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.
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