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To warn away the women, the Brazilians make loud 'devil-music' on what are called 'jurupari pipes. Now, just as in Australia, the women may not see the jurupari pipes on pain of death. When the sound of the jurupari pipes is heard, as when the turndun is heard in Australia, every woman flees and hides herself. The women are always executed if they see the pipes. Mr.
The semi-religious dances and drinking bouts usual among the settled tribes of Amazonian Indians are indulged in to greater excess by the Tucunas than they are by most other tribes. The Jurupari or Demon is the only superior being they have any conception of, and his name is mixed up with all their ceremonies, but it is difficult to ascertain what they consider to be his attributes.
When thus dressed, they perform a monotonous seesaw and stamping dance, accompanied by singing and drumming. Often this sport is kept up for several days and nights in succession. During the time, they drink large quantities of caxiri, while they smoke tobacco and take snuff. Their chief masker represents their demon Jurupari, but he does not appear to be treated with any particular respect.
Sometimes grotesque head-dresses, representing monkeys' busts or heads of other animals, made by stretching cloth or skin over a basketwork frame, are worn at these holidays. The biggest and ugliest mask represents the Jurupari.
They do not appear to obey any common chief, and I could not make out that they had Pajes, or medicine-men, those rudest beginnings of a priest class. Symbolical or masked dances, and ceremonies in honour of the Jurupari, or demon, customs which prevail among all the surrounding tribes, are unknown to the Caishanas.
On the 2d of July, in the morning, the jangada arrived at the foot of San Pablo d'Olivenca, after having floated through the midst of numerous islands which in all seasons are clad with verdure and shaded with magnificent trees, and the chief of which bear the names of Jurupari, Rita, Maracanatena, and Cururu Sapo.
I could not learn that there was any deep symbolical meaning in these masked dances, or that they commemorated any past event in the history of the tribe. Some of them seem vaguely intended as a propitiation of the Jurupari, but the masker who represents the demon sometimes gets drunk along with the rest, and is not treated with any reverence.
The Navahos ascribe the creation of certain animals to a god Bekotsidi, whose character and rôle, however, are vague. The Brazilian Tupan and Jurupari appear to be divine creators.
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