In each hamlet there is the trunk of a large tree hollowed out like a trough. In this, from their cassava, they make an abominable ill-tasted and sour kind of fermented liquor called piwarri. They are very fond of it, and never fail to get drunk after every brewing. The frequency of the brewing depends upon the superabundance of cassava.
Both men and women go without clothes. The men have a cotton wrapper, and the women a bead-ornamented square piece of cotton about the size of your hand for the fig-leaf. Those far away in the interior use the bark of a tree for this purpose. They are a very clean people, and wash in the river or creek at least twice every day. They paint themselves with the roucou, sweetly perfumed with hayawa or accaiari. Their hair is black and lank, and never curled. The women braid it up fancifully, something in the shape of Diana's head-dress in ancient pictures. They have very few diseases. Old age and pulmonary complaints seem to be the chief agents for removing them to another world. The pulmonary complaints are generally brought on by a severe cold, which they do not know how to arrest in its progress by the use of the lancet. I never saw an idiot amongst them, nor could I perceive any that were deformed from their birth. Their women never perish in childbed, owing, no doubt, to their never wearing stays.
They have no public religious ceremony. They acknowledge two superior beings--a good one and a bad one. They pray to the latter not to hurt them, and they are of opinion that the former is too good to do the man injury. I suspect, if the truth were known, the individuals of the village never offer up a single prayer or ejaculation. They have a kind of a priest called a Pee-ay-man, who is an enchanter. He finds out things lost. He mutters prayers to the evil spirit over them and their children when they are sick. If a fever be in the village, the Pee-ay-man goes about all night long howling and making dreadful noises, and begs the bad spirit to depart. But he has very seldom to perform this part of his duty, as fevers seldom visit the Indian hamlets. However, when a fever does come, and his incantations are of no avail, which I imagine is most commonly the case, they abandon the place for ever and make a new settlement elsewhere. They consider the owl and the goat-sucker as familiars of the evil spirit, and never destroy them.