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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The Plains, Covered
With Forests, And Intersected By Rivers; The Immense Savannahs,
Extending Eastward, And Bounding The Horizon; Were Inhabited By
Wandering Hordes, Separated By Differences Of Language And Manners,
And Scattered Like The Remnants Of A Vast Wreck.
In the absence of
all other monuments, we may endeavour, from the analogy of
languages, and the study of
The physical constitution of man, to
group the different tribes, to follow the traces of their distant
emigrations, and to discover some of those family features by which
the ancient unity of our species is manifested.
In the mountainous regions which we have just traversed, - in the
two provinces of Cumana and New Barcelona, the natives, or
primitive inhabitants, still constitute about one-half of the
scanty population. Their number may be reckoned at sixty thousand;
of which twenty-four thousand inhabit New Andalusia. This number is
very considerable, when compared with that of the hunting nations
of North America; but it appears small, when we consider those
parts of New Spain in which agriculture has existed more than eight
centuries: for instance, the Intendencia of Oaxaca, which includes
the Mixteca and the Tzapoteca of the old Mexican empire. This
Intendencia is one-third smaller than the two provinces of Cumana
and Barcelona; yet it contains more than four hundred thousand
natives of pure copper-coloured race. The Indians of Cumana do not
all live within the Missions. Some are dispersed in the
neighbourhood of the towns, along the coasts, to which they are
attracted by the fisheries, and some dwell in little farms on the
plains or savannahs. The Missions of the Aragonese Capuchins which
we visited, alone contain fifteen thousand Indians, almost all of
the Chayma race. The villages, however, are less populous there
than in the province of Barcelona. Their average population is only
between five or six hundred Indians; while more to the west, in the
Missions of the Franciscans of Piritu, we find Indian villages
containing two or three thousand inhabitants. In computing at sixty
thousand the number of natives in the provinces of Cumana and
Barcelona, I include only those who inhabit the mainland, and not
the Guayquerias of the island of Margareta, and the great mass of
the Guaraunos, who have preserved their independence in the islands
formed by the Delta of the Orinoco. The number of these is
generally reckoned at six or eight thousand; but this estimate
appears to me to be exaggerated. Except a few families of Guaraunos
who roam occasionally in the marshy grounds, called Los Morichales,
and between the Cano de Manamo and the Rio Guarapiche,
consequently, on the continent itself, there have not been for
these thirty years, any Indian savages in New Andalusia.
I use with regret the word savage, because it implies a difference
of cultivation between the reduced Indian, living in the Missions,
and the free or independent Indian; a difference which is often
belied by fact. In the forests of South America there are tribes of
natives, peacefully united in villages, and who render obedience to
chiefs.* (* These chiefs bear the designations of Pecannati, Apoto,
or Sibierne.) They cultivate the plantain-tree, cassava, and
cotton, on a tolerably extensive tract of ground, and they employ
the cotton for weaving hammocks.
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