My Friends the Savages Part 18

It was an adopted child!

Is not this the acme of maternal feeling? And does it not approach foolishness?

The birth, and subsequent suckling, of her first child put an end to the grace and bloom of a Sakai woman.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A child being tattooed.

_p._ 140.]

She fulfils with incomparable zeal the functions confided to her by Nature, but as she has, at the same time, to attend to the heavy duties allotted her by man she becomes over-worked and worn-out with excessive fatigue.

When thirty years old she looks almost as old and withered as one of our hard-worked countrywomen does at fifty, and the poor creature cannot in any way conceal this premature falling off because of--the extreme lightness of her attire.

"The tailor tree of our great father Adam" has no leaves for the inhabitants of the jungle, for both male and female only wear a strip of bark (well beaten to render it flexible) wound round the body and fastened on the hips.

That worn by the men never exceeds four inches in breadth, but the women use lists of from six to eight inches wide. Another piece of bark-cloth is pa.s.sed between the legs and tied, in front and behind, to this belt.

The women, although daughters of the forest, are not without a certain amount of coquetry and will often decorate their girdles with flowers or medicinal and sweet-smelling herbs, but they never think of making a chaste veil of large leaves with which to cover those parts of their persons that ought to be kept secret from the public gaze.

The costume that they are wearing in the photographs was prepared by me in order to present these ochre-coloured Eves to my readers in a more decent state, or rather, a little more in accordance with what civilized society requires, because "to the pure all things are pure" and in my opinion the perfect innocence in which these women go about naked is preferable to that consciousness of their natural form which leads so many of our society ladies and other females, to resort to artificial means that they may deceive their admirers, and gain a name for beauty.

The men, too, are even to be envied, for in the total absence of nether-garments their better-halves can never claim "to wear the trousers" as sometimes happens amongst us.

Necklaces are very much worn by Sakai girls and women. They are made of beads (which are considered the most elegant) serpents' teeth, animals'

claws, sh.e.l.ls, berries or seeds.

The men, instead, finish off their toilet by loading their wrists with bracelets. These are of bra.s.s-wire, bamboo or _akar batu_ which it is believed preserves them from the fever.

Their faces are always disfigured by coloured stripes or hieroglyphics.

They have not the custom of wearing rings through their noses but only a little bamboo stick that is supposed to have the virtue of keeping off I don't exactly know what sort of malady or spirit.

The mother bores a hole through the nose cartilage of her child with a porcupine quill and then takes care that the wound heals quickly, without closing. Afterwards she pa.s.ses through a light piece of this reed.

The same operation is made upon the ears, which from being generally well-shaped, become deformed, as the hole through the lobe has to be very large. It is not sufficient to pierce the tissue with a quill; a little bamboo cane has to be at once inserted; the day after a larger one is subst.i.tuted and so on until it is possible to hang from the ears pendants made of bamboo and ornamented with flowers, leaves and perhaps even cigarettes.

A strip of _upas_ bark twisted round the head bestows the finishing touch to the Sakais' toilet. Happy people! They have no tailor's, dressmaker's or milliner's bills to pay!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: _Gne_ would be p.r.o.nounced in English as _neay_.

_Translator's Note._]

[Footnote 11: In chapter XIV speaking of the superst.i.tions of this people I have mentioned those which refer to the birth of a child and the strange ideas they have concerning this event.]

CHAPTER XI.

A Sakai village--The "elder"--The family--Degrees of relationship--Humorists disoccupied--On the march--Tender hearts--Kindling the fire--A hecatomb of giants--The hut--Household goods and utensils--Work and repose.

A real village, such as we understand it to be, does not exist among the Sakais, but I have been obliged to make use of the word for want of a better one to explain the meaning. Each hut is some hundreds of yards distant from the other so that altogether a village covers an area of from twenty to forty miles. Nearly always the boundaries of village territory are marked by secondary water-courses (the true Sakais never encamp near a navigable river) which give their names to the people living round the sh.o.r.es.

Only the width of a brook or torrent divides two of these settlements that I have called villages, therefore the distance is much less than that lying between the two extremities of a single village.

And yet, beyond being on neighbourly and friendly terms, they have nothing to do with each other, for one Sakai tribe does not like mixing with another and will not recognize any tone of authority, or receive any word of advice unless proceeding from a close relation, and even then it must be given in the form of fatherly counsel or affectionate exhortation otherwise the person to whom it is addressed would probably leave his own people, not to have further annoyance from them, and go to live among his wife's kinsfolk.

The inhabitants of a village are all one family, belonging to the first, second, third and even fourth generation for they are all descended from the same old man, who is called the "Elder" and who is regarded with esteem and consideration by everybody.

It is he who acts as magistrate or arbitrator in any dispute or quarrel (that very rarely takes place) amongst his offspring and the sentence p.r.o.nounced by him is rigorously respected. It is he, too, who selects the spot for a clearing when, as often happens, the Sakais change their place of encampment, forming their village in quite another part of the forest.

Besides this he has nothing else to do, unless he is still able to work.

The Elders of the various villages are upon a perfect footing of cordiality and never incite to or permit the shedding of blood, or even a conflict between their tribes.

If upon the death of an Elder there happens to be two or more brothers still living the oldest one succeeds him, and should any misunderstanding eventually arise between them, or should the number of those composing the village become too great, the other emigrates to a far off corner of the forest, followed by all the families which are, in a direct line, closely related to him, thus forming the nucleus of a new Sakai village which never exceeds a few hundreds of inhabitants.

In the plains, however, a great many families may be found living together in the same village, sometimes even to three thousand persons.

But it is not here that one is able to study and observe the habits and customs of the genuine Sakais.

Notwithstanding the practice of living in groups, one family isolated from the other, fraternity of race is very profoundly felt and if to-morrow a common danger should be menaced they would all unite like one man to resist and overcome it, besides being always ready to help each other in time of need.

Not many degrees of relationship are recognized by the Sakai.

The male and female children of the same father and mother are considered, as with us, brothers and sisters, but also the sons and daughters of brothers (who among us would only be cousins) are cla.s.sed the same and call all their uncles "father".

That established for the descendants of females is quite different, and this is natural because the girls of one village marry into another.

The children of a woman are supposed to bear no relationship to those of their mother's brothers and very little attention is paid to that which exists between them and their uncles.

Sisters' children are considered brothers instead of cousins, and the aunts are all called mothers, even when they live in other villages.

The wives of brothers call themselves sisters and are known by the name of "mother" by their nephews and nieces but sisters' husbands have no claim to relationship, other than that of cordial friendship.

Grandchildren give the t.i.tle of "father" also to their grandfather and great-grandfather and that of "mother" to their grandmother so that these two words which have such a sacred significance to us, to the Sakais are but common appellations.

No tie whatever exists between the parents of the husband and those of the wife and neither between the latter (the father and mother of the wife) and their sons-in-law. They are only upon simple friendly terms.

Humourists who are fond of exercising their wit upon the eternal mother-in-law question would find no ground for their jokes among this people.