OF THE PERFORATION OF THE LIPS AND EARS OF THE
SAVAGES.
The Abipones, like all the other American savages, used formerly to
pierce their lower lip with a hot iron, or a sharp reed. Into the hole
some insert a reed and others a small tube of bone, glass, gum, or
yellow brass; an ornament allowed only to the men when they are seven
years old, never to the women. This custom has long since been abolished
amongst the later Abipones, but is still continued by the Guaranies who
inhabit the woods, by the Mbayas, Guanas, and Payaguas. These people
think themselves most elegantly adorned when they have a brass pipe a
span long, and about the thickness of a goose's quill, hanging from the
lip to the breast. But this imaginary ornament renders them very
formidable to European strangers; for they are of great height, their
bodies are painted with juices of various colours, and their hair
stained of a blood red; the wing of a vulture is stuck in one of their
ears, and strings of glass beads hung round their neck, arms, knees and
legs; thus accoutred they walk the streets smoking tobacco out of a very
long reed; figures in every respect terrible to behold.
The thing which is inserted into the lip, of whatever material it may be
made, is called by the Guaranies _tembetà_, and is universally used by
them whilst they wander about the woods without religion; but after
being converted to Christianity and settled in colonies they throw away
this lip appendage. The hole of the lip, which neither salve nor plaster
will cure, however, remains, and in speaking the saliva sometimes flows
profusely through it; it also impedes them a little in pronouncing some
words. All the plebeian Indians whom I discovered in the woods of
Mbaeverá, both youths and adults, used a short slender reed for the
tembetà; but that of the three caciques was made of a gold-coloured gum
or rosin. At first sight I could have sworn that it was glass. In the
heat of the sun that beautiful gum flows plentifully from the tree abati
timbabỹ, and falls gradually into the models of tembetàs, crosses,
globes, or any other figure they like: exposed to the air it grows as
hard as a stone, so that no liquid can ever melt it, but still retains
its glassy transparency. If this rosin of the tree abati timbabỹ were
not possessed of singular hardness, the tembetà made of it, after
remaining whole days in the lip of the savage, and being covered with
saliva, would soften, and dissolve.
Do not imagine that there is but one method of piercing the lip amongst
the savages. The anthropophagi do not pierce the lower lip but cut it to
the length of the mouth in such a manner, that when the wound terminates
in a scar they look as if they had two mouths. They wander up and down
the woods, and are often, but fruitlessly exhorted by the Jesuits, not
without peril to themselves, to embrace our religion. The Indians of
Brazil and Paraguay formerly delighted in human flesh. Many of them,
after having been long accustomed to Christian discipline in our towns,
sometimes confessed that the flesh of kine or of any wild animal tastes
extremely flat and insipid to them, in comparison with that of men. We
have known the Mocobios and Tobas, for want of other food, eat human
flesh even at this day. Some hundreds of the last-mentioned savages fell
suddenly upon Alaykin, cacique of the Abipones, about day-break as he
was drinking in a distant plain with a troop of his followers. An
obstinate combat was carried on for some time, at the end of which the
wounded Abipones escaped by flight. Alaykin himself and six of his
fellow-soldiers fell in the engagement, and were afterwards roasted and
devoured by the hungry victors. An Abiponian boy of twelve years old,
who used to eat at our table, was killed at the same time by these
savages, and added to the repast, being eaten with the rest; but an old
Abiponian woman, who had been slain there with many wounds, they left on
the field untouched, her flesh being too tough to be used. Now let me
speak a little of the adorning, or, more properly, torturing of the
ears.
The use of ear-rings, which is very ancient, and varies amongst various
nations, is highly ridiculous amongst the Americans. The ears of very
young children of both sexes are always perforated. Few of the men wear
ear-rings, but some of the older ones insert a small piece of cow's
horn, wood, or bone, a woollen thread of various colours, or a little
knot of horn into their ears. Almost all the married women have
ear-rings, made in the following manner. They twist a very long palm
leaf two inches wide into a spire, like a bundle of silk thread, and
wider in circumference than the larger wafer which we use in sacrifice.
This roll is gradually pushed farther and farther into the hole of the
ear; by which means in the course of years the skin of the ear is so
much stretched, and the hole so much enlarged, that it folds very
tightly round the whole of that palm leaf spire, and flows almost down
to the shoulders. The palm leaf itself, when in this spiral form, has an
elastic power which daily dilates the hole of the ear more and more. Do
not think that I have exaggerated the size of this spire and the
capaciousness of the ear. With these eyes, by the aid of which I am now
writing, I daily beheld innumerable women laden with this monstrous
ear-ring, and very many men even of other nations. For those most
barbarous people the Oaèkakalòts and Tobas, and other American nations
out of Paraguay, use the same ear-rings as the Abiponian women. The
Guarany women wear brass ear-rings sometimes three inches in diameter,
not however inserted into the ear, but suspended from it.
The Paraguayrians seem to have learnt the various use of ear-rings from
Peru. Its famous king and legislator, the Inca Manco Capac, permitted
his subjects to perforate their ears, provided however that all the
ear-holes should be smaller than those he himself used. He assigned
various ear-rings to all the people in the various provinces: some
inserted a bit of wood into their ears; some a piece of white wool not
bigger than a man's thumb; others a bulrush; others the bark of a tree.
Three nations were allowed the privilege of larger ear-rings than the
rest. All persons of royal descent wore for ear-rings very wide rings
which were suspended by a long band, and hung down to the breast. The
Paraguayrians, who had at first imitated the Peruvians, in course of
ages invented still more ridiculous ear-rings, none of which a European
could behold without laughter.
As the Abipones deprive their eyes of brows and lashes, pierce their
lips and ears, prick their faces with thorns and mark them with figures,
pluck the down from their chins, and pull up a quantity of hair from the
fore part of their heads, I always greatly wondered at their preserving
the nose untouched and unhurt, the cartilage of which the Africans,
Peruvians, and Mexicans formerly perforated, sometimes inserting a
string of beads into the hole. According to Father Joseph Acosta, book
VII. chap. 17, Tikorìk, king of the Mexicans, wore a fine emerald
suspended from his nostrils. The Brazilians from their earliest age
perforate not the lower lip alone but also other parts of the face,
inserting very long pebbles into the fissures; a frightful spectacle, as
the Jesuit Maffei affirms in the second book of his History of the
Indies. You would call the faces of the Brazilians tesselated work or
mosaic. But the Parthians delighted still more in deforming themselves;
for, according to Tertullian, Lib. I., cap. 10. De Cultu Fœmin, they
pierced almost every part of their bodies for the admission of pebbles
or precious stones. If Diodorus Siculus Lib. IV. cap. 1. may be
credited, the female Negroes bordering on Arabia perforated their lips
for the same purpose. From all this it appears that the savages of
America are not the only people who have adopted the foolish custom of
marking their bodies in various ways.