His Home Is In The Interior
Of An Unknown Country, Which He Wanders Over In Wild Freedom.
While
the Caingwas are homekeeping, these savages are nomadic, and could
not settle down.
The land is either burnt up or inundated, so they do
not plant, but live only by the chase. So bold and daring are they
that a man, armed only with a lance, will attack a savage jaguar; or,
diving under an alligator, he will stab it with a sharpened bone. 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.
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