Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1895 — Fathers Must Be Careful There. [ARTICLE]

Fathers Must Be Careful There.

Among the Indians of British Guiana usage bids the father to go to bed when a child is born, and allows the mother to return at once to her household duties. Janies Rodway’s recently published book on that country explains the custom by a superstition which attaches the spirit of the child to the body of the father. The author says: “The father must not hunt, shoot, or fell trees for some time, because there is an invisible connection between himself and the babe, whose spirit accompanies him in all his wanderings, and might be shot, chopped, or otherwise Injured unwittingly. He therefore retires to his hammock, sometimes holding the little one, and receives the congratulations of his friends, as well as the advice of the elder members of the community. If he has occasion to travel he must not go very far, as the child and spirit might get tired, hhd in passing a creek, must first lay across it a little bridge or bend a leaf Into the shape of a canoe for his companion.’’— New York Times.