Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1879 — An Indian Festival In Brazil. [ARTICLE]

An Indian Festival In Brazil.

Hcribner for July. The grand festival begins on Saturday evening. During the day parties have been coming iu from all directions, bringing their roupa de ver a Deus—“clothes to see God in”—on their heads. Every house is crowded with guests, and many swing their ham macks to the trees; the old women busy themselves in preparing sweetmeals and mandioea beer; and the men build an arbor of boughs before the chapel. Everybody attends the final prayer meeting, and devoutly salute the saint; then the iu several houses at once and is continued with very little intermission until Tuesday or Wednesday, as the refreshments last. Many of the young people get only five or six hours of sleep during this time. The dancers are orderly, and for the most part sober: the old people sit around and wateh them, and grow talkative, and enjoy themselves quietly, and white clerks from town move about with a pleasing sense of their own glory. On sauday morning there is an interlude, during which the grand, breakfast is served, An ox has been killed for the occasion, and the guests eat as much as they please, with their fingers for forks. Ceremonious toasts are proposed in bad Portuguese and drunk in bad wine; everbody says “Viva!” in acknowledgement of everybody’s sentiments, and there i a solemn aping of all that is redieulous in the grand of thebrancos. With this the Indians feel that they have done their duty, and return to their sports with fresh unction. The dance rustic waltzes and quadrilles,notungracefully, to the music of a violin ana a little •wire-stringed guitar. Then there is The favorite lundid, ft kind of slow fandango, involving much snapping of fingers and shuffling of feet. Tne sar-j acura dance is led off by a special musician, a merrv old fellow, who marches about the room playing a tiny reed flute witli the right hand and beating a drum with the left. One after another the couples fall in behind him, tripping along with their arms about each other very lovingly, and keeping time to his music with a little jingling songi. '