Note 320 — Chapter XV

One is irresistibly reminded of the clown, especially of the comic man who usually puts in an appearance at military sports. It is possible that this custom of dressing-up to secure attention when airing a grievance is what has been mistaken by some writers for a part of the dance. Sir Roger Casement, quoting Maw in the Contemporary Review, September 1912, talks of “the masked men” as “a necessary part of each performance.” It is certainly quite unknown to me, for I never saw or heard of anything of the kind, though in the first edition of Bates’s Naturalist on the River Amazon the frontispiece of the second volume gives a masked dance of the Tukuna, so I do not suggest that masked dancers do not exist, only that they are not known among the tribes of the Issa-Japura valleys.