a "medicine-man," or
priest of their superstitions. They are good-natured and ingenious,
excelling most of the other tribes in the manufacture of pottery; but
they are idle and debauched, naked except in the villages, and tattooed
in numbers of short, straight lines on the face. The Marubos, on the
Javari, have a dark complexion and a slight beard; and on the west side
of the same river roam the Majeronas--fierce, hostile, light colored,
bearded cannibals. In the vicinity of Pebas dwell the inoffensive
Yaguas. The shape of the head (but not their vacant expression) is well
represented by Catlin's portrait of "Black Hawk," a Sauk chief. They are
quite free from the encumbrance of dress, the men wearing a girdle of
fibrous bark around the loins, with bunches looking like a mop hanging
down in front and rear, and similar bunches hung around the neck and
arms. The women tie a strip of brown cotton cloth about the hips. They
paint the whole body with achote.[183] They sometimes live in
communities. One large structure, with Gothic roof, is used in common;
on the inside of which, around the walls, are built family
sleeping-rooms. The Yaguas are given to drinking and dancing. They are
said to bury their dead inside the house of the deceased, and then set
fire to it; but this conflicts with their communal life. Perhaps, with
the other tribes on the Japura, Ica, and Napo, they are fragments of
the great Omagua nation; but the languages have no resemblance. Of the
Oriente Indians we have already spoken. The tall, finely-built Cucamas
near Nauta are shrewd, hard-working canoe-men, notorious for the
singular desire of acquiring property; and the Yameos, a white tribe,
wander across the Maranon as far as Sarayacu. On the Ucayali are
numerous vagabond tribes, living for the most part in their canoes and
temporary huts. They are all lazy and faithless, using their wives
(polygamy is common) as slaves. Infanticide is practiced, _i.e._,
deformed children they put out of the way, saying they belong to the
devil. They worship nothing. They bury their dead in a canoe or earthen
jar under the house (which is vacated forever), and throw away his
property.[184] The common costume is a long gown, called _cushma_, of
closely-twilled cotton, woven by the women. Their weapons are two-edged
battle-axes of hard wood, as palo de sangre, and bows and arrows. The
arrows, five or six feet long, are made from the flower-stalk of the
arrow-grass (_Gyneriu