Horrid
As Such A Death By The Hands Of Their Friends And Relatives
Must Be, The Fears Of The Old
Women, when hunger begins
to press, are more painful to think of; we are told that they
then often run
Away into the mountains, but that they are
pursued by the men and brought back to the slaughter-house
at their own firesides!
Captain Fitz Roy could never ascertain that the Fuegians
have any distinct belief in a future life. They sometimes
bury their dead in caves, and sometimes in the mountain
forests; we do not know what ceremonies they perform.
Jemmy Button would not eat land-birds, because "eat dead
men": they are unwilling even to mention their dead friends.
We have no reason to believe that they perform any sort of
religious worship; though perhaps the muttering of the old
man before he distributed the putrid blubber to his famished
party, may be of this nature. Each family or tribe has a
wizard or conjuring doctor, whose office we could never
clearly ascertain. Jemmy believed in dreams, though not, as
I have said, in the devil: I do not think that our Fuegians
were much more superstitious than some of the sailors; for
an old quartermaster firmly believed that the successive
heavy gales, which we encountered off Cape Horn, were
caused by our having the Fuegians on board. The nearest
approach to a religious feeling which I heard of, was shown
by York Minster, who, when Mr. Bynoe shot some very
young ducklings as specimens, declared in the most solemn
manner, "Oh, Mr. Bynoe, much rain, snow, blow much."
This was evidently a retributive punishment for wasting
human food. In a wild and excited manner he also related,
that his brother, one day whilst returning to pick up some
dead birds which he had left on the coast, observed some
feathers blown by the wind. His brother said (York imitating
his manner), "What that?" and crawling onwards,
he peeped over the cliff, and saw "wild man" picking his
birds; he crawled a little nearer, and then hurled down a
great stone and killed him. York declared for a long time
afterwards storms raged, and much rain and snow fell.
As far as we could make out, he seemed to consider the
elements themselves as the avenging agents: it is evident in
this case, how naturally, in a race a little more advanced
in culture, the elements would become personified. What
the "bad wild men" were, has always appeared to me most
mysterious: from what York said, when we found the place
like the form of a hare, where a single man had slept the
night before, I should have thought that they were thieves
who had been driven from their tribes; but other obscure
speeches made me doubt this; I have sometimes imagined
that the most probable explanation was that they were
insane.
The different tribes have no government or chief; yet
each is surrounded by other hostile tribes, speaking different
dialects, and separated from each other only by a deserted
border or neutral territory:
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 172 of 402
Words from 88572 to 89088
of 208183