WHOLE VOL. THE WEST INDIES VAZQUEZ DE ESPINOSA 693 



the Spaniards shall not learn that they are kidnapping them) they 

 sell them off to the Guarani Indians for a dog or a knife or glass 

 beads or axes. 



When a marriage is to take place they call a meeting at an ap- 

 pointed place, and the cacique orders everyone to come to where 

 they are to marry off the bride with his arrow and bow, and to bring 

 a pelt or other article as a present, each according to his means ; 

 and when they have gathered, the cacique goes in first to enjoy the 

 bride, and then the others in due order, each presenting what he has 

 brought toward her dowry, and the last of all is the husband ; and 

 with this barbarous and bestial procedure, they are duly married. 



They have another savage custom : when father or mother or some 

 close relative dies, as a sign of grief and mourning they cut off a 

 finger or toe joint, cutting off as many as they have lost relatives 

 by death, until they may even get completely maimed in hands and 

 feet, and those who have cut off the most joints are held and respected 

 as the most honored. 



1830. Some i6 leagues from the city there is another tribe of very 

 barbarous Indians called the Pampas. These have never been pacified 

 nor can they be brought to listen to reason. They go naked ; their 

 country is flat ; they are great shots with rope bolas, spears, and 

 arrows. It is their custom, when a marriage is to take place, for the 

 young man to take a fagot of wood to his future father-in-law's 

 home and lay it at the door and then retire and hide where they 

 cannot see him, but he can see if they pick up the fagot ; and if they 

 take it inside, that means that the marriage and matrimonial cere- 

 mony is a fact, and he goes at once to his father-in-law's home without 

 further formality and takes the bride as his own ; but if they do not 

 take in the fagot, off he goes, for they do not want him. These 

 barbarous savages have the custom, when father or mother or son 

 dies, of skinning and eating him ; they stuff the skin with straw and 

 keep it as a memento, saying that they cannot keep him better than 

 inside themselves, nor give him a better resting place. 



They neither sow nor trade ; they are unconquerable for their 

 country gets flooded ; when it rains, it all becomes a sea ; and so, 

 although they are so near the city, for this reason and their great 

 bestiality, they have never been subdued. If they catch any Spaniard, 

 his sad fate is to be put in a corral or cage like a pig to be fattened 

 and eaten. There are many other very savage tribes in those regions, 

 impossible to enumerate. 



1831. From this city to that of Cordoba, which is the boundary 

 with the Diocese and State of Tucuman, it is 120 leagues of level 



