Anthropos: Anthropos, 29.1934

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Werks-URN (URL):: https://digi.evifa.de/viewer/resolver?urn=urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-d-4729543

URN:: urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-d-4729543

Persistenter Identifier:: BV041701500

Titel:: Anthropos

Weitere Titel:: Anthropos

Erscheinungsort:: Fribourg

Verlag:: Ed. St. Paul, Anthropos-Institut

Erscheinungsjahr:: 1906

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

Wissensgebiet:: Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie > Allgemeines

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Strukturtyp:: Zeitschriftenband

Werks-URN (URL):: https://digi.evifa.de/viewer/resolver?urn=urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-d-4737843

URN:: urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-d-4737843

Persistenter Identifier:: DE-11-001871386

Titel:: Anthropos, 29.1934

Erscheinungsjahr:: 1933

Signatur:: LA 1118-29

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

Zeitschriftenheft

Strukturtyp:: Zeitschriftenheft

Titel:: Bd. 29, H. 5./6., Sep. - Dec., 1934

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

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Strukturtyp:: Zeitschriftenartikel

Titel:: The Frog in Indian Mythology and Imaginative World

Sonstige Person:: Wassén, Henry

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

614 Henry Wassén, I. Positive and negative information about the frog as a source of food. The great wealth, both as regards the species and the individuals, of frogs and toads in South America is a fact well-known from travel descrip tions and zoological literature. It is particularly a question of the tropical parts and we have a vivid and typical description of the impression these animals make upon the visitor in Im Thurn’s book on Guiana: “Of the frogs and toads in Guiana, it is impossible to speak in detail. They are enormously abundant, and their varied and strange croaks combine in a chorus, which hardly ever ceases, gains redoubled force at night, and forms the characteristic sound both on the coast, in the forest, and on the savannah. So deeply does it impress the traveller that, when it has once been heard, he never, walking by an English ditch in spring, hears the feeble croak of one of our own frogs without seeing gigantic tropical scenes rise instantaneously before him. The amphibian which most annoys the colonist is a toad (Bufo agua), which swarms everywhere in muddy places, and at night crawls from the trenches in Georgetown out on the streets in such numbers that it is often impossible to avoid treading on them E” We have similar statements from Bates 1 2 . Considering this abundancy, as well in individuals as in species, it is natural to question whether the frogs play any roll among the Indians from the point of view of food. Is that so we have of coarse in this fact one not altogether negligible reason for the rather important place they so often occupy in the popular belief. If we look in the literature for information concerning the frog as a source of food for the Indians we find as well positive and negative state ments. To start with Guiana Roth takes up the question: “Frogs and toads, as well as their larvae and eggs, constitute an equally inter esting feature of the Indian menu. From Enaco village, toward the upper Potaro, B. Brown describes certain pits for trapping frogs in connection with a small dry, circular pond, having its bottom all grass covered. It was situated in a small clearing some 50 yards in diameter, and had evidently been artificially made. In the center of this the guide paused and directed my attention to numbers of small circular pits that had been dug all over the bottom of the pond. These averaged from 3 to 6 feet in diameter and from 6 to 8 feet in depth. Leaning against a tree on one side was a bundle of sticks with slightly curved ends. Selecting one, the guide stooped down, and stirring up a large mass of gelatinous froth in the bottom of a pit, dislodged a small flesh- colored frog, which he tapped on the head. In the grass around the pits’ mouths were also patches of this froth containing little white frogs’eggs about half the size of peas. These frogs are considered great delicacies by the Indians, and the pits are dug to entrap them when they come to the spot to deposit their eggs. After being gutted and prepared with the ‘butter’ from turtles’eggs, certain frogs’larvae are eaten by Indians 1 Among the Indians of Guiana, p. 136. 2 H. W. Bates: The Naturalist on the River Amazons, p. 195. — “A great number of toads are seen on the bare sandy pathways soon after sunset. One of them was quite a colussus, about seven inches in length .and three in height. This beg fellow would never move out of the way until we were close to him. If we jerked him out of the path with a stick, he would slowly recover himself, and then turn round to have a good impudent stare. I have counted as many as thirty of these monsters within a distance of half a mile.”

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