[281] “To an Indian smallpox is certain death—the most dreaded enemy, who has over and over again swept off entire tribes, and the name or passing suspicion of which from youth up has always been trembled at and fled from as from death itself” (Simson, p. 142).
[282] There are many varieties of this complaint. In one kind the patient wastes away. With another it assumes the characteristics of elephantiasis, the legs swell, the flesh becomes soft and podgy, the skin unhealthy and white. It is said by the rubber-gatherers that a cure can only be effected when the patient sees the sea, in other words through complete change of air.
[283] Simson speaks of a “skin-disease common amongst all Indians of the higher Marañon, called ‘carata.’ The skin is ‘scaly and blotched all over with black’” (Simson, p. 178). This seems to be similar to the “cutaneous disease” mentioned by Bates, except that he explicitly mentions “the black spots were hard and rough but not scaly” (Bates, ii. 382). The Purupura Indians have also a skin complaint that causes them to be “spotted and blotched with white, brown, or nearly black patches” (Wallace, p. 357).
[284] I did myself, and so did my boy Brown and others of the party.
[285] André, pp. 16-110.
[286] Spix and Martius, p. 31.
[287] Simson, pp. 148, 194. A very common practice among Indians.
[288] Koch-Grünberg, pp. 134, 165.
[289] I do not mean the body of an infant killed at birth, which, as I have said, is done as quietly and secretly as possible.
[290] “Primary urn-burial is characteristic in the main of the Tupi-Guarani family” (Joyce, p. 270).