Through the Heart of Patagonia

by H. Hesketh-Prichard

But however this quality may seem to approximate to civilisation, the customs with which he still surrounds the events of birth, sickness, and death are the old cruel forms that have been perpetuated through the ages, and they stamp him as remaining even to this day the very slightly diluted savage.

In some cases when a child is born, a cow or mare is killed, the stomach taken out and cut open, and into this receptacle while still warm the child is laid. Upon the remainder of the animal the tribe feast, and when they feast they carry out the notion thoroughly. After eating their fill, they lie about gorged and half insensible and let the world spin on. This is a quiet festivity, and only takes place in this modified form when the tribe happen to be out of fire-water.

But should there be liquor at hand, the younger women, who never drink on such occasions, go round beforehand and gather up every knife, hatchet, or, in fact, all and any weapon they can find, and bury them in some hidden spot about the camp.[12] This custom, which is in its own way pathetic, speaks for itself. Under the influence of liquor the nature of the peaceable Indian becomes completely changed. It maddens him, and the dance round the fires often ends in a free fight.

A variation of the foregoing birth-ceremony is yet more savage. If a boy is born, his tribe catch a mare or a colt—if the father be rich and a great man among his people, the former; if not, the latter—a lasso is placed round each leg, a couple round the neck, and a couple round the body. The tribe distribute themselves at the various ends of these lassos and take hold. The animal being thus supported cannot fall. The father of the child now advances and cuts the mare or colt open from the neck downwards, the heart, &c., is torn out, and the baby placed in the cavity. The desire is to keep the animal quivering until the child is put inside. By this means they believe that they ensure the child's becoming a fine horseman in the future.[13]

If an Indian dies the place becomes accursed. The camp is immediately removed to a fresh locality. When the dead man or woman is buried, certain ceremonies are observed about the grave, evidently with a view to enabling the departed to start in another life with an adequate outfit. Horses and dogs are slaughtered, so that he may have the means to pursue and kill the guanaco in the land of ghosts. Food and dead game are also placed in the grave to supply his needs at the outset of the new existence. Should the dead happen to be a child or a person of tender years, fillies and colts are slaughtered at the burial.

In former times, and in fact until quite recent years, it used to be the custom to place beside the corpse the silver-mounted horse-gear of the dead man, and to close the grave upon it. In a land where life depends not infrequently upon the strength of your raw-hide head-stall, for instance, the value of sound gear is properly appreciated; therefore this particular precaution for the welfare of the dead shows a very practical solicitude on the part of the survivors. To-day the Tehuelches still bury these possessions in the grave, but the custom is only continued with a reservation. Instead of leaving the valuable gear under the earth for all time, they now at the end of a twelvemonth dig it up again. How they reconcile this economical arrangement with the comfort of their lost friend I do not know, but it may be suggested that they imagine the inhabitant of another world has had full time in the course of a year to make suitable new gear for himself.

The religion of the Indians is interesting. It consists, of course, in the old simple beliefs in good spirits and devils, but chiefly devils, which, with variations dependent on climate and physical environment, represent all over the world the spiritual creeds of uncivilised races. The dominant Spirit of Evil, as feared by the Tehuelches, is called the Gualicho. And he abides as an ever-present terror behind their strange, free, and superstitious lives. They spend no small portion of their time in either fleeing from his wrath or in propitiating it. You may wake in the dawn to see a band of Indians suddenly rise and leap upon their horses, and gallop away across the pampa, howling and gesticulating. They are merely scaring the Gualicho away from their tents back to his haunts in the Cordillera—the wild and unpenetrated mountains, where he and his subordinate demons groan in chosen spots the long nights through.

The expedition under my command happened to encamp near one such place upon the southern shore of Lake Rica. It was a moonlight night, and loud rushing noises broke the peace of every hour of it. There happened to be a huge glacier on the opposite side of the lake, from which great pieces became detached at frequent intervals (for the mass of the glacier overhung the cliff), and these plunged with strange, loud explosions, I might almost call them, into the water. Such are the noises that terrify the Indian; he cannot explain them, and it is small wonder they excite his fears in the highest degree. For it must be remembered that in all practical ways the Tehuelche is a very brave man. Yet no pay can tempt him within the region of the Cordilleras, where to his superstitious mind the near presence of the Gualicho is manifested by those awful groanings and sounds which no human agency known to him could by any possibility produce.

In common with other savage peoples, the Tehuelches believe the Good Spirit to be of a far more quiescent habit than the spirits of evil. Long ago, at the epoch of Creation perhaps, the Good Spirit made one effort for the benefit of mankind,[14] but since then he has been otherwise occupied, and shown himself little interested with earthly matters. Like Baal, he is perchance upon a journey, or perchance he is sleeping. The result is the same; his worshippers must take care of themselves as well as they can, and the best method which offers is to ward off by all means in their power the attacks of the maleficent influence. For the Gualicho is of a very active disposition, and shows no scorn of small things. On the contrary, he is quite capable of descending upon a single Indian to punish him for an offence and to work him harm.