Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1893-01-25

BRAZILIAN INDIANS.
Characteristic and Customs or Some of the
South American Tribes.
Brazilian Indians are said to be about
the ugliest human beings on the face
of the earth, not excepting the dig
gers" of lower California and the tribes
of Terra del Fuego. The Botocudos,
who are most noted, have advanced far
enough to till small patches of land,
live in huts, raise cattle and weave mats
for sale. The Portuguese gave them
their singular name from the word
botogue. meaning barrel-bung-from
their habit of wearing large, round
disks of wood in their ears and under
lips. This fashion used to go so far
that in middle life many of them had
stiff under lips projecting five or six
inches, holding a plug as big as the top
of a coffee cup OF late years the Gus
tom is mostly discontinued but both
sexes still go perfectly naked, except
those living in the near neighborhood
of white settlements. The men varnish
themselves all over with bright yellow
paint made from the bark and gum of a
species of palm; and the women dress
up as some civilized ladies do, by ap-
plying a few streaks of white and
red to their faces, arms and bosoms.
Though many of the Botocudos are
now practically civilized, we are assured
that those of the far interior are yet
cannibals to the extent of eating their
captives taken in war. Like the Greeks
of the Homeric age, they consider it
the greatest of evils to lie unburied
after death; SO they delight in making
flutes and trumpets of their enemies,
bones. 1 have the questionable pleas
ure of owning one of these CHASTITY
trophies, which has five holes and is or.
namented with tufts of red and yellow
feathers attached to the bone bv
strings; but it requires somebody moro
courageous than your correspondent to
test its value as musical instrument
by personal experiment.
There is another Brazilian tribe.
whose name 1 do not remember. who
are. an almost exact counterpart of the
Ieblos of Mexico and Arizona-sim-
pie, peaceful and industrious. They
live near the coast, and are doubtless
descendants of those Pinzon and other
early voyagers first encountered. But
unfortunately they are few in number
and rapidly dying out, for among their
fierce neighbors the "turn unto
him the other cheek also'' princi-
pie is disastrous to life and prop
erty. There are many scattered
tribes of unreclaimed savages, most of
whom arc wandering cannibals and all
implacably hostile. Perhaps the most
interesting among these lat safe dis
tance) are the Mundrucus, or "Behead-
ers, who, with their allies, are said to
number between twenty and thirty
thousand. They live up the Madura
Tapajos, Rio Negro, and other tributa-
ries OF the Amazon, in palm-leaf hints
set around a central malocca-the latter
not the dwelling of a chief, as might be
supposed, but rather a grand council
chamber, fortress, arsenal, and general
pow-wow room In it are deposited
those horrible trophies-the preserved
heads OF their enemies-which have
given to the Mundrucus their terrible
title of ''Beheaders." Unlike the Jiveros,
OF southeastern Ecuador, they do not
extract the skull, but by some savage
process OF embalming keep the cranial
relic as nearly entire as possible, insert
ing false eyes, made of bits of shell or
polished quartz, the long hair conbed
out and carefully decorated with strings
OF rockcock and macaw feathers, feath-
er earrings in the ears, and dyed strings
passed through the tongue by which
to suspend it from the rafters.
In peaceful times hundreds of
these are ranged around the walls of
the molocca or set in rows around the
mandioca fields to keep the ghosts away
that might otherwise injure the grow
ing food; and on warlike and festive
occasions they are trotted out on the
points of the warriors spears. Strange
to say, the Dyaks of Rorneo have a sim
liar custom of preserving their enemies
head, and are provided with blow-guns,
almost identical with those of South
Americans.
Like most other Amazonian Indians.
the Mundrucus cultivate little man
dioca, corn and plantains. They know
how to prepare farina meal from the
mandioca, and also to brew a sort of in
toxicant resembling chicha They have
gourd vessels, some of them quantity
carved, rude pots of baked clay and
utensils of wood and stone. Their ca
noes are followed tree trunks, and be-.
sides the blow-guns for killing birds,
they have bamboo spears with poisoned
points. and arrows tipped with the
deadly curare. By the way, the latter
is now generally conceded to be neither
a vegetable poison nor the venom of
serpents, as was formerly supposed, but
the putrid matter from decayed human
bodies, the arrows being stuck into q
fostering corpse and left until soaked
full of the deadliest poison known
Fannie B. Ward, in Chicago Inter Ocean
Deserved the Name. = Jones
''Smith is about your closest friend,
isn't hep" Borrowitt-sfYes, confound
him! It's almost impossible to borrow
a cent from him. Kate Fields WASH
ington.
-Featherstone-"Wh did Won leave
your suburban boarding place for? I
thought your landlady was going to be
like mother to you" Ringway-"She
was She wanted me to sleep in q
cradle. e."-Philadelphia Press
-''Ma," said newspaper mans SON.
81 know why editors call themselves
we ;" .'Why?' SOS the man that
doesn't like the article will think there
are too many people for him to taclrle.,i