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Updated: May 9, 2025
Among the Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco, the missionaries discovered what they describe as "a carefully planned system of racial suicide, by the practice of infanticide by abortion, and other methods." Nor is infanticide the only mode in which a savage tribe commits suicide. A lavish use of the poison ordeal may be equally effective.
Travellers on such an errand as that which is carrying the gaucho and his youthful companions across the Chaco, do not lie abed late; and they are up and stirring as the first streak of blue-grey light shows itself above the horizon. Again a tiny fire is kindled; the kettle hung over it; and the mates, with the bombillas, called into requisition.
His home is a movable point upon an area of twenty thousand square miles; his horse, the finest steed that he can find upon the Pampas between Buenos Ayres and the Andes, between the Gran Chaco and Cape Horn; his food, the first beef that he captures with his lasso; his dainties, the tongues of cows which he kills, and abandons, when he has stripped them of his favorite titbit, to the birds of prey.
His new acquaintance invites him to go with him to Paraguari, but before complying with the invitation M. Forgues crosses the river and rides into the territory of Gran Chaco as far as the Quinta de la Miseria, situated about two miles and a half from the river-bank.
Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Guaranis, Chiriguanos, and Lengua Indians, 56 sq.; among the Yuracares of Bolivia, 57 sq.; among the Indians of the Gran Chaco, 58 sq.; among the Indians of Brazil, 59 sq.; among the Indians of Guiana, 60 sq.; beating the girls and stinging them with ants, 61; stinging young men with ants and wasps as an initiatory rite, 61-63; stinging men and women with ants to improve their character or health or to render them invulnerable, 63 sq.; in such cases the beating or stinging was originally a purification, not a test of courage and endurance, 65 sq.; this explanation confirmed by the beating of girls among the Banivas of the Orinoco to rid them of a demon, 66-68; symptoms of puberty in a girl regarded as wounds inflicted on her by a demon, 68.
One of the two differs only in the style of his dress; being an Indian as the others, and, like them, quite a youth, to all appearance the youngest of the party. Yet also their chief, by reason of his richer and grander dress; his attire being of the most picturesque and costly kind worn by the Chaco savages.
Coronado said of Cevola, “The seven cities are seven small towns, standing all within four leagues together;” and “all together they are called Cevola.” The Chaco ruins show that each of these “cities” was, Pueblo fashion, a single edifice of vast size, capable of accommodating from five hundred to three thousand people.
The savannahs of the province of Chiquitos communicate on the north with those of Moxos, and on the south with those of Chaco; but a ridge or line of partition of the waters is formed by the intersection of two gently sloping plains.
To cure the painful and dangerous wound inflicted by a ray-fish, the Indians of the Gran Chaco smoke the wounded limb and then cause a woman in her courses to sit astride of it. An ancient Hindoo method of securing prosperity was to swallow a portion of the menstruous fluid.
From the military outposts of Argentina at the south, to the Fort of Olimpo, 450 miles north, the country is left entirely to the savage. The former are built to keep back the Tobas from venturing south, and the latter is a Paraguayan fort on the Brazilian frontier. Here they are landed and, perforce, fasten themselves like leeches on the licentious soldiery. The Chaco is a great unknown land.
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