bajalera
Super Nomad
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Location: Santa Maria CA
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Those uncivilized early-day nomads
A quick scanning of Padre Baegert's account of life among the Baja nomads gives the impression that in their world, it was Every Man for Himself. And
likewise for Women and even Children.
"As far as food for their support is concerned," Baegert said, "the husband does not provide for his wife, nor the wife for her husband, nor either
for their children beyond infancy. Both parents eat whatever they have or find, each one for himself, without being concerned about the other or about
their offspring."
But when English pirate Capt. George Shelvocke dropped anchor off Cabo San Lucas in 1721 and spent some time among the Pericu, he noticed that "when
any of us gave any thing that was eatable to any one of them in particular, he always divided it into as many shares as there were persons about him,
and commonly reserv'd the least for himself."
Capt. Woodes Rogers, who was at the cape in 1709, said his people gave one of the natives a shirt, "but he soon tore it to pieces and gave it to the
rest of his Company to put the Seeds in, which they us'd for Bread."
Pericu men wouldn't trade their necklaces of carved mother-of-pearl shell and seeds for the colored glass beads the pirates offered--what they wanted
were knives.
When the English crew traded old knives for fish, the Indians passed the knives around until everybody had one--"and after they had enough," Rogers
wrote, "we could get no Fish from them." Pericu society was definitely not acquisitive.
Sick people, according to Baegert, were either ignored or maybe not, depending on where you open his book.
On page 65, ". . . the healthy ones care little for the sick and hardly trouble themselves about them (even if these should happen to be husbands,
wives, or other close relations) . . ."
Earlier, however, he had said, "If the Indians make a shelter for a sick person as a protection against heat or cold, the entrance to this shelter is,
as a rule, so low that it is necessary to crawl into it on hands and knees." (Baegert sometimes had to enter shelters to administer sacraments--and he
has been described as corpulent.)
"To transport a sick person from one place to another," the padre says, "they bind him to a ladder made of crooked pieces of wood, and two carriers
bear this stretcher on their heads. This is truly a bed of torture for any person who lacks Indian bones."
Maybe so, but it brought sick people along to the rancheria's next campsite where they could be cared for, instead of leaving them alone to fend for
themselves.
Without a whole lot of help, some of the Indians described by Jesuits could not have survived. Baegert met a 70-year-old blind men, and elderly blind
men were seen by Francisco de Ulloa at a Pacific Coast site in 1539.On his expedition to the north, Wenceslao Linck met a 70-year-old who had been
born sightless.
Relatives and/or friends had not only been providing these disabled people with food and other needs, but had also been leading them from place to
place every few days when their rancherias moved. Narrow Indian trails, which often crossed rugged terrain and passed through dense thorny vegetation,
must have made guiding a blind person truly difficult.
The fact that a baby who was born blind was allowed to live--and had been nurtured for decades--is unexpected, because of the infanticide mentioned in
Jesuit documents. Padre Miguel del Barco said, "The [Indian]love of young children [hijuelos] is not enough to prevent them from sometimes killing
their newborn infants [criaturas] when they cannot obtain food."
Statements like this have in modern times been interpreted as "they killed their children." However, Barco didn't refer to the unfortunate ones as
ninos or hijos--the common terms for children--or even as hijuelos. He called them criaturas: newborns, who have a very specific diet.
Given a mother who isn't getting enough food to produce milk, and a starving infant, it's doubtful that anything approaching the mother/child
"bonding" considered so important today could have occurred during a starving time.
When weather or insects caused a disastrous crop failure, hunters-and-gatherers knew when and where the next food supply would become available--and
about how long the starving time could be expected to last.
In a camp of 40 to 80 people where perhaps a dozen starving infants were wailing nonstop, ending their misersy instead of letting them die slowly and
painfully--and inevitably--could be considered an act of human kindless (at least by other members of the rancheria, who were starving, too, and
probably pretty grouchy).
Some early-day observers have described the peninsula's Indians as uncivilized savages, but after describing the somewhat forbidding appearance of the
Pericu, Capt. Shelvocke added, "there is a wide difference between what one would, upon the first sight, expect to find from them, and what they
really are; for by all that I could discern in their behaviour towards one another, and their deportment towards us, they are endued with all the
humanity imaginable. . ."
bajalera
\"Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest never happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.\" -
Mark Twain
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academicanarchist
Senior Nomad
Posts: 978
Registered: 9-7-2003
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cultural chauvinism
Bajalera. You mean to say that people like Baegert were biased? Don't say it is so! I don't need to tell you that people like Baegert were steeped in
a strong dose of cultural chauvinism, their inherent belief in their own cultural and religious superiority.
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bajalera
Super Nomad
Posts: 1875
Registered: 10-15-2003
Location: Santa Maria CA
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Chauvinist? Naw, surely you jest!
Maybe I've finally figured out John Jacob's inconsistencies. Essentially he was (for good reason) pist-off, and wrote the book off the top of his head
in stream-of-consciousness style--so after starting sections with negative statements remembered some of the good stuff that I can use. And like any
amateur writing in a snit, he never bothered to go back for a second look at what he'd written. This would also help to explain the translator's
problems.
Or maybe he just had a drinking problem?
Good to have you back!
Lee
\"Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest never happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.\" -
Mark Twain
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