CHAPTER XI
Small families—Birth tabu—Birth customs—-Infant mortality—Infanticide—Couvade—Name-giving—Names—Tabu on names—Childhood—Lactation—Food restrictions—Child-life and training—Initiation.
Though so recognised an authority as Bates is responsible for the statement that the fecundity of the Amazonian Indians is of a low degree,[224] because as many as four children in one family are rarely found, it is open to doubt whether he and his successors have not in this instance confounded effect and cause. It is certainly true that the normal number for a family is but two or three, yet that this is not a question of fertility the high percentage of pregnant women would seem to disprove.[225] The numbers are remarkable in view of the fact that husbands abstain from any intercourse with their wives, not only during pregnancy but also throughout the period of lactation—far more prolonged with them than with Europeans. The result is that two and a half years between each child is the minimum difference of age, and in the majority of cases it is even greater.
The main reason why there are these limited families, is, in my opinion, not a diminishing birth-rate, but an enormously high percentage of infant mortality. The test of the survival of the fittest is applied to the young Indian at the very moment of his birth, for the infant is immediately submerged in the nearest stream, a custom that easily leads to infanticide in the case of an unwanted child, or one with any apparent deformity.
Another accepted opinion with which I am not in agreement is that these girls become mothers at a very early age, and that when only fourteen years old themselves may have already had two children, as is said of tribes on the Tikie. My experience has been that these peoples do not arrive at the age of physical maturity even so early as white races, probably owing to lack of nourishing food and perhaps in some degree to the retarding and depressing effect of the forest environment.[226]
These Indians share the belief of many peoples of the lower cultures that the food eaten by the parents—to some degree of both parents—will have a definite influence upon the birth, appearance, or character of the child.[227] Before the birth of an infant the mother has to submit to certain definite food restrictions, which vary with different tribes in some slight degree, but are all rooted in the same idea. Among some tribes all animal food is forbidden to any woman throughout the entire period of pregnancy, and this precludes her from share in the tribal or family hot-pot. Among the tribes of the Tikie and elsewhere tapir flesh is prohibited, not so much because it is considered unhealthy, which on account of its richness it certainly would be,[228] but because if a mother partook of any it would be looked upon as tantamount to allotting the visible characteristics of the animal to the unborn child. From a like cause these Indians imagine that the child would have the teeth of a rodent did the mother eat capybara during the months of her pregnancy; it would be spotted like a paca if she ate that beast; or, if she ate bush-deer flesh, which is tabu to all women after marriage among the Kuretu-language group, the venison would make the infant deformed. Peccary is tabu among many tribes, and with the Witoto during the last month of pregnancy the mother’s food is limited to one kind of small fish, with cassava and fruits.
The belief that ill will befall the unborn infant if the mother do not regularly adhere to dietary laws is strictly held by both men and women. To give birth to a deformed or disfigured child is the most disgraceful calamity that can happen to any woman, and therefore all possible precautions must be taken, and any animals reputed to possess undesirable characteristics are naturally forbidden, lest the unborn child should in any way resemble the appearance or take the characteristics of the animal concerned. The prohibitions are, therefore, definitely tabus, inasmuch as they are believed to entail the penalty of deformed or malignant progeny upon the transgressor, a belief very binding on people who hold that to some extent the consumer absorbs the characteristics of aught that is eaten.