Near the Rubber Belt smallpox has found its devastating way among the Indians. I have said that they fear any contagious disease, and will often leave a sick person to die, so it may well be understood that a case of smallpox causes the utmost panic and consternation.[281] Tribes further removed from contact with “civilisation” are spared this scourge, but I noticed a form of measles among the children. Yellow fever is not known in the upper reaches, but I can answer for it that beriberi is, as I fell a victim to it myself. It is very prevalent in all this country, but it does not attack the Indians.[282]
The Napo Indians suffer from skin diseases that are not known to the tribes in the Issa and Japura valleys. There is a bluish discoloration and white blotch that is said to come from eating tapir.[283] Among the Karahone one meets with cases afflicted in the same manner as natives on the Apaporis. They are spotted with a leprosy which is said to be due to the amount of fish that is eaten by these tribes. This disease is otherwise unknown.
All strangers suffer from ulcers on the legs.[284] Among the Indians themselves sores are common,[285] but I think are due entirely to neglected wounds caused by palm-spines and so forth, not to climate and feeding as would be the case with ourselves. Stings also have to be reckoned with.
Indian remedies are rather symptomatic than specific;[286] the methods of cure will be more fully dealt with in connection with the medicine-men. The remedies are rather of the order of kill than cure. For instance, fever is treated by the drastic method of bathing in the cold water of the river to lower the temperature.[287] On the Napo the natives take a concoction of tobacco-water and quinine. They make a remedy for wounds from the bark of a tree, which they boil, and use the liquid to wash the wound. A root found in the forest yields a narcotic much employed by the medicine-man when it is scraped, crushed, and boiled in water. Another remedy, acting as a counter-irritant, is a sage-green feathery moss, some species of lichen, very dry, that grows round the roots of trees.
During my stay with the tribes I never met with any such frantic sorrow at a death as is described by Koch-Grünberg,[288] though a mother will cry over the body of a dead child,[289] and sobbing, wailing, and a certain amount of excited grief is shown at a funeral, especially if it be that of an important person.
Burial takes place without delay on the day of death. The dead man, unwashed, is wrapped in his hammock in a sitting position, and a grave is dug immediately below the place where the hammock was slung in his lifetime. Though they only dig deep enough to hide the body, this custom of intramural interment does not appear to have unhealthy effects upon the other inhabitants of the house, and no epidemic ever seems to arise in consequence. The dead man’s ornaments, his arms, and other personal possessions, such as his tobacco-bag, his coca-pot, are placed in the leaf-lined grave beside him. The whole interment is carried out with all speed, to get the body out of the way as quickly as they possibly can. South of the Issa a canoe or earthen jar takes the place of the hammock for shroud, but I never met with any urn burial, primary or secondary, among the tribes of the north.[290]
When the deceased is a woman the same procedure is followed, only pots are buried with her in place of weapons. Among the Kuretu-language group, when a woman dies, her pots are broken before they are placed in the grave,[291] and her baskets are also buried with her in addition to her ornaments. This is done to prevent the return of the soul to ask for its properties should they be needed in the spirit world.
When a chief has died the ceremonies are more elaborate. His body, like any other man’s, is wrapped in his palm-fibre hammock, and he is buried with his weapons, ornaments, and private treasures. But after the grave is filled in, the assembled tribe partake of a funeral feast. In the intervals of drinking and dancing the mourners sing of the great achievements, the worthiness and virtues of the dead man. The new chief comes forward, attired in the prescribed fashion, wearing a weird and wonderful head-dress to attract attention. He does not face the assembled people, but turns to the wall of the house, and speaks with his back to the tribe.
After a burial a fire is made over the new grave by the relatives, and is always kept burning for some days, except in the case of a chief, when the whole house is burnt. This may possibly counteract the obvious dangers of these intramural burials, and account for the absence of evil results.
Whatever mourning may be indulged in before the body is buried, no grief is ever shown after the interment, for the spirit has then departed. This belief explains why a man’s grave is not marked in any way by these tribes, and has, as a matter of course, no claim to respect from his survivors.