CHAPTER XIII
Sickness—Death by poison—Infectious diseases—Cruel treatment of sick and aged—Homicide—Retaliation for murder—Tribal and personal quarrels—Diseases—Remedies—Death—Mourning—Burial.
Indians, like most coloured races, are abject cowards in pain or disease. They will bear torture stoically enough when deliberately inflicted, but should they suffer from any, to them, mysterious reason, in their ignorance of natural causes they at once ascribe their affliction to witchcraft. To this possibly may be due the hapless manner in which they will lay them down to die, and actually succeed in doing so by auto-suggestion.
To the Indian in common with other peoples of the lower cultures, moreover, there is no such thing as death from natural causes. It is the result either of poison administered in secret by an enemy, or magical evil wrought by him or at his instigation, and the crashing of the thunder is the magic noise that accompanies the fatal result. If a possible enemy is known or suspected, or if, after divination, the medicine-man can identify the culprit, it becomes the duty of the relatives to avenge the deceased, who has, according to Indian logic, been murdered.[274]
Without doubt a very large number of deaths are due to poison. Removal by poison is practised to a great extent by the Karahone, who have, as has been said, much scientific knowledge of poisons and their effects. Further, it is the custom of the tribal medicine-man when his patients are in what he considers to be a hopeless condition, to administer a dose of poison quietly to the moribund sufferers after he has declared that all his skill is in vain, and announced that recovery is impossible. For the medicine-man it then becomes more important to secure the fulfilment of his verdict than to risk the chance of recovery falsifying his prognostications. The probability is that the patient would die, if for no other reason than that the medicine-man foretold his death, but that gentleman will take no risks.[275]
There are other and more recognised cases in which it is the medicine-man’s province to administer a fatal draught. A mad person, for example, is first exorcised by the medicine-man to expel his madness. If this fails to secure the eviction of the evil spirits that cause the madness, the man is put to death to ensure the destruction of the bad influence which, since it passes the doctor’s power to remedy, has presumably been sent by some hostile colleague with greater magical gifts. Occasionally also, when any serious accident has befallen an Indian, a medicine-man goes through the ceremony of placing him in a secluded part of the bush, and administering the usual narcotic. The patient is then left for the night. The next day his relatives return, and if he is not dead he recounts to them his dreams, and from these they deduct who is the enemy that has caused his sickness. Reprisals naturally follow.
Should any known infectious disease break out in a tribe, those attacked by it are immediately left, even by their closest relatives, the house is abandoned, and possibly even burnt. Such derelict houses are no uncommon sight in the forest, grimly desolate mementos of possible tragedies.
Perhaps the cruel treatment of the sick arises from the fact that all disease is regarded as due to an enemy who essays by such means to procure the destruction of the tribe. Fear is undoubtedly the root-cause. But it must also be remembered that where life is not easy for the hale and hearty, for the helpless it is impossible except in so far as they can prey upon their active neighbours. The question of self-preservation comes in to complicate the problem of the unfit. At every point it is clearly to be seen that the survival of the most fit is the very real and the very stern rule of life in the Amazonian forests. From birth to death it rules the Indians’ life and philosophy. To help to preserve the unfit would often be to prejudice the chances of the fit.[276] There are no arm-chair sentimentalists to oppose this very practical consideration. The Indian judges it by his standard of common sense: why live a life that has ceased to be worth living when there is no bugbear of a hell to make one cling to the most miserable of existences rather than risk greater misery? Moreover, in Indian opinion, such clinging to life is a very arrant selfishness.
Certainly cases of chronic illness meet with no sympathy from the Indians. A man who cannot hunt or fight is regarded as useless, he is merely a burden on the community. Should he show no signs of eventual recovery, his friends unhesitatingly leave him to die, or, if a medicine-man has not been commissioned to put him out of the way, he is driven into the bush, where the same end is speedily attained. This is done not only to the invalids, but also to the aged members of a tribe, unless they possess great wisdom and experience, and so are of great tribal worth. Otherwise they, too, have ceased to be units of any practical value in tribal life, and merely hamper the more active. Actual parricide there is none; old people are not killed, but they are left to die. There is no sentimental desire for their company, no affection to lighten the unhappiness of their lot. If they are unable to tend themselves, not an Indian will go out of his way to render any help or service. Cassava may be thrown to them occasionally, or it may be forgotten, and without doubt in times of scarcity no provision whatever is made for the feeble and the failing who can make none for themselves. Slaves, of course, are looked upon as of no account, and if sick or crippled they are abandoned without a thought. If a woman with a young child should die, and no one be found willing to adopt the infant, the father argues that it must die anyhow, and it is either quietly killed and buried with the dead mother, or exposed in the bush.[277]