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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Besides, The State Of The Savages Of The
Torrid Zone Is Not Like That Of The Savages Of The Missouri.
The
latter require a vast extent of country, because they live only by
hunting; whilst the Indians of Spanish Guiana employ themselves in
cultivating cassava and plantains.
A very little ground suffices to
supply them with food. They do not dread the approach of the
whites, like the savages of the United States; who, being
progressively driven back behind the Alleghany mountains, the Ohio,
and the Mississippi, lose their means of subsistence, in proportion
as they find themselves reduced within narrow limits. 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missionaries are gradually superseded by vicars.
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