My Friends the Savages Part 14

The head is covered with a rich, crisp growth of very black hair but few hairs are to be seen on the face or body. Those rare ones, whose appearance would be rapturously hailed by our youths as the forerunners of a possible mustache or beard, are plucked out by the Sakais in their spare time!

A great many ladies would be highly contented to possess the beautiful tresses that the Sakai woman generally has, but whilst amongst us an artistic arrangement of the hair is an attraction which often makes us forget the lesser charms of the face, the raven locks of these women sometimes cause a feeling of disgust.

They do not take the least care of this splendid ornament bestowed upon them by Nature; when they do not let their hair hang dirty and dishevelled upon their shoulders they just tie it up badly with a strip of many-coloured upas bark (a remedy against migraine) stick in some roughly carved combs and hair-pins (amulets against the malignant spirit of the wind) and adorn it with fresh flowers.

But alas! under that bow of natural ribbon, under those combs and flowers there is a tiny world of restless inhabitants and the poor primitive Eve is obliged to scratch her head furiously now and then.

And not less furiously does the man also scratch his though he takes much more pains over his hair, combing and smoothing it in order to divide it well in front and display the tattoo which distinguishes the parting.

Frequently both the men and the women rub into their heads the finely pounded root of a plant to which they attribute the virtue of softening their rough, luxuriant locks and of destroying the inmates.

Even the men sometimes wear combs and hair-pins.

Cleanliness as the reader will have understood from the example given above is not the highest quality of the Sakai any more than it is of other primitive peoples. Hygienic practices march alongside civil progress. The bath, as a pleasure or a necessity, is quite unknown to them, and those who dwell amongst the mountains have the greatest fear of water. The foaming torrents and noisy cascades that dash down the ravines have inspired them with terror and as they have no notion whatever of being able to keep afloat, they are afraid to venture near a stream, however quietly it may flow, unless it is shallow enough for them to see the bottom.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Sakai beauty.

_p._ 119]

Not only have they no idea of swimming but they are equally ignorant of any other means, of remaining on the water's surface. They have no canoes of any kind and when they want to cross from one sh.o.r.e to the other they either throw a huge tree into the river to serve as a bridge or they walk on round the bank until they find a fordable point and can reach the opposite side by jumping from stone to stone.

I am glad to say that my lectures upon cleanliness have not been completely fruitless for many of the young people make their ablutions now from time to time, especially the females, and come to me asking for soap. Though not a great step towards progress this is always better than nothing. The old people, of course, do not regard the bathing innovation with kindly eyes. They are always filthy to a repugnant degree, begrimed with ashes and earth from lying about round the fire, day, and night; the smell that emanates from them certainly does not invite one to approach them.

But their fathers and their grandfathers never washed themselves and so it is their duty to follow their questionable example.

The five senses with the Sakais are practically reduced to two for whilst they are very quick in hearing and seeing, the same cannot be said of smelling, feeling and tasting.

The acuteness of the two first is due to the continual need they have, in the forest, of keeping the ear and the eye open. To be on their guard against enemies they must either hear or see them.

The weakness of the smelling faculty may be explained by the bad way the Sakai men and women treat their noses, boring holes through them large enough to pa.s.s a little bamboo stick, which they wear, partly for ornament, and partly as a charm, against I do not exactly know what danger. And not only this, but they are in the habit of playing a sort of flute with their nose, stopping up the right nostril with leaves, so it is easy to comprehend what little sensibility this unfortunate appendix of the face can have.

Owing to their almost complete nudity their skin is not very susceptible to touch for it is hardened and toughened by the effects of sun, rain, cold and dew which makes it as weather-beaten as that of any old salt's; besides this they are accustomed from childhood to be stung by insects and nettles, to be p.r.i.c.ked and scratched by thorns and brambles, and to be cut by the dry stiff blades of the long gra.s.ses of their native place. Habit is second nature.

Their deficient sense of taste results from the practices mentioned further on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Another Sakai beauty.

_p._ 119.]

Sakai cookery does not require much study or experience.

The vegetable food they have at their disposition consists of: sweet potatoes, yams, maize, sikoi, different bulbs and tubers that they find in the forest like we do truffles, many edible leaves and all sorts of fruit, mushrooms, _nanka_, _guaccicous_, _gua pra_,[9] etc. Rice is an imported luxury which they use when they can get it.

Here are the necessaries for a variety of dishes, but the Sakais know no variety in the culinary art and with the exception of the fruit, the yams and potatoes that are cooked under the hot ashes, the whole lot is put, with a little water, into cooking-pots made out of large bamboo canes, and boiled up together into a kind of paste with pieces of serpents, rats, toads, lizards, beetles and other similar delicacies to give it flavour.

The monkey, deer, wild-boar, wild-sheep and any other big game caught in traps they just burn at the fire without taking the trouble to skin the animal, and then they eat it nearly raw.

They season the meat with salt, when they have any, which is not often, and with a capsic.u.m that sets your mouth on fire. The use of this capsic.u.m, and the continual chewing of tobacco, and betel has ruined the palate of the Sakais, and left them with little power of relis.h.i.+ng.

Fish is rarely seen at the board (I use the word in a figurative sense as the thing it signifies does not exist for them) of the mountain tribes for the double motive that they have no fis.h.i.+ng tackle and their fear of the water makes them avoid it as much as possible. Nevertheless when there is a dearth of other food they will throw in some beaten _ple-pra_ and the fish, of a fair size, that rise to the surface to bite it are deftly hit by a knife, the Sakai seldom failing in his mark.

To the simplicity of their cooking corresponds the still greater simplicity of their drinks which are--of the singular number.

The inhabitants of the forest drink nothing but water but this they require clear and fresh. Should it not be perfectly pure in colour and taste they will not drink it. They always seek a spring to satisfy their thirst and supply their families with the necessary liquid.

Sometimes, when I was first living amongst them, I happened to stoop over a torrent or stream to drink some water but my companions protested vehemently declaring that it might do me a great deal of harm.

They are afraid of poisons in every shape and form as they are also of contagion and would even be frightened if in drinking they were to touch their bamboo bottles and gla.s.ses with their lips. They are very clever in pouring the contents down their throats without letting the receptacle come in contact with their mouths, an accomplishment which we should not be able to achieve until after many damp trials.

It might almost be desired that our civilization would imitate this hygienic custom of the savages. How many infections the less! How much fewer the microbes that poison the blood of our poor people!

The Sakais do not drink milk, not only from the difficulty in obtaining it but also from a strange prejudice which I have never succeeded well in understanding.

Once they are weaned they never swallow a single drop of milk.

Neither do they drink alcoholic beverages for the simple reason that they have not got them and do not know what they are.

If they should ever come to taste them and procure them easily will they not crave for them like all other savages?

As soon as the Sakai's frugal meal is finished he fills his mouth with tobacco, or if he has none, with sirih.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Resting from work.

_p._ 123.]

This is composed of a leaf or two of betel--a plant that possesses a certain narcotic virtue--smeared with lime and rolled up round a little tobacco and a piece of areca nut. Both men and women chew these quids with great relish, spitting out the juice from time to time.

The old people, whose want of teeth makes mastication next to impossible, put the ingredients into a bamboo and pound them until they are reduced to, what they consider, a delicious paste.

The young Sakai reaches the height of his vigour at about eighteen years old, after which he has a brief stationary period, followed by a rapid falling off that I think must be caused by his being continually exposed to the inclemency of the weather.

The woman begins to decline soon after her first confinement. From the age of 13 to 15 she becomes a wife and in two years from that date she is but the ghost of her former self. Thin, and with a wrinkled skin, not even a shadow remains of her youthful freshness and the attractive points she had as a girl.

But what does this matter to her? Her husband is faithful to her, with a fidelity that knows no hypocrisy; she is happy and is proud of her maternity; she can still dance and strike chords upon her _krob_, modulate a plaintive ditty on her _ciniloi_ and sing whilst she beats on her bamboo sticks an accompaniment that tortures well-tuned ears. For the rest, if her beauty soon fades, her ugliness does not create the least feeling of disgust amongst the Sakais of the masculine gender, who have aesthetic ideas peculiarly their own.

It is enough to say that the ugliest of the female s.e.x are the prettiest and the most admired.

I am speaking in earnest.

They, as well as the men, are in the habit of painting themselves in grotesque stripes and hieroglyphics, in imitation of medicinal plants, the princ.i.p.al colours used being red and black. Sometimes they add a little white but very rarely yellow.