ROTH] SEXUAL LIFE 321 



When the fasting period was approaching its conclusion, he had to 

 submit to a scarification, by means of agouti teeth, upon his shouklers 

 without a murmur, and the better he bore this infliction the more 

 vaHant would his son prove; the blood thus made to flow was not 

 allowed to fall onto the ground, but was smeared on the child's face 

 to make it courageous (genereux) (RoP, 550). The actual termina- 

 tion of the fast must here have been celebrated more or less cere- 

 moniously: ''Placed on a red-painted scat, the women bring him 

 food, which the old men put in his mouth, as they would do to a child, 

 the cassava and the fish being in small pieces: he eats the cassava, but 

 ejects the fish after cliewing it. lie would become sick if he began to 

 eat too well at once; he is made to drink by being lield by the neck" 

 (BBR, 249). The scarification and flogging ordeals of puberty are 

 repeated on the Carib father, both island and mainland, after his wife's 

 dehvery of either boy or girl : the reputed idea is " to transfer his courage 

 (muth) to the children" (ScR, ii, 431). In the former case, after a 

 course of very limited diet he is "brought to a public place, lookuig 

 like a skeleton, and standing upright on two large flat cakes of cassavas. 

 The sponsors then begin to scratch and cut his skin with ver}' sharp 

 agouti teeth. They first begin on the sides, then the shoulders, from 

 the arm to the elbow, from elbow to wrist, and from the thighs to the 

 ankles. . . . He is then painted ami rubbed Avith roucou leaves, 

 pepper seeds and tobacco juice, and placed on a red-painted seat" 

 (BBR, 248-9), and fed, as already- mentioned. The Mainland Carib, 

 the Galibi of Cayenne, after some weeks' subsistence on a stmted diet, 

 is "scarified on various parts of the body with fish-bones or agouti 

 teeth: very often even he is given several lashes with a whip" 

 (PBa, 223-4). 



281. After the l)irth of the baby come the various procedures con- 

 nected with the isolation of one or both parents; in the case of the 

 fatluT, his so-called "lying-in" is spoken of as the couvade, and is 

 met with in many tribes, for e.xample, Ai-awaks, Warraus, Caribs 

 (who call the practice l-enonimdno) , Makusis, and Wapisianas. In 

 the case of the Mainland Caribs (Cayenne) "when theii' waves are 

 confined for the fu'st time, the newly married husband has to sling 

 his hammock high up to the ridge of the house" (PBa, 223-4). 

 With the Island Caribs, if the child is a firstborn male, the hus- 

 band, as soon as the woman is delivered, goes to bed, complains 

 and acts as though he had been delivered (BBR, 248) , and submits 

 to a restricted diet, etc. As with the Caribs, so watli the ^\jawaks 

 and Warraus, it is practicall}' the husband who is isolated, and does 

 the " lying-in." Indeed, in these three tribes, the woman is isolated 

 only during actual delivery, which takes place either out in the bush, 

 in a separate shelter, or in a compartment specially partitioned oft" from 



139G1° — 30 ETH— 15 21 



