La Relación - page 40

La Relación - page 40

roots are beginning to sprout and are not good. These people love their children more and treat them better than any other people on earth. When someone's child happens to die, the parents and relatives and the whole village weep for him for a full year. The parents begin crying each morning before dawn, and then the whole village joins in. They do the same thing at midday and at sunset. At the end of a year, they honor the dead child and wash themselves clean of the soot on their bodies. They mourn all their dead in this manner except old people, whom they ignore, saying that their time has passed and they are of Iittle use, and that in fact they occupy space and consume food which could be given to the children. Their custom is to bury the dead, unless the dead man is a medicine man, in which case they burn the body, all dancing around the fire with much merriment. They grind the bones to a powder. A year later they honor the dead medicine man, scar themselves, and his relatives drink the powdered bones mixed with water.

Each one has a recognized wife. The medicine men have the greatest freedom, since they can have two or three wives, among whom there is great friendship and harmony. When someone gives his daughter in marriage, from the first day of the marriage onward, she takes all that her husband kills by hunting or fishing to her father's lodge, without daring to take or eat any of it. The husband's in-laws then take food to him. All this time the father-in-law and the mother-in- law do not enter his lodge and he does not enter their lodge nor the lodges of his brothers-in-law. If they encounter him somewhere, they move away the distance of a crossbow shot, and while they are moving away, they lower their heads and keep their eyes on the ground, because they think it is a bad thing for them to see each other. The women are free to communicate and converse with their in-laws and relatives. This custom is observed on the island and for a distance of more than fifty leagues inland.

Another custom of theirs

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