324 ANIMISM AND FOLK-LORE OF GUIANA INDIANS [eth. ANN. 30 



with their nails. A piece of the midrib of the kokerite pahn is 

 specially employed for the purpose (ScR, ii, 314). 



283. In many of the tribes during the couvade, and often for long 

 afterward, the husband is prohibited from engagmg in certain of his 

 ordinary occupations. The Pomeroon Arawak must neither smoke, 

 lift any heavy weight, use a fish-hook, nor have intimate relations 

 with any woman. The Mainland Carib of Cayenne was not allowed 

 to cut any big timber with an ax (PBa, 223-4). The Makusi must 

 not touch his weapons (ScR, ii, 313). Should these and similar pro- 

 hibitions be not observed, some evil would be sure to befall the child. 

 There is another intei'esting example recorded of a man ( ?Arawak) 

 during couvade lying in his hammock and twisting a new bowstring; 

 baby began to scream, with the result that the father had to undo 

 the whole line (Ti, ii, 1883, p. 355). 



When one reaUzes what the Indian conception of child-life is, the 

 explanation of the above otherwise extraordmary customs becomes 

 comparatively simple. In its material as well as m its spirit nature 

 the baby is believed to be part and parcel of both parents, and even 

 at birth is not considered to have an independent existence. Its 

 material dependence on the father ceases only when the navel-string 

 is fuially detached, the signal for the male parent to conclude his 

 "hatching" or couvade. The baby's spirit nature does not, how- 

 ever, usually free itself from the mother luitil the lapse of many 

 months, when it begins to crawl or walk (an occasion which in some 

 tribes seems to have been celebrated by a festival, with hair cutting 

 and other features) ; hence, all this time, whatever can affect the 

 mother in the way of food, or otherwise, exerts a corresponding influ- 

 ence on the child. On the other hand, its spirit nature may occasion- 

 ally tend to wander aU on its ovn\ account. Thus, when a Moruca 

 River woman is carrying her very young infant along a pathway and 

 happens to meet a cross path, she wiU break off a leaf or two from 

 an adjoining bush, and throw it on the latter; baby's Spirit must 

 follow her and not go off in another direction. On the conclusion of 

 the couvade the baby's sjjirit natin-?, though physically freed from 

 the Spirit of the father, and in that sense independent of it, never- 

 theless accompanies the father for a similar period, that is, imtil it 

 can crawl, and can be influenced by it so long as the companionship, 

 so to speak, is retained. When the infant begins to crawl, its hair 

 is cut for the first time. Rev. Mr. Dance was, I beUeve, among the 

 first to appreciate fully the true signification of these facts in con- 

 nection with, presumably, the Arawaks. I myself have had oppor- 

 tunities for studying them among Arawaks as well as Warraus. 



The infant Spirit clings to the father, gazes upon him, foUows him wherever he 

 goes, and for the time being is as intimate and familiar with the father, as he is with 

 his own infant body with which the infant Spirit is only recently associated. How 



