28o SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 1 33 



could not have happened very easily when I was a girl," said a woman 

 older than lOO years ; "mothers watched over their girls then. Parents 

 would not have wanted a son to marry a girl that had a 'natural' 

 child — parents, you know, arranged for the marriage of their sons 

 in those days." 



Illegitimacy in a family lowered the status of the family in the 

 community. The expectant unmarried mother was scolded by her 

 parents; sometimes whipped by her father. "No one would have 

 blamed her parents if they had hanged her." Usually, however, the 

 parents said nothing, blaming themselves. Everybody in the family 

 was ashamed ; conversation by family members became almost nil ; 

 quietly everyone waited for the months to pass until the arrival of the 

 baby. The cacique had the right to take the life of the paramour, if 

 the girl's parents insisted that he do so. Girls, knowing this, usually 

 protected the man by refusing to identify him. 



If the unmarried mother was not accepted by her parents, she de- 

 livered her child away from home, usually in the woods, where she 

 was assisted by a friend. If she delivered it in her home, it was 

 reared there. "What else could they do?" Sometimes the child was 

 reared by grandparents or other sympathetic adults. According to 

 Argentine law, a child born out of wedlock may bear its father's 

 name, a custom taken over by present-day Araucanians. 



Informants lamented the present-day increase of children born out 

 of wedlock. "Today there are girls who are only 12 years old who 

 have a 'natural' child." 



DEFORMED CHILDREN, INFANTICIDE, SICK CHILDREN 



Rarely was a child born deformed. One had been born with only 

 one finger; one with only a thumb and first finger on its left hand; 

 one with a harelip ; one with defective hearing ; one had faulty teeth 

 from babyhood on ; an occasional child is not able to walk at the 

 proper age. "What could parents do about it? They had to take the 

 child as it came." No child was known to have been born with 

 polydactyl digits. Infanticide was not practiced. 



A child that cries only occasionally is looked upon as a normal child, 

 and no attention is paid to its crying. During an interview a child less 

 than 2 years old cried because its grandaunt, who often coddled it, 

 left the house. Elders merely laughed, and let it cry. But a child that 

 cries persistently is thought to be sick, that is, to have something 

 wrong with its intestinal tract. It is given either dehydrated powdered 

 lining of the crop of chicken or rhea, preferably rhea, or its own 



