Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/57

 The Indians of the hsd- Japurd District. 45

court of law. He holds office till death, when his son, son- in-law, or adopted son would probably be elected to succeed him.

The rival authority is the medicine-man, and the amount of power exercised by either depends entirely upon their personality. The medicine-man is not a priest ; he officiates for no divinity, offers no sacrifice, no prayer. It is his business to oppose magic to magic, and so protect his tribe, or his individual patients, from the ills resulting from the malevolent magic-working of their enemies. Ikit of this anon.

From first to last the Indian is hedged about by pid, ('it is so,' 'it is our custom'). Before a child's birth the mother, and after birth the father, must submit to certain definite tabus. The.se differ slightly among the tribes, but are similar in all essentials. The mother, for instance, must not eat paca flesh, or the child's skin will be spotted like that beast's ; nor capybara, or the child will have the teeth of a rodent : in fact her diet often is restricted to cassava and such poor food as small bony fish, frogs, lizards, and little snakes. Should she give birth to twins, one will be left by her exposed in the bush, where, when her time comes, she will have retired alone, or with one other woman. If the twins were girl and boy, the girl would be killed; otherwise it would be the second, as obviously that is the one who lias no business to appear on the scene. The reason averred is that only beasts have more than one at a birth, and the Indian's aversion to anything resembling the brute creation is intense. To avoid any such likeness the tribes depilate, more or less strictly, all hair but that of the head. The exception is the medicine-man, and the hairier he is the better. For the same reason they blacken the teeth.

If a child at birth were seen to be deformed or sickly, the mother, during the bath in the river which is immediately resorted to, would simply submerge it till life was extinct.