Note 235 — Chapter XI

Infanticide is a subject open to unlimited misapprehension and misrepresentation. Compare with the above, for instance, the statements of a missionary among some of the Indian tribes farther south. Mr. Grubb speaks of “a shrill cry of pain when a child perhaps has been cruelly murdered” (An Unknown People in an Unknown Land, p. 17). A reviewer with much knowledge and experience of Paraguay, remarks, “I never remember hearing the women’s shrill cry of lamentation. The children are killed almost immediately after birth, as secretly as possible, and no one pays much attention to the fact” (Seymour H. C. Hawtrey, for R.A.I.). This is certainly the case with the Issa and Japura groups.