Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The
Authority Of The Chiefs Of The Independent Caribs Is Hereditary In The
Male Line Only, The Children Of Sisters Being Excluded From The
Succession.
This law of succession which is founded on a system of
mistrust, denoting no great purity of manners, prevails
In India;
among the Ashantees (in Africa); and among several tribes of the
savages of North America.* (* Among the Hurons (Wyandots) and the
Natchez the succession to the magistracy is continued by the women: it
is not the son who succeeds, but the son of the sister, or of the
nearest relation in the female line. This mode of succession is said
to be the most certain because the supreme power remains attached to
the blood of the last chief; it is a practice that insures legitimacy.
Ancient traces of this strange mode of succession, so common in Africa
and in the East Indies, exist in the dynasty of the kings of the West
India Islands.) The young chiefs and other youths who are desirous of
marrying, are subject to the most extraordinary fasts and penances,
and are required to take medicines prepared by the marirris or
piaches, called in the transalleghenian countries, war-physic. The
Carribbee marirris are at once priests, jugglers and physicians; they
transmit to their successors their doctrine, their artifices, and the
remedies they employ. The latter are accompanied by imposition of
hands, and certain gestures and mysterious practices, apparently
connected with the most anciently known processes of animal magnetism.
Though I had opportunities of seeing many persons who had closely
observed the confederated Caribs, I could not learn whether the
marirris belong to a particular caste.
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