Page:Isaiah Bowman - Desert Trails of Atacama (1924).pdf/327

 on the number of children he has, for this determines the num- ber of beasts he can pasture. While loose relations are tolerated within the tribe, relations between a woman and a stranger, Indian or not, are immediately punished by expulsion from the tribe. Of 22 married couples in Susques only two had no children at the time the village was studied. The other twenty had seventy-nine children, forty-four boys and thirty- five girls. In spite of the hard conditions of life at Susques the ancestral character is strictly maintained; the women do not marry strangers, and the people never abandon their arid lands to emigrate to more desirable regions.

The Indians of Susques signal each other at night by lighting a fire upon a high mountain just north of the village; in the daytime columns of smoke serve the same purpose. A certain number of fires indicate that the Indians are to assemble in the village; a different number may signify ‘‘Danger; hide yourself.” Ground is considered as common property; houses belong to the individuals that construct them. If a stranger comes he is refused water, fire, and food. They seek in this way to keep out of their country those who would take away their Jands and make conditions of life difficult. A police agent who visited Susques was given two or three sheep; then the Indians disappeared leaving him without other food and without forage for his mules, and he was obliged to leave.

The curious mixture of Catholic rites and pagan beliefs of which we have spoken in the case of Tarapacaé (p. 72) is also illustrated here, as indeed in hundreds of places throughout the Central Andes. Questioned about an apacheta, an Indian responded that it was dedicated both to the saints and to the Inca deity, Pachamama. The principal saints are those that are considered patrons of beasts. St. John is the patron saint of sheep because he is generally depicted accompanied by the figure of a lamb; then follow St. Anthony, patron of llamas; St. Raymond, patron of asses; St. Bartholomew, patron of goats. Two prayers are offered by spinners of wool, the first without doubt addressed to Pachamama and the second a curi- ous mixture of appeals to Pachamama and Saint Anne, the Christian patroness of spinning.