Lopez, A Later Ruler, Took Sport In Hunting Indians Like Deer.

We are told that on one occasion he was so successful as to kill forty-eight!

The children he captured and sold into slavery at fifteen and twenty dollars each. The white settler considers himself very brave if he kills the savage with a rifle sighted at five hundred yards, while well out of range of the Indians' arrows, and I have known them shot just "for fun"! The Indians retaliate by cutting off the heels of their white captives, or leaving them, in statu naturae, bound with thongs on an anthill; and a more terrible death could not be devised by even the inquisitor, Torquemada, of everlasting execration. The Indian is hard and cruel, indifferent to pain in himself or others. A serpent may sting a comrade, and he takes no notice; but let one find food and there is a general scamper to the spot. The Chaco savage is barbarous in the extreme. The slain enemies are often eaten, and the bones burnt and scattered over their food. The children of enemies are traded off to other tribes for more food.

The Chaco Indian is a born warrior. Sad to say, his only hope is to fight against the Latin paleface.

Most of us have at times been able to detect a peculiar aroma in the negro. The keen-scented savage detects that something in us, and we "smell" to them. Even I, Big Cactus Red Mouth, was not declared free from a subtle odor, although I washed so often that they wondered my skin did not come off. They never wash, and in damp weather the dirt peels from them in cakes. Of course they don't smell!

When a man or woman is, through age, no longer capable of looking after the needs of the body, a shallow grave is dug, the aged one doubled up until the knees are pressed into the hollow cheeks, and the back is broken. This terrible work done, the undesired one is dragged by one leg to the open tomb. Sometimes the face and whole body is so mangled, by being pulled through thorns and over uneven ground, that it is not recognizable, and the nose has at times been actually torn off. While sometimes still alive, the body is covered up with mother earth. Frequently the grave is so shallow that the matted hair may be seen coming out at the top. The burial is generally made near a wood, and, if passible, under the holy wood tree, which, in their judgment, has great influence with evil spirits. Wild beasts, attracted by the odor of the corpse, soon dig up the remains, and before next day it is frequently devoured.

An ordinary burial service may be thus described: A deep cut is first made in the stomach of the departed one. Into this incision a stone, some bone ash, and a bird's claw are introduced. The body is then placed over the grave on two sticks, a muttering incantation is said by the witch doctor, and the sticks are roughly knocked from under the body, so as to permit it to fall in a sitting posture.

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