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THE CAPTIVITY OF HANS STADE

Caput XXIII,

How they danced with me before the huts, wherein they keep their idols the Tamerka.

Then they led me from the place where they had shaved off my eyebrows, to before the huts wherein the Tammerka their idols were, and made round about me a circle in the middle of which I stood. Two women were with me, and they tied to one of my legs strings of objects, which rattled,^[1] and they also tied an ornament made of birds' tails, and of square shape, behind my neck, so that it projected above my head; it is called in their language Arasoya.^[2] Thereupon the womenkind all began together to sing, and to their time I was obliged to stamp with the leg to which they had tied the rattles, so that they rattled in harmony. But the leg in which I was wounded pained me so badly that I could hardly stand, for I had not yet been bandaged.

Caput XXIV.

How, after the dance, they took me home to Ipperu Wasu, who was to kill me.

Now when the dance came to an end, I was handed over to Ipperu Wasu, who kept me in careful custody. Then he

↑ These bunches of little bells (Cascavcis) were threaded nuts, whose kernels had been replaced by pebbles: Nieuhoff describes them as made from "the rind of the fruit Aguai". Making music when the victim danced, they are compared by old writers with the bells used by the morris-dancers in Europe.
↑ In the province of S. Paulo there is a mountain of old called Bira- çoiava, and lately Araçoiáva, or Arassoiyába. The people derive it from "Araçoyà" (properly Coaraçy), the sun, and "mba", a very general term, meaning thing, shadow, and so forth; thus the title is "Escondrijo do Sol" (hiding-place of the sun), and Arasoya may have some gimilar signification. Guaiaciaba, "hair of the sun", was a term applied to Europeans with fair locks.

[1] These bunches of little bells (Cascavcis) were threaded nuts, whose kernels had been replaced by pebbles: Nieuhoff describes them as made from "the rind of the fruit Aguai". Making music when the victim danced, they are compared by old writers with the bells used by the morris-dancers in Europe.

[2] In the province of S. Paulo there is a mountain of old called Bira- çoiava, and lately Araçoiáva, or Arassoiyába. The people derive it from "Araçoyà" (properly Coaraçy), the sun, and "mba", a very general term, meaning thing, shadow, and so forth; thus the title is "Escondrijo do Sol" (hiding-place of the sun), and Arasoya may have some gimilar signification. Guaiaciaba, "hair of the sun", was a term applied to Europeans with fair locks.

[1]

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