8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I33 



groups she is despised. One informant concluded that a man, too, can 

 be sterile. "How else explain why a man who married five successive 

 wives merely to have children had no child? Surely not all those 

 women were sterile." Because of the shame attached to sterility, a 

 childless couple usually adopts a child — three couples were mentioned 

 as having done so recently. Sterility is a cause for multiple wives. 



A medicinal preparation was known to produce sterility artificially 

 and was given to a woman whose death had been feared at previous 

 deliveries. Informants were unwilling to give further information 

 about it except to say that specialists knew what to give. In all 

 probability the ingredients used were not common knowledge. Non- 

 Araucanian herbalists had been asked for medicinal preparations to 

 bring about sterility. One man wanted it at once, since his baby had 

 just been born, and he knew the medicine had to be taken by his wife 

 immediately after delivery in order to be effective. In Conaripe area 

 a man asked for such a preparation for himself ; he wanted no more 

 children ; his family was already large. Sterility was not produced 

 by treatment with fumes. 



According to one of Cooper's sources (1946, p. 733) impotency 

 was produced in an unfaithful lover in revenge by the woman who 

 was the unmarried mother of his child. She roasted the testicles of 

 their infant in a heated pot, an act called koftun. 



Fertility, also, it is thought, can be produced by a medicinal prepa- 

 ration. An herbalist interviews the sterile woman and then goes home 

 to dream. The medicinal preparation she dreams of is given to the 

 woman. Following this the woman can expect to bear children ; often 

 the husband, too, takes the preparation. Several couples were named 

 who had no children in spite of having taken the preparation. 



An 80-year-old man, at the time of the present study, was the 

 father of three children younger than 10; they were born to his third 

 wife, a young woman. When the late cacique of Coiiaripe area died, 

 at about the age of 100, his youngest child was 6 years old. 



Artificial contraceptive devices are not known; medicinal ones are 

 spoken of. "Specialists know what to give." 



SIZE OF FAMILIES 



In the days of multiple wives each wife bore her husband children, 

 unless sterility prevented it. Often 10 or more years elapsed before 

 a man married an additional woman. Generally the newly acquired 

 wife was a young woman. 



The number of children in families in areas under my observation 



