Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Two Of The Carib Villages In The
Missions Of Piritu Or Of Carony, Contain More Families Than Four Or
Five Of The Settlements On The Orinoco.
The state of society among
the Caribbees who have preserved their independence, at the sources
of the Essequibo and
To the south of the mountains of Pacaraimo,
sufficiently proves how much, even among that fine race of men, the
population of the Missions exceeds in number that of the free and
confederate Caribbees. Besides, the state of the savages of the
torrid zone is not like that of the savages of the Missouri. The
latter require a vast extent of country, because they live only by
hunting; whilst the Indians of Spanish Guiana employ themselves in
cultivating cassava and plantains. A very little ground suffices to
supply them with food. They do not dread the approach of the
whites, like the savages of the United States; who, being
progressively driven back behind the Alleghany mountains, the Ohio,
and the Mississippi, lose their means of subsistence, in proportion
as they find themselves reduced within narrow limits. Under the
temperate zone, whether in the provincias internas of Mexico, or in
Kentucky, the contact of European colonists has been fatal to the
natives, because that contact is immediate.
These causes have no existence in the greater part of South
America. Agriculture, within the tropics, does not require great
extent of ground. The whites advance slowly. The religious orders
have founded their establishments between the domain of the
colonists and the territory of the free Indians. The Missions may
be considered as intermediary states. They have doubtless
encroached on the liberty of the natives; but they have almost
everywhere tended to the increase of population, which is
incompatible with the restless life of the independent Indians. As
the missionaries advance towards the forests, and gain on the
natives, the white colonists in their turn seek to invade in the
opposite direction the territory of the Missions. In this
protracted struggle, the secular arm continually tends to withdraw
the reduced Indian from the monastic hierarchy, and the
missionaries are gradually superseded by vicars. The whites, and
the castes of mixed blood, favoured by the corregidors, establish
themselves among the Indians. The Missions become Spanish villages,
and the natives lose even the remembrance of their natural
language. Such is the progress of civilization from the coasts
toward the interior; a slow progress, retarded by the passions of
man, but nevertheless sure and steady.
The provinces of New Andalusia and Barcelona, comprehended under
the name of Govierno de Cumana, at present include in their
population more than fourteen tribes. Those in New Andalusia are
the Chaymas, Guayqueries, Pariagotos, Quaquas, Aruacas, Caribbees,
and Guaraunos; in the province of Barcelona, Cumanagotos, Palenkas,
Caribbees, Piritus, Tomuzas, Topocuares, Chacopatas, and Guarivas.
Nine or ten of these fifteen tribes consider themselves to be of
races entirely distinct. The exact number of the Guaraunos, who
make their huts on the trees at the mouth of the Orinoco, is
unknown; the Guayqueries, in the suburbs of Cumana and in the
peninsula of Araya, amount to two thousand. Among the other Indian
tribes, the Chaymas of the mountains of Caripe, the Caribs of the
southern savannahs of New Barcelona, and the Cumanagotos in the
Missions of Piritu, are most numerous. Some families of Guaraunos
have been reduced and dwell in Missions on the left bank of the
Orinoco, where the Delta begins. The languages of the Guaraunos and
that of the Caribs, of the Cumanagotos and of the Chaymas, are the
most general. They seem to belong to the same stock; and they
exhibit in their grammatical forms those affinities, which, to use
a comparison taken from languages more known, connect the Greek,
the German, the Persian, and the Sanscrit.
Notwithstanding these affinities, we must consider the Chaymas, the
Guaraunos, the Caribbees, the Quaquas, the Aruacas or Arrawaks, and
the Cumanagotos, as different nations. I would not venture to
affirm the same of the Guayqueries, the Pariagotos, the Piritus,
the Tomuzas, and the Chacopatas. The Guayquerias themselves admit
the analogy between their language and that of the Guaraunos. Both
are a littoral race, like the Malays of the ancient continent. With
respect to the tribes who at present speak the Cumanagota,
Caribbean, and Chayma tongues, it is difficult to decide on their
first origin, and their relations with other nations formerly more
powerful. The historians of the conquest, as well as the
ecclesiastics who have described the progress of the Missions,
continually confound, like the ancients, geographical denominations
with the names of races. They speak of Indians of Cumana and of the
coast of Paria, as if the proximity of abode proved the identity of
origin. They most commonly even give to tribes the names of their
chiefs, or of the mountains or valleys they inhabit. This
circumstance, by infinitely multiplying the number of tribes, gives
an air of uncertainty to all that the monks relate respecting the
heterogeneous elements of which the population of their Missions
are composed. How can we now decide, whether the Tomuza and Piritu
be of different races, when both speak the Cumanagoto language,
which is the prevailing tongue in the western part of the Govierno
of Cumana; as the Caribbean and the Chayma are in the southern and
eastern parts. A great analogy of physical constitution increases
the difficulty of these inquiries. In the new continent a
surprising variety of languages is observed among nations of the
same origin, and which European travellers scarcely distinguish by
their features; while in the old continent very different races of
men, the Laplanders, the Finlanders, and the Estonians, the
Germanic nations and the Hindoos, the Persians and the Kurds, the
Tartar and Mongol tribes, speak languages, the mechanism and roots
of which present the greatest analogy.
The Indians of the American Missions are all agriculturists.
Excepting those who inhabit the high mountains, they all cultivate
the same plants; their huts are arranged in the same manner; their
days of labour, their work in the conuco of the community; their
connexions with the missionaries and the magistrates chosen from
among themselves, are all subject to uniform regulations.
Nevertheless (and this fact is very remarkable in the history of
nations), these analogous circumstances have not effaced the
individual features, or the shades of character which distinguish
the American tribes.
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