Nobody has ever been to teach the Sakai to be honest and as no kind of moral maxims are known by them it stands to reason that this honesty which speaks in their looks, words and acts depends upon their natural sweet temper and their way of living.
The real Sakai recoils from everything approaching violence and never assaults a fellow creature unless he believes himself or his family seriously menaced or badly treated.
A young man procuring food with his blowpipe.
p. [169].
Paolo Mantegazza has written that the nature of a weapon indicates not only the technical ability of a race but also its degree of ferocity. All those arms which serve to make suffer instead of to kill are certain signs of cruelty.
Well, the Sakai inflicts no suffering upon his foe. The terrible poisons with which he tinges his fatal arrows cause almost immediate death, and his sole motive for killing is to rid himself of one whom he thinks will do him harm, but should his enemy run away before he can hit him he would neither follow nor lay an ambush for him. He might almost take as his motto the celebrated line by Niccolini:
Ripassi l'Alpi e tornerà fratello.[14]
Even if their gentle, peaceable characters did not disincline them for a deed of crime, if their indolence and lack of passionate feelings were not safe-guards from evil-doing the entire absence of incentive power prevents them from committing a guilty action. Why should they rob when their neighbours' goods are also theirs? When everything is everybody's, be it a rich supply of meat, fruit, grain, tobacco or accomodation in a sheltered hut? And why should they kill anybody?