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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Were They Albinos, Such As Have Been Found Heretofore In
The Isthmus Of Panama?
But examples of that degeneration are very
rare in the copper-coloured race; and Anghiera, as well as Gomara,
speaks of the inhabitants of Paria in general, and not of a few
individuals.
Both describe them as if they were people of Germanic
origin,* (* "Aethiopes nigri, crispi lanati; Pariae incolae albi,
capillis oblongis protensis flavis." - Pet. Martyr Ocean., dec. 50
lib. 6 (edition 1574). "Utriusque sexus indigenae albi veluti
nostrates, praeter eos qui sub sole versantur." (The natives of
both sexes are as white as our people [Spaniards], except those who
are exposed to the sun.) - Ibid. Gomara, speaking of the natives
seen by Columbus at the mouth of the river of Cumana, says: "Las
donzellas eran amorosas, desnudas y blancas (las de la casa); los
Indios que van al campo estan negros del sol." (The young women are
engaging in their manners: they wear no clothing, and those who
live in the houses ARE WHITE. The Indians who are much in the open
country are black, from the effect of the sun.) - Hist. de los
Indios, cap. 74. "Los Indios de Paria son BLANCOS y rubios." - (The
Indians of Paria are WHITE and red.) Garcia, Origen de los Indios
1729, lib. 4 cap. 9.) they call them 'Whites with light hair;' they
even add, that they wore garments like those of the Turks.* (*
"They wear round their head a striped cotton handkerchief" - Ferd.
Columb. cap. 71. (Churchill volume 2.) Was this kind of head-dress
taken for a turban? (Garcia, Origen de los Ind., page 303). I am
surprised that people of these regions should have worn a
head-dress; but, what is more curious still, Pinzon, in a voyage
which he made alone to the coast of Paria, the particulars of which
have been transmitted to us by Peter Martyr of Anghiera, professes
to have seen natives who were clothed: "Incolas omnes genu tenus
mares, foeminas surarum tenus, gossampinis vestibus amictos
simplicibus repererunt; sed viros more Turcorum insuto minutim
gossypio ad belli usum duplicibus." (The natives were clothed in
thin cotton garments; the men's reaching to the knee, and the
women's to the calf of the leg. Their war-dress was thicker, and
closely stitched with cotton after the Turkish manner.) - Pet.
Martyr, dec. 2 lib. 7. Who were these people described as being
comparatively civilized, and clothed with tunics (like those who
lived an the summit of the Andes), and seen on a coast, where
before and since the time of Pinzon, only naked men have ever been
seen?) Gomara and Anghiera wrote from such oral information as they
had been able to collect.
These marvels disappear, if we examine the recital which Ferdinand
Columbus drew up from his father's papers. There we find simply,
that "the admiral was surprised to see the inhabitants of Paria,
and those of the island of Trinidad, better made, more civilized
(de buena conversacion), and whiter than the natives whom he had
previously seen."* (* Churchill's Collection volume 2, Herrera
pages 80, 83, 84. Munoz, Hist. del Nuevo Mundo volume 1, "El color
era baxo como es regular en los Indios, pero mas clara que en las
islas reconocidas." (Their colour was dark, as is usual among the
Indians; but lighter than that of the people of the islands
previously known.) The missionaries are accustomed to call those
Indians who are less black, less tawny, WHITISH, and even ALMOST
WHITE. - Gumilla, Hist. de l'Orenoque volume 1 chapter 5 paragraph
2. Such incorrect expressions may mislead those who are not
accustomed to the exaggerations in which travellers often indulge.)
This certainly did not mean that the Pariagotos are white. The
lighter colour of the skin of the natives and the great coolness of
the mornings on the coast of Paria, seemed to confirm the fantastic
hypothesis which that great man had framed, respecting the
irregularity of the curvature of the earth, and the height of the
plains in this region, which he regarded as the effect of an
extraordinary swelling of the globe in the direction of the
parallels of latitude. Amerigo Vespucci (in his pretended FIRST
voyage, apparently written from the narratives of other navigators)
compares the natives to the Tartar nations,* (* Vultu non multum
speciosi sunt, quoniam latas facies Tartariis adsimilatas habent.
(Their countenances are not handsome, their cheek-bones being broad
like those of the Tartars.) - Americi Vesputii Navigatio Prima, in
Gryn's Orbis Novus 1555.) not in regard to their colour, but on
account of the breadth of their faces, and the general expression
of their physiognomy.
But if it be certain, that at the end of the fifteenth century
there were on the coast of Cumana a few men with white skins, as
there are in our days, it must not thence be concluded, that the
natives of the New World exhibit everywhere a similar organization
of the dermoidal system. It is not less inaccurate to say, that
they are all copper-coloured, than to affirm that they would not
have a tawny hue, if they were not exposed to the heat of the sun,
or tanned by the action of the air. The natives may be divided into
two very unequal portions with respect to numbers; to the first
belong the Esquimaux of Greenland, of Labrador, and the northern
coast of Hudson's Bay, the inhabitants of Behring's Straits, of the
peninsula of Alaska, and of Prince William's Sound. The eastern and
western branches* of this polar race (* Vater, in Mithridates
volume 3. Egede, Krantz, Hearne, Mackenzie, Portlock, Chwostoff,
Davidoff, Resanoff, Merk, and Billing, have described the great
family of these Tschougaz-Esquimaux.), the Esquimaux and the
Tschougases, though at the vast distance of eight hundred leagues
apart, are united by the most intimate analogy of languages. This
analogy extends even to the inhabitants of the north-east of Asia;
for the idiom of the Tschouktsches* at the mouth of the Anadir (* I
mean here only the Tschouktsches who have fixed dwelling-places,
for the wandering Tschouktsches approach very near the Koriaks.),
has the same roots as the language of the Esquimaux who inhabit the
coast of America opposite to Europe.
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