Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/304

294 reason do you fast at such a joyful moment?' 'The child is ours, and proceeds from us,' replied the savage, 'and the cooked food used by grown folks, which is profitable for us at other times, would now do the little children harm, if we ate it.' So I observed a sort of identity which he supposed to exist between father and son," etc. The missionary goes on to relate how he cured the Indian of the delusion, by showing that to give him a thrashing would have no effect on his child.

Among the Arawaks of Surinam, for some time after the birth of his child, the father must fell no tree, fire no gun, hunt no large game; he may stay near home, shoot little birds with a bow and arrow, and angle for little fish; but his time hanging heavy on his hands, the most comfortable thing he can do is to lounge in his hammock. Of the couvade among the fierce equestrian tribe of the Abipones, whose home lay south of the centre of the continent, the Jesuit missionary Dobrizhoffer gives a full account. "No sooner do you hear that the wife has borne a child, than you will see the Abipone husband lying in bed, huddled up with mats and skins lest some ruder breath of air should touch him, fasting, kept in private, and for a number of days abstaining religiously from certain viands; you would swear it was he who had had the child . . . . I had read about this in old times, and laughed at it, never thinking I could believe such madness, and I used to suspect that this barbarian custom was related more in jest than in earnest; but at last I saw it with my own eyes in use among the Abipones. And in truth they observe this ancestral custom, troublesome as it is, the more willingly and diligently from their being altogether persuaded that the sobriety and quiet of the fathers is effectual for the wellbeing of the new-born offspring, and is even necessary. Hear, I pray, a confirmation of this matter. Francisco Barreda, Deputy of the Royal Governor of Tucuman, came to visit the new colony of Conceiçam in the territory of Santiago. To him, as he was walking with me in the courtyard, the Cacique Malakin came up to pay his respects, having just left his bed, to which he had been confined in consequence of his wife's recent delivery.