughts. 
Each horde of Mundurucus has its paje or medicine 
man, who is the priest and doctor ; fixes upon the time 
most propitious for attacking the enemy ; exorcises evil 
spirits, and professes to cure the sick. All illness whose 
origin is not very apparent is supposed to be caused by 
a worm in the part affected. This the paje pretends to 
extract ; he blows on the seat of pain the smoke from 
