(M111) When the Tupi Indians of Brazil had made a prisoner in war, they used to bring him home amid great rejoicings, decked with the gorgeous plumage of tropical birds. In the village he was well treated: he received a house and furniture and was married to a wife. When he was thus comfortably installed, the relations and friends of his captor, who had the first pick, came and examined him and decided which of his limbs and joints they proposed to eat; and according to their choice they were bound to provide him with victuals. Thus he might live for months or years, treated like a king, supplied with all the delicacies of the country, and rearing a family of children who, when they were big, might or might not be eaten with their father. While he was thus being fattened like a capon for the slaughter, he wore a necklace of fruit or of fish-bones strung on a cotton thread. This was the measure of his life. For every fruit or every bone on the string he had a month to live; and as each moon waned and vanished they took a fruit or a bone from the necklace. When only one remained, they sent out invitations to friends and neighbours far and near, who flocked in, sometimes to the number of ten or twelve thousand, to witness the spectacle and partake of the feast; for often a number of prisoners were to die the same day, father, mother, and children all together. As a rule they shewed a remarkable stolidity and indifference to death. The club with which they were to be despatched was elaborately prepared by the women, who adorned it with tassels of feathers, smeared it with the pounded shells of a macaw’s eggs, and traced lines on the egg-shell powder. Then they hung it to a pole, above the ground, in an empty hut, and sang around it all night. The executioner, who was painted grey with ashes and his whole body covered with the beautiful feathers of parrots and other birds of gay plumage, performed his office by striking the victim on the head from behind and dashing out his brains. No sooner had he despatched the prisoner than he retired to his house, where he had to stay all that day without eating or drinking, while the rest of the people feasted on the body of the victim or victims. And for three days he was obliged to fast and remain in seclusion. All this time he lay in his hammock and might not set foot on the ground; if he had to go anywhere, he was carried by bearers. They thought that, were he to break this rule, some disaster would befall him or he would die. Meantime he was given a small bow and passed his time in shooting arrows into wax. This he did in order to keep his hand and aim steady. In some of the tribes they rubbed the pulse of the executioner with one of the eyes of his victim, and hung the mouth of the murdered man like a bracelet on his arm. Afterwards he made incisions in his breast, arms, and legs, and other parts of his body with a saw made of the teeth of an animal. An ointment and a black powder