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Domestication of Animals
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minute and accurate narratives of social scenes among the Indians and
Esquimaux. In speaking of wolves he says
“They always burrow underground to bring forth their young, and though it is natural
to suppose them very fierce at those times, yet I have frequently seen the Indians go to
their dens and take out the young ones and play with them. I never knew a Northern Indian
hurt one of them; on the contrary, they always put them carefully into the den again; and I
have sometimes seen them paint the faces of the young wolves with vermilion or red
ochre.”
[South America.]—Ulloa, an ancient traveller, says
“Though the Indian women breed fowl and other domestic animals in their cottages,
they never eat them: and even conceive such a fondness for them, that they will not sell
them, much less kill them with their own hands. So that if a stranger who is obliged to pass
the night in one of their cottages, offers ever so much money for a fowl, they refuse to part
with it, and he finds himself under the necessity of killing the fowl himself. At this his
landlady shrieks, dissolves into tears, and wrings her hands, as if it had been an only son,
till seeing the mischief past mending, she wipes her eyes and quietly takes what the
traveller offers her.”
The care of the South American Indians, as Quiloa truly states, is by
no means confined to fowls. Mr. Bates, the distinguished traveller and
naturalist of the Amazons, has favoured me with a list of twenty-two
species of quadrupeds that he has found tame in the encampments of the
tribes of that valley. It includes the tapir, the agouti, the guinea-pig, and
the peccari. He has also noted five species of quadrupeds that were in
captivity, but not tamed. These include the jaguar, the great ant-eater, and
the armadillo. His list of tamed birds is still more extensive.
[North Africa.]—The ancient Egyptians had a positive passion for
tamed animals, such as antelopes, monkeys, crocodiles, panthers, and
hyenas. Mr. Goodwin, the eminent Egyptologist, informed me that “they
anticipated our zoological tastes completely,” and that some of the
pictures referring to tamed animals are among their very earliest
monuments, viz. 2000 or 3000 years B.C. Mr. Mansfield Parkyns, who
passed many years in Abyssinia
