OF THE STRENGTH AND LONGEVITY OF THE ABIPONES.
Truly ridiculous are those persons who, without ever having beheld
America even from a distance, have written with more boldness than truth
that all the Americans, without distinction, are possessed of little
strength, weakly bodies, and bad constitutions, which cannot be said of
the generality of them. Their habit of body varies according to climate,
country, food, and occupation; as we find those Europeans who breathe
the healthy mountain air of Styria more robust than those who grow
sallow with ague in the marshy plains of the Bannat. Negro slaves
brought in ships were often exposed to sale, like cattle, in the streets
of Lisbon, whilst I was in that city. Those from Angola, Congo, Cape de
Verd, and above all the island of Madagascar are eagerly chosen, being
generally of strong health and superior activity. Africans, natives of
that country which the Portugueze call Costa de la Mina, can scarcely
find a purchaser, being generally weak, slothful, and impatient of
labour, because they inhabit nearest to the equator, where there is
little or no wind, tepid air, and frequent rain. In sailing to Paraguay
we were detained in that neighbourhood by a continuous calm, and
remained stationary there for full three weeks, roasted by the heat of
the sun, and daily washed with warm showers. Who can wonder that this
languishing climate produces languid and weakly bodies, though strong
robust people are found in other parts of Africa? From this you may know
what to think of so extensive a region as America, and of its
inhabitants. Its various provinces and even different parts of the
provinces differ essentially in the properties of the air, food, and
habitations, which produces a variety in the constitutions of the
inhabitants, some being weak, some very strong.
Let others write of the other Americans to whom and what they choose: I
shall not contradict them. Of the Paraguayrians I confidently affirm
that the equestrian nations greatly excel the pedestrians in beauty of
form, loftiness of stature, strength, health, and longevity. The bodies
of the Abipones are muscular, robust, agile, and extremely tolerant of
the inclemencies of the sky. You scarcely ever see a fat or pot-bellied
person amongst them. Daily exercise in riding, hunting, and in sportive
and serious contests prevents them almost always from growing fat, for
like apes they are always in motion. They consequently enjoy such an
excellent habit of body, and such sound health as most Europeans might
envy. Many diseases which afflict and exhaust Europeans are not even
known by name amongst them. Gout, dropsy, epilepsy, jaundice, stone, &c.
are words foreign and monstrous to their ears. They expose their bare
heads for whole days to the heat of the sun, and yet you never hear one
of them complain of head-ache. You would swear they were devoid of
feeling, or made of brass or marble; yet even these grow hot when acted
on by the rays of the sun. After having been long parched with thirst in
dry deserts, they drink large draughts of marshy, salt, muddy, stinking,
bitter water, without injury. They greedily swallow quantities of hard,
half-roasted beef, venison, tiger's and emu's flesh, and the eggs of the
latter, without experiencing any consequent languor of the stomach, or
difficulty of digestion. They often swim across vast rivers in cold
rainy weather without contracting any ill affection of the bowels or
bladder, which was often troublesome to the Europeans in swimming, and,
if succeeded by strangury, dangerous. They ride seated on saddles made
of hard leather during journeys of many weeks, and yet such long sitting
does not injure the external skin even. They are unprovided with
stirrups, and often use trotting horses, yet after many hours of
uninterrupted riding you can perceive no signs of fatigue or exhaustion
in any of them. Stretched on a cold turf, should a sudden shower
descend, they pass the night swimming in water, yet never know what the
colic or the gout is. The Spaniards run the risk of both after being
long drenched with rain water, which, when it touches the skin, affects
the body most terribly in America, often producing syncope, and
sometimes pustules and ulcers. I have frequently seen Spanish soldiers
faint in the church from having been wetted with rain on their way
thither. The Abipones pass many days and nights amid constant rain
uninjured, because their feet are bare; for the moisture contracted from
rain hurts the feet when they are wrapt up more than when they are
uncovered; as, finding no vent when it exhales, it creeps inwards,
penetrates the bones and nerves, and affects the rest of the body in a
terrible manner. But I can give you further proof of the strength of the
Abipones.
If a thorn of any plant happens to stick in their foot, and to break
there, so that it cannot be pulled out by the finger, they will coolly
cut the little piece of flesh, to which the thorn adheres, with a knife.
When they go out to act the part of spies, or to reconnoitre distant
places, they sit with both feet upon the horse's back. They climb high
trees, and sit quietly on their boughs, in order to plunder the hives
concealed there, without any sense of danger or giddiness. After their
removal to our colonies, being fatigued with handling the axe and the
plough, instruments to which they were unaccustomed, and feeling their
strength fail them, their bodies bathed in sweat, and burning with heat,
they exclaimed, _La yivichigui yauigra_, now my blood is angry. For this
they have a ready remedy: they plunge a knife deep into their leg, watch
the blood spouting from it for some time with pleased eyes, and at
length stop it by applying a clod to the wound, saying with a cheerful
voice that they are recovered, and feel perfectly well. They are as
lavish, and almost prodigal in shedding their blood, for the purpose of
obtaining glory, as of procuring health; for in public drinking parties
they cruelly prick their breast, arms and tongue with a bundle of
thorns, or with the sharp bones of a crocodile's back, with much
effusion of blood. They emulate one another in doing this, in order to
obtain a reputation for bravery, and that these spontaneous wounds may
render them less fearful of shedding their blood in engagements with the
enemy, and may make their skin impenetrable by covering it with scars.
Boys of seven years old pierce their little arms in imitation of their
parents, and display plenty of wounds, indications of courage superior
to their years, and preludes of war, for which they are educated from
earliest infancy.
Persons wasted to a skeleton, and with every symptom of fever and
consumption, we have seen restored to health by daily eating and
drinking the alfaroba. When seized with a violent disorder, or
dangerously wounded, they recover by the use of this easily obtained
remedy, or, like dogs, without any at all. I have often with horror
beheld many of them wounded with various kinds of weapons, their side
pierced, their bones and ribs broken, their breath drawn with
difficulty, the blood streaming from their numerous wounds; themselves,
in short, the breathing images of death. When I saw these very Abipones
a few weeks afterwards, riding or drinking, in full health, I could
attribute it to nothing but the strength of their constitutions; for it
certainly could not be owing to their unskilful physicians and
inefficacious medicines. Every one knows that small-pox and measles are
almost the only, and by far the most calamitous pest by which America is
exhausted. The Abipones take the infection like the other Indians, but
seldom fall victims to the disease, though, whilst under its influence,
they are less careful of themselves than the other natives. Owing to the
more healthy temperature of their blood and humours, it does not cause
either so much, or such noxious matter in them as it does in others. Of
the small-pox I shall discourse more fully hereafter. They live and
enjoy their health many years after they have been wounded with leaden
bullets without ever suffering them to be extracted: as a proof of their
strength they often showed us a bullet sticking, without injury, in
their arm or foot, and offered it us to handle. It is still more
remarkable that a musket ball seldom proves fatal to the Abipones,
unless it strike the heart or the head: their Cacique, the renowned
Kaapetraikin, received a ball of this kind into his forehead without any
dangerous consequences. Considering these things I often wondered why
the savages dreaded firearms so much, since they very rarely proved
fatal to them. But as children are afraid of ignes fatui, though
harmless; in like manner the Indians fear the report more than the ball,
which they so often find to miss of its aim, and prove formidable to the
air alone. These instances will, if I mistake not, do something towards
convincing Europeans of the strength of the Abipones. Neither shall I
ever be a convert to the opinion that the Americans are possessed of a
duller and less acute sense of corporal inconvenience. The Abipones are
highly sensible of the impressions of the elements, the injuries of
weapons, and the pain arising from these causes, but are not so much
overcome and exhausted by them as most others, either because they are
blessed with a better temperature of blood and humours, and greater
strength of limbs and muscles, or because the hardships they have been
accustomed to from childhood, render them callous, or because their
eager thirst after military fame impels them to deny that anything gives
them pain, though they be ever so much affected by it.
I have already observed that they seldom grow bald, and not grey till at
an advanced period of life. Even when arrived at extreme age they can
hardly be said to have grown old, like certain plants which are always
green and vigorous. Cicero, in his treatise on Old Age, bestows great
praise on Massinissa, king of Mauritania, who, at ninety years of age,
_cùm ingressus iter pedibus sit, in equum omninò non ascendit: cùm equo,
ex equo non descendit. Nullo imbre, nullo frigore adducitur, ut capite
operto sit. Exequitur omnia regis officia et munera, etc._ The Roman
orator would find all the old Abipones so many Massinissas, or even more
vigorous than Massinissa. He would scarce believe his own eyes were he
to see men, almost a hundred years old, leap on to a fiery horse,
without the aid of a stirrup, like a boy of twelve years old, sit it for
hours, and even whole days, beneath a burning sun, climb trees for
honey, travel or lie upon the ground in cold or rainy weather, contend
with the enemy in battle, shrink from no toils of the army or the chase,
evince wonderful acuteness both of sight and hearing, preserve all their
teeth quite sound, and seem only to be distinguished by the number of
their years from men in the prime of life. All these things will hardly
be credited in Europe where they are so rare. In the colonies of the
Abipones I daily beheld old men, like youths in every other respect but
that of age, without surprize. If a man dies at eighty he is lamented as
if cut off in the flower of his age. Women generally live longer than
men, because they are not killed in war, and because the moistness of
their nature renders them more long lived. You find so many old women a
hundred years of age, amongst the Abipones, that you may wonder at, but
will scarce be able to count them. I cannot say that the pedestrian
nations of Paraguay enjoy equal strength and longevity. The Guaranies,
Lules, Isistines, Vilelas, and other pedestrian Indians, are subject to
diseases like the Europeans, and both feel old age, and discover it by
their habit of body. Their lives, like those of Europeans, are sometimes
short, sometimes long. You find very few men a hundred years old, or
even approaching to that age amongst them. It is worth while to
investigate the causes of this exceeding vigour of the Abipones.