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Updated: May 16, 2025
The Midgan, or slave-caste of the semi-Semitic Somal, are sometimes reduced to the same extremity; but they are ever held, like the Wendigo, or man-eaters, amongst the North American Indians, impure and detestable. On the other hand, the Tupi- Guaranis of the Brazil, a country abounding in game, fish, wild fruits, and vegetables, ate one another with a surprising relish.
The regiments are composed of Patagonian Indians or semi-civilized Guaranis, mixed with all classes of criminals from the state prisons. Nature has imprinted upon them the unmistakable marks of the savage sullen, stupid ferocity, indifference to pain, bestial instincts. As for his fighting qualities, they more resemble those of the tiger than of the cool, brave and trained soldier.
The narrow scaled fruit, which resembles reddish pine-cones, yields different articles of food according to the period at which it is gathered whether the saccharine properties are fully matured, or whether it is still in a farinaceous condition. The Guaranis have of late years come under the influence of Christian Protestant missions.
The Guaranis, to which the tribe who attacked us belonged, are the most widely scattered of any of the Indian nations in South America. They are to be found, Uncle Paul told me, as far south as the Rio de la Plata, and on the banks of most of the rivers between it and the Orinoco, where the white man is not yet settled.
When symptoms of puberty appeared on a girl for the first time, the Guaranis of Southern Brazil, on the borders of Paraguay, used to sew her up in her hammock, leaving only a small opening in it to allow her to breathe.
And the Jesuit missionaries, Fathers Raymond and Dutertre, who lived many years among the Antillean Caribs, concluded from their traditions that they were descended from a people on the continent named Galibis, who, according to M. d'Orbigny, were a branch of the Guaranís.
Bows and arrows are unknown; the Nayin or cross-bow peculiar to this people, and probably a native invention, not borrowed, as might be supposed, from Europe, is carried only when hunting or fighting: a specimen was exhibited in London with the gorillas. The people are said sometimes to bend it with the foot or feet like the Tupi Guaranis, the Jivaros, and other South Americans.
The descendants of the Guaranis exist some in a semi-civilised condition, others as barbarous as of yore in several parts of the continent; but a large portion became amalgamated with the invaders, and their language is still spoken throughout Paraguay and the neighbouring provinces by the mixed race who have descended from them.
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.
Why these Guaranis had attacked us, it was hard to say, except that they had observed, when watching our movements, some persons of an enemy's tribe in our company. Kallolo and Maco belonged, they told us, to the Acawoios, a tribe living towards the head waters of the Essequibo.
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