290 SOME REMARKABLE CUSTOMS. 



there was at this absurd notion. ' But not only tlie father's 

 food/ the Tamanacs went on to say, ' but even killing fish or 

 any other animal on such days, would do harm to the children.' 

 When I knew of this nonsense, I set myself to work to seek 

 out the motive of it, and taking aside one of the most reason- 

 able of the savages : ' tell me,' I said, ' as the Spaniards do 

 not fast at the birth of their children, for what reason do you 

 fast at such a joyful moment ?' ' The child is ours, and pro- 

 ceeds from us,' replied the savage, 'and the cooked food used 

 by grown folks, which is profitable for us at other times, would 

 now do the little children harm, if we ate it.' So I observed 

 a sort of identity which he supposed to exist between father 

 and son," etc. The missionary goes on to relate how he cured 

 the Indian of the delusion, by showing that to give him a 

 thrashing would have no effect on his child.^ 



Among the Arawaks of Surinam, for some time after the 

 birth of his child, the father must fell no tree, fire no gun, hunt 

 no large game ; he may stay near home, shoot little birds with 

 a bow and arrow, and angle for little fish ; but his time hang- 

 ing heavy on his hands, the most comfortable thing he can do 

 is to lounge in his hammock.^ Of the couvade among the 

 fierce equestrian tribe of the Abipones, whose home lay south 

 of the centre of the continent, the Jesuit missionary Dobriz- 

 hoffer gives a full account. " No sooner do you hear that the 

 wife has borne a child, than you will see the Abipone husband 

 lying in bed, huddled up with mats and skins lest some ruder 

 breath of air should touch him, fasting, kept in private, and 

 for a number of days abstaining religiously from certain viands ; 

 you would swear it was he who had had the child. ... I had 

 read about this in old times, and laughed at it, never thinking 

 I could believe such madness, and I used to suspect that this 

 barbarian custom was related more in jest than in earnest; but 

 at last I saw it with my own eyes in use among the Abipones. 

 And in truth they observe this ancestral custom, troublesome 

 as it is, the more willingly and diligently from their being 

 altogether persuaded that the sobriety and quiet of the fathers 



' Grilij, ' Saggio di Sfcoria Americana,' vol. ii. p. 133, etc. 

 " Quandt, in Klemm, C. G., vol. ii. p. 83. 



