Chap. YI. 
WEDDINGS. 
405 
work frame, are worn at these holidays. The biggest 
and ugUest mask represents the Jurupari. In these 
festival habiliments the Tuctinas go through their 
monotonous see-saw and stamping dances accompanied 
by singing and drumming, and keep up the sport often 
for three or four days and nights in succession, drinking 
enormous quantities of caysiima, smoking tobacco, and 
snuffing parica powder. 
I could not learn that there was any deep symbolical 
meaning in these masked dances, or that they comme- 
morated any past event in the history of the tribe. Some 
of them seem vaguely intended as a propitiation of the 
Jurupari, but the masker who represents the demon 
sometimes gets drunk along with the rest, and is not 
treated with any reverence. From all I could make ou.t, 
these Indians preserve no memory of events going beyond 
the times of their fathers or grandfathers. Almost every 
joyful event is made the occasion of a festival : wed- 
dings amongst the rest. A young man who wishes to 
wed a Tucuna girl has to demand her hand of her 
parents, who arrange the rest of the affair, and fix a 
day for the marriage ceremony. A wedding which took 
place in the Christmas week whilst I was at St. Paulo, 
was kept up with great spirit for three or four days ; 
flagging during the heats of mid-day, but renewing 
itself with increased vigour every evening. During 
the whole time the bride, decked out with feather 
ornaments, was under the charge of the older squaws, 
whose business seemed to be, sedulously to keep the 
bridegroom at a safe distance until the end of the 
dreary period of dancing and boosing. The Tucunas 
