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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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missionaries are gradually superseded by vicars.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.
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