Page:The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse.pdf/182

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IN EASTERN BRAZIL.
63


me, and I knew not what they intended doing to me, upon which I remembered the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ, and how he suffered innocently at the hands of the vile Jews, whereby I consoled myself and became more resigned. Then they brought me before the huts of the king, who was called Vratinge Wasu, which means in German, the Great White Bird.[1] Before his huts lay a heap of freshly dug earth, whither they led me and sat me down thereon, and some held me, when I thought nothing else but that they would dispatch me at once. I looked round for the Iwara Pemme,[2] wherewith they club men, and asked whether they were going to kill me then, when they answered, "not yet." Upon which a woman came from out of the crowd towards me, holding a fragment of a crystal, set in a thing like a bent ring, and with this same piece of crystal shaved off my eyebrows, and would also have cut the beard from my chin, but this I would not suffer, and said, that they should kill me with my board. Then they replied, that for the present they would not kill me, and left me my beard. But after some days they cut it off with a pair of scissors, which the Frenchmen had given them.[3]

  1. ↑ Guirá or Wirá is any bird, Tinga white, and Wasú for Guaçu, great. The latter is opposed to Mirim, Merim, Mini, or Mi, small.
  2. ↑ Vasconcellos (ii, 18) calls this sacrificial club Tangapema. Vieyra Tangapena (Fangapena being a clerical error), Ferd. Denis Yvera-pème, and others, Yvera-pèmi, Tangapé, and Tacapé. It is described in Part 2, chapter 28, and Varnhagen (1, 112) gives an illustration of what evidently corresponds with the Cuidará of the Amazonian tribes. The common tomahawk, a paddle-shaped cutting club, corresponding with the North American weapon, was called Macaná, and on the Amazon as Tamarana.
  3. ↑ In scraping and shaving the prisoner about to be eaten, there was possibly some idea of ceremonial purification.
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