Remember the Rainforest tm

Home

Expedition Index

Expedition Text

Expedition Etchings

Etching locations

Maps

Plants

Animals

People and Scenes

Eco-petitions and project proposals

Lesson plans

Statistics

Authors and Artists

Contact us

page 77 ---witch doctors---women---Payagoas nation---abortion---burial---

Guaycuru people

The face and often the neck and breast of the adult Guaycurus, are disfigured by tatooing, in the shape of diamonds; in the underlip they wear a piece of reed several inches long. The hair upon the temples and thence round the head is shorn, like that of the Franciscan monks. Among them too, the Payes, who are met with in all the Indian tribes in Brazil, and are called in their language Vunageneto, are greatly respected. These latter are physicians, conjurers, and exorcists of the evil principle, which they call Nanigogigo. Their cures of the sick are very simple, and consist principally of fumigating or in sucking the part affected, on which the Paye [conjurer] spits into a pit, as if he would give back the evil principle which he has sucked out, to the earth and bury it.

The Guaycurus differ from most of the Indians of South America, in not burying their dead near the abode of each individual, but in common burying grounds. The accounts of the number of this tribe are in general exaggerated. It is certain that the whole nation at this time does not consist of more than twelve thousand persons, and this number daily diminishes from the unnatural custom of the women, who til they have reached the thirtieth year, procure abortion, to free themselves from the privations of pregnancy, and the trouble of bringing up children.

The third powerful nation, the Payagoas, who at the time of the discovery of the country were particularly formidable to the Paulistas by their fleets, are now rare in the waters of Upper Paraguay, i.e. above the narrow part of the river, at the mountains Feixe dos Morros.

page 78 ----indians---

As constant rivals and enemies of the Guaycurus, they do not unite with them, till the occupation of their country by the Portuguese; and have hitherto proved the implacable enemies of the latter, menacing them sometimes with open hostility, sometimes by well-contrived surprises and robberies, in which they never spared the vanquished. When they seperated in the year 1778 from their allies, the Guaycurus, they disdained to remain in a country which they could no longer dispute with foreigners, and withdrew to the lower Paraguay near Assumcao, when they submitted to the Spaniards. Unsettled and fugitive, cowardly and cruel, despised by the weaker, they act exactly the same part in the waters of the Paraguay, as the Muras in the Madeira and the Amazon river, in describing whom we shall return to them. Besides the Cayapos and the Guaycurus, travellers by those rivers hear also of the Icquatos indians as inhabitants of Matto Grosso.

Porto Feliz, province of Sao Paulo

Our experienced host at Porto Feliz had just received orders from the government at Sao Paulo to prepare several large canoes in order to convey ammunition down the Tiete to Cujaba. As for a long period, all military stores had been sent to Matto Grosso by way of Minas and Goyaz, this method surprised the inhabitants who puzzled themselves with conjectures, respecting the object of these consignments.