POLYGAMY OP THE NATIVES. 
455 
them in the sun, and reduce them to powder without 
separating the hones. I have seen masses of fifty or sixty 
pounds of this flour, which resembles that of cassava. 
W hen it is wanted for eating, it is mixed with water, and 
reduced to a paste. In every climate the abundance of fish 
has led to the invention of the same means of preserving 
them. Pliny and Diodorus Siculus have described the fish- 
bread of the ichthyophagous nations, that dwelt on the 
Persian Gulf and the shores of the Ked Sea.* 
At Esmeralda, as everywhere else throughout the missions, 
the Indians who will not he baptized, and who arc merely 
aggregated in the community, live in a state of polygamy. 
The number of wives differs much in different tribes. It is 
most considerable among the Caribs, and all the nations that 
have preserved the custom of earning off young girls from 
the neighbouring tribes. How can we imagine domestic 
happiness in so unequal an association ? The women live in 
a sort of slavery, as they do in most nations which are in a 
state of barbarism. The husbands being in the full enjoy- 
ment of absolute power, no complaint is heard in their pre- 
sence. An apparent tranquillity prevails in the household ; 
the women are eager to anticipate the wishes of an imperious 
and sullen master ; and they attend without distinction to 
their own children and those of their rivals. The mission- 
aries assert, what may easily be believed, that this domestic 
peace, the effect of fear, is singularly disturbed when the 
husband is long absent. The wife who contracted the first 
ties then applies to the others the names of concubines and 
servants. The quarrels continue till the return of the 
master, who know s how to calm their passions by the sound 
of his voice, by a mere gesticulation, or, if he thinks it 
necessary, by means a little more violent. A certain 
inequality in the rights of the women is sanctioned by the 
language of the Tamanacs. The husband calls the second 
and third wife the companions of the first; and the first 
treats these companions as rivals and enemies (ipucjatoje), 
* These nations, in a still ruder state than the natives of the Orinoco, 
contented themselves with drying the raw fish in the sun . They made up 
the fish-paste in the form of bricks, and sometimes mixed with it the 
aromatic seed of palinrus (rhamnus), as in Germany, and some other 
countries, cummin and fennel-seed are mixed with wheaten bread. 
