nor] SICKNESS AND HYGIENE 703 
world, and that it was rendering them a great service thus to deliver 
them from its troubles; but the Carib assured him that this was not 
true (PBR, 253). Yet in contradiction to this statement there is the 
evidence of Rochefort as follows: True it is that some Carib hereto- 
fore have hastened the death of their parents and have killed their 
fathers and mothers out of a persuasion that they did a good work 
and rendered them a charitable office by delivering them out of many 
inconveniences and troubles which attend old age (RO, 565). On 
the other hand, whatever the omission of altruistic duty to which the 
Guiana Indian male might plead guilty, so long as he himself had 
wife or mother, he would be neither forgotten nor neglected. 
918. Many are the references throughout the literature of cases 
where the Indians have taken to their heels upon the development 
in their midst of diseases new to them, i. e., introduced directly or 
indirectly by Europeans and Negroes (Cr, 505). In the course of 
a smallpox epidemic on the Corentyn the Indians deserted their 
dwellings and took to the woods, leaving the unfortunate sufferers 
to the care of a few old women (StC, 1, 299). Brett relates that 
when the cholera broke out on the Pomeroon some of the Carib 
went into the most inaccessible parts of the forest to escape the 
disease, and learned that they had even cut down large trees to 
obstruct the paths, lest the people should too easily follow them 
(Br, 225). The felling of the trees, however, was rather to prevent the 
evil spirit that caused the disease from pursuing the fugitives (PEN, 
1, 176). Crévaux was informed at San Fernando that the Piaroa 
Indians (Orinoco River) avoid contact with the whites. They have 
so great a fear of calentura [fever] and catarro [influenza] that they 
won’t touch with their hands a piece of money offered them by the 
whites before washing it with a stick (Cr, 542). The same traveler 
subsequently had a personal experience of similar nature among 
the same Indians, by whom he was well received, but happening to 
sneeze he saw the circle around him broken. The most timid betook 
themselves to a distance, the bravest closing their noses with the 
thumb and forefinger (Cr, 543). The Trio (Surinam) asked De 
Goeje’s party several times whether they had brought disease with 
them, and emphatically warned them on taking their departure not 
to bring any under any circumstances (GO, 15). The Parikuta host 
in welcoming his guest expresses the hope that the latter has brought 
no bad spirits with him (sec. 813). These examples must not be 
taken as indicative of the Indians having any appreciation of the 
contagiousness of disease, as one or two travelers would seem to 
believe, but rather as indicative of their conception that disease can 
be sent them, etc., by their enemies or the medicine men (WER, v1, 
sec. 307). 
