Whatever of art there may be in the soul of the tribesman finds expression in the dance. It is the concert and the play, the opera, the ball, the carnival, and the feast of the Amazons, in that it gives opportunity for the Æsthetic, artistic, dramatic, musical, and spectacular aspirations of the Indian’s nature. It is his one social entertainment, and he invites to it every one living in amity with him. Any excuse is enough for a dance, but nevertheless the affair is a serious business. The dance, like the tobacco palaver, is a dominant factor in tribal life. For it the Amazonian treasures the songs of his fathers, and will master strange rhymes and words that for him no longer have meaning; he only knows they are the correct lines, the phrases he ought to sing at such functions, because they always have been sung, they are the words of the time-honoured tribal melodies.[313] It is for these occasions that he fashions quaint dancing-staves and wonderful musical instruments, and dons all his treasured ornaments, while his wife paints her most dazzling skin costumes. He practises steps and capers, tutors his voice to the songs; meantime his children rehearse assiduously in the privacy of their forest playground, against the time when they too may take part in the tribal festivities.

The entertainment demands elaborate preliminaries. When any such carnival is on hand the old women of the tribe for days previously are busied making cassava, and with the preparation of kawana or other appropriate drinks. The amount of liquid refreshment necessary for a large dance is enormous, in view of the custom by which the liquor-logged native simply steps aside, and by the insertion of a finger down the throat is speedily ready for a further supply. During the four or five days that a dance continues only the old men among the Turuka will eat anything, and that nothing more substantial than manioc starch; the dancers merely drink hashiri.

Nor is the inner man only to be considered. All sartorial treasures, the feathers and necklaces of the men, the beaded girdles of the women, are taken from their receptacles, the wardrobes in the rafters of the maloka. The men—for the Amazonian male reserves to himself the greatest brilliance of attire on occasions of ceremony—array themselves in their feather tiaras, with necklaces, armlets, and sounding garters of polished nuts. The maidens and matrons also apply themselves to the elaboration of their toilets. No court dressmaker ever gave more anxious thought to the fashioning of chef-d’oeuvre in silk and brocade than do these dusky daughters of Eve to the tracing of circles, angles, bands, and frets upon their naked skins. Coquetry is as essential an accompaniment of the savage dance, in the unmapped bush of the Amazons, as in a garlanded ballroom of Mayfair. The most vain of English beauties probably spends less time over her adornment for any function than do these young women as they squat in chattering crowds over the calabashes of vegetable dye, white, scarlet, black, or purple, with which they trace upon each other the cunning patterns that make their only dresses.

When these preparations are satisfactorily advanced the chief, or some one in authority, despatches his invitations, no formal cards entrusted to a postman, but a summons mysterious as a Marconigram, and imperious as a writ of the High Court. The chief takes his stand between the manguare, the signal drums slung from the rafters of the great house, and with the rubber-headed drumstick he beats out as message sonorous notes that travel to every Indian within eight or nine miles. This summons is no mere manipulation of the four notes which constitute the range of the instrument, but an articulate message to convey the time, the place, and the purpose of the meeting to the initiated.

The numbers who congregate for a dance were a constant source of astonishment to me. Out of the silent and trackless bush scores of expectant guests, all painted and feathered, will pour into the clearing about the maloka, at the time appointed by the signal drum, and by nightfall some hundreds are gathered. Great bonfires are set ablaze, and the interior of the tribal lodge, where the chief has a place in the centre, flares ruddy with the light of torches. The men make loud clangour with their instruments, flutes, pan-pipes, or drums, and out in the clearing they form into line, clutching their jingling dance-poles, while the women form up facing them. Led by a strenuous tribesman clattering with nuts and dried seeds, the line begins its perambulation of the maloka. Forward two steps—thud! Backward two steps—thud! Clattering and pattering, with the fifes shrieking high above all other sounds, as the drums growl deep below, the procession slowly encircles the maloka, and then enters. In a frenzied flutter of feathers and leaves the performers move round the chief, to a jangle of seed-pods and rattles, till the company is completed, and the tribal lodge is packed with the dancers, when he signals for silence. The dance stops. The instruments cease their outcry, and in the sudden contrast of silence the chief sings a line which is the keynote of the occasion, the explanation, the reason for the assembly. Then dance and song begin, while those who are not taking active part squat round upon their haunches and ejaculate hoarse cries of approval and encouragement at intervals.

As aforesaid, any excuse is good enough reason for such festival. Dances take place continuously: at the harvest of the pine-apple and the manioc; at the conclusion of a successful hunt or war-expedition; and at such other times in the Amazonian season as the chief feels moved to give entertainment. As the weather does not vary sufficiently to influence the harvesting of the crops at any particular date, there is no equivalent to our harvest; and, though manioc is planted as a rule just before the heaviest annual rainfall becomes due, there is no part of the year when some of the roots are not ready to gather. Pines are most plentiful in October, and it is then that the special pine-apple dances take place.[314]

The dance takes its character from the occasion. The dancing staff, unless the dance is in honour of some specific thing, is undecorated, merely furnished with a calabash that contains nuts, or with a carved head hollowed for the same purpose, and is sometimes hung with bunches of dried seeds that rattle when shaken or when knocked on the ground. These form important additions to the orchestra, and to the garters and anklets strapped to the legs. Very often the Indian decorates his staff with palm leaves merely for ornament, but in the harvest dances the staves are adorned with bunches of whatever crop is to be honoured—a tuft of pine-apple leaves or a bundle of manioc shoots. The Yakuna carve patterns on their dance staves.[315] Among the Tureka, north of the Japura, dance staves are a most important possession, and are looked on with great affection by their owners. The Tureka men wear aprons when dancing, and use clappers in one hand, instead of the horns and rattle used alternately by the Tukana.[316] The Menimehe carries a club in his right hand. On the Tikie, dancers are said to hold a flute in the left hand, and always to have a green twig under their girdle. Koch-GrÜnberg further states that they have clay whistles with which they blow at dances as well as for signals. These are not customs of the Issa-Japura tribes.

The soloist who leads the dancers from the start outside the maloka very probably commences by executing some fancy high stepping. He may, for instance, prance like a stallion, and this is calculated to amuse the company immensely. When the performers get too heated by their exertions in the house they will file outside, still dancing, and after a few turns on the open space in front of the maloka, will return within.

Among the Okaina and the Boro the hand is often placed on the far shoulder of the next in line. I especially remember one endless dance in an Okaina house in which all free performers were double locked, while those in possession of staves or rattles were content with a single lock to allow freedom for one hand. The dancers invariably stand in single file, usually with one hand resting on the shoulder of the next in line. The Menimehe and most other tribes place the left hand on their neighbour’s right shoulder, but, according to Koch-GrÜnberg, tribes on the Tikie place the right hand, though the Tukana rest the left. The figure is composed of a broken circle of men thus linked together, whilst in their free hands they hold the dancing staves, rattles, or flutes. Within, and concentric, is the ring of women dancers, who face the men and maintain a time which is complementary and not identical with theirs.[317] North of the Japura in some cases the women dance between the men in the same circle,[318] or the men and the younger girls dance round the elder women. When dancing, personal touch is not tabu or disliked, possibly because it is ceremonial or conventional. In most of these dances the woman who is not engaged in the inner circle of the select—the complementary figure of the dance—places herself outside the outer circle with her left hand on the left shoulder of the man of her choice. Her frontal portion is thus at right angles, and away from that of her man.

The rhythm of the dance is always very marked. The figures and steps are simple, neither suggestive nor lascivious, and wholly destitute of the lustful invitation of the dances of the East. The step is almost invariably a high, prancing flexion of the thigh upon the body, followed by a deliberate extension to the ground, repeated two or three times, the advance being completed with a resounding stamp of the right foot upon the earth, according to the accentuation of the measure. The same steps are repeated backwards in retiring, although less ground is covered, so that the dancers sway rhythmically forward and backward; but the end of each movement finds the whole line advanced some little distance from where it was at the conclusion of the previous one. The forward movement may be described simply as, right foot forward, left foot forward, stamp with right, right foot backward, left foot backward, right foot back in position, toe on ground, to start da capo right foot forward, in uninterrupted repetition. Spruce has described this movement as “a succession of dactyls.”[319] In stamping, which is done by all the dancers in unison, the knee is brought up to a right angle with the trunk, and the foot then thrust down with the whole weight of the body. Toe with right is the same motion as stamp right, but with only a slight flexion of the knee, and comparatively noiseless. The circles move to the right, continuing, but almost imperceptibly on account of slight change of ground. The Tureka make a jump before the stamp, shout at the end of the figure, and whistle through their teeth.

While the principal dance is in progress a frequent form of side-show to the main entertainment is the entrance of a tribesman with a grievance. He will have made for himself the most remarkable costume he can devise, and to ensure that he shall gain attention, wears upon his head a veritable “matinÉe hat” of absurd proportions.[320] He pays no heed to the dance when he comes into the maloka, but stalks solemnly to a position in the sight of all, though he will keep out of the actual track of the dancers. Then, standing stock-still with upraised hand, facing neither the performers nor the “sitters out,” but in any chance position, he raises his staff and begins to recite his complaint to a monotonous refrain. The following is a typical instance of what may be chanted:

Or the complaint might run:

The following is a complaint made by a Boro chief’s daughter of her treatment by her own tribe:

The petitioner will repeat his or her song for hours without ceasing. To all appearance no one takes the slightest notice of his presence, unless the dance should come to an end during the recitation, when the performers jeer and laugh at his tale of woe. This has no effect upon the plaintiff, who continues gravely to voice his grievance. The chief must, however, take note of the matter, and if it be thought of sufficient importance it is brought up for discussion and judgment at the next tribal conference in tobacco palaver. At any rate, this method of airing a grievance has the effect of placing the culprit on the black-list, in view of the resultant publicity; and the natural wariness that is shown by others of the tribe in all dealings with such suspect for the future, is in itself a punishment for the crime.

It is difficult in the extreme to obtain any reliable evidence of the existence of initiation dances. Sixty years ago Dr. Russell Wallace described as the initiation dance of the girls of the Uaupes a dance which, six years ago, Dr. Koch-GrÜnberg, the latest and most painstaking of Amazonian investigators, found as a Jurupari ceremony confined to men on the river Aiary. The dance is the same in each case, and depends for its distinction upon the infliction of serious bodily injury. The mysteries of initiation, as has been said, have not yet been fathomed in the Amazons, nor have those of Jurupari. There is undoubtedly a dance in which the performers beat their fellows with lianas until the blood is drawn and the victims faint with pain, but no white man has yet spoken with certainty upon its origin.[322] The dance is not known in the district between the Issa and the Japura, nor do the mysteries of initiation fall to be discussed in this chapter. Those are not matters which are readily laid bare to even the most enterprising investigator in the haunts of the aborigines.

According to Koch-GrÜnberg’s account, all the women, accompanied by the smaller boys, leave the maloka directly the notes of the flutes are heard, and either hide in the woods or in another house with closed exits. The performers circle round in quick marching time, blowing their flutes, which each holds in his right hand, his left resting on the right shoulder of the next man. At the completion of the circle they stand in line. One dancer then draws the long whip they all carry under their right arms, and while his companion holds his flute high up, blowing lustily, he gives him three blows on the side and stomach heavy enough to draw blood freely. This continues till all have taken part. There is no singing, but the gaping wounds and much drinking of kashiri rouse the performers to a state of wild excitement. This dance is followed by an ordinary one, in which the women take part.[323] Obviously none of the Issa-Japura tribes practise this dance, for I never saw any signs of the scars that must inevitably remain on the bodies of dancers cut in this wholesale fashion.

The account given by Bates of a dance at the Feast of Fruits among the Juri and the PassÉ Indians is an equally good description of some of the Issa-Japura harvest dances. The men carry long reeds instead of javelins, and with their left hands on their neighbours’ right shoulders move slowly to right and to left. The accompaniment is a song as drawling and monotonous as the movement, which will be continued for upwards of an hour at a time.[324]

In the pine-apple dance the Indians tie pine leaves to boughs and wave them as they move. The women of the chief, and possibly all the women of the tribe, form a semicircle with the chief in the centre, sometimes alone, sometimes with others. They carry the mid-rib of the Trooly palm or some similar wand, with a small pine, or often the pine-top, tied to the end.

The proceedings at all harvest dances are very similar. I give as example a Boro dance at the gathering of the manioc, which is but an excuse for this dance, as manioc is pulled up at all times and seasons. As is almost universal in Indian dancing, the outer circle, or rather semicircle, is composed of men. The women, fewer in number, stand together in the centre, or each behind the man of her choice. Their dancing staves are all decorated with bunches of manioc shoots. The woman, with the nearer hand resting on the man’s shoulder, keeps step with him, moving to her own front and not sideways like the man, though in the same direction. The inner group face the circle of men, and their steps are complementary to those of the men, and not identical with them. The chief starts the dance with the first line of the song, his wife replies, and her answer is echoed by the chorus of the chief’s women.

The whole process of growing, harvesting, and preparing the manioc for cassava is thus related, then the chief will ask:

The suggestion is obviously that the women have stolen and eaten the cassava of the chief, but it is made solely to bring in the sexual suggestion. The women deny the imputation, and declare that their bellies are empty, or that they are great with child, not swollen with mao. The chief will then ask why, or when, the belly fills with child, and so the song continues on the lines of the sexual ideas introduced until the finale is reached, when the chief would sing:

The Muenane, who occupy a part of the central Issa-Japura watershed, between the Andoke and the Resigero, possess a dance of their own, which has travelled into many of the other tribes south of the Japura, and has become very popular.[331] This is a combination of a riddle and an animal dance. The figure is formed as in the pine-apple dance, but the centre is taken by a warrior who has gained a reputation as a wit. His business is to ask a riddle, which will in all probability be an original one, and he asks it after the manner of a chant. Naturally a man with at least the indigenous sense of wit is loudly applauded and received with shrieks of laughter from the outset. The dancers take up the chanted question as they rotate round the questioner. At the end of the measure the dance stops, and the riddler rushes frantically round the circle with a lighted torch, looking, like Alcibiades, for a man—to answer his riddle. He stops suddenly, thrusts his torch into the face of a performer, and, peering into his eyes to seek for some sign of answering intelligence, repeats his question. The answer, if in the negative, is given—whatever the tribe dancing may be—in the tongue of the originators of the dance, Muenane—“Jana” (I do not know). The dancer thereupon, having failed to reply correctly, is then impressed to be a follower of the questioner, and must rush after him and imitate all his antics, which are apparently to give the clue to the riddle. In a short time a long single file of these failures is engaged in presenting a burlesque of the habits of the animal whose name is the answer required. The first performer who guesses correctly becomes the questioner in turn, and the dance starts afresh.

It may be pertinent here to relate an incident which tends to convey at least an insight into the Indian character, the lack of altruism, the love of discomfiture of others. On one occasion the questioner—evidently to take a rise out of a stranger, and being intoxicated, if not with coca at least with the dancing mania—thrust his torch into my face, nearer than would be tolerated in the usual way. I quickly placed my foot on his chest, with the resultant back-somersault of torch and man. The shrieks of laughter lasted a considerable time. I was the hero of the hour, and custom decreed that the victim should laugh at his own discomfiture.

All Indians are clever mimics, and the fidelity with which they reproduce the actions of jaguars, tapirs, monkeys, parrots, and other familiar animals of the bush is remarkable. The riddles are nearly always concerned with animals, and the test of wit is the amount of sexual suggestion contained in the reply.[332] A typical query is, “When is a howler-monkey not a howler?” The answer would be, “When he is covering his mate.” The dumb show of the actors delights the audience, and leaves no small characteristic to the imagination. The riddles may defy translation, but the actions are certainly not beyond interpretation.

In this connection it is well to refer again to the subject of dance intoxication. The excitement due to rhythmic motion struck me very forcibly. It should be remembered too that the men are heroic cocainists, and this stimulant, in forcing the imagination, undoubtedly for the moment—qua alcohol—has an aphrodisiacal tendency. The sexual innuendoes of the songs, though not of the dance, increase the effect. It must also be borne in mind that five days and nights is not an uncommon limit to one dance. It may cease at sunrise for a short space, and individuals, of course, rest and sleep as nature may dictate, but never, to my knowledge, for any length of time.

On one occasion I was witness to the most remarkable salacity on the part of an individual. In my innocence I considered it part of the dance, and was satisfied with the idea that I had at last happed upon the indigenous counterpart of the coition and parturition dances of the East. It was not until the man was restrained by order of the chief that the true facts were realised.[333] But this was exceptional. The dance is carried on with frenzy and excitement, but with nothing beyond that. It never touches eroticism.[334] The dance never ends, as we know ending. It dwindles to cessation.

Another dance, much appreciated by the tribes between the Issa and the Japura, is not very dissimilar in essentials from the musical chairs of our childhood. The dancers form into a line, or two parallel lines, and, headed by the song-leader, carry out the customary step in single file. At the leader’s mention of a certain word, or perhaps a certain subject, previously agreed upon, the whole line must right-about turn, and pick up the step again without losing a beat. Those who fail are withdrawn from the line. The dance continues until the fittest alone remain, and is productive of general amusement.

But there are more tragic inspirations for a dance than the guessing of riddles or the garnering of the crops. I refer to the triumphant home-coming of tribal warriors, laden with booty from the war-path, with a band of doomed prisoners. The treatment of the latter and their disposal at the feast have been already dealt with. But the cannibal ritual of insult is not the end. When the orgy of blood and gluttony is over, the warriors must dance. Only the men may take part in the feast, so only the men may participate in this dance. The music is chiefly that of the drums, and to their gloomy rolling—according to Robuchon’s account—the warriors lurch portentously, drunk already with victory, and excited by dancing. They break apart frequently to stir the great troughs of liquor with the forearms of their dead enemies, and to quaff deep calabashes full of drink. Then they stagger back to the wild intoxication of the dance. Their songs become shrieks, demoniacal, hellish. For eight days this horrible dance of triumph continues, while the captive boys and girls, young enough to be saved from the fate of the earthen pot, cower in the darkness of the maloka and suffer, perforce in silence, the gibes of the women. But this scene defies description.

Set against the darkly impressive background of the forest any tribal dance gives an amazing effect of kaleidoscopic light and colour when, with nightfall, by the flare of great fires and the glow of torches, the performance begins. The chosen soloist of the tribe jangling his circlets of nuts, sounding his gourd rattle, in a falsetto voice sings the ancient air of the dance. The warriors follow the melody in canon. Then slowly the great line of naked men, arms interlocked about each other’s necks, surges forward two steps in perfect time, pauses a moment, then recedes two steps. In a little while the whole earth shakes with the swing of the movement. It is like the flowing and ebbing of mighty waves upon a shore. It intoxicates with the recurrence of the accentuation. Slowly round the big maloka the procession passes, swaying in unison. The streaked and banded women dance uniformly in an opposite direction. The fires splutter and blaze. The torches cast strange shadows. The flutes, the pan-pipes, and the drums blare, bleat, and boom their barbaric accompaniment.

It is a mad festival of savagery. The naked men are wildly excited; their eyes glare, their nostrils quiver, but they are not drunk. The naked women abandon themselves to the movement of the dance; they scream their chorus to the tribal dance-song; but they are not lewd. There is about it an all-pervading, illimitable delirium. The wild outburst affects even the stranger in their midst. Forgotten cells in his brain react to the stimulus of the scene. He is no longer apart, alien in speech and feeling. He locks arms in the line of cannibals, sways in rhythm with them, stamps as solemnly, and sings the meaningless words as fervently as the best of them. He has bridged an age of civilisation, and returned to barbarism in the debased jetsam of the river banks. It is the strange fascination of the Amazons.