An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay, (2 of 3)

CHAPTER XXVI.

OF THE MOURNING, THE EXEQUIES, AND FUNERAL CEREMONIES OF THE ABIPONES

Of those things which the Abipones do to testify their grief, according to the customs established by their ancestors, some tend to obliterate the memory of the defunct, others to perpetuate it. All the utensils belonging to the lately deceased are burnt on a pile. Besides the horses killed at the tomb, they slay his small cattle if he have any. The house which he inhabited they pull entirely to pieces. His widow, children, and the rest of his family remove elsewhere; and having no house of their own, reside for a time in that of some other person, or lodge miserably under mats. They had rather endure the injuries of the weather, than, contrary to the laws of their countrymen, inhabit a commodious house that has been saddened by the death of the dear master of it. To utter the name of a lately deceased person is reckoned a nefarious offence amongst the Abipones; if, however occasion requires that mention should be made of that person, they say, "The man that does not now exist," making use of a paraphrase. But if the name of the defunct be derived from an appellative noun, the word is abolished by proclamation, and a new one substituted. It is the prerogative of the old women to invent these new names, which are quickly divulgated amongst the widely-scattered hordes of the Abipones, and are so firmly imprinted on their minds, that no one individual is ever heard to utter a proscribed word.

All the friends and relations of the deceased change the names they formerly bore. In the colony of the Rosary, the wife of the chief Cacique dying of the small-pox, her husband changed his name of Revachigi to that of Oahari. His mother and brother and captive, as well as all the brothers of the deceased, had new names given them with various ceremonies. The old mother of the Cacique was extremely fond of a lank, scraggy dog, unworthy of the very air it breathed. When this change of names was made, I asked the old woman what name would be given her dog, to show them that we held their absurd rites in ridicule, though unable at that time to prevent them. On the death of a Cacique, all the men under his authority shave their long hair as a sign of grief. Widows also have their hair shaven, and wear a kind of cloak made of the caraquatà, stained black and red, which covers the head like a hood, and flows down from the shoulders to the breast. Widows use this cloak all their lives, unless a new marriage frees them from the unpleasant law of perpetual mourning. An Abiponian husband when he loses his wife shaves his hair in like manner, and wears a small woollen cap, which he publicly receives from the hands of an old woman, the priestess of the ceremonies, whilst the other women are engaged in lamenting, and the men in drinking together, and which he throws off when his hair begins to grow.

But let me now discourse upon what entirely consoles the Abipones for the loss of their friends, and renders the very necessity of mourning so pleasant to them. Leaving the care of inhuming the body and lamenting for it to the women, they seek for honey in the woods to serve as materials for the public drinking-party, to which they all flock at sun-set. At any report of the death of an Abipon we always pitied the women, upon whom devolved all the trouble of the exequies, the care of the funeral, and the labour of making the grave, and of mourning. For besides that the corpse was to be carried to the grave, and inhumed by them, all standing in a row, and uttering repeated lamentations, the widowers were to be shaved, the widows veiled, the names of the relations of the deceased to be changed, the funeral drinking-party to be attended, and the houses to be demolished; in short, they had to go through the trouble of a public mourning of nine days' continuance. This is of two kinds. One which is held by day in the streets by all but the unmarried women, and another carried on at night in houses appointed for the purpose, and which none but those that are specially invited attend. At stated hours, both in the forenoon and afternoon, all the women in the town assemble in the market-place, with their hair scattered about their shoulders, their breast and back naked, and a skin hanging from their loins. The expression of their faces inspires I can hardly tell whether most of melancholy or terror. Picture to yourself a set of Bacchanals or infernal furies, and you will have a good idea of them. They do not lament in one place by day. They go up and down the whole market-place, like supplicants, walking separately but all in one very long row. You may sometimes count as many as two hundred. They go leaping like frogs. The motion of their feet is accompanied by a continual tossing about of their arms. Each strikes a gourd containing various seeds to the measure of her voice; but some, instead of a gourd, beat a pan covered with does' skins, which makes the most ridiculous noise you can conceive. To every three or four gourds one of these drums answers. But what offends the ear most is the shouting of the mourners. They modulate their voices, like singers, and make trills and quavers mingled with groans. After chaunting some mournful staves in this manner they all cease at intervals, and, changing their voices from the highest to the lowest key, suddenly utter a very shrill hissing. You would swear that a knife had been laid to their throats. By this sudden howl they signify that they are seized with rage, uttering all sorts of imprecations on the author of the death, whoever he be. Sometimes, intermitting this chaunt, they recite a few verses in a declamatory tone, in which they extol the good qualities and deeds of the deceased, and in a querulous voice endeavour to excite the compassion and vengeance of the survivors. At other times they mingle tears with their wailings, tears extorted not by grief, but by habit, or, perhaps, by exhaustion. Most of them carry about some little gift or remembrance of the deceased, as emu feathers, glass-beads, a knife, or a dagger. I will now describe their method of lamenting by night. About evening, all the women that are invited assemble in a hut, one of the female jugglers presiding over the party, and regulating the chaunting and other rites. It is her business to strike two large drums alternately, and to sing the doleful funeral song, the rest observing the same measure of voice. This infernal elegy, accompanied with the rattling of gourds and bellowing of drums, lasts till morning. The same method is observed for eight days without variation; on the ninth night, if they be mourning for a woman, the pans are broken, not without proper ceremonies. The tragic howl, which they uttered on the preceding nights, now gives place to a more festive chaunt, which the old female drummeress interrupts at intervals with out-stretched jaws and a deep, and, as it were, threatening voice, seemingly to exhort her singing companions to hilarity and louder notes. These nocturnal lamentations, which continue nine days, are commenced at the setting and concluded at the rising of the sun. The patience displayed by the women in enduring so many sleepless nights is truly astonishing, but still more so is that of the men who can sleep soundly whilst the air is filled with confused shouts, and the noise of gourds and drums. Nor are funeral rites alone conducted in this manner. The sacred anniversaries to the memory of their ancestors are religiously celebrated with the same rites and ceremonies. Should the memory of her dead mother enter a woman's mind, she immediately loosens her hair, seizes a gourd, paces up and down the street with some women whom she calls to partake in her mourning, and fills the air with lamentation. Few nights pass that you do not hear women mourning. This they do upon their feet, with their bodies turned towards the spot where the deceased is buried, always accompanying their lamentations with the sound of gourds. Women find weeping easier than silence, and this is the reason why the nights are so seldom passed in quietness. The vociferation, however, always grows more violent as the day approaches; for when one begins to lament another follows her example, then a third comes, and then a fourth, till, by day-break, the number of mourners seems greater than that of sleepers. The men meantime are by no means idle. The grief which the women express with tears and shrieks, they testify by shedding the blood of enemies or their own. The nearest of kin to the deceased immediately assembles all the fellow-soldiers he can raise, and leads them against the foreign foes by whose hands his relation perished. It is his business to make the first attack against the author of the death, and not to return home till he has fully revenged it; though these savage heroes sometimes make an inglorious retreat, without obtaining vengeance on their enemies.

CHAPTER XXVII.

OF THE CUSTOMARY REMOVAL OF THE BONES

A few things remain to be said of the ceremonies with which the bones of the dead are honoured by the Abipones when they are removed to their native land, and thence to the family burying-places. Many translations of this kind have I witnessed: I will briefly relate that of the Cacique Ychamenraikin, who was killed in battle by the savages at a place full forty leagues distant from the town of St. Jeronymo. A drummer came announcing that the bones of the deceased leader would be carried into the town next day about evening. After the flesh had been stripped off and buried by his companions, they were put into a hide and conveyed on a horse. To receive these bones with due honour, preparations were made by Hanetrain, the chief of the jugglers, and his companion Lamamin, and a house to place the sad remains in appointed and properly furnished. The whole company of the women hastened to meet the funeral at three leagues distance. At the entrance of the town the order of the funeral profession was this: the mournful train was led by two jugglers, mounted on horses ornamented with bells, horse-cloths and ostrich feathers. They brandished in their hands a spear, to which was affixed a brazen bell. They did not keep with the rest, but galloping forwards, rode up and down as if they were skirmishing, then returned into the path like persons making an assault, and rejoined the rest of the company. These were followed by a train of women lamenting in the manner I have described. Six Abipones in place of an umbrella held up at the end of their spears an elegant square cloth woven like a carpet, under which they carried the sack of bones. The company was closed by the troop of the other Abipones, all mounted on horses, furnished with a spear, a bow, and a quiver, and with their heads shaven. The victors were followed by a band of women and children lately taken in war, so that this otherwise mournful spectacle bore more the appearance of a triumph than of a funeral. On each side was seen a multitude of horses hastening to their pastures after the military expedition. All the ways were crowded with boys and girls careless of the lamentations, but struck with the novelty of the spectacle. The bones being placed in a house prepared for their reception, the regular mourning was carried on for nine days. Nocturnal wailings were as usual added to those of the day. That the lamentations might be carried on without intermission, the jugglers, carrying a spear with a bell at the end of it, visited all the houses to admonish the women at what hours to mourn. The funeral compotation, meantime, and the conducting of it as magnificently as was due to the memory of so great a leader, was the sole care of the men – a care admirably calculated to abate the poignancy of their grief; and indeed it would be difficult to decide whether the men drank, or the women mourned most pertinaciously. Whilst this was going on at home, persons of both sexes were chosen to accompany the bones of Ychamenraikin to his family burying-place, and there inter them agreeably to the rites of their country. These ceremonies were observed by the savages before they were instructed in the Christian religion only. Other removals of bones were conducted in exactly the same manner, with the exception of the canopy, which was reserved exclusively for their leaders. The bones of seven Abipones, who had been slain by the Spaniards, were brought home on one day, and skilfully constructed into as many images; hats being placed on their skulls, and clothes on their bodies. These seven skeletons were placed in a savage hut, honoured for nine successive days with mourning and drinking, and thence transported to their graves.

Should there be any European who makes little account of sepulture, saying with Virgil,

Cælo tegitur qui non habet urnam,

that man is of a very different way of thinking from the Abipones, who esteem it the greatest misfortune to be left to rot in the open air. Hence amongst them, persons inflamed with the desire of revenge contemptuously cast away the carcasses of their enemies, making fifes and trumpets of their bones, and using their skulls for cups. On the other hand, they honourably inter the smallest bone of one of their friends, paying it every possible mark of respect. We have known savage Guaranies, who, in all their migrations, carried with them little boxes containing the relics of their jugglers, and in them, as in holy preservatives, placed all their hopes. These monuments of savage superstition were at length taken away by the missionaries, and burnt by them in the presence of all. The Guaranies newly brought from the woods to our colonies had no stronger inducement to embrace the Catholic religion than the seeing their countrymen buried by us with honourable ceremonies and a solemn chaunt. But now, after I have discoursed with prolixity on the diseases, physicians, medicines, death, and sepulture of the Abipones, it cannot be thought foreign to the course of my history to treat of the serpents and noxious insects which inflict death on many, and threaten it to all: it will also be agreeable to Europeans to know by what means the Americans defend themselves against serpents, or expel the poison of their wounds.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

OF THE MORE REMARKABLE SERPENTS

Paraguay contains full twenty kinds of serpents, all differing in name, colour, size, form, and the nature of their poison. Those most commonly known are the Mboy̆tiñi, or Mboy̆chiñi, the Quiririò, the Yacaninà, the Mboy̆hobĭ, the Mboy̆quatia, the Mboy̆pe-guazù, or Cucurucù, the Mboy̆pe-mir̂i, the Yboyà, the Tarey̆mboyà, the Mboy̆guazù, or Yboyà, the Mboy̆roy̆, the Curiyù, the Ybibobocà, the Yacapecoayà, the Yararacà, the Cacaboyà, &c. The Mboy̆chiñi, or Rattle-snake, which is remarkable for its venom and the tinkling appendage to its tail, is about the thickness of a man's arm at the elbow, and often as much as five feet in length. It has a forked tongue, a flat head, little blackish eyes, four teeth in the upper jaw, besides other unusually acute and incurvated ones, from the hollows of which it darts poison at all it meets. Some lesser teeth are visible when the animal opens its mouth. The colour of the back, which is much deeper at the sides, is a dusky yellow, varied with yellow lines intersecting one another at the spine. It is covered with dusky scales, like those of a crocodile, but softer. The belly is of a yellowish colour, with rather large and almost parallelogram scales: at the extremity of the tail is situated that rattle from which it takes its name, and which is composed of a smooth, dry, cinereous material, the breadth of a man's thumb. Here and there it has a small hollow cell divided in the midst by a thin membrane, containing a little ball not perfectly round, which, being agitated by every motion of the serpent, and shaken against its receptacle, makes a sound like the wooden rattle which children use. Every year a fresh joint grows on to the rattle, as in stags-horns, connected with vertebræ, like the chains of a ring. From the joints of the rattle you may tell the age of the serpent, as you may that of a stag from the branches of his horns. Hence the older the serpent the more it rattles. This snake when angry coils itself up; when purposing an attack it moves along the ground so swiftly that it almost seems to fly. Providence has fastened that tinkling appendage to its tail in order to warn others from approaching it, for its poison is justly accounted the most virulent of any; the remedies which prove efficacious against the bites of other serpents, have been found unavailing against those of the rattle-snake, which causes certain but slow death, the deadly poison gradually diffusing itself through all the members. It takes away the use of the foot, arm, ear, and eye on that side which has been bitten, and presently, passing to the other, causes extreme torture, continual delirium, and acute pains, especially at the extremity of the feet and hands, which contract a cadaverous paleness from being deserted by the blood, which is rendered torpid by the coldness of the venom. All this I observed in two Guarany youths who were bitten by a rattle-snake. Both were under eighteen years of age, both were robust and of strong constitutions. The first struggled with his pains twelve days, the other fourteen, at the expiration of which period they both died, the strength of the poison baffling the virtue of the most established remedies. Whenever I heard of any person's being bitten by a rattle-snake I immediately prepared him for death, by administering the sacrament to him, before the delirium began. An Indian woman, in the flower of her age and strength, was reduced to the last extremity by the pestilential bite of one of these rattle-snakes. However, to the astonishment of all, she escaped death, but having lost the use of her limbs, dragged on a miserable existence for many years.

A letter dated Williamsburg, a town of Virginia, September the 28th, 1769, and published in the German newspapers of the 6th of Jan. 1770, tends greatly to confirm the virulence of the poison of the rattle-snake: the contents are as follows. "In Johnston county, North Carolina, at the latter end of June, a rattle-snake crept into a house, where four children were lying on the ground, the youngest of which it bit with its poisoned teeth. The father, awakened by the screams of the child, ran to render it assistance, and was at the same moment wounded by it himself. Meantime, whilst he was seeking some weapon to slay the deadly animal, the other three children were also wounded. With the utmost haste and diligence all sorts of remedies were applied to the wounded, but in vain, for the father and his four children expired next day." Has not then nature, you ask me, supplied a remedy powerful enough to expel this deadly poison? She may perhaps have afforded many which human ingenuity has not yet discovered, but which are at any rate unknown to the Paraguayrians. I am not ignorant that books do speak of medicines for this purpose, which they extol as divine, but all who have used them have found them of no avail. The Brazilians make use of little gourds, by which the poisoned wound is enlarged and dried. Sometimes they bind the wounded member with the rush Jacapè to prevent the poison from spreading. They sometimes cauterize the wounded part. Before the poison reaches the heart the sick man is induced to sweat by drinking Tipioca. Some Indians place much faith in the bruised head of a noxious serpent applied to the wound, which they also bathe in fasting saliva. But whether these remedies ever saved the life of any one who has been bitten by this most venomous snake I must be allowed to doubt. However destructive the teeth of these serpents are when employed to bite, they become salutary when used as medicine: for they say that the Brazilians prick their necks with them to ease the pain of the head-ache. They think it useful to anoint the loins, and other parts of a sick person's body, as well as swellings, with the fat of this snake. Its head also, when tied to the neck of the sick man, is said to cure pains in the throat. This method of healing was unknown to us in Paraguay.

The next to this in noxious qualities is a snake twelve, and sometimes fifteen feet long, with a large body the colour of ashes, varied with little black spots, yellowish under the belly, and formidable on account of a peculiar poison it contains and introduces with its bite. The Brazilians call it Cucurucù, the Guaranies Mboy̆pè guazù; and from its effects I guess it to be the same as that which Pliny calls Hæmorrhoam, and others Hæmorrhoida. This snake is most abundant where heat and moisture, the generators of serpents, predominate. Its poison heats the veins, and expels the ebullient blood from the mouth, nose, ears, eyes, finger-nails, in a word from all the outlets and pores of the body. This is related by Patricio Fernandez, who asserts that few persons are killed by this serpent, because most part of the poison flows out with the blood itself. For my part I never saw any serpent of that kind, nor any person that had been bitten by one, though I understand that they are not unfrequent in Brazil, where the Indians apply the head of the serpent to the wound it has inflicted, by way of a cataplasm; fresh tobacco leaves slightly burnt are used for a cautery. The roots also of the Caapia, Jurepeba, Urucù, Jaborandy̆, &c. are used to create perspiration. They say that, when the head of this serpent, in which greatest part of the poison lies, is cut off, the flesh is eaten by the savages of Brazil. In Paraguay, besides the Mboy̆pè guazù, you meet with the Mboy̆pè mir̂i, which is scarce thicker than a quill. Though smaller, it is more poisonous than the larger serpent of the same name.

The Yacaninà is to be reckoned amongst the larger and more dangerous serpents. It is two, sometimes three ells long, and as thick as a man's arm. It raises itself upon the last joint of its tail, and leaps upon people almost as if it were flying. The Quiririô terrifies the bravest with its very aspect. The size and colours of its body, and the strong poison it contains, are the occasion of this terror. The Mboy̆hobĭ, of a dark green colour, spotted with black, very large both as to length and breadth, and pregnant with the most noxious poison, infests all the plain country. On the other hand, the Mboy̆quatia is chiefly found within the walls of houses. It has obtained its name from the beautiful variety of its colours. It is middle-sized, but of a very virulent poison. In the rivers and lakes water-snakes of various shapes and monstrous size wander in great numbers. They are thought not to be venomous, though formidable to swimmers; for their horrid teeth never leave loose of any thing they have once got hold of. They squeeze animals to death with the folds of their bodies. Of the number of these is the Mboy̆roy̆, called by the Guaranies the cold serpent, because it loves cold places and shade. Another is the Curiyù, eight, and often nine ells long, and of breadth corresponding to such great length. This water-snake affords the Indians a dainty repast. Remarkable above the rest is a serpent of enormous size, but perfectly innocent in its nature. The Ampalaba is thicker than a man's breast, and larger than any water-snake. It is of a light reddish colour, and resembles the trunk of a very large tree covered with moss. As I was travelling through the territory of St. Iago, at the banks of a lake near the river Dulce, my horse suddenly took fright. Upon my enquiring of my companion the occasion of the animal's terror, he replied, "What, Father! did you not see the Ampalaba snake lying on the shore?" I had seen him, but had taken him for the trunk of a tree. Fearing that the horse would be alarmed and throw me, I did not think proper to stay and examine the great sparkling eyes, short but very acute teeth, horrid head, and many-coloured scales of the monster. These serpents live under water, but come frequently on shore, and even climb lofty trees. They never attack men, and it is most likely that they are devoid of poison. All however agree that Ampalabas are fond of rabbits, goats and does, which they attract with their breath, and swallow whole. As it must require an enormous throat to swallow a doe, you will perhaps think an equal facility of mind necessary to believe the fact. I candidly own that I never saw it done, but should not venture to doubt the truth of a thing that has been affirmed by creditable authors, and eye-witnesses.

CHAPTER XXIX.

MORE ON THE SAME SUBJECT; AND RESPECTING OTHER INSECTS