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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Before Cortez Entered The Capital Of Montezuma In 1521, The
Attention Of Europe Was Fixed On The Regions We Have Just
Traversed.
In depicting the manners of the inhabitants of Paria and
Cumana, it was thought that the manners of all the inhabitants of
the new continent were described.
This remark cannot escape those
who read the historians of the Conquest, especially the letters of
Peter Martyr of Anghiera, written at the court of Ferdinand the
Catholic. These letters are full of ingenious observations upon
Christopher Columbus, Leo X, and Luther, and are stamped by noble
enthusiasm for the great discoveries of an age so rich in
extraordinary events. Without entering into any detail on the
manners of the nations which have been so long confounded one with
another, under the vague denomination of Cumanians (Cumaneses), it
appears to me important to clear up a fact which I have often heard
discussed in Spanish America.
The Pariagotos of the present time are of a brown red colour, as
are the Caribbees, the Chaymas, and almost all the nations of the
New World. Why do the historians of the sixteenth century affirm
that the first navigators saw white men with fair hair at the
promontory of Paria? Were they of the same race as those Indians of
a less tawny hue, whom M. Bonpland and myself saw at Esmeralda,
near the sources of the Orinoco? But these Indians had hair as
black as the Otomacs and other tribes, whose complexion is the
darkest. 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.
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