“Well,” he continued, in a tone of irritated disappointment, “can your jugglers and ‘fire kings’ tell the past, and predict the future? When you have your inmost thoughts revealed to you, and when the spirits of your dead friends recall to your memory scenes and incidents known only to them, yourself, and God—tell me,” and his voice grew deep and earnest, “on what hypothesis do you account for things like these? Yet I can testify to their truth. You may laugh at what you call the vulgar trickery of the old hag who has just left us, but I can take you where even your scoffing tongue will cleave to its roof with awe; where the inmost secrets of your heart shall be unvailed, and where you shall feel that you stand face to face with the invisible dead!”
I have never felt it in my heart to ridicule opinions, however absurd, if sincerely entertained; and there was that in the awed manner of my host which convinced me that he was in earnest in what he said. So I dropped the conversation, on his assurance that he would accompany me to visit the strange woman to whom he assigned such mysterious power.
Antonio had been an attentive witness of the tricks of the Sukia, and expressed to me the greatest contempt for her pretensions. Such exhibitions, he said, were only fit for idle children, and were not to be confounded with the awful powers of the oracles, through whom the “Lord of Teaching and the spirits of the Holy Men” held communion with mortals. I spoke to him of the mysterious woman, who was greater than all the Sukias, and lived among the mountains. “She is of our people,” he exclaimed, warmly, “and her name is Hoxom-Bal, which means the Mother of the Tigers. It was to seek her that I left the Holy City of the Itzaes, with no guide but my Lord who never lies. And now her soul shall enter into our brothers of the mountains, and they shall be tigers on the tracks of our oppressors!”
The form of the Indian boy had dilated as he spoke; his smooth limbs were knotted by the swelling muscles; his eyes burned, and his low voice became firm, distinct, and ominous. But it was only for an instant; and while I listened to hear the great secret which swelled in his bosom, he stopped short, and, turning suddenly, walked away. But I could see that he pressed his talisman closer to his breast.
The Sukias of the coast are usually women, although their powers and authority are sometimes assumed by men. Their preparation for the office involves mortifications as rigorous as the Church ever required of her most abject devotees. For months do the candidates seclude themselves in the forests, avoiding the face of their fellows, and there, without arms or means of defense, contend with hunger, the elements, and wild beasts. It is thus that they seal their compact with the mysterious powers which rule over earth and water, air and fire; and they return to the villages of their people, invested with all the terrors which superstition has ever attached to those who seem to be exempt from the operations of natural laws.
These Sukias are the “medicine-men” of the coast, and affect to cure disease; but their directions are usually more extravagant than beneficial. They sometimes order the victim of fever to go to an open sand-beach by the sea, and there, exposed to the burning heat of the vertical sun, await his cure. They have also a savage taste for blood, and the cutting and scarification of the body are among their favorite remedies.
The Mosquitos, I may observe here, have no idea of a supreme beneficent Being; but stand in great awe of an evil spirit which they call Wulasha, and of a water-ghost, called Lewire. Wulasha is supposed to share in all the rewards which the Sukias obtain for their services. His half of the stipulated price, however, is shrewdly exacted beforehand, while the payment of the remainder depends very much upon the Sukia’s success.
Among the customs universal on the coast, is infanticide, in all cases where the child is born with any physical defect. As a consequence, natural deformity of person is unknown. Chastity, as I have several times had occasion to intimate, is not considered a virtue; and the number of a man’s wives is only determined by circumstances, polygamy being universal. Physically, the Mosquitos have a large predominance of negro blood; and their habits and superstitions are African rather than American. They are largely affected with syphilitic affections, resulting from their unrestrained licentious intercourse with the pirates in remote, and with traders (in character but one degree removed from the pirates) in later times. These affections, under the form of the bulpis, red, white, and scabbed, have come to be a radical taint, running through the entire population, and so impairing the general constitution as to render it fatally susceptible to all epidemic diseases. This is one of the powerful causes which is contributing to the rapid decrease, and which will soon result in the total extinction of the Sambos.
Their arts are limited to the very narrow range of their wants, and are exceedingly rude. The greatest skill is displayed in their dories, canoes, and pitpans, which are brought down by the Indians of the interior, rudely blocked out, so as to give the purchaser an opportunity of exercising his taste in the finish. Essentially fishers, they are at home in the water, and manage their boats with great dexterity. Their language has some slight affinity with the Carib, but has degenerated into a sort of jargon, in which Indian, English, Spanish, and Jamaica-African are strangely jumbled. They count by twenties, i. e., collective fingers and toes, and make fearful work of it when they “get up in the figures.” Thus, to express thirty-seven, they say, “Iwanaiska-kumi-pura-matawalsip-pura-matlalkabe-pura-kumi,” which literally means, one-twenty-and-ten-and-six-and-one, i. e., 20 × 1 + 10 + 6 + 1. They reckon their days by sleeps, their months by moons, and their years by the complement of thirteen moons.