CHILDREN OF THE TOLDOS
It is a humiliating reflection that the great mass of peoples have always been, and will always be, far more ready and fervent in propitiating an evil spirit, or endeavouring to avert the action of any punishing power, than in seeking the favour of the Good Spirit or returning him thanks for benefits received. Human nature under the frock-coat of civilisation is much the same as under the capa of the Tehuelche.
By inference one can see that the Patagonian believes in a future life—a life much on the lines of his earthly one, but abounding in those things which he most desires, and which here he finds in short measure. I only know that the land he is going to after death is a land flowing, not with milk and honey, but with grease. On the pampas of life here below the guanaco is lean and seldom yields an ounce of fat, and as I have myself experienced the craving for fat, or fat-hunger, I know it to be a very real and uncomfortable demand of the human system. But in the Patagonian Beyond the guanaco herds will be plump and well provided with supplies of suet, and the califate-bushes always laden with ripe and purple berries.
The traditions of the tribes go back to the epoch when they hunted on foot and used bows and arrows, as well as the bolas, armed with a large single ball of stone. That period may be one hundred, or possibly a hundred and fifty, years ago. Then a tribe of Pampa Indians rode down out of the north and brought to the Tehuelches the inestimable boon of horses.
At the present day no worse evil can happen to an Indian than to be left without a horse and dependent on his own legs. He rides perpetually, and in consequence has almost lost the walking capabilities of other men.[15] He lives upon horseback, and there earns his living, so to speak. With his dogs he rides down his game, but he has no skill in tracking any more than the dogs. But, for all that, his sight is keen; the quality of extraordinary long-sightedness, which distinguishes men used to scanning vast levels of sea or land, is essentially his.
The Tehuelche, although in many ways offering a complete contrast, yet in some points forms a strange parallel to the Esquimaux. The Esquimaux has never seen a horse, the Tehuelche never uses a boat, although his land abounds in sheets of water. Both races are eminently sluggish and peaceable. Both fear evil spirits, which they fancy live in particular localities. It is indeed a far cry from Greenland to Patagonia, but if you substitute the horse for the kayak and the seal for the guanaco, you will find that, although separated by space and race and circumstance, a certain resemblance between the people of the Far South and of the Far North exists. And of both races little evil can be said.
These primitive peoples, living close to nature, divided from man's original state only by the thinnest and filmiest of partitions, attain in a wonderful degree the art of doing without things. The Esquimaux starts upon a long day's hunting, with the thermometer marking many degrees below zero, upon nothing save a drink of water! A luxury such as coffee is said to enervate him.[16] The Patagonian Indian rides out of a morning having taken nothing at all in the way of sustenance. But he puts a pinch of salt in his belt, and when his dogs pull down their first guanaco or ostrich, he draws off the blood and swallows it mixed with salt.
The tribes live to a considerable extent on guanaco, and it is practically their life-work to follow the wanderings of the herds through the changing seasons. But the flesh of the ostrich is more palatable, and is, consequently, preferred when it can be procured. They drink maté in large quantities, which, as has been shown, is the universal habit on the pampas, where it is, in fact, indispensable, supplying, as it does, to a certain extent, the place of vegetables, besides having the valuable quality of refreshing and invigorating in a quite extraordinary degree.
They rarely smoke pure tobacco; it is too precious. They mix it with about 80 per cent. of califate-wood shavings. Once, when short of tobacco, I tried their mixture, and in truth there are many worse smokes upon the English and American markets. The califate is certainly a little acrid, but burns with a very blue smoke. I fancy one could get on tolerably well with this faked tobacco, aided by a bit of imagination and a strong throat.