The Indian Describes Himself
As A Man; Monkeys Are Little Men; I Was A Thing; But The
Paraguayans Are Christians,
And that is the lowest degree of all.
The priests they see on the other side of the river are
Yankilwana
(neither man nor woman); and a Yankilwana, in his distinctive garb,
could never tread this Indian soil. So abhorrent to them is the name
of Christian, that the missionaries have been compelled to use
another word to describe their converts, and they are called
"Followers of Jesus." All the members of some large expeditions have
been massacred just because they were Christians. Surely this is
convincing corroboration of my remarks regarding the state of Roman
Catholicism in those dark lands.
A few miserable-looking, diminutive sheep are kept by some tribes,
and the blankets referred to are made from the wool, which is torn
off the sheep with a sharp shell, or, if near the coast, with a
knife. The blankets are woven by hand across two straight branches of
tree, and they are sometimes colored in various shades. A bulbous
root they know of dyes brown, the cochineal insect red, and the bark
of a tree yellow. String is made from the fibre of the caraguatai
plant, and snail shells are used to extract the fibre. This work is,
of course, done by the women, as is also the making of the clay pots
they use for cooking. The men only hunt.
All sleep on the ground, men, women, children and dogs,
promiscuously.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 213 of 313
Words from 56742 to 56996
of 83353
