30O SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I33 



[intestines] on the right side of his body," and more often, in recent 

 years, uses a revolver. The chief reason for suicide is "feehng sad 

 about a thing." In two instances insanity was given as the cause. An 

 informant in his eighties told of a suicide that had just happened : 

 "When I arrived home last evening, a young man, only 25 years old, 

 had cut his throat. He was still lying near my yard [the Argentine 

 law forbids the removal of such a body until the police have given 

 permission to do so]. The people are saying that this man committed 

 suicide because he had a heavy and sad heart — his mother, who was 

 a widow, died in disgrace recently. Although she had sons and 

 daughters with whom she might have lived, she gave herself up to 

 other men. If one of the man's [suicide's] sisters had been sad, she 

 would have hung herself ; one of my women relatives did that. This 

 relative of mine loved someone, but her parents would not allow her 

 to marry him and this saddened her. She fastened one end of a rope 

 about her neck and tied the other to a branch of a tree that hung over 

 a cliff — any projection would have done. She let go of the rope, and 

 there she hung in midair." 



While I was in the area a young woman hung herself because her 

 father refused to let her work in San Martin de los Andes. The fol- 

 lowing morning, a schoolboy, while looking for a horse on which to 

 ride to school, found her hanging from a tree. 



An 80-year-old informant told of a suicide committed by a woman 

 who was intermittently insane. "The woman went to her daughter-in- 

 law's house to see why the daughter-in-law's small child was crying. 

 She found the daughter-in-law hanging from the rafters by a rope 

 and the child hanging onto its mother's feet. The mother-in-law could 

 not look at the woman; she grabbed the child and ran out of the 

 house." 



LYING, THEFT, INTOXICATION 



Persons seldom lied. Liars were not respected. "It is the same 

 today," said a man in his eighties. Old informants remarked that 

 young men tell lies at home about food, "the way in which they got the 

 food that they bring home from estancias, especially animals. We eat 

 the food, but no one compliments the young man for having provided 

 it." A non-Araucanian, who was born and reared among the Arauca- 

 nians and who employed a large number of them on his estancia, 

 noted, "An Araucanian cannot lie and get away with it. You can 

 see it in his face and in his actions the minute he tells a lie." 



Stealing today is usually done from Argentines ; seldom is anything 

 stolen from an Araucanian. Things stolen are usually sheep. 



