A Bow And Arrows, And Some Food And Cooking Utensils, Are Dropped Into The Grave.

All shooting stars, according to the Indian belief, are flying stones; hence the custom of placing a stone in the stomach of the dead.

It is supposed to be able to mount heavenward, and, assuming its true character, become the avenging adversary, and destroy the one who caused the death - always a bad witch doctor. The bird's claw scratches out the enemy's heart, and the ashes annihilate the spirit. One of the missionaries in the Lengua tribe stated that he assisted at the burial of a woman where the corpse fell head foremost into the grave, the feet remaining up. Four times the attempt to drop her in right was made, with similar results, and finally the husband deliberately broke his dead wife's neck, and bent the head on to the back; then he broke her limbs across his knee, and so the ghastly burial was at last completed! Truly, "the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty." Let the one whose idea is to "leave the pagan in his innocency" visit these savages, and, if he lives to tell it, his ideas will have undergone a great change. They are lost! and millions have not yet heard of the "Son of Man," who "came to seek and to save that which was lost."

At the death of any member, the toldo in which he lived is burnt, all his possessions are destroyed, and the people go into mourning. The hair of both sexes is cut short or pulled out, and each one has the face blackened with a vegetable dye, which, from experience, I know hardly ever wears off again. As I have said, everything the man owned in life is burnt and the village is deserted; all move right away to get out of the presence of the death-giving spirit. To me the toldo would not only seem abandoned, but the people gone without leaving a trace of their path; but not so to Wolf Rider, my guide. By the position of the half-burnt wood of the fire, he could tell the direction they had taken, and the number gone - although each steps in the other's footprints - whether they were stopping to hunt on the way, and much more he would never tell me. Some of the missionaries have spent ten years in the Chaco, but cannot get the savage to teach them this lesson of signs.

In some tribes the aged ones are just "left to die" sitting under a palm-leaf mat. All the members of the tribe move away and leave them thus. Many are the terrible things my eyes have witnessed, but surely the most pathetic was the sight of an old woman sitting under the mat. I was one day riding alone, but had with me two horses, when I caught sight of the palm-leaf erection and the solitary figure sitting under it.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 115 of 161
Words from 58968 to 59470 of 83353