Tame animals among the red men of America. 33 
night, or just before rain falls, they raise a most horrid 
chorus of cries. Often though the sky was clear and un- 
threatening I have been prepared for the approach of a 
tropical shower by this bird chorus. The value of a 
parrot in Indian economics is generally very slight, but a 
single individual of one species, called towa-towa (Cliry- 
sotis sp.), is often offered and accepted in exchange for a 
large canoe, a gun, or a tamed hunting dog, the three 
most coveted articles among the ordinary properties of 
an Indian. 
Macaws, ungainly in shape and gaudy in colour as they 
appear in Engand when chained by one foot to a perch, 
are really startlingly beautiful when wandering, tame 
but free, among the bushes and low trees round an Indian 
settlement. Under such circumstances, their colour, in- 
tensified by the bright tropical sun, produces as vivid an 
effect as is anywhere to be seen even in the animal king- 
dom. These birds, like most other animals, have an ac- 
curate sense of time, wandering away during the day 
from the villages, but returning regularly to be fed at a 
definite time in the afternoon. Macaws, though not great 
talkers, not infrequently pick up a few Indian words. It 
has already been said that they are sometimes kept by 
Indians for the sake of the yellow feathers which they can 
be made to produce ; it may be added that the long tail 
feathers, in their natural colours, are also harvested 
from the living birds to be made into shoulder ruffs for 
their masters. 
But of all the members of the parrot family to be met 
with in Indian settlement, by far the most beautiful are 
the lovely little keatzi or kessi-kessi (Conurus solstitia* 
E 
