Thus when the Patagonians were attacked by
small-pox, which they attributed to the machinations of an evil
spirit, they used to abandon their sick and flee, slashing the air
with their weapons and throwing water about in order to keep off the
dreadful pursuer; and when after several days' march they reached a
place where they hoped to be beyond his reach, they used by way of
precaution to plant all their cutting weapons with the sharp edges
turned towards the quarter from which they had come, as if they were
repelling a charge of cavalry. Similarly, when the Lules or
Tonocotes Indians of the Gran Chaco were attacked by an epidemic,
they regularly sought to evade it by flight, but in so doing they
always followed a sinuous, not a straight, course; because they said
that when the disease made after them he would be so exhausted by
the turnings and windings of the route that he would never be able
to come up with them. When the Indians of New Mexico were decimated
by smallpox or other infectious disease, they used to shift their
quarters every day, retreating into the most sequestered parts of
the mountains and choosing the thorniest thickets they could find,
in the hope that the smallpox would be too afraid of scratching
himself on the thorns to follow them.
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