Marriage among these nations is a traffic, a barter of various articles and animals for a wife. The woman, moreover, is burdened with work, whilst the man takes his ease, whenever he is not hunting or engaged in minding the cattle.
The Patagonian who dies in his own home is buried with pomp. His body, covered with his handsomest ornaments, and with his weapons laid beside it, is stretched on a winding-sheet of skins. They then wrap it in these skins and tie it on the back of his favourite horse, whose left leg they break. All the women of the tribe join the wives of the deceased and utter piercing shrieks. The men, having painted their hands and faces black, escort the body as far as the place of burial, where horses and sheep are sacrificed to serve as food for the dead during his journey into the next world.
Tobas, Lenguas, and Machicuys.—These three tribes, which must, as we have said, be included in the Pampean family, are termed collectively the Indians of the Grand Chaco, or Great Desert. It will not be uninteresting, in order to give an example of the customs of the wild South American races, to quote here some pages in which an account of his visit to the Grand Chaco nations is related by Dr. Demersay in his travels in Paraguay.
“Reduced at the present day to very small numbers and, indeed, almost extinct, the remnant of the Lengua nation,” says Dr. Demersay, “lives to the north of the river Pilcomayo, in union and amalgamated with the Emmages and Machicuys, within a short distance of the Quartel. Their actual enemies are the Tobas, who are allied to the Pitiligas, Chunipis and Aguilots, and who constitute a numerous horde on the other side of the Pilcomayo.
“The remnants of the Lenguas are more especially joined and mingled with the Machicuys: in fact, they no longer form more than a dozen families, and the Mascoyian cacique is theirs as well.
“There are payes or doctors, among the Lenguas, who administer nothing to a sick person beyond water or fruit, and who practise suction with the mouth for wounds and sore places. They interlard this operation with juggleries and songs, accompanied by gourds (porongos), shaken in the invalid’s ears. These porongos are filled with little stones, and make a deafening clatter. The payes are also sorcerers, and read the future as well as heal the sick.
“Some girls, but the custom is not general, tattoo themselves in an indelible way at the age of puberty, an event which is always marked by rejoicing. This festival consists of a family gathering, during which the men intoxicate themselves with brandy, if they can obtain some by barter, or with a fermented liquor (chicha) extracted from the fruit of the algarobo.
“The tattooing of the women consists of four narrow and parallel blue lines, which descend from the top of the forehead to the end of the nose, but are not continued on the upper lip, as well as of irregular rings traced on the cheeks and chin as far as the temples.