Not only is polygamy practised among these tribes, but the strange custom of polyandry exists. On one occasion, when a missionary was arguing with a native against the practice of polygamy, he used an argumentum ad hominem, and with the bad results that usually follow such an argument. Finding that he could not prove to his interlocutor that a man ought not to have two wives, the missionary asked how it would be liked by the men if one wife were to have two husbands. To his astonishment, the man replied that the plan answered very well, and that he knew a woman who at that time had three husbands.
It has been already mentioned that the natives of Guiana depend chiefly for their food upon the beasts, birds, and fishes which they capture. Vegetable food is not so important to them as it is generally to inhabitants of warmer climates, probably because the almost perpetual moisture of the country forces the inhabitants to partake of a comparatively generous diet.
The staple vegetable food is the cassava, which is prepared in rather a curious manner. Strange to say, it is obtained from a plant belonging to the natural order Euphorbiaceæ, plants which are celebrated for containing most poisonous juices.
Some of them are trees of the largest size, while others are little herbs that only exist for a few weeks. All of them, however, secrete an acrid juice, more or less poisonous. A familiar example of these plants may be found in the common spurge, or wart-wort of our gardens (Euphorbia helioscopa), the white, acrid, milky juice of which is employed in destroying warts. Several of these Euphorbiaceæ produce, beside the poisonous juice, a farinaceous substance, from which the poison can be separated, and which is then useful as human food.
The chief plant which produces the cassava is the Jatropha manihot, though there are others from which the farina can be obtained. The juice of this plant is so poisonous that a very small dose will produce death. Fortunately, the venomous principle is exceedingly volatile, and can be driven off by heat, so that the very substance which in its raw state is a deadly poison becomes, when cooked, a wholesome article of food.
The mode of preparing the cassava is as follows: Taking on her back the quake, which has already been described, the Guianan woman digs up a quantity of the cassava root, puts it into the quake, and brings it to her hut. She next peels it by tearing off the outer covering with her teeth, and then proceeds to scrape it into very fine shavings. This is done by means of the native grater, which, rude as it looks, is a very effective machine. It consists of a thick board about a yard in length and half as much in width. Into the upper surface of this board are driven in regular rows a number of fragments of sharp stones, which are further secured in their places by a sort of vegetable glue obtained from the juice of a tree.
By being drawn over this surface, the cassava roots are soon reduced to thin shavings, much like those of the horse radish, which are collected into a basket. One of these baskets is shown in [fig. 2], on page 1231. It is made much like the cradle already mentioned, but is of closer texture, and the strips of cane are wider. It is about two feet in diameter, and is capable of containing a considerable quantity of the grated root.
When the native cassava maker does not possess one of these graters, she uses as a substitute the acrid root of a species of Ireartia palm, which is covered with hard protuberances, and answers the purpose tolerably well, though it does not work so smoothly or neatly as the regular grater.
Sometimes a further process of grinding is employed, though not always. In such cases, the grated root is placed on a flat, sloping stone, and rubbed with another, just as is done by the Araucanians. See [page 1203].
The next process is to rid it of its poisonous juices, and in this part of the operation there is also considerable variation. Among some tribes, the scraped cassava is taken out of the dish and pressed tightly into a sieve or colander. This instrument is very ingeniously made. It is of basket work, but instead of being made of flat strips of cane or reed, round twigs are used, about as thick as ordinary drawing pencils. The natives have an ingenious mode in which the shape of the vessel is preserved while the interstices are not allowed to diminish or increase in size. This is done by beginning with a comparatively few twigs at the apex of the colander, and inserting fresh twigs at regular intervals as the vessel increases in size.