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 Intimate Connection Established Between The Natives Of The New
World And The Spaniards Since The Conquest, Have Introduced A
Certain Number Of American Words Into The Castilian Language.
Some
of these words express things not unknown before the discovery of
the New World, and scarcely recall to
Our minds at present their
barbarous origin.* (* For example savannah, and cannibal.) Almost
all belong to the language of the great Antilles, formerly termed
the language of Haiti, of Quizqueja, or of Itis.* (* The word Itis,
for Haiti or St. Domingo (Hispaniola), is found in the Itinerarium
of Bishop Geraldini (Rome 1631.) - "Quum Colonus Itim insulam
cerneret.") I shall confine myself to citing the words maiz,
tabaco, canoa, batata, cacique, balsa, conuco, etc. When the
Spaniards, after the year 1498, began to visit the mainland, they
already had words* to designate the vegetable productions most
useful to man, and common both to the islands and to the coasts of
Cumana and Paria. (* The following are Haitian words, in their real
form, which have passed into the Castilian language since the end
of the 15th century. Many of them are not uninteresting to
descriptive botany. Ahi (Capsicum baccatum), batata (Convolvus
batatas), bihao (Heliconia bihai), caimito (Chrysophyllum caimito),
cahoba (Swietenia mahagoni), jucca and casabi (Jatropba manihot);
the word casabi or cassava is employed only for the bread made with
the roots of the Jatropha (the name of the plant jucca was also
heard by Americo Vespucci on the coast of Paria); age or ajes
(Dioscorea alata), copei (Clusia alba), guayacan (Guaiacum
officinale), guajaba (Psidium pyriferum), guanavano (Anona
muricata), mani (Arachis hypogaea), guama (Inga), henequen (was
supposed from the erroneous accounts of the first travellers to be
an herb with which the Haitians used to cut metals; it means now
every kind of strong thread), hicaco (Chrysobalanus icaco), maghei
(Agave Americana), mahiz or maiz (Zea, maize), mamei (Mammea
Americana), mangle (Rhizophora), pitahaja (Cactus pitahaja), ceiba
(Bombax), tuna (Cactus tuna), hicotea (a tortoise), iguana (Lacerta
iguana), manatee (Trichecus manati), nigua (Pulex penetrans),
hamaca (a hammock), balsa (a raft; however balsa is an old
Castilian word signifying a pool of water), barbacoa (a small bed
of light wood, or reeds), canei or buhio (a hut), canoa (a canoe),
cocujo (Elater noctilucus, the fire-fly), chicha (fermented
liquor), macana (a large stick or club, made with the petioles of a
palm-tree), tabaco (not the herb, but the pipe through which it is
smoked), cacique (a chief). Other American words, now as much in
use among the Creoles, as the Arabic words naturalized in the
Spanish, do not belong to the Haitian tongue; for example, caiman,
piragua, papaja (Carica), aguacate (Persea), tarabita, paramo.
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