Kitabı oku: «An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay, (2 of 3)», sayfa 11

But this bloody tragedy, at length, had a happy termination. The Indian Ychohàke ceased at length to live and to be feared, and you will be surprised to hear that one, who, in his lifetime, had been so mad in his suspicions of sorcery, grew sane in his last moments. Having received baptism, at his own desire, conscious of approaching dissolution he delighted much in the presence of the priest, whom, as he came in the early part of the night, he persuaded to repose for a while at his own house, promising to let him know when he felt his death approach. He kept his word: he calmly expired the night before Trinity Sunday, whilst the priest was suggesting every thing consolatory to the dying man, and his relations were all weeping around him. He caused us to entertain great hopes of his obtaining a happy immortality on many accounts. For, indignant at the lamentations of his weeping domestics, he said they should remember he was going to visit the great house of the Creator of all things, the high father, the greatest captain. Ever intent on appeasing the Almighty, he testified sorrow and remorse for the many murders he had committed, of Christians and others. He repeatedly desired his wife not to follow the custom of their ancestors in slaying his horses and sheep at his grave; leaving them, and all his other property, to his little daughter. All this manifests that he held his ancient superstitions in abhorrence, and had embraced Christianity with his whole soul. I have related this to show you that all the misery resulting from deaths and disorders is attributed by the Abipones to the magical arts of the jugglers; whom, nevertheless, at other times they revere as physicians and saviours, of which more hereafter. Much remains to be said of diseases which ought not to be unknown to Europe.

CHAPTER XXII.
OF A CERTAIN DISEASE PECULIAR TO THE ABIPONES

During an eighteen years' acquaintance with Paraguay and its inhabitants, I discovered a disease amongst the Abipones Nakaiketergehes, entirely unknown elsewhere. This disease affects the mind more than the body, though I should think it occasioned by the bad temperature of the former. They sometimes begin to rave and storm like madmen. The credulous and superstitious crowd think them reduced to this state by the magic arts of jugglers, and call them Loapařaika. These persons, agitated, as I think, by the intemperature of black bile, and filled with gloomy ideas, betray their madness chiefly at sun-set. The distracted persons suddenly leap out of their tents, run into the country on foot, and direct their course straight to the burying-place of their family. In speed they equal ostriches, and those who pursue them on the swiftest horses can hardly overtake and bring them home. Seized with fury in the night, they burn with the desire of committing slaughter somewhere; and for this purpose snatch up any arms they can lay hold of. Hence, as soon as a report is spread through a town of any one's being seized with this kind of madness, every body takes up a spear. The hordesmen, as they can neither calm the furious man, nor keep him at home, suffer him to go out into the street, armed with a stick, and accompanied with as many people as possible. A crowd of boys assembling to behold the spectacle, they make a circuit about all the streets. The insane person strikes the roof and mats of every tent again and again with the stick, none of the inmates daring to utter a word. If through the negligence of his guards, or his own cunning, he gets possession of arms, Heavens! what a universal terror is excited! a terror not confined to women and unwarlike boys, but felt by men who account themselves heroes; for they say it is wrong and irrational to use arms against those who are not in possession of their senses. The women, therefore, with their children used to crowd to the court-yard of our house which was fortified with stakes against the assaults of savages, and through fear of the insane person, pass hours, nay whole nights there.

Persons seized with this madness take scarcely any food or sleep, and walk up and down pale with fasting and melancholy: you would imagine that they were contemplating some new system of the figure of the earth, or studying how to square the circle. By day, however, they betray no signs of alienation of mind, nor are they to be feared before evening. A person of this description, who was very turbulent at night, visited me in the middle of the day. In familiar conversation I asked him who it was that disturbed the rest by his furiousness every night. He replied with a calm countenance, that he did not know. The Spaniard, my companion, seeing him take his leave, said, "This is the man you have long wished to know. This is he that raves at night." Yet I could discover nothing indicative of derangement either in his countenance or manners. Another insane person of the kind, whom I knew, met me as we were both riding in the plain, and joined company with me. But, pretending business, I put spur to my horse and hastened home. Twice when I was shutting the door of my hut, and once when I was tying a horse to a stake to feed, I should have been destroyed by a madman, had not persons come to my succour and averted the danger. Sometimes many persons of both sexes began to rave at once; sometimes one, and often no one was in this deplorable state. This madness lasted eight, fourteen, or more days, before tranquillity and intellect were restored. All the Abipones subject to this malady, whom I have known, were uniformly of a melancholy turn of mind, always in a state of perturbation from their hypochondriac or choleric temper, and of a fierce, threatening countenance. When this bile was excited by bad air, or immoderate drinking, it is neither strange nor surprising, that derangement and raving madness ensued. The stupid or ignorant alone attribute that to magic art, which is solely to be ascribed to the fault or strength of nature.

We have found the fear of death a powerful antidote to the licence of raving amongst the Abipones. Within a few days the number of mad persons increased unusually: one of them in the dead of the night got through the fence, and was stealing into our house, but was carried away by people who came to our assistance. Alaykin, the chief Cacique, being informed of our danger, called all the people into the market-place next day, and declared, that if any one henceforward took to raving, he should immediately put to death all the female jugglers, as well as the insane themselves. From that time I never heard of any more tumults occasioned by these furious persons. Might not some of them have feigned madness in the first instance, because they loved to be objects of terror to their hordesmen, and to be pointed at with the finger? I never can believe with the savages, that a magical charm was the cause of their insanity.

CHAPTER XXIII.
OF MEASLES, SMALL-POX, AND THE MURRAIN IN CATTLE

The physician Roderigo Fonseca observes, "The plague was never seen either in the East or West Indies, but we know that in America a million Indians were destroyed by the small-pox not many years back, when no Spaniard took the infection. This disease was introduced amongst them by a Negro." I say nothing of the East Indies, being an utter stranger to them, but every one agrees that no plague ever raged in America: if you have read the contrary in any historian, remember that catarrh, ague, and diarrhea, if long and widely prevalent, are called the plague by the lower orders of Spaniards. The small-pox and measles too are not improperly denominated the plague by the Indians. We have also frequently experienced a murrain in cattle fatal to horses, oxen, and above all to mules; a disease induced not by the pestilence of the air, but by the badness of the pastures, or the scarcity of water. This sort of disorder may be truly called contagious, the mere contact with sick or dead bodies being infectious. Swelling of the head, and blood trickling from the nostrils were symptoms of the reigning disorder; the same signs too indicated the bites of serpents in animals. Mutilating the ear, and cutting the vein of the fore foot, were admirable remedies against the poison of that disease in mules, especially if salt were given them to lick. The paunches of the oxen slain to feed the Indians are daily thrown out, along with the bowels, into an open place, where all the horses and mules eagerly crowd to lick the garbage, because a sort of salt and nitre is created by the blood of which they are excessively fond. Therefore, whilst this dreadful murrain raged in our territories we daily sprinkled those entrails with salt, the salubrity of which is proved by the circumstance, that whilst numbers died in the neighbouring estates, very few sickened, and many recovered with us in the town of St. Joachim.

It is beyond all controversy, that small-pox is the true plague of the Americans, and that it has been lately introduced into America, either by Europeans or Negroes. Hence the just complaint of the Indians. "The Europeans are fine people, truly! They have made liberal compensation for the infinity of gold and silver they have taken from us, by leaving us the plague of the small-pox." Indeed it is a well known fact that the number of Indians who have died of this disease during the two last centuries, defy all calculation. In the thirty Guarany towns some thirty thousand persons died of the small-pox in the year 1734.

It is not true that the Spaniards and other Europeans in America are exempted from small-pox; but it cannot be doubted that the Indians take it sooner, and more frequently die of it. I am of opinion that their habit of body has less strength to repel or overcome that poison. They generally eat half-raw and unsalted meat; they always go with their heads and feet bare; they drink nothing but water, and that not of the best kind, except at a few festive drinking parties in the course of the year; all which tend to weaken the stomach. The heat of the sun, and the constant use of maize, cause a ferment in their blood which, on the accession of small-pox, very frequently proves fatal. This must be understood of the pedestrian Indians only, for the Abipones, and other equestrian Indians, who do not labour under those miseries to which the pedestrians are subject, generally have the small-pox in a milder form.

In the year 1765 this plague carried off great numbers in the Spanish colonies. Having swept away about twelve thousand persons in the thirty Guarany towns, it spread to the distant hordes of the savages scattered throughout Chaco, and though almost all took the infection, yet few died in proportion to the number of the sick. I speak of the equestrians, who were saved by the strength of their constitutions. In the town which I founded for the Abipones, one woman only escaped the contagion, yet out of the many hundreds that took the disease, twenty alone fell victims to it.

Often no mention is made of the small-pox for many years amongst the Indians; but this calm is the sure forerunner of an approaching storm. We have always found the small-pox break out first in the colonies of the Spaniards, and spread from thence to the farthest hordes of the Indians; who, having learnt from the experience of their ancestors, to dread this disease as their death, separate from their hordesmen as soon as ever they have the least suspicion of its approach, and fly, some one way, some another, in precipitate haste. Upon this occasion they travel not in a straight line, but by various meanders and windings. That this method is superstitiously observed by the Lules, Isistines, Vilelas, Homoampas, and Chunipies, I was told by Fathers who had resided long amongst them. Through fear of the contagion, fathers desert their sick sons, and sons their fathers. They leave a pitcher of water, and some roasted maize at the sick man's bed, and consult their own safety by flight. I should wrong the Abipones were I to say that they imitate them in these particulars. They do indeed turn their backs on the spot where the pestilence prevails, and crowd to their lurking-places in the woods; but on these occasions, they travel straight onwards, as usual, nor ever neglect their sick friends and relations, studiously performing the duties of humanity. Their endurance of pain and inconvenience at such times is likewise deserving of commendation. Even whilst the disorder rages with malignant heats I never heard them womanishly crying or complaining. They account the least groan a dishonour, and, to maintain the character for fortitude, endeavour to endure the bitterness of disease in silence.

I generally found this disorder most fatal to persons of a melancholy, choleric habit, or of advanced age, and to women in a state of pregnancy. To those upon whom, after a feverish heat, the small-pox slowly broke out, in whom it was blackish, thick, depressed, and spotted in the middle, or mixed with red and confluent, I presaged great danger and speedy death; – a prediction generally verified by the event. When the small-pox and swelling quickly disappear, all hope of the patient's recovery disappears likewise. I generally observed that persons of a cheerful disposition, fair complexion, and less advanced period of life, underwent little trouble and danger from this disease. The burning of the throat, occasioned by the small-pox breaking out there, together with the cough and sort of quinsy it produces, are highly dangerous, and frequently fatal to the Indians. Water, mixed with sugar and citron-juice, is very refreshing to persons afflicted in this manner; a decoction of plantane leaves is also of use to rinse the throat, and sometimes for the purpose of washing the eyes. The old physicians advised persons in the small-pox to stay within doors, and keep themselves well covered, lest the spots which are ready to come out should be repressed to the inward parts. The Abipones, on the contrary, after taking the small-pox, passed days and nights in the open air, or in huts half closed, and admitting the air on every side. Whilst flying to the recesses of the woods they received the cold air into their whole bodies: might not this be the reason why, out of so great a number of sick persons, so very few died of the small-pox? For I have since learnt that modern physicians think the open air wholesomer for persons in the small-pox than the heat of a room; therefore I now no longer wonder at this disease proving fatal to so many thousands of Guaranies, who, after being seized with it, always lie near the fire in a close room, almost smothered with blankets, and would have thought it fatally dangerous to breathe the fresh air even for a moment. The habits of the Abipones, in time of small-pox, were totally opposite, and it seldom proved fatal to them. To corroborate this assertion I will relate an event worthy the consideration and wonder of physicians.

One of my Abipones, who was burning with feverish heat, the forerunner of small-pox, secretly procured a horn full of brandy which he drank to the last drop. Mounting his horse, in a state of complete intoxication, he swam across a river in the night, and arrived in safety at a plain, three miles and a half distant, where his fellow-hordesmen were dwelling, for fear of the contagion. When informed of these things, I was in great apprehension of the immediate death of the imprudent savage, and flew to succour both his soul and body. Unexpectedly good news were announced: that same night the small-pox broke out upon him, neither thick nor malignant. In a very few days he recovered, and was at liberty to ride where he liked. He was about thirty years old, of a lively temper, strong constitution, and high fame amongst his countrymen, for the number of Spaniards he had slain. Here it may be observed that the Americans, who have had the genuine small-pox, do not fear the return of it. At five years of age I had the small-pox so slightly, that I was marked in ten places only, and was ill but two days. Yet that this short sickness is, by the law of nature, sufficient, I was fully persuaded, after living many months, day and night, with Indians who had the disorder, without taking the infection.

Almost the same observations may be made on measles as on small-pox. It rages at intervals, spreads, and cuts off vast numbers in America. Whilst I resided in the town of St. Joachim, out of two thousand Indians so many were laid up with this disorder, that often none were left to supply the sick with food, water, wood and medicines. The offices due to the minds and bodies of the sick kept Father Joseph Fleischauer and myself occupied day and night for some months. That pestilence carried off two hundred persons, out of which number there were very few infants, and no old men, most of them being persons in the flower of their age. The tertian ague sometimes spreads like a contagion amongst the Indians, but is more troublesome than dangerous, and prevails only in those places where stinking ditch water is in constant use. For the same reason tertian ague is very prevalent in many Spanish towns, especially in Tucuman. In the colony of Concepcion, on the banks of the river Inespin, which supplied the inhabitants with sweet and very wholesome water, no person was ever seized with the tertian ague. In the colonies of St. Ferdinand and the Rosary, which were surrounded with marshes and lakes, the Abipones were destitute of river water, and consequently hardly ever free from agues. In the colony of the Rosary the fever prevailed so much for the space of some months, that no one escaped it, not even myself, though at other times secure amidst persons infected with this disorder. That none of the savages might die suddenly without receiving baptism, I daily visited all the sick, and at length caught the quotidian ague, though the Indians only laboured under the tertian. The fever daily increased at sun-set, and did not leave me till morning. This feverish agitation, at the end of seven and twenty days, was succeeded by the tertian, after two fits of which I happily recovered. What I suffered, in my utter want of all necessaries, and what danger I underwent, need not be told here.

Just as I am about to conclude my discourse on contagious disorders, a circumstance occurs to my mind worthy the critical examination of physicians. Whilst I was at the Cordoban estate of St. Catharine belonging to the Jesuits, at the approach of night, we beheld a fiery meteor, which bore the appearance of a very wide beam, and rolled sparkling through the midst of heaven to the opposite horizon. The Spanish strangers afterwards declared that it was visible to the whole province, and judged it portentous. We, who had learnt a sounder philosophy, gazed at that sudden splendour as calmly as at a firework, though it did in reality prove calamitous, being either the cause or the sign, or, at any rate, the concomitant of a deadly catarrh which prevailed over the whole of Tucuman, and in two years carried off a great number of Spaniards and Negroes. Almost at the same time when the fiery exhalation was seen, this epidemic disease, as they say, began. Though this dangerous pestilence visited all the cities without distinction, yet I think it raged with particular violence in the estates. Travelling from Cordoba to Sta. Fè, I met crowds of Spaniards carrying horns filled with the urine of sick persons for the inspection of the Cordoba empirics; for there are no real physicians in the whole provinces. You would hardly believe what faith the lower orders of Spaniards place in the inspection of urine, and how much they are deceived in this matter.

CHAPTER XXIV.
OF THE PHYSICIANS AND MEDICINES OF THE ABIPONES

Restrain your laughter, friendly reader, when you hear that the Abipones honour their physicians with the title of Keebèt, which same word has the several significations of the devil, a physician, a prophet, and a malevolent sorcerer. From which it appears how widely the office of physician extends with them, and what various kinds of knowledge it embraces. They revere physicians as the representatives of their grandfather, the evil spirit, and, believing them gifted by him with the art of healing diseases, dignify them with his honourable title of Keebèt. But I openly pronounce these Abiponian physicians worthy of contempt and ridicule, for they never learnt even the rudiments of medical science, never entered a school of the kind, nor ever acquired the least smattering of pharmacy, botany, anatomy, or nosology. These knaves deserve to be flogged every day of their lives by the angry Galen, and spit upon by Æsculapius, Hippocrates, and the whole tribe of physicians. For they thrust frauds instead of medicines, words instead of deeds upon the credulous Abipones, and are as well able to create as cure diseases, as ignorant in preparing a medicine as in composing a charm, and better skilled in weaving deceits than in relieving pains.

It is remarkable in the Abiponian physicians that they cure every kind of disease with one and the same medicine. Let us examine their method of healing. They apply their lips to the part affected, and suck it, spitting after every suction. At intervals they draw up their breath from the very bottom of their breast, and blow upon that part of the body which is in pain. That blowing and sucking are alternately repeated. If the whole body languishes, if it burns with malignant heat, if it is seized with measles or small-pox, four or five of these harpies fly to suck and blow it, one fastening his lips on the arm, another on the side, a third and fourth on the feet. If a child cries, or refuses the breast, the mother gives him to a juggler to be sucked. This method of healing is in use amongst all the savages of Paraguay and Brazil, that I am acquainted with, and, according to Father Jean Grillet, amongst the Galibe Indians. I have known matter sucked from an ulcer and blood from a wound with utility, the materials of the corruption that would have ensued being by this means exhausted. Spaniards or Indians, when stung by a serpent, get some friend to suck the part affected, that the poison may be extracted before it spreads over the limbs. I do not therefore blame the Abipones for having their wounds, ulcers, and serpent-bites sucked: their superstition lies in suffering that office to be performed by none but the jugglers, and in believing the faculty of healing imparted to them by their grandfather. Though they at the same time believe that one excels another in the salubrity of his lips and breath, and in his healing powers. Another point in which this sucking is to be condemned is, that they use it as an universal remedy against every disease. I knew an European in Paraguay eminently versed in the medical art, who, from having made successful use of the herb fumitory, obtained the name of Doctor Fumitory. In the town of St. Thomas there was an Indian healer of the sick, who, when asked what medicine he gave to such or such a patient of his, uniformly replied, "I gave him vervain, Father." Having found this herb do good to one individual, he indiscriminately prescribed it to all sick persons under whatever disease they laboured. The Abipones, still more irrational, expect sucking and blowing to rid the body of whatever causes pain or inconvenience. This belief is constantly fostered by the jugglers with fresh artifices. For when they prepare to suck the sick man, they secretly put thorns, beetles, worms, &c. into their mouths, and spitting them out, after having sucked for some time, say to him, pointing to the worm or thorn, "See here the cause of your disorder." At this sight the sick man revives, when he thinks the enemy that has tormented him is at length expelled: for as imagination is often the origin of sickness, it may also be that of health. Moreover, it is not surprizing that after many days sucking the pain should be relieved, which would have ceased of its own accord, by the benefit of time alone. I do not deny that the Abipones generally recover; but for that they are indebted to their natural strength, not to the juggler who sucked them. To him, however, they religiously ascribe the praise and the glory of their recovered health; to him they give horses, arms, garments, or any thing belonging to the convalescent person. Neither is it from gratitude that they do this, but from fear; being firmly persuaded that the disease will return again unless they reward the physician to the utmost of their ability. Alas! how many infants have we seen fainting, pale, languid, dying, and soon dead from having their little bodies exhausted by constant sucking! The savage mothers must be certainly mad, since they still persist in this insane practice, after seeing so many children die in consequence of it.

Amongst the Payaguas there exists a law that if any of them dies of a disease, the physician who undertook his cure shall be put to death by the arrows of the assembled people; and being desperately addicted to revenge, they are steadfast in the execution of this cruel law. During my residence in the city of Asumpcion, an unhappy physician atoned for the death of his patient by his own. Were this law in force amongst the Abipones, fewer of them would profess themselves followers of Galen; they would shun the dangerous profession of medicine, and physicians would cease to grow like funguses in a night. Of this I am quite sure, that in every Abiponian horde there are more physicians than sick persons: deterred by no danger of loss of fame or life, and certain of reward, they besiege the beds of the sick, and suck away their strength in every disease. When questioned on the patient's danger, they make the happiest forebodings. If the event turn out contrary to their prognostics, they have always a ready excuse: the disease was a fatal one, or their skill was baffled by the magical arts of some other juggler; the matter rests here, for it would be a crime to doubt the excuse of a juggler.

Though sucking is the chief and almost only cure in use amongst the Abipones, yet they have some dream-like ideas of our remedies. At times, when oppressed by the heat of the sun, or inflamed with a feverish burning, they will draw blood by piercing their arm or leg with a knife. Medicinal herbs, of which their country produces so great a variety, they scarce know by name, yet are desirous of being thought well skilled in the mysteries of nature. Hence, not so much in the desire of restoring the sick person, as of increasing their own reputation, they would sometimes prescribe the leaves of a tree, or the roots of some little known plant, on which the druggist might safely write quid pro quo, these remedies being generally of such a nature, that they are more likely to miss than be of any service. At the end of a fatiguing journey, I fell ill in the town of Concepcion. A woman, of high repute for skill in the healing art, comes and gives me a large dark root, promising me the complete restoration of my health, if I would drink it well boiled in water. I shuddered at the medicine, but still more at the old hag that prescribed it.

The Guarany tongue is as rich as the Abiponian is poor in the names of wholesome plants, and not a few of the Guaranies are well acquainted with the use of them. In the town of St. Joachim I knew an Indian named Ignacio Yaricà, eight years an attendant upon the sick, whose dexterity and success I could not but admire. He would set a broken limb, and entirely heal it in a very short time by means of swathes of reeds and four little herbs. The woods of America also produce a kind of dark green ivy, which twines itself round the branches of trees, and is called by the Spaniards suelda con suelda. This plant cut small, boiled in water, and bound with linen on to the limb, soon and happily consolidates it. In the city of Corrientes, a Spanish matron was cured of a sprained foot, by merely wrapping it in the fresh skin of a puppy. The Abipones are totally ignorant of medicines for purging the bowels, causing perspiration, removing bile, and dispelling noxious humours. They will not even bear the mention of an enema. In the town of St. Jeronymo, a Spanish soldier who professed the art of medicine, being requested by Father Brigniel to attend upon a sick Abipon, declared the necessity of an injection. No sooner did the sick man feel the syringe applied to him, than he started furiously out of bed, snatched up a lance, and would have slain the soldier physician, had he not saved himself by hasty flight. Sudden terror giving way to rage, the old Spaniard, whilst we were laughing, poured forth a volley of curses on his ungrateful patient. "You had better call up a devil from hell, Fathers," said he, "to cure this beast. When I offered him medicine, the savage tried to kill me: he opposes a lance to a syringe. Who could contend with such unequal arms?" The Guaranies have the same repugnance to the use of the syringe. The Indians use snuff as a medicine, stuffing it into their ears, when they find them badly affected by the rain or wind. The jugglers vauntingly affirm, that they have it in their power to perform cures by words alone. Sitting on the sick man's bed they sing extemporary verses, as magical charms, either to reconcile the evil spirit, or to call up the shades of the dead by whose assistance they hope to remove all diseases. But away with this superstitious nonsense. The Abiponian physicians show how little they confide in their own arts, when, on being seized with a disorder, they neglect to consult their colleagues, and prefer the aid of any European who will prescribe for them. At the time that I dwelt amongst the Abipones, the most famous in the art of medicine was Pariekaikin, the chief of the jugglers, who, on being seized with pleurisy, called on me to heal him in preference to any of his colleagues. Calcined hartshorn, boiled in barley-water, restored him to health, and gained me the reputation of a physician amongst the Abipones. Nothing will procure you the good-will of the savages so soon as skill in the healing art. They think that he who understands the natures and remedies of diseases can be ignorant of nothing. They will believe him in matters of religion, and be tractable and obedient to him. Our Saviour himself inspired mortals with wonder, by healing bodies as well as souls. In imitation of him, when we were employed in the instruction of the savages, we endeavoured to supply the want of physicians, surgeons, and druggists, by easily obtained remedies, by reading medical books, and by other means, in order to wean that miserable people from their jugglers, whom we accounted the chief obstacles to the propagation of the holy religion.