Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

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beyond
NOTES OF A BOTANIST
the last were the Amazons.
" These man-
like women," he says, "have their abodes in great
forests and on lofty hills, amongst which that which
rises above the rest, and is therefore beaten by the
winds for its pride with most violence, so that it
is bare and clear of vegetation, is called Yacamiaba "
(Yacamf, the Tupi name of the Trumpeter bird or
Aba or awa, people).
Agami ;
When I read this account of Acuna's, some years
after I had left the Amazon, I was struck with the
connection of the name of the hill Yacamiaba with
that of an Indian dance I had seen on the Upper
Amazon in 1851. The dance was called Yacami-
cuiia (Agami woman), and the performers in it
moved to the rude music of a pipe and tambour ;
and to the words of a song, which I unfortunately
neglected to take down at the time. A lot of young
people joined hands to form a ring,
in which males
and females alternated, and danced round and round,
singing the song of the Yacami. At the words
" "
Yacami-cuna-cufia ! the ring suddenly broke up
the partners turned tail to tail and bumped each
other repeatedly, with such goodwill that one ot
the two (and as often the man as the woman) was
frequently sent reeling across the room, amidst the
uproarious laughter of the bystanders. The Yacamis
or Agamis are, as is well known, birds without any
tail-feathers, those appendages having diappeared
from the birds continually rubbing their sterns to-
gether so, at least, says Indian- tradition, which has
it is easy to under-
been embodied in the dance ;
stand its application to a rocky hill, shaggy below
with woods, bare at the summit, such as I have
seen many in both Brazilian and Spanish Guayana.
and