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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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. The Tschouktsches are the
Esquimaux of Asia. Like the Malays, that hyperborean race reside
only on the sea-coasts. They are almost all smaller in stature than
the other Americans, and are quick, lively, and talkative. Their
hair is almost straight, and black; but their skin (and this is
very characteristic of the race, which I shall designate under the
name of Tschougaz-Esquimaux) is originally whitish. It is certain
that the children of the Greenlanders are born white; some retain
that whiteness; and often in the brownest (the most tanned) the
redness of the blood is seen to appear on their cheeks.* (* Krantz,
Hist. of Greenland 1667 tome 1. Greenland does not seem to have
been inhabited in the eleventh century; at least the Esquimaux
appeared only in the fourteenth, coming from the west.)
The second portion of the natives of America includes all those
nations which are not Tschougaz-Esquimaux, beginning from Cook's
River to the Straits of Magellan, from the Ugaljachmouzes and the
Kinaese of Mount St. Elias, to the Puelches and Tehuelhets of the
southern hemisphere. The men who belong to this second branch, are
taller, stronger, more warlike, and more taciturn than the others.
They present also very remarkable differences in the colour of
their skin. In Mexico, Peru, New Grenada, Quito, on the banks of
the Orinoco and of the river Amazon, in every part of South America
which I have explored, in the plains as well as on the coldest
table-lands, the Indian children of two or three months old have
the same bronze tint as is observed in adults.
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