The
Same Man Will Run In Abject Terror If He Thinks He Hears Spirits.
Though not religious, the savages are exceedingly superstitious,
afraid of ghosts and evil spirits, and the fear of these spectral
visitants pursues them through life.
During a storm they vigorously
shake their blankets and mutter incantations to keep away
supernatural visitors.
All diseases are caused by evil spirits, or the moon; and a comet
brings the measles. The help of the witch doctor has to be sought on
all occasions, for his special work is to drive away the evil spirit
that has taken possession of a sick one. This he does by rattling a
hollow calabash containing stones. That important person will perform
his mystic hocus pocus over the sick or dying, and charm away the
spirits from a neighborhood. I have known an Indian, when in great
pain through having eaten too much, send for the old fakir, who,
after examination of the patient and great show of learning, declared
that the suffering one had two tigers in his stomach. A very common
remedy is the somewhat scientific operation of bleeding a patient,
but the manner is certainly uncommon - the witch doctor sucks out the
blood. One I was acquainted with, among the Lengua tribe, professed
to suck three cats out of a man's stomach. His professional name was
thereafter "Father of Kittens." The doctor's position is not one to
be envied, however, for if three consecutive patients die, he must
follow them down the dark trail!
These medicine-men are experts in poisons, and their enemies have a
way of dying suddenly. It cannot be denied that the Indians have a
very real knowledge of the healing virtues of many plants. The writer
has marvelled at the cures he has seen, and was not slow to add some
of their methods to his medical knowledge. Not a few who have been
healed, since the writer's return to civilization, owe their new life
to the knowledge there learned.
Infanticide is practised in every tribe, and in my extensive
wanderings among eight toldos, I never met a family with more than
two children. The rest are killed! A child is born, and the mother
immediately knocks it on the head with a club! After covering the
baby with a layer of earth, the woman goes about as if nothing had
occurred. One chief of the Lengua tribe, that I met, had himself
killed nineteen children. An ironwood club is kept in each toldo
for this gruesome work. Frequently a live child is buried with a dead
parent; but I had better leave much of their doings in the inkpot.
When a girl enters the matrimonial market, at about the age of twelve
or thirteen, her face is specially colored with a yellow paint, made
from the flower of the date palm, and the aspirant to her hand brings
a bundle of firewood, neatly tied up, which he places beside her
earthen bed at early morning.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 117 of 161
Words from 59972 to 60471
of 83353
