Female Decohatoks, 
28 'i 
Which, as in the case of the Caribs, a pin with the tip outside was stuck. 
Several Avoinen wore gold coins on their bead necklaces, a demonstration 
that they knew the value of money a little or not at all : amongst the 
coastal tribes one might search in vain for such a decoration. The 
apron-belts (Mosa) of the women consisted of a sort of bead embroidery, 
with pretty angular figures ä la Grec, which had some resemblance to 
those hieroglyphics that we found in Waraputa. These aprons seemed 
to be their greatest pride, just as they also constituted their chief finery. 
One also saw similar figures, painted roughly with the fingers or a piece 
of wood, in white clay, in red or black colours, upon the walls of the 
houses, on the paddles, corials, weapons, etc. It is strange that it is 
only the women who do the painting. Is the man ashamed of the art, 
or does the woman only possess the talent for it? When my brother on 
his previous journey was staying with the Tarumas, they informed him 
that the picture writing, which he discovered there on several of the 
boulders lying round about “had been cut in by the women ages and ages 
ago.” As soon as the husband has finished an implement of any kind, a 
weapon or similar article, he hands it over to his wife who now starts 
on its artistic complicated painting without any pattern or other 
guidance than her own inborn individual love of art as it were.* 
801. The settlement consisted of twelve houses with about GO resi- 
dents. The houses for the most part corresponded with those already 
met with on the Rupununi and only a few that were not quadrangular 
but round varied from them in regard to model. If a new structure, 
whether a square or a round one, is to be built, they drive seven-foot 
high posts into the ground fairly close to one another, plait these 
together with thin laths and then rill in the interspaces with wet clay. 
The rafters that correspond exactly with those of our own simple 
buildings except that they are not fixed with pins but tied together with 
the toughest bush-rope, are carried upon some big posts raised in the 
middle of the house. The leaves of the Maximiliana regia form the roof. 
The quadrangular houses called to mind our small peasants’ huts 
covered with straw. The roof of the round (bee-hive) houses 
( Hauserth ilrmchen) is also round and runs up into a long point ending 
at the top of the central main post on to which the remaining rafters 
are tied in a circle at their upper ends, while their lower ones project 
considerably beyond the sub-structure and so give the building the 
appearance of some Chinese construction which, with its elegantly 
sloping roof, makes quite a pretty picture. 
802. Having already described the interior of such a building I will 
only add that the whole household furniture consisted of hammocks 
woven out of cotton thread like a net with large meshes; small wooden 
stools that, cut out of a piece of wood, represented rough similes of all 
kinds of animals — but were almost only used by the women, as the men 
preferred s'quatting on their heels; hollowed-out calabashes of all shapes 
* It is to be feared that, beyond the painting of the earthenware, this statement of the 
decorative work being limited to the female sex is based on insufficient evidence. (Ed). 
