The Indian, destitute of firearms, ranges through the forest in chase of
the fiercest and largest animals which haunt its shade, armed with a
slender tube, and a quiver full of needle-like arrows. The tube, ten or
eleven feet long, is the celebrated gravatana, or blow-pipe; called also
the zarabatana by the Spaniards. Slight as are the arrows which are
blown through this weapon, they will penetrate the thickest hide; and
being tipped with a deadly poison, carry death through the veins of the
wounded animal in the course of a few minutes.
Blowpipes are formed in various ways,--for one, the stems of a small
palm, the triatea setigera, are used. Outside they appear pointed, from
the scars of the fallen leaves, but within they have a soft pith, which
soon rots in water, and is easily extracted, leaving a smooth, polished
bore. They vary from the thickness of a finger to two inches in
diameter. Each of these stems is slender, the one of a size which may
be pushed inside the larger. This is done that any curve in the one may
counteract that in the other. A conical wooden mouthpiece is fitted on
the one end, and the whole is spirally bound with the smooth black bark
of a creeper. Two teeth, fastened about a couple of feet apart from the
mouth end, serve as sights to enable the sportsman to take better aim.
The end applied to the mouth is bound round with a small silk-grass cord
to prevent it splitting; while the other is strengthened by having the
seed of a nut, with a hole cut through it, secured round it.
The arrows, from nine to ten inches long, are made from the leaves of a
species of palm, or from the spinous processes of the patawa, pointed as
sharp as a needle. The other end is burned hard, and round it is wound
a little conical tuft of tree-cotton, the silky covering of the bomba,
so as exactly to fill up the bore of the tube. They are carried in a
quiver, which holds some hundreds. It is in shape somewhat like a
backgammon dice-box, formed of basketwork, and covered with a piece of
the skin of the tapir. To it is attached a bunch of silk-grass, a small
piece of bone for scratching the point of the arrows, and a basket for
holding wild honey secured round the blunt end. The points of the
arrows are tipped with the deadly wourali or urali poison.
Another kind of gravatana is made of two separate pieces of wood, each
scooped out so as to form one half of the tube. The two halves are then
secured together, by binding round them spirally long fiat strips of the
jacitira, or wood of the climbing palm-tree, the whole being afterwards
smeared over with the black wax of the melipona bee. The tube tapers
towards the muzzle, and a cup-shaped mouthpiece is fitted in the broad
end. It is so heavy that only a strong man, accustomed to its use, can
employ it.
The boys learn to shoot with a smaller and lighter instrument. The
tools used are made of the incisor teeth of the paca and cavy. A light
arrow is put in at the inner end, and when the ball of silk-cotton
secured to the shafts fits tightly, it can be propelled with such force
by the breath that it makes a noise almost as loud as a pop-gun when
flying from the muzzle. An expert Indian can propel arrows so as to
kill at a distance of fifty or sixty yards. It is more useful in the
forest than a gun, for the report of firearms alarms the birds or
monkeys, while the silent poisoned dart brings them down one by one,
until the sportsman has a heap of slain by his side.