32 King, Folk-lore of the North American Indians. 



therefore, help the child. A tribe of Melanesians, when a 

 favourite child dies, sacrifice the mother's aunt or the 

 grandmother to go and look after it. The same idea leading 

 to a different practice is shown when the Papuans and 

 Bushmen kill a sucking child if its mother dies. A case 

 is quoted where a Huron child was buried alive with its 

 dead mother from motives of compassion. An account 

 of the Abnakis of North America states that they are 

 inconsolable at the death of a child — believing that it was 

 wretched in the other world because it was too young to 

 look after itself and too weak to procure the necessaries 

 of life. 



When such are the notions held by savages it is hard 

 to see how they can be reconciled with the practice of 

 infanticide which is so frequent amongst savage tribes. 

 Infanticide, we are told, is often not regarded as murder if 

 it be performed immediately after birth, but, according to 

 the views w^e have been considering, infanticide would 

 have the effect of preventing a family relation from 

 coming back to life. The question of infanticide is a 

 practical one.* Savages suckle their infants for a long 

 time, often for three or more years. How can the mother 

 provide food enough for the newborn infant and for the 

 next youngest as well — how provide food for twins? 

 Amongst the Aruntas of Central Australia the infant is 

 killed immediately after birth. The spirit part of the 

 child goes back to the place from which it came, and can 

 be born subsequently of the same woman.f Even apart 

 from infanticide, deaths of children are very frequent 

 amongst uncivilised people, and by the Jesuits it was 



* Another practical question was the treatment of the old. The 

 Indian tribes deserted or even killed the aged or infirm, thinking that they 

 were thus doing them a good service, for otherwise they would be compelled 

 to die of hunger, (iv., 199.) "These people being nomadic cannot drag 

 after them their fathers or friends, the aged or the sick." (ii., 151.) 



t Spencer and Gillcn, op. cit., p. 51. 



