Wild Beasts, Attracted By The Odor Of The Corpse, Soon Dig
Up The Remains, And Before Next Day It Is Frequently Devoured.
An ordinary burial service may be thus described:
A deep cut is
first made in the stomach of the departed one. Into this incision a
stone, some bone ash, and a bird's claw are introduced. The body is
then placed over the grave on two sticks, a muttering incantation is
said by the witch doctor, and the sticks are roughly knocked from
under the body, so as to permit it to fall in a sitting posture. 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. Getting down from my horse, I approached the woman
and offered to take her to a place of safety, promising to feed her
and permit her to live as long as she chose. Would she come with me?
I begged and entreated, but the poor woman would not so much as lift
her eyes to mine. The law of her tribe had said she must die, and the
laws are to them unalterable. Most reluctantly, I left her to be
eaten later on by the wild beasts.
Terrible as this custom is, other tribes kill and eat their aged
parents "as a mark of respect." Another tribe will not permit one
member to go into the spirit world alone, so they hang another one,
in order that there may be two to enter together.
Whereas the Caingwas are a religious people, even attributing their
custom of piercing the lip to divine commandment, the Chaco
aborigines have no god and no religion. Missionaries in the solitary
station I have referred to, after ten years' probing, have been
unable to find any approach to worship in their darkened minda. "The
miserable wretches who inhabit that vast wilderness are so low in the
scale of reasoning beings that one might doubt whether or not they
have human souls." [Footnote: Washburn's "History of Paraguay."]
These "lost sheep" have no word to express God, and have no idols.
"The poverty of the Indian dialects of the Chaco is scarcely
surpassed by that of the dumb brutes."
These wretched tribes have perfect community of goods; what is
secured by one belongs equally to all. A piece of cloth is either
torn up and distributed, or worn in turns by each one. The shirt
which I gave my guide, Yantiwau, for much arduous toil, was worn by
one and another alternately. Much as the savage at first desires to
possess some garment, it does not take long for him to tire of it.
All agree with Mark Twain, that "the human skin is the most
comfortable of all costumes," and, clothed in the sunlight, the human
form divine is not unlovely.
Sometimes the Indians of the interior take skins, etc., to the
Paraguayan towns across the river. Not knowing the use of money,
their little trading is done by barter. Their knowledge of value is
so crude that on one occasion they refused a two-dollar axe for an
article, but gladly accepted a ten-cent knife.
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