. Bulletin. Ethnology. 678 SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS [ Bull. 143 ESTHETIC AND RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES Art.—The esthetic manifestations of the Purus-Jurua River Indians are little known. However, it seems that the Cashinawa and other Panoan tribes displayed no little artistic skill in tracing geometric patterns on the human body. The style of the motifs used in body painting was the same as that traced on pottery. Cashinawa fabrics and basketry were enlivened by geometric figures, with a predominance of the meander. The Ipurind showed some proficiency in carving bird figures of light wood, w
. Bulletin. Ethnology. 678 SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS [ Bull. 143 ESTHETIC AND RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES Art.—The esthetic manifestations of the Purus-Jurua River Indians are little known. However, it seems that the Cashinawa and other Panoan tribes displayed no little artistic skill in tracing geometric patterns on the human body. The style of the motifs used in body painting was the same as that traced on pottery. Cashinawa fabrics and basketry were enlivened by geometric figures, with a predominance of the meander. The Ipurind showed some proficiency in carving bird figures of light wood, which were described as dance accessories. The Ipurind also decorated the interior of their houses with straw or bark figures and carved serpents on the ends of the horizontal laths of the hut frame. Songs and dances.—^Judging from the examples recorded by Steere (1903, pp. 378, 387), the songs of the Ipurind refer mainly to war; those of the Paumary are melodies sung by canoe paddlers. Their words are short descriptive sentences of trivial events, such as, "The toucan eats fruit in the edge of my garden and after he eats, he sings" (Steere, 1903, p. 387). The Cashinazva had several types of dances, each called by a different name. In all the dances, the men clasped hands and circled or followed winding lines. Certain ceremonial dances were wild displays of vitality, during which the participants jumped, shouted, invoked the spirits, and recited the names of the forest animals. Musical instruments.—Huge bark trumpets (fig. 100) played the same part in the ceremonial life of the Arawakan tribes of the Puriis River as they did among the Arawakan tribes of Guiana and Bolivia. The Pamnary made trumpets of clay, probably of the same type as those of the Orinoco River. Panpipes, though probably known to all the tribes of the Purus River, are specifically mentioned only for the Figure 100.—Ipurind bark trumpet. (Redrawn from Ehrenreich, 1891 a, fig. 47.) The
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