Remember the Rainforest 1

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I have already mentioned that when girls reach puberty, they must fast while suspended from the roof of the hut in hammocks. Friar Jose condemned this barbarity, which often almost kills the girls. It seemed as if the abstinence of food, in many instances of life, was second nature to them. As soon a pregnancy is declared, the couple undergoes a rigorous fast. Then they feed on ants, mushrooms and guarana.

Guarana berries

The ants are toasted or eaten alive. The Mauhe puts a stick in the ant's nest and the little critters run straight into his mouth. During pregnancy, many Indians women cause themselves to bleed, using a toucan or rodent's tooth, which causes an abundant loss of blood in the arms and legs, and then the wound is blackened, rubbing it with soot of the burned genipap.

Genipap flower

When the chief or another member of his family dies, the Indians also impose upon themselves a month of fasting; then, they only swallow guarana, water and ants. The deceased is bound by the extremities, stretched out on a stick, and exposed to the fire which has been lighted around it. The corpse is dried to such a degree that, after the first two weeks of the fast of the living, it looks like a mummy with bent legs, in a round pit, where, by means of stones and sticks, it stays in that position, without being covered with earth.

Having completed the period of drying, the mummy is withdrawn from the pit and put to rest, with the entire horde dancing all day long around it, between horrible howls and cries.

They believe they have lost their substance by crying, so they seek to remedy it by leading from the nose to the mouth the water of the tears and swallowing it. In the afternoon, already exhausted by these excesses, they bury the bodies in the place described and spend the night dancing and drinking cajiri, which, like the waters of Lethe, erases all the memory of the dead.

Funeral party

Drinking cajiri

When, once, a chief returned from the south of the province to his tribe, he died on the way; his people divided his body into two halves, below the ribs, and the dissected trunk was taken home. These customs remind us of the Tupis.

Civilized Tupi today

Singular also is the habit of not eating the big fish of the river, but only the small fishes of the streams and lagoons of the woods, and abstaining from all poaching raids with the dogs or killing with the rifle.

To maintain their physical strength, they compensate for the lack of animal food, eating many oily fruits, such as palm coconuts, piqui, chestnut, etc.,

Pachira aquatica, the Maranhao chestnut

in search of which they wander through the woods, looking for ripe ones. In the expeditions, they arm themselves with the blowpipe and poisoned arrows,

that they acquire from their neighbors of the west, but only use them in hunting; otherwise, they use the bow and arrow:

Their bows are made of red wood, are very large and elastic, and are traded as an article of commerce, to many other tribes.

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