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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5. The Cumanagotos, Or, According To The Pronunciation Of The
Indians, Cumanacoto, Are Now Settled Westward Of Cumana, In The
Missions Of Piritu, Where They Live By Cultivating The Ground.
They
number more than twenty-six thousand.
Their language, like that of
the Palencas, or Palenques, and Guarivas, is between the Tamanac
and the Caribbee, but nearer to the former. These are indeed idioms
of the same family; but if we are to consider them as simple
dialects, the Latin must be also called a dialect of the Greek, and
the Swedish a dialect of the German. In considering the affinity of
languages one with another, it must not be forgotten that these
affinities may be very differently graduated; and that it would be
a source of confusion not to distinguish between simple dialects
and languages of the same family. The Cumanagotos, the Tamanacs,
the Chaymas, the Guaraons, and the Caribbees, do not understand
each other, in spite of the frequent analogy of words and of
grammatical structure exhibited in their respective idioms. The
Cumanagotos inhabited, at the beginning of the sixteenth century,
the mountains of the Brigantine and of Parabolata. I am unable to
determine whether the Piritus, Cocheymas, Chacopatas, Tomuzas, and
Topocuares, now confounded in the same villages with the
Cumanagotos, and speaking their language, were originally tribes of
the same nation. The Piritus take their name from the ravine
Pirichucuar, where the small thorny palm-tree,* called piritu,
grows in abundance (* Caudice gracili aculeato, foliis pinnatis.
Possibly of the genus Aiphanes of Willdenouw.); the wood of this
tree, which is excessively hard, and little combustible, serves to
make pipes.
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