-daged, especially at the forehead and back, so as to flatten it and produce an abnormal shape of the skull. In many cases only the back of the head was flattened by the application of artificial pressure. The elongation was both upwards and sideways. This deformation was particularly confined to male children.
When twins were born one was killed or else left to die in the sun, as they believed that the other could not live if both were left alive. Murder for them, in that instance, was a question of humanity.
The Bororos had a perfect horror of natural death. They were terrified at the sight of a person dying. Therefore when one of their people was about to expire they covered him up and placed him out of sight. If he or she under those circumstances delayed in departing this life, the departure was hastened by suffocation or strangulation. The Bororos were too restless, and could not wait too long for anything.
They were easily suggestionized. Many of them would make excellent subjects for hypnotic experiments. The women particularly were extraordinarily sensitive to animal magnetism. They were much given to hysterical displays. One of the reasons which was given me for hastening the death of moribund Bororos was a curious superstition that the sight of a dying person would cause the death of women, particularly if the dying person happened to look in the direction of one woman present. The women believed this so firmly that occasionally—the Bororos asserted—women actually became ill and died when they saw a dead person. This, no doubt, may have occurred merely by suggestion. Women were never allowed, under ordinary circumstances, to see dead people.
When dancing the Bororos sprang on one foot and then on the other, always hopping about in a circle.
Abnormalities and deformities were frequently noticeable among them, such as hare-lip, supernumerary toes and fingers, and hypertrophy of the limbs. Abnormalities of the genitals were general owing to tribal customs.
One of the evil spirits most feared by the Bororos was called aroi koddo—or "soul that falls." It was a spirit that came to earth solely for the purpose of punishing the Bororos. They said that this spirit was an extremely noisy one and its approach was announced by terrifying sounds.
The Bororos were frightened of comets and had about them superstitions similar to those of Europeans—that is to say, that their appearance caused illness, misfortune and death. Solar and lunar eclipses, the Bororos stated, were merely the result of anger on the part of evil spirits. "The sun or moon were making faces because they were angry," was their highly astronomical explanation of the phenomenon.
The Bororos had a firm belief that some of their ancestors lived in the sun, others in the moon; and they said the ancestors caused the sun to make faces when angry. In the sun also lived the head of all the barihs, or medicine-men, the intermediary between humans and spirits; whereas in the moon dwelt only those who could invoke the souls of the ancestors. The barih was only capable of communicating with a barih's ancestors.