PLATE XXXIX.BORO WOMEN CARRYING CHILDREN
PLATE XXXIX.
BORO WOMEN CARRYING CHILDREN
With the naming of a child the formalities connected with its birth are at an end, and once the navel is healed the father’s share in the ceremonials is completed. With his return to ordinary life the infant reverts to the charge of the mother. Day and night the child remains with her. It is carried out into the fields when she sets forth on her day’stoil among the manioc and pines, and is brought back to the fireside at night when she returns to cook the evening meal. The Witoto women, in common with other tribes in the vicinity, carry their infants in a sling of beaten bark-cloth that is passed round the forehead and hung as a bag behind. At a less tender age they will seat them on the hip, and small girls may often be seen with a smaller brother or sister astraddle round their waists.
The Indian mother will suckle her young for three years, or even longer, and at least during the earlier nursing will have no connection with her husband. This long period of lactation is certainly due in a measure to the scarcity of food. There is no artificial supply or substitute obtainable in place of the natural provision. If the mother cannot feed it the child must starve. The child is fed wherever the mother’s duties may take her. On many occasions I have seen a child that is running about and playing, suddenly toddle up to the squatting mother intent on her cassava making, and still standing suck for a few moments and then toddle away. Not less remarkable is it to see the women milk themselves into a palm-leaf, a very usual custom after the children’s teeth develop. The leaf is rested on the palm of the hand, which gives it the necessary cuplike form, and from this the child is fed.
The prohibitions with regard to certain foods that affected the parents before and immediately subsequent to childbirth, continue in force afterwards so far as the children are concerned. Such tabus are more strictly enforced on the girls than on the boys; and their diet is neither plentiful nor seemingly of the most nourishing description. Cassava cakes and fruits are permitted them, and some of the smaller bony kinds of fish among fish-eating tribes, but none of the better kinds of fish, and no game, until they attain maturity.
There is no childhood as others know it for the little Indian. By this I mean no innocent childhood. These forest children from birth see all the life of their elders, hear all things openly discussed, and the very games and jests of the babies are tainted with what we should consider obscenity.
Children are primarily under the authority and protection of the father, but any authority on the parent’s part is very slight, and ceases to exist altogether where the boys are concerned once the age of puberty is reached. Of course even a married son shows respect to a father if they are living in the same house. Girls, as they are in the care of their mothers or some responsible elderly matron of the tribe until their marriage, must be more under authority; and virginity, as with us, is strictly protected so far as is possible.[253]But in the main it may be said that parental control is only a semblance, and filial piety, so characteristic of the Inca and the Chinese, is practically unknown: indeed, though the smaller children seem very fond of their parents, after a few years it appears to be almost fashionable to disregard parental authority entirely.
A child is not considered responsible for any damage it may contrive to do. If it commit any mischief that entails loss to others compensation is claimed from the parents, but no chastisement would in consequence be meted out to the little offender. Children are never beaten, whatever their offences, and rarely punished. They are looked upon as the potential warriors and mothers of warriors, and treated very differently to the old and worn, who may be left to forage for themselves. The parents, in fact, show great affection for their children, despite the stoical way in which infant lives are sacrificed. Often have I seen the father, who would on no account carry food or any part of his woman’s burden, however heavy, give his small son a lift over the bad ground. Although he will never play games with his children as western folk do, the Indian father will do his best to please the youngsters and make them happy. He will make little javelins, a small blow-pipe, a toy sword for the boys. They have their miniature weapons from the tenderest years, and imitate their fathers in all that they do, just like the girls, who go with their mothers to the plantations, and take a share in women’s work as their form of play, and shoulder a share of women’s burdens when hardly more than babies themselves.Their games, in short, are all mimetic. They have no games with string or balls.
It follows naturally enough that there is little or no elaborate ritual of initiation among most of these tribes, so far as I was able to ascertain, for no part of a man’s life is kept secret from a child. The elders simply take the young of each sex apart and teach them. Nor is there much ceremony on the attainment of the young warrior to tribal rank. He has been instructed by the elder men as to the ways of hunting; he is allowed to join a tobacco palaver; he is presented by the chief with a pouch of coca; he is permitted to lick tobacco, and he affirms as he does so that he will bear himself bravely on all occasions. There is no further formality, and thus he enters the ranks of the fighting men. Among the Bara after a Jurupari dance all the youths of pubertal age are whipped, which is considered to be initiation. The whipping instrument, made from the hide of the tapir, is sacred. Women are excluded from this ceremony, and they believe when the boys shout that it is the expulsion of demons. The performance is regarded as strictly private, and if a man or boy tells of his experience he is outcast.
For the girls there are some secret lodges in the bush. But how far this is an Indian custom, how far a recent development for purposes of defence, I was not able to ascertain. The matter is not one on which the Indian is ever communicative. Certainly among all the tribes in the vicinity of the much-feared and ever-raiding Andoke, the girls who are bordering on puberty are segregated in the depths of the forest under the protection of old and wise women of the tribe. This may not be general, and I do not think it is a universal custom. It is done by these tribes principally, I take it, for the protection of the flower of their womanhood, to prevent the mothers of warriors-to-be from falling into the hands of the restless thieving Andoke. At the same time the girls are under instruction of their keepers, they are taught in these lodges presumably the duties that will shortly fall to their lot. They learn to dance, to sing, and to paint themselves for festivals. It isno unusual sight to see a party of small girls painting each other, if by chance one haps across a secret lodge. This is, I take it, in the way of practice, the Indian girl’s version of her civilised sisters’ “dressing-up” games.
The girls’ isolation is not absolute. There is always communication between the hidden lodge and the tribal house, but such communication is made with due care, no path is ever cut or worn to the hiding-place, and if one develops by usage it is speedily blocked the moment it is noticeable. When no inimical raiders are about, and all is considered safe, the girls repair to the tribal house, but no girl is allowed to return to the tribe for good until such time as a marriage has been arranged for her.
One writer on the Jivaro tribes mentions festivities held when a four-year old child is first initiated into the art of smoking.[254]This could never occur among any of the tribes on the Japura or the Issa, where it has been seen tobacco is only licked. Boring the ears, nose, and lips of the adolescent is done when they go to the lodges at the age of puberty. It is very carefully carried out, and is probably done with their ordinary boring instrument, the tooth of a capybara. Among the Menimehe the tribal marks are tattooed on face and breast at this time.
I have not met with the custom mentioned by Sir Clement Markham as existing among the Mariama, of a man cutting lines near the mouth of his twelve-year-old son, nor has the scourging of the Omagua, and their trial of the girls by hanging them in a net to smoke them, come under my observation, any more than the cruel scourging of girl children mentioned by Clough,[255]though boys on the Apaporis are thrashed, and I have heard of the custom north of the Japura. The Jurupari dance as described by so many authorities, and the girls’ whippings, as noted by Wallace,[256]have been told me second-hand by these tribes. I have never seen either, and south of the Japura I believe such customs to be unknown.
PLATE XL.OKAINA GIRLS
PLATE XL.
OKAINA GIRLS
Marriage regulations—Monogamy—Wards and wives—Courtship—Qualifications for matrimony—Preparations for marriage—Child marriages—Exception to patrilocal custom—Marriage ceremonies—Choice of a mate—Divorce—Domestic quarrels—Widowhood.
Marriage regulations—Monogamy—Wards and wives—Courtship—Qualifications for matrimony—Preparations for marriage—Child marriages—Exception to patrilocal custom—Marriage ceremonies—Choice of a mate—Divorce—Domestic quarrels—Widowhood.
At the beginning of my stay among the tribes, I thought, as many have asserted, that polygamy was common among the Indians. The reason for this belief is simply the fact that it is extremely hard to distinguish at first between wives, concubines, and attached women—women under the protection of a man, but not necessarily in intimate relation. Inquiries do not immediately assist any conclusion. If, for example, you question one of the attached women she would merely reply, “I am the chief’s woman,” which answer would have been equally correct in either case. But on better knowledge of their languages and customs the conviction was forced on me that monogamy and not polygamy is the rule, with the exception of the chiefs north of the Japura, who have, so far as I could make out, more than one wife. Koch-Grünberg affirms, and other tribes told me, that among the tribes on the Tikie a chief may have four wives. This is not the case south of that river, where chiefs, like ordinary members of the tribe, have only one.
But in addition to his wife or wives, all female prisoners and any unattached women belong by right to the chief. He is their father, mother, and husband, in so far that they receive his protection, though the wife would not permit any intimacy, unless it were when she was bearing or nursing a child. These women are not to be regarded, however, as what the Witoto callrinyo kachirete, that is tribal prostitutes, although other members of the tribe beside the chief areallowed to have access to them when his consent has been gained. The prisoners certainly would be used with his permission as women of convenience. So far as I could gather the chief respects the chastity of his wards, and it is therefore unlikely that he would claim anydroit de seigneurwhere the other women of the tribe are concerned.[257]Letourneau is responsible for the statement that “in America from the land of the Esquimaux to Patagonia, the loan of a wife is not only lawful but praiseworthy.”[258]I have never heard any suggestion ofjus utendi et abutendi, and consider it unlikely in view of the Indian’s character. He is not only a jealous husband but the rights of the wife are tacitly recognised, and I should conclude that such a custom would be entirely alien to Indian nature. The same argument holds good in the case of a daughter.
To distinguish between wards and wives is so great a difficulty that I even hesitated to accept without further confirmation the account given by Wallace of polygamous practices among the Isanna and Uaenambeu tribes,[259]careful as he was over all details of things about which he had personal knowledge. But I also was told by all tribes north of the Japura that it is permissible to have more than one wife, though the first must retain the position of “mistress of the house.”[260]It possibly resolves itself into the question of whether the women greatly out-number the men at a particular period or not.
Marriage with these Indians is not a matter of any great or prolonged ceremony or even of festival. A youth marries as a matter of course when he reaches man’s estate. Till he has taken to himself a wife he must remain in some degree dependent either on his parents or the chief; for he cannot plant his own manioc or tobacco, nor can he cook his own food. He has no one whose duty it is to see thatthere are no thorns or jiggers in his feet, to paint him for a dance, to prepare him store of drinks. Complete independence comes only when with his own woman he can, if he so pleases, go his own way, and live in solitude out in the forest or have his own fire in the shelter of the bigmaloka, just as it suits his whim. To secure this independence, to get his woman, he is required in the first place to show that he is a capable hunter and warrior, that is to say he must demonstrate the fact that he can feed and protect a wife and children.[261]But there is no scheme in any way approximating to the customs of those African peoples who rule that a man must have killed his man before he can be considered a proved warrior, and qualified for matrimony. It is sufficient if he be a hunter by repute in the generality of cases, though among the Uacarra and some other tribes, as noted by Wallace, an exhibition of skill is demanded.[262]A girl of these tribes will not marry a man who did not prove a good shot in an archery trial held for the purpose of testing his prowess, the reason alleged being that he cannot be sufficiently adept to maintain a family. This is the underlying idea in all the ceremony attached to the transaction of marriage among these Indians, of a piece with all their doings and sentiments. There is no use for the unfit. It is the philosophy of the forest in practical form.
Further, in view of his prospective position as husband and father, there are certain preparations, elementary enough, to be made by the bridegroom. From the surrounding forest a plot of land must be reclaimed, the trees felled and uprooted, the soil broken and roughly tilled, for the plantation. This is an absolute necessity, the agricultural is far more vital than any housing problem, for that is a point easy enough to settle, as the intending bridegroom need not build himself a house at all, if he can obtain a corner in the great house of assembly. There is nothing to prevent him from building one on his own account if he is not content with the quarters there allotted to him, thoughthe usual arrangement is for a man to bring his wife to live with his family rather than to start a separate establishment.
Betrothals are often made in childhood by arrangement between the parents, and occasionally a small boy is married to a small girl. This is not common, but I have seen it done in the case of a chief more than once. On one occasion that I remember it was among the Andoke, another time it was in a Boro house. The ceremony is the same as for adults, but naturally only in form. Among some tribes of the Andoke such child marriage is allowed if the boy has made a plantation and successfully hunted an animal, and either his or, more rarely, the girl’s family will admit them to joint life, and one Witoto man told me that he had been married as quite a youngster. But the general disparity of age is from five to fifteen years, for a man will choose an undeveloped girl, perhaps only nine or ten years old, and hand her over to the women of his own family.[263]The Andoke usually marry girls much younger than themselves, and I have seen a man of twenty with a tiny girl-wife hurrying after him. Undoubtedly the idea is the same as that underlying infant marriage in India, the man seeks to gain affection by association. The girl lives with him and his people, they become to all intents and purposes her people; she is trained by custom to their habits of life, must naturally imbibe their ideas, and will bring no foreign notions of manners or morals to disturb the equanimity of the common household when, in due time, she attains pubescence, and is made a wifede factoas well asde jure.[264]
In the ordinary run of events the woman invariably comes to live with the man’s family, he never goes to hers. Only in rare cases have I heard anything approaching the matrilocal customs noted among the Indians of British Guiana.[265]These cases would be exclusively when a chief,who has no son, marries his daughter to some man with a view to obtaining an heir through her. The man might be selected from friendly neighbours, or, with the approval of the tribe, an adopted son of the chief might be chosen. If the former, the bridegroom would have to leave his own people and live with his father-in-law. How exceptional this is may be judged from the fact that it is the sole circumstance of which I am aware where disregard is permitted to the prevailing rules of patrilocal and exogamous customs. This is, however, hearsay only. I never met with a case in point, though the Indians told me of it.
Individual preliminaries settled, it remains for sanction to be obtained from the chief of the girl’s household—to whom, it must be remembered, all unattached women belong—with which end in view the would-be bridegroom presents him with a pot of tobacco and one of coca.[266]He need ask no one’s consent of his own account, as in marriage the man has an absolutely free hand, unless he goes against tribal law by marrying a girl of any hostile tribe who might prove to be a danger to the community. As proof that he is a man of substance and owns a house, or has a recognised right to quarters in one, he will bring a piece of palm shingle that has been left over after the thatching, to the father of the selected damsel. He also brings a small tree cut through, to show that he has cleared and made a plantation. In both cases the form would appear to be accepted without the actuality. The father then produces some coca and tobacco. North of the Japura they will chewpataca,[267]and they will lick tobacco ceremonially together. There is no further ceremony, and a fortnight later the marriage is consummated, the girl remaining with her own people during the interval.[268]
Robuchon and Hardenburg, in dealing with this formality of presenting wood, have taken the action to be that thesuitor wishes to provide his future parents-in-law with a supply of firewood. Though in other details of marriage ceremonial they are exactly correct, both these authorities seem to have mixed the idea of firewood—a matter it is never the son-in-law’s business to prepare—with this symbolic offering, which is intended to signify that his patch of ground for cultivation is prepared and only waiting for the woman to plant and cultivate it.
If the information given me about tribes north of the Japura is correct, a more primitive marriage custom still maintains among their neighbours. The suitor, accompanied by his father and other relatives, visits the father of the chosen lady. Notice of the arrival having duly been sent, the object of such a formal visit is understood, though not definitely stated beforehand. If the suggestion meets with favour the visitors are welcomed with a feast. Two or three days later, in the middle of the festivities, the bridegroom’s party suddenly kidnap the bride, without any show of opposition on the part of her friends and family. She is carried off to the visitors’ canoes, and the pair thenceforward may consider themselves to be man and wife without further ceremony.[269]Though I never met with this custom in the districts near the middle Issa and Japura rivers, all the tribes told me of it, and among the Kuretu, so I was informed, the ceremony is even more suggestive of marriage by capture, as it is a point of honour for the bride to scream and protest while the groom carries her off with mock assistance from his friends.[270]
In every marriage the contracting parties are allowed complete freedom of choice. This is absolute on the part of the man, and, with the rare exception of young girls adopted into a family with a view to marriage, equally so on the part of the woman. The unmarried women are never objects of barter. The man neither pays for his wife, nor does he receive dowry with her. With marriage he assumesentire responsibility for wife and family. Girls rarely refuse an offer made to them. They occupy an inferior position in the family compared with that of the sons. By education and custom they are subservient to the wishes of the elders. As they grow older and have to take their share of the communal work they lose what independence they had as irresponsible children. By marriage alone can the native girl obtain a corner of her own in themaloka, a desirable sleeping-place beside the fire. A man is not forced upon her against her will. One bachelor is to all intents and purposes as eligible as any other. Personal appearance, where all who attain puberty are of necessity healthy and well formed, counts for little. The battle of Eugenics is fought at birth not at marriage. Whereas a boy becomes independent almost from the date of his first breech clout, the girl has her freedom curtailed with each succeeding year. Food tabus have schooled her appetite. She has suffered the restraints of the secret lodge. Marriage is her destiny, she neither knows nor desires an alternative. Such an upbringing does not make for capriciousness where choice of a husband is concerned. She can always run away if her husband prove displeasing, but in the majority of cases, unless subjected to very decided ill-usage, it never enters into the head of any wife so to behave. Peoples who will submit to the tyranny of a few blackguardly oppressors, and make hardly an effort in self-defence, do not rebel against the obvious in everyday life.Pia, “it is so,” makes as much for demoralising inertia asKismet. In short, there is no coercion in an Indian girl’s wedding, and equally no opportunity for original selection.
This question of personal acquiescence rules throughout their matrimonial relations, for with these Indians the marriage contract is only binding so long as husband and wife desire to be bound. Divorce is simple. For good cause shown the husband can rid himself of his wife, and be free to try for better fortune with another. He has only to bring the matter up in tobacco palaver, and if he can make good his cause he need not trouble further: he is free.[271]Infidelity, bad temper, disease, laziness, disobedience, or childlessness, is deemed a sufficiently weighty objection in a wife to warrant such action. Tribal opinion is in every case the chief criterion in the business.
On the part of the wife the matter is simpler yet. She will run away. A woman is never blamed for deserting her husband, on the presumption that such unnatural procedure could alone be due to the fact that she had been not only ill-treated but grossly ill-treated by him. For an independent woman is unknown among the Indians: if she is not under the protection of some man she is left in the lurch, and if she does not speedily find a protector must very surely die. Moreover it is obvious that when a woman runs away she must leave her children, and only gross cruelty will drive her to that.
If, on the other hand, a man divorce his wife, that is to say if he drives her away from him and so forces her out of the household, he lays himself open to severe tribal censure should the consensus of opinion be that no good cause has been shown. If upon inquiry he fails to establish a satisfactory excuse, he promptly is held up to ridicule by his fellows; he is the butt of all the women; and he will certainly find it a most difficult thing to remarry, for no woman will ever consent to be his wife. In fact, tribal censure results in the practical banishment of the offender, for his life in the tribal family will be made unendurable till such time as his offence be forgotten. The end of this persecution, and his return to tribal rights and privileges, depends entirely on his ability to prove and persuade his fellows that after all he was not the one to be blamed.
When a woman quarrels with her man, or wishes to revenge any wrong she may have suffered at his hands, real or imaginary, she will dart at the loin-cloth of the offender in the presence of the tribe and attempt to tear it away so as to expose him to his fellows. No insult could be greater, for this is the worst disgrace that can happen to a man. Should this occur, the victim must run into the forest and hide himself; nor can he return until he has beaten out a new bark loin-cloth to replace the one that wastorn, and so, once more decently attired, he may come back and apologise to the tribe. The pair will then go off together into the bush, and, according to circumstances, the wrong-doer undergoes, or perhaps they mutually undergo, a very painful penance. The wronged one takes one or more of the big black stinging ants, and places them on the most sensitive and private parts of the other’s body. The sting of the virulent insects not only gives intense pain, but results in fever within twenty-four hours, and there is much swelling of the parts affected.[272]This is the recognised mode of punishment after any conjugal infidelity, or any ordinary separation; and, repentance thus very practically expressed by submission to torture, forgiveness follows and good relations are again restored.
When a man dies the top ligatures of his widow are cut as a sign of mourning, and are only replaced if she marries again. There is no prohibition against remarriage, though this is not permitted till some months after the husband’s death. As a rule, on a man’s death his widow continues to live with his people, either under the protection of the chief, or under that of her dead husband’s brother. If her own people are not hostile to the tribe into which she married she may return to them, but the probability is that the tribes will have drifted apart, even if they have not become enemies. Very frequently widows become the tribal prostitutes, a custom that is not recognised, but is tolerated, and is never practised openly or immodestly.[273]
Sickness—Death by poison—Infectious diseases—Cruel treatment of sick and aged—Homicide—Retaliation for murder—Tribal and personal quarrels—Diseases—Remedies—Death—Mourning—Burial.
Sickness—Death by poison—Infectious diseases—Cruel treatment of sick and aged—Homicide—Retaliation for murder—Tribal and personal quarrels—Diseases—Remedies—Death—Mourning—Burial.
Indians, like most coloured races, are abject cowards in pain or disease. They will bear torture stoically enough when deliberately inflicted, but should they suffer from any, to them, mysterious reason, in their ignorance of natural causes they at once ascribe their affliction to witchcraft. To this possibly may be due the hapless manner in which they will lay them down to die, and actually succeed in doing so by auto-suggestion.
To the Indian in common with other peoples of the lower cultures, moreover, there is no such thing as death from natural causes. It is the result either of poison administered in secret by an enemy, or magical evil wrought by him or at his instigation, and the crashing of the thunder is the magic noise that accompanies the fatal result. If a possible enemy is known or suspected, or if, after divination, the medicine-man can identify the culprit, it becomes the duty of the relatives to avenge the deceased, who has, according to Indian logic, been murdered.[274]
Without doubt a very large number of deaths are due to poison. Removal by poison is practised to a great extent by the Karahone, who have, as has been said, much scientific knowledge of poisons and their effects. Further, it is the custom of the tribal medicine-man when his patients are in what he considers to be a hopeless condition, to administer a dose of poison quietly to the moribund sufferers after hehas declared that all his skill is in vain, and announced that recovery is impossible. For the medicine-man it then becomes more important to secure the fulfilment of his verdict than to risk the chance of recovery falsifying his prognostications. The probability is that the patient would die, if for no other reason than that the medicine-man foretold his death, but that gentleman will take no risks.[275]
There are other and more recognised cases in which it is the medicine-man’s province to administer a fatal draught. A mad person, for example, is first exorcised by the medicine-man to expel his madness. If this fails to secure the eviction of the evil spirits that cause the madness, the man is put to death to ensure the destruction of the bad influence which, since it passes the doctor’s power to remedy, has presumably been sent by some hostile colleague with greater magical gifts. Occasionally also, when any serious accident has befallen an Indian, a medicine-man goes through the ceremony of placing him in a secluded part of the bush, and administering the usual narcotic. The patient is then left for the night. The next day his relatives return, and if he is not dead he recounts to them his dreams, and from these they deduct who is the enemy that has caused his sickness. Reprisals naturally follow.
Should any known infectious disease break out in a tribe, those attacked by it are immediately left, even by their closest relatives, the house is abandoned, and possibly even burnt. Such derelict houses are no uncommon sight in the forest, grimly desolate mementos of possible tragedies.
Perhaps the cruel treatment of the sick arises from the fact that all disease is regarded as due to an enemy who essays by such means to procure the destruction of the tribe. Fear is undoubtedly the root-cause. But it must also be remembered that where life is not easy for the hale and hearty, for the helpless it is impossible except in so far as they can prey upon their active neighbours. The questionof self-preservation comes in to complicate the problem of the unfit. At every point it is clearly to be seen that the survival of the most fit is the very real and the very stern rule of life in the Amazonian forests. From birth to death it rules the Indians’ life and philosophy. To help to preserve the unfit would often be to prejudice the chances of the fit.[276]There are no arm-chair sentimentalists to oppose this very practical consideration. The Indian judges it by his standard of common sense: why live a life that has ceased to be worth living when there is no bugbear of a hell to make one cling to the most miserable of existences rather than risk greater misery? Moreover, in Indian opinion, such clinging to life is a very arrant selfishness.
Certainly cases of chronic illness meet with no sympathy from the Indians. A man who cannot hunt or fight is regarded as useless, he is merely a burden on the community. Should he show no signs of eventual recovery, his friends unhesitatingly leave him to die, or, if a medicine-man has not been commissioned to put him out of the way, he is driven into the bush, where the same end is speedily attained. This is done not only to the invalids, but also to the aged members of a tribe, unless they possess great wisdom and experience, and so are of great tribal worth. Otherwise they, too, have ceased to be units of any practical value in tribal life, and merely hamper the more active. Actual parricide there is none; old people are not killed, but they are left to die. There is no sentimental desire for their company, no affection to lighten the unhappiness of their lot. If they are unable to tend themselves, not an Indian will go out of his way to render any help or service. Cassava may be thrown to them occasionally, or it may be forgotten, and without doubt in times of scarcity no provision whatever is made for the feeble and the failing who can make none for themselves. Slaves, of course, are looked upon as of no account, and if sick or crippled they are abandoned without a thought. If a woman with a young child should die, and no one be found willing to adopt the infant, the father argues that it must dieanyhow, and it is either quietly killed and buried with the dead mother, or exposed in the bush.[277]
The reason that underlies such neglect of the sick and infirm has, on the other hand, resulted in the prevention of intra-tribal homicide. If the survival of the unfit is not to be desired, the existence of the fit is to be encouraged by all possible means. On the whole, although sick people are neglected, I do not think that they are often destroyed. Frequently a sick Indian has appealed to me, “Oh! let me die,” but none has ever said, “Kill me!” Intra-tribal homicide is certainly prohibited by custom, otherwise homicide is only limited by fear of reprisal, a more effective combination than any police force or criminal code. Even as punishment for an admitted offence, homicide within the tribe is not tolerated, for if a man die it means the loss of a warrior, an injury to tribal strength, a matter not to be lightly risked where the battle is only to the strong. There is, however, one exception to this, and that is in the case of theft. Living as these peoples do an absolutely public life, theft becomes of necessity a capital crime. The loser, if he can catch the thief, will kill him by knocking him down by a blow on the legs with the iron-wood sword, and then hacking off his head. This retribution is considered perfectly justifiable by the tribe, and is indeed sanctioned by custom.
After a murder has been committed it is the sacred duty of some brother or near relative of the dead to kill the murderer, or, if not, at least a relative of his, in accordance with the world-old idea of an eye for an eye. A man who refused to revenge a murdered relative would be taunted by all the women, and this would soon render his own life in the tribe an intolerable one. But I have never come across the custom which is prevalent in Africa among some primitive peoples, that is, to search for the same relative to the murdered as the murdered man was to the avenger: for example, “You have killed my nephew, I will kill your nephew.”
When an intentional murder has been committed themurderer flies to the bush, where he is promptly followed, and the pursuit is not foregone until the criminal is secured or the pursuers find themselves in imminent danger from a hostile tribe. In the latter case the blood-feud remains open for an early settlement, and the friends of the murderer are dealt with first.
Homicide is, in fact, always looked upon as a wrong done to a man’s tribe or family, rather than to the individual himself. In the case of accidental homicide it may still lead to a blood-feud. The deed is done, that is sufficient for these simple-minded folk. It may possibly be put down to the witchcraft of some neighbouring medicine-man who has bewitched the unintentional slayer with hostile motives; but that will not save the unfortunate offender, rather is it an additional argument that he should be destroyed lest worse trouble follow. There is also to be reckoned with the idea that the dead man’s spirit will haunt the tribe, and especially his nearest relative, until his blood has been avenged.[278]Besides, it is undoubtedly difficult to draw the line between accident and design, and, for the matter of that, the meaning of the word “accident” is unknown to the Indian.
The chief and the tribe will sometimes take up the quarrel as their own, but, on the other hand, a man considers it a disgraceful thing not to be able to avenge his own wrongs, and, therefore, never applies to the chief for tribal help. This is true of all small communities, an affront of any one of the community being a personal attack upon every other member, but it is not necessary that it should be avenged by all, unless the affronted one be unable for any cause to complete his revenge by himself.
No tribal notice is taken of a murder committed intra-family, such as the murder of a son or a wife, as no revenge is necessary; the loss only affects the murderers, and it is simply arranged by the family itself. The loss of one member does not suggest itself as a reasonable causefor compelling the loss of another. The one exception to this would be if the murdered man were a noted warrior whose death would constitute a serious tribal loss. Action might then be taken by the whole tribe after the usual tobacco palaver.
So much for death by violence; there remains something to be said of death by disease, and of sickness not necessarily ending in death.
All travellers and writers have noticed how prone the Indian is to sun-sickness. Living as he does in the perpetual gloom of his tribal house, or the restricted light of the forest depths, he appears to be exceptionally susceptible to the effects of strong sunshine. His sensitiveness is tried further by any sort of change, even a transference from the upper reaches to the main rivers completely upsets him. Indians appear to go sick especially on moving only a short way from their own locality. They are also bad subjects for malarial fevers, and the Issa River is notoriously unhealthy in this respect. By this I mean the river itself, and in its immediate vicinage. Even a few hundred yards away from its banks the country is comparatively healthy and free from pestilent fly-belts, which, it will be remembered, are at their worst some three days steam up that river.[279]On the Brazilian frontier especially thepiumfrom sunrise to sunset is unbearable. The beginning of the rains invariably brings fever.
On the other hand, chest complaints are rare, respiratory disease is unknown, and throat diseases uncommon, though you meet victims to rheumatism and cramp. There is no venereal disease among these tribes, and no umbilical hernia. Phimosis is common, and so are gastric complaints. Diseases of the eye are rare, though squinting is extremely prevalent.
There are many parasitic diseases. Ringworm and intestinal worm are very general troubles, and lice in the head universal. Jiggers in the Indian houses are a pest to all, and one of the daily duties of the Indian wife consists in the examination of her man’s feet to remove any thornsor jiggers that may have effected a lodgment. This jigger is similar to the African species; it burrows into the foot, and lays its eggs beneath the skin. I have had as many as thirty-seven picked out of my foot at one time. The nuisance can be largely diminished if the traveller take the precaution always to wear boots in or about an Indian house, for jiggers are not found in the bush itself, though a somewhat similar pest abounds on the leaves and grasses,[280]and causes abominable irritation. In the Rubber Belt the usual remedy for this is a bath of white rum.
Near the Rubber Belt smallpox has found its devastating way among the Indians. I have said that they fear any contagious disease, and will often leave a sick person to die, so it may well be understood that a case of smallpox causes the utmost panic and consternation.[281]Tribes further removed from contact with “civilisation” are spared this scourge, but I noticed a form of measles among the children. Yellow fever is not known in the upper reaches, but I can answer for it that beriberi is, as I fell a victim to it myself. It is very prevalent in all this country, but it does not attack the Indians.[282]
The Napo Indians suffer from skin diseases that are not known to the tribes in the Issa and Japura valleys. There is a bluish discoloration and white blotch that is said to come from eating tapir.[283]Among the Karahone one meetswith cases afflicted in the same manner as natives on the Apaporis. They are spotted with a leprosy which is said to be due to the amount of fish that is eaten by these tribes. This disease is otherwise unknown.
All strangers suffer from ulcers on the legs.[284]Among the Indians themselves sores are common,[285]but I think are due entirely to neglected wounds caused by palm-spines and so forth, not to climate and feeding as would be the case with ourselves. Stings also have to be reckoned with.
Indian remedies are rather symptomatic than specific;[286]the methods of cure will be more fully dealt with in connection with the medicine-men. The remedies are rather of the order of kill than cure. For instance, fever is treated by the drastic method of bathing in the cold water of the river to lower the temperature.[287]On the Napo the natives take a concoction of tobacco-water and quinine. They make a remedy for wounds from the bark of a tree, which they boil, and use the liquid to wash the wound. A root found in the forest yields a narcotic much employed by the medicine-man when it is scraped, crushed, and boiled in water. Another remedy, acting as a counter-irritant, is a sage-green feathery moss, some species of lichen, very dry, that grows round the roots of trees.
During my stay with the tribes I never met with any such frantic sorrow at a death as is described by Koch-Grünberg,[288]though a mother will cry over the body of a dead child,[289]and sobbing, wailing, and a certain amount of excited grief is shown at a funeral, especially if it be that of an important person.
Burial takes place without delay on the day of death. The dead man, unwashed, is wrapped in his hammock in a sitting position, and a grave is dug immediately below the place where the hammock was slung in his lifetime. Thoughthey only dig deep enough to hide the body, this custom of intramural interment does not appear to have unhealthy effects upon the other inhabitants of the house, and no epidemic ever seems to arise in consequence. The dead man’s ornaments, his arms, and other personal possessions, such as his tobacco-bag, his coca-pot, are placed in the leaf-lined grave beside him. The whole interment is carried out with all speed, to get the body out of the way as quickly as they possibly can. South of the Issa a canoe or earthen jar takes the place of the hammock for shroud, but I never met with any urn burial, primary or secondary, among the tribes of the north.[290]
When the deceased is a woman the same procedure is followed, only pots are buried with her in place of weapons. Among the Kuretu-language group, when a woman dies, her pots are broken before they are placed in the grave,[291]and her baskets are also buried with her in addition to her ornaments. This is done to prevent the return of the soul to ask for its properties should they be needed in the spirit world.
When a chief has died the ceremonies are more elaborate. His body, like any other man’s, is wrapped in his palm-fibre hammock, and he is buried with his weapons, ornaments, and private treasures. But after the grave is filled in, the assembled tribe partake of a funeral feast. In the intervals of drinking and dancing the mourners sing of the great achievements, the worthiness and virtues of the dead man. The new chief comes forward, attired in the prescribed fashion, wearing a weird and wonderful head-dress to attract attention. He does not face the assembled people, but turns to the wall of the house, and speaks with his back to the tribe.
After a burial a fire is made over the new grave by the relatives, and is always kept burning for some days, exceptin the case of a chief, when the whole house is burnt. This may possibly counteract the obvious dangers of these intramural burials, and account for the absence of evil results.
Whatever mourning may be indulged in before the body is buried, no grief is ever shown after the interment, for the spirit has then departed. This belief explains why a man’s grave is not marked in any way by these tribes, and has, as a matter of course, no claim to respect from his survivors.
It is possible that the question of cannibal customs as insults to the dead also influence the Indians in the matter of burial, and the absence of sign upon a grave. It would in some measure account for the burial in the house—as a protective measure—in spite of the fact that they recognise the danger of the spirit’s return, a belief which would more naturally incline them to extramural burials.
Ceremonial bathing always takes place after a funeral, in which every one takes part for the purpose of purification.