xicant
called _chicha_, and poured it into wooden troughs and palm leaves. On
the morning of the fourth day, three hours before the dawn, the girl's
father, having arrayed himself in his savage finery, summons all his
neighbours with loud cries. The damsel is seated on a stone, and every
guest in turn cuts off a lock of her hair, and running away hides it in
the hollow trunk of a tree in the depths of the forest. When they have
all done so and seated themselves again gravely in the circle, the girl
offers to each of them a calabash full of very strong _chicha_. Before
the wassailing begins, the various fathers perform a curious operation
on the arms of their sons, who are seated beside them. The operator
takes a very sharp bone of an ape, rubs it with a pungent spice, and
then pinching up the skin of his son's arm he pierces it with the bone
through and through, as a surgeon might introduce a seton. This
operation he repeats till the young man's arm is riddled with holes at
regular intervals from the shoulder to the wrist. Almost all who take
part in the festival are covered with these wounds, which the Indians
call _culucute_. Having thus prepared themselves to spend a happy day,
they drink, play on flutes, sing and dance till evening. Rain, thunder,
and lightning, should they befall, have no effect in damping the general
enjoyment or preventing its continuance till after the sun has set. The
motive for perforating the arms of the young men is to make them skilful
hunters; at each perforation the sufferer is cheered by the promise of
another sort of game or fish which the surgical operation will
infallibly procure for him. The same operation is performed on the arms
and legs of the girls, in order that they may be brave and strong; even
the dogs are operated on with the intention of making them run down the
game better. For five or six months afterwards the damsel must cover her
head with bark and refrain from speaking to men. The Yuracares think
that if they did not submit a young girl to this severe ordeal, her
children would afterwards perish by accidents of various kinds, such as
the sting of a serpent, the bite of a jaguar, the fall of a tree, the
wound of an arrow, or what not.[135]

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Indians of the Gran Chaco.]

Among the Matacos or Mataguayos, an Indian tribe of the Gran Chaco, a
girl at puberty has to remain in seclusion for some time. She lies
covered up with branches