The fight lasted only some twenty minutes, but it was after sunset
when we reached the _maloca_. The women and children received us
with great demonstrations of joy. Soon the pots and pans were boiling
inside the great house. I have previously observed how the Mangeromas
would partake of parts of the human body as a sort of religious rite,
whenever they had been successful with their man-traps; now they
feasted upon the hands and feet of the slain, these parts having been
distributed among the different families.
I crept into my hammock and lit my pipe, watching the great mass of
naked humanity. All the men had laid aside their feather-dresses and
squirrel tails, and were moving around among the many fires on the
floor of the hut. Some were sitting in groups discussing the battle,
while women bent over the pots to examine the ghastly contents. Here,
a woman was engaged in stripping the flesh from the palm of a hand
and the sole of a foot, which operation finished, she threw both
into a large earthen pot to boil; there, another woman was applying
an herb-poultice to her husband's wounds.
Over it all hung a thick, odoriferous smoke, gradually finding its
way out through the central opening in the roof.
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