The Choctaw Redskins formerly had an analogous custom. Brett and Im Thurn have observed this "lying-in" among the Indians of Guiana. The father, Brett says, goes to his hammock quite naked, taking the most indecent posture, and he remains there some days as if he were ill, receiving the congratulations of his friends and tended by the women of the neighbourhood, whilst the mother of the new-born infant goes about her cooking without receiving any attention.[1]
The testimony of the Jesuit Dobritzhoffer, in regard to the Abipones, is not less explicit: "Among the Abipones of South America," he says, "as soon as the wife has given birth to a child, the husband is put to bed, and carefully tended; he fasts for a certain time. You would swear that it is he who has just been delivered. I had formerly read of this and smiled at it, not being able to credit such folly, and supposing that this barbarous custom was related more as a joke than seriously, but at last I have seen it with my own eyes amongst them."[2] More recent testimony confirms what I have just quoted. In 1842 M. Mazé, Commissioner-General in French Guiana, himself proved the custom of couvade among the Indian tribes on the river Oyapok. In 1852 M. Voisin, justice of the peace in a commune of French Guiana, ascending in a canoe the river Mana, received hospitality one night in the hut of some Galibi Indians. On awaking he learned that during the night, and behind a partition of foliage which separated his hammock from the household of his hosts, a child had been born. The mother had uttered no sound, and at daybreak M. Voisin saw her go to the river-side and make her toilet, then take her new-born child and throw it several times into the water, catching it as it rose to the surface, and then wiping it with her hands. The husband, on the contrary, remained all the while in his hammock, acting the invalid, and receiving with the greatest seriousness the attention lavished on him by his wife.[3]
The couvade comedy is not always so complete. In certain tribes it is attenuated, and becomes more symbolic.
