OF THE MOURNING, THE EXEQUIES, AND FUNERAL CEREMONIES
OF THE ABIPONES.
Of those things which the Abipones do to testify their grief, according
to the customs established by their ancestors, some tend to obliterate
the memory of the defunct, others to perpetuate it. All the utensils
belonging to the lately deceased are burnt on a pile. Besides the horses
killed at the tomb, they slay his small cattle if he have any. The house
which he inhabited they pull entirely to pieces. His widow, children,
and the rest of his family remove elsewhere; and having no house of
their own, reside for a time in that of some other person, or lodge
miserably under mats. They had rather endure the injuries of the
weather, than, contrary to the laws of their countrymen, inhabit a
commodious house that has been saddened by the death of the dear master
of it. To utter the name of a lately deceased person is reckoned a
nefarious offence amongst the Abipones; if, however occasion requires
that mention should be made of that person, they say, "The man that does
not now exist," making use of a paraphrase. But if the name of the
defunct be derived from an appellative noun, the word is abolished by
proclamation, and a new one substituted. It is the prerogative of the
old women to invent these new names, which are quickly divulgated
amongst the widely-scattered hordes of the Abipones, and are so firmly
imprinted on their minds, that no one individual is ever heard to utter
a proscribed word.
All the friends and relations of the deceased change the names they
formerly bore. In the colony of the Rosary, the wife of the chief
Cacique dying of the small-pox, her husband changed his name of
Revachigi to that of Oahari. His mother and brother and captive, as well
as all the brothers of the deceased, had new names given them with
various ceremonies. The old mother of the Cacique was extremely fond of
a lank, scraggy dog, unworthy of the very air it breathed. When this
change of names was made, I asked the old woman what name would be given
her dog, to show them that we held their absurd rites in ridicule,
though unable at that time to prevent them. On the death of a Cacique,
all the men under his authority shave their long hair as a sign of
grief. Widows also have their hair shaven, and wear a kind of cloak made
of the caraquatà, stained black and red, which covers the head like a
hood, and flows down from the shoulders to the breast. Widows use this
cloak all their lives, unless a new marriage frees them from the
unpleasant law of perpetual mourning. An Abiponian husband when he loses
his wife shaves his hair in like manner, and wears a small woollen cap,
which he publicly receives from the hands of an old woman, the priestess
of the ceremonies, whilst the other women are engaged in lamenting, and
the men in drinking together, and which he throws off when his hair
begins to grow.
But let me now discourse upon what entirely consoles the Abipones for
the loss of their friends, and renders the very necessity of mourning so
pleasant to them. Leaving the care of inhuming the body and lamenting
for it to the women, they seek for honey in the woods to serve as
materials for the public drinking-party, to which they all flock at
sun-set. At any report of the death of an Abipon we always pitied the
women, upon whom devolved all the trouble of the exequies, the care of
the funeral, and the labour of making the grave, and of mourning. For
besides that the corpse was to be carried to the grave, and inhumed by
them, all standing in a row, and uttering repeated lamentations, the
widowers were to be shaved, the widows veiled, the names of the
relations of the deceased to be changed, the funeral drinking-party to
be attended, and the houses to be demolished; in short, they had to go
through the trouble of a public mourning of nine days' continuance. This
is of two kinds. One which is held by day in the streets by all but the
unmarried women, and another carried on at night in houses appointed for
the purpose, and which none but those that are specially invited attend.
At stated hours, both in the forenoon and afternoon, all the women in
the town assemble in the market-place, with their hair scattered about
their shoulders, their breast and back naked, and a skin hanging from
their loins. The expression of their faces inspires I can hardly tell
whether most of melancholy or terror. Picture to yourself a set of
Bacchanals or infernal furies, and you will have a good idea of them.
They do not lament in one place by day. They go up and down the whole
market-place, like supplicants, walking separately but all in one very
long row. You may sometimes count as many as two hundred. They go
leaping like frogs. The motion of their feet is accompanied by a
continual tossing about of their arms. Each strikes a gourd containing
various seeds to the measure of her voice; but some, instead of a gourd,
beat a pan covered with does' skins, which makes the most ridiculous
noise you can conceive. To every three or four gourds one of these drums
answers. But what offends the ear most is the shouting of the mourners.
They modulate their voices, like singers, and make trills and quavers
mingled with groans. After chaunting some mournful staves in this manner
they all cease at intervals, and, changing their voices from the highest
to the lowest key, suddenly utter a very shrill hissing. You would swear
that a knife had been laid to their throats. By this sudden howl they
signify that they are seized with rage, uttering all sorts of
imprecations on the author of the death, whoever he be. Sometimes,
intermitting this chaunt, they recite a few verses in a declamatory
tone, in which they extol the good qualities and deeds of the deceased,
and in a querulous voice endeavour to excite the compassion and
vengeance of the survivors. At other times they mingle tears with their
wailings, tears extorted not by grief, but by habit, or, perhaps, by
exhaustion. Most of them carry about some little gift or remembrance of
the deceased, as emu feathers, glass-beads, a knife, or a dagger. I will
now describe their method of lamenting by night. About evening, all the
women that are invited assemble in a hut, one of the female jugglers
presiding over the party, and regulating the chaunting and other rites.
It is her business to strike two large drums alternately, and to sing
the doleful funeral song, the rest observing the same measure of voice.
This infernal elegy, accompanied with the rattling of gourds and
bellowing of drums, lasts till morning. The same method is observed for
eight days without variation; on the ninth night, if they be mourning
for a woman, the pans are broken, not without proper ceremonies. The
tragic howl, which they uttered on the preceding nights, now gives place
to a more festive chaunt, which the old female drummeress interrupts at
intervals with out-stretched jaws and a deep, and, as it were,
threatening voice, seemingly to exhort her singing companions to
hilarity and louder notes. These nocturnal lamentations, which continue
nine days, are commenced at the setting and concluded at the rising of
the sun. The patience displayed by the women in enduring so many
sleepless nights is truly astonishing, but still more so is that of the
men who can sleep soundly whilst the air is filled with confused shouts,
and the noise of gourds and drums. Nor are funeral rites alone conducted
in this manner. The sacred anniversaries to the memory of their
ancestors are religiously celebrated with the same rites and ceremonies.
Should the memory of her dead mother enter a woman's mind, she
immediately loosens her hair, seizes a gourd, paces up and down the
street with some women whom she calls to partake in her mourning, and
fills the air with lamentation. Few nights pass that you do not hear
women mourning. This they do upon their feet, with their bodies turned
towards the spot where the deceased is buried, always accompanying their
lamentations with the sound of gourds. Women find weeping easier than
silence, and this is the reason why the nights are so seldom passed in
quietness. The vociferation, however, always grows more violent as the
day approaches; for when one begins to lament another follows her
example, then a third comes, and then a fourth, till, by day-break, the
number of mourners seems greater than that of sleepers. The men meantime
are by no means idle. The grief which the women express with tears and
shrieks, they testify by shedding the blood of enemies or their own. The
nearest of kin to the deceased immediately assembles all the
fellow-soldiers he can raise, and leads them against the foreign foes by
whose hands his relation perished. It is his business to make the first
attack against the author of the death, and not to return home till he
has fully revenged it; though these savage heroes sometimes make an
inglorious retreat, without obtaining vengeance on their enemies.