CHAPTER XIX.
OF THE MARRIAGE OF THE ABIPONES.
We know that a plurality of wives, or the repudiation of them, was familiar to the Hebrews and other nations, and that it is tolerated even now amongst the Mahometans and Chinese. The Greeks and Romans did not universally, nor at all times object to it. What wonder then that the custom of polygamy and divorce should be common to many savages of America, since it is upheld by the practice of the ancients? You should not however imagine that the whole nation of the Abipones follow after the steps of the other nations in that respect. The major part are contented with one and the same wife, though I cannot deny that divorce is as frequent amongst them as the changing of the dress in Europe; yet I have known many who kept the same wife all their lives. But if any Abipon marries several women, he settles them in separate hordes, many leagues distant from one another, and visits first one, then the other, at intervals of a year. If he keeps many in the same house, which is very seldom the case, endless quarrels, blows, and battles, are sure to ensue, about the prerogative of governing the family, and the favour of their husband. Nejetenta, as I said before, is a word appropriated to express a contest between two wives about their husband; any other sort of fight is called Roélakitápegeta.
Let us now speak of the reason that occasions divorce. It is very common amongst them to reject wives to whom they have formerly united themselves, at their own pleasure, and with impunity, so that divines have very properly doubted the reality of the marriage of savages, as it seems to want the perpetuity of the nuptial tie. If their wives displease them, it is sufficient; they are ordered to decamp. No farther cause or objection is sought for; the will of the husband, who dislikes his wife, stands in the place of reason. Should the husband cast his eyes upon any handsomer woman, the old wife must remove merely on this account, her fading form or advanced age being her only accusers, though she maybe universally commended for conjugal fidelity, regularity of conduct, diligent obedience, and the children she has born. None of the men of most authority have either the right or the inclination to defend the divorced, or control the divorcer. But, appointing a drinking-party, wherein the memory of injuries is refreshed in the minds of the intoxicated guests, the relations fiercely avenge the dishonour done to the repudiated wife. Often, too, women just cast off by one man are immediately married by another. I have observed elsewhere that the younger women highly approve the law of Christ, and are anxious that themselves and their husbands should be baptized, because the perpetuity of their marriage is thereby secured, and their husbands prevented from changing or increasing the number of their wives. This licence of divorce produces, as I have already related, bloody murders of children, and the incredible diminution of the whole nation.
You will find many things worthy of reprehension, but at the same time not a few deserving of praise, in the married state of the Abipones. I will inform you of those most worthy of mention. Though the paternal indulgence of the Roman pontiffs makes the first and second degrees of relationship alone a bar to the marriage of the Indians, yet the Abipones, instructed by nature and the example of their ancestors, abhor the very thought of marrying any one related to them by the most distant tie of relationship. Long experience has convinced me, that the respect to consanguinity, by which they are deterred from marrying into their own families, is implanted by nature in the minds of most of the people of Paraguay. In this opinion I was greatly confirmed by the Cacique Roỹ, leader of the savages in the woods of Mbaeverà, who, when I was explaining the heads of religion to the surrounding multitude, and happened to make mention of incestuous nuptials, broke out into these words—"You say right, Father! Marriage with relations is a most shameful thing. This we have learnt from our ancestors." Such are the feelings of these wood savages, though they think it neither irrational nor improper to marry many wives, and reject them whenever they like.
Another admirable trait in the character of the savage Abipones is their conjugal fidelity. You never hear of this being shaken, or even attempted. Husbands are many months absent from their homes, whilst their wives remain in the midst of a horde of men without danger or even suspicion. What the Greeks have fabled of Penelope, who continued faithful to her husband Ulysses during an absence of twenty years, is the true history of the Abiponian women. But if an Abipon entertains the slightest suspicion of his wife's virtue, he does not digest it in silence, but takes ample vengeance on the person suspected though not convicted of the injury.
Amongst the other good qualities of the married people amongst the Abipones, may be reckoned the tender affection which they display towards their offspring, in feeding, clothing, and taking care of them. To tutor the boys from their earliest age in the arts of riding, swimming, hunting, and fighting, is the chief care of the fathers. The girls are diligently instructed by their mothers in the domestic duties of females, and early inured to labour and in accommodation. But this is worthy of censure in them, that however disobedient or refractory their children may be, they never have the courage to correct them with a word, much less with a blow. Alaykin, chief Cacique of the town of Concepçion, whenever he visited me, held a little boy five years of age upon his lap. This child, who was as restless as a young ape, would sometimes pull his father's nose or his hair, and sometimes struck his face. The old man, pleased at this, would cry—"Look, Father! can you ever doubt that this fearless boy will sometime come to be a famous soldier or captain, since he is not afraid of me, a leader so victorious and so formidable to the Spaniards?" The same boy would throw bones, horns, or any thing else he could lay hold on, at his mother, when she came to call him home. The warlike father interpreted the child's insolence, which he ought to have punished, as the mark of an intrepid mind, and rewarded it with laughter, and even with praise. The too unbounded love which they bear their children incapacitates the savages from doing any thing to cause them pain. But every one knows that the immoderate fondness of parents is a frequent injury to children in Europe.
CHAPTER XX.
GAMES ON THE BIRTH OF THE MALE CHILD OF A
CACIQUE.
The love implanted in the minds of all nations towards their prince never shows itself more clearly than when the birth of an heir is announced. Festive fires, theatrical games, joyous acclamations, songs, paintings, sculpture, elegant dances, and various other things attest the public joy. This custom of the Europeans, the savage and warlike Abipones in their fashion imitate. They make public show of rejoicing for some days, when informed of the birth of a Cacique's son. As soon as a report is spread of the birth of the son of a Cacique, the whole crowd of girls, bearing palm boughs in their hands, repair to the house of the infant amid festive acclamations; they run round the roof and sides of it, shaking the palm boughs, by which percussion they happily augur that the child will become famous in war, and the scourge of his enemies. The use of the palms, and the other ceremonies which follow all have relation to this. The strongest of the women is covered from the loins to the legs, with a sort of apron made of the longer ostrich feathers. That woman has every day the most business to perform; for in company with the other girls, she visits all the huts, and with a hide, twisted in the form of Hercules's club, whips, puts to flight, and pursues all the men that she finds in every house, and those that are met by the way are soundly beaten by the girls, with the palm boughs. The first day is passed in this running up and down, amidst the laughter of the flagellated men. Next day the girls, who are distributed into bands, wrestle with one another, and the boys do the same in a separate place. On the third day they are called out to dance, the boys on one side, and the girls on the other. They all join hands till a circle is formed, an old woman, the directress of the dance going round striking a gourd: and when after a whirling for some time, they grow giddy, they rest at intervals, and then renew their dancing, which contains nothing worthy of admiration, but the patience displayed on the part both of the spectators and of the performers, and is perfectly devoid of art. On the fourth day, the woman with the apron of ostrich feathers traverses the town, surrounded by girls, challenging the stoutest and strongest woman she finds in every house, to contend with her in the street; and now throwing her adversary, now being herself thrown, affords an amusing spectacle to the assembled people. During the remaining days, (for those games last eight days,) either the former sports are renewed, or the men joyfully indulge in public drinking-parties, wherein songs are alternately sung to the sound of drum. Of the other games, on the occasion of some person's being admitted to the rank of captain, of the celebration of any signal victory, of the death of a noble, the removal of the bones of the dead, the shaving of a widow's hair, &c. we shall discourse elsewhere. Of this I am quite certain, that the Abipones Nakaiketergehes, or wood-Abipones, are much more observant of national rites and ceremonies than the rest. It is incredible what time and labour it cost us to abolish the national rites of this ferocious nation, which the example of their ancestors had hallowed in their eyes. An oak a hundred years old, which has stuck its roots deep into the ground, is not felled at a blow. But now, from nuptial and natal games, let us proceed to things of a more gloomy character, to diseases, physicians, and medicines.
CHAPTER XXI.
OF THE DISEASES, PHYSICIANS, AND MEDICINES OF THE
ABIPONES.
I have long since described the Abipones to be stout, vigorous, and robust; and unless I am much deceived, have already proved in chapter the seventh, that the diseases, which in Europe fill houses with sick persons, and graves with dead bodies, are unknown here. Epilepsy, gout, lethargy, madness, jaundice, diseases in the joints, complaints in the kidneys, elephantiasis, iliac disorders, &c. are names strange and foreign to the Abipones. You scarce hear once in three years of any of them dying of a fever, pleurisy, or consumption. Sickness is more rare amongst them than an Aurora Borealis, or an eclipse with us. I never heard any of them complain of tooth-ache except an old woman, who soon stopped the pain with a few drops of vinegar. I do not wonder that the savages should be exempt from so common a complaint, as they are accustomed from childhood to chew tobacco leaves mixed with salt and the saliva of old women, and reduced into the form of an unguent. It is not improperly, therefore, that they call tobacco noetà, their medicine: for they are constantly eating honey, both in a solid and liquid state, which is the certain destruction of the teeth; so that the Indians must suffer continual torment from them, or soon be deprived of them altogether, were not the bad effects of the honey counteracted by the acrimony of the salt and tobacco. Experience shows that persons who smoke or chew tobacco every day will preserve their teeth sound. I have seen Spaniards of the higher orders in Paraguay either chew or smoke tobacco, and take delight in it as of certain utility to the health. But the Paraguayrians have another remedy against the tooth-ache. The pods of the cacào are steeped for some time in brandy. Cotton dipped in this liquor is applied to the tooth, which, if not hollow, is well moistened with that brandy, which should be held a long time in the mouth. If you repeat this several times, both the swelling and the pain will entirely cease. My own frequent experience, joined with that of others, has taught me the efficacy of this noble medicine, which is celebrated even in Europe. The freshest and most juicy pods must be chosen for the purpose, for what virtue will the old decayed ones yield, which are destitute of oil? The milder drinkable brandy should be used, not that fiery liquor which chemists call spirits of wine. Some prick the gum of the tooth with the spine of the fish raya, and by eliciting blood, allay the pain. Others again reduce tigers' claws and alum first into a calx, and then into a powder, by laying them on hot coals, and after they are well mixed up together, apply them to the hollow of the tooth. By the adoption of this method, many, beside myself, have found not only the pain, but the cause of the pain so entirely removed, that it never returned afterwards. Tooth-ache is a frequent and dreadful affliction to Europeans in Paraguay, on account of the scarcity or unskilfulness of surgeons. In extracting the diseased tooth, they pierce and lacerate the whole gum near it, which causes extreme pain, together with much effusion of blood. That the Abipones never need the aid of these torturers, is a truly enviable part of their felicity. I never saw a toothless person amongst them. The teeth, which they have made strenuous use of all their lives, generally go with them to the grave.