Читать книгу An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay, (2 of 3) - Dobrizhoffer Martin - Страница 5

The Abipones, like all the other American savages, used formerly to pierce their lower lip with a hot iron, or a sharp reed. Into the hole some insert a reed and others a small tube of bone, glass, gum, or yellow brass; an ornament allowed only to the men when they are seven years old, never to the women. This custom has long since been abolished amongst the later Abipones, but is still continued by the Guaranies who inhabit the woods, by the Mbayas, Guanas, and Payaguas. These people think themselves most elegantly adorned when they have a brass pipe a span long, and about the thickness of a goose's quill, hanging from the lip to the breast. But this imaginary ornament renders them very formidable to European strangers; for they are of great height, their bodies are painted with juices of various colours, and their hair stained of a blood red; the wing of a vulture is stuck in one of their ears, and strings of glass beads hung round their neck, arms, knees and legs; thus accoutred they walk the streets smoking tobacco out of a very long reed; figures in every respect terrible to behold.

The thing which is inserted into the lip, of whatever material it may be made, is called by the Guaranies tembetà, and is universally used by them whilst they wander about the woods without religion; but after being converted to Christianity and settled in colonies they throw away this lip appendage. The hole of the lip, which neither salve nor plaster will cure, however, remains, and in speaking the saliva sometimes flows profusely through it; it also impedes them a little in pronouncing some words. All the plebeian Indians whom I discovered in the woods of Mbaeverá, both youths and adults, used a short slender reed for the tembetà; but that of the three caciques was made of a gold-coloured gum or rosin. At first sight I could have sworn that it was glass. In the heat of the sun that beautiful gum flows plentifully from the tree abati timbabỹ, and falls gradually into the models of tembetàs, crosses, globes, or any other figure they like: exposed to the air it grows as hard as a stone, so that no liquid can ever melt it, but still retains its glassy transparency. If this rosin of the tree abati timbabỹ were not possessed of singular hardness, the tembetà made of it, after remaining whole days in the lip of the savage, and being covered with saliva, would soften, and dissolve.

Do not imagine that there is but one method of piercing the lip amongst the savages. The anthropophagi do not pierce the lower lip but cut it to the length of the mouth in such a manner, that when the wound terminates in a scar they look as if they had two mouths. They wander up and down the woods, and are often, but fruitlessly exhorted by the Jesuits, not without peril to themselves, to embrace our religion. The Indians of Brazil and Paraguay formerly delighted in human flesh. Many of them, after having been long accustomed to Christian discipline in our towns, sometimes confessed that the flesh of kine or of any wild animal tastes extremely flat and insipid to them, in comparison with that of men. We have known the Mocobios and Tobas, for want of other food, eat human flesh even at this day. Some hundreds of the last-mentioned savages fell suddenly upon Alaykin, cacique of the Abipones, about day-break as he was drinking in a distant plain with a troop of his followers. An obstinate combat was carried on for some time, at the end of which the wounded Abipones escaped by flight. Alaykin himself and six of his fellow-soldiers fell in the engagement, and were afterwards roasted and devoured by the hungry victors. An Abiponian boy of twelve years old, who used to eat at our table, was killed at the same time by these savages, and added to the repast, being eaten with the rest; but an old Abiponian woman, who had been slain there with many wounds, they left on the field untouched, her flesh being too tough to be used. Now let me speak a little of the adorning, or, more properly, torturing of the ears.

The use of ear-rings, which is very ancient, and varies amongst various nations, is highly ridiculous amongst the Americans. The ears of very young children of both sexes are always perforated. Few of the men wear ear-rings, but some of the older ones insert a small piece of cow's horn, wood, or bone, a woollen thread of various colours, or a little knot of horn into their ears. Almost all the married women have ear-rings, made in the following manner. They twist a very long palm leaf two inches wide into a spire, like a bundle of silk thread, and wider in circumference than the larger wafer which we use in sacrifice. This roll is gradually pushed farther and farther into the hole of the ear; by which means in the course of years the skin of the ear is so much stretched, and the hole so much enlarged, that it folds very tightly round the whole of that palm leaf spire, and flows almost down to the shoulders. The palm leaf itself, when in this spiral form, has an elastic power which daily dilates the hole of the ear more and more. Do not think that I have exaggerated the size of this spire and the capaciousness of the ear. With these eyes, by the aid of which I am now writing, I daily beheld innumerable women laden with this monstrous ear-ring, and very many men even of other nations. For those most barbarous people the Oaèkakalòts and Tobas, and other American nations out of Paraguay, use the same ear-rings as the Abiponian women. The Guarany women wear brass ear-rings sometimes three inches in diameter, not however inserted into the ear, but suspended from it.

The Paraguayrians seem to have learnt the various use of ear-rings from Peru. Its famous king and legislator, the Inca Manco Capac, permitted his subjects to perforate their ears, provided however that all the ear-holes should be smaller than those he himself used. He assigned various ear-rings to all the people in the various provinces: some inserted a bit of wood into their ears; some a piece of white wool not bigger than a man's thumb; others a bulrush; others the bark of a tree. Three nations were allowed the privilege of larger ear-rings than the rest. All persons of royal descent wore for ear-rings very wide rings which were suspended by a long band, and hung down to the breast. The Paraguayrians, who had at first imitated the Peruvians, in course of ages invented still more ridiculous ear-rings, none of which a European could behold without laughter.

As the Abipones deprive their eyes of brows and lashes, pierce their lips and ears, prick their faces with thorns and mark them with figures, pluck the down from their chins, and pull up a quantity of hair from the fore part of their heads, I always greatly wondered at their preserving the nose untouched and unhurt, the cartilage of which the Africans, Peruvians, and Mexicans formerly perforated, sometimes inserting a string of beads into the hole. According to Father Joseph Acosta, book VII. chap. 17, Tikorìk, king of the Mexicans, wore a fine emerald suspended from his nostrils. The Brazilians from their earliest age perforate not the lower lip alone but also other parts of the face, inserting very long pebbles into the fissures; a frightful spectacle, as the Jesuit Maffei affirms in the second book of his History of the Indies. You would call the faces of the Brazilians tesselated work or mosaic. But the Parthians delighted still more in deforming themselves; for, according to Tertullian, Lib. I., cap. 10. De Cultu Fœmin, they pierced almost every part of their bodies for the admission of pebbles or precious stones. If Diodorus Siculus Lib. IV. cap. 1. may be credited, the female Negroes bordering on Arabia perforated their lips for the same purpose. From all this it appears that the savages of America are not the only people who have adopted the foolish custom of marking their bodies in various ways.