Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Before We Reached Its Confluence, A Granitic Eminence On The
Western Bank, Near The Mouth Of The Guasacavi, Fixed Our Attention:
It
is called Piedra de la Guahiba (Rock of the Guahiba woman), or the
Piedra de la Madre (Mother's Rock.) We inquired the cause of so
singular a denomination.
Father Zea could not satisfy our curiosity;
but some weeks after, another missionary, one of the predecessors of
that ecclesiastic, whom we found settled at San Fernando as president
of the missions, related to us an event which excited in our minds the
most painful feelings. If, in these solitary scenes, man scarcely
leaves behind him any trace of his existence, it is doubly humiliating
for a European to see perpetuated by so imperishable a monument of
nature as a rock, the remembrance of the moral degradation of our
species, and the contrast between the virtue of a savage, and the
barbarism of civilized man!
In 1797 the missionary of San Fernando had led his Indians to the
banks of the Rio Guaviare, on one of those hostile incursions which
are prohibited alike by religion and the Spanish laws. They found in
an Indian hut a Guahiba woman with her three children (two of whom
were still infants), occupied in preparing the flour of cassava.
Resistance was impossible; the father was gone to fish, and the mother
tried in vain to flee with her children. Scarcely had she reached the
savannah when she was seized by the Indians of the mission, who hunt
human beings, like the Whites and the Negroes in Africa. The mother
and her children were bound, and dragged to the bank of the river. The
monk, seated in his boat, waited the issue of an expedition of which
he shared not the danger. Had the mother made too violent a resistance
the Indians would have killed her, for everything is permitted for the
sake of the conquest of souls (la conquista espirituel), and it is
particularly desirable to capture children, who may be treated in the
Mission as poitos, or slaves of the Christians. The prisoners were
carried to San Fernando, in the hope that the mother would be unable
to find her way back to her home by land. Separated from her other
children who had accompanied their father on the day in which she had
been carried off, the unhappy woman showed signs of the deepest
despair. She attempted to take back to her home the children who had
been seized by the missionary; and she fled with them repeatedly from
the village of San Fernando. But the Indians never failed to recapture
her; and the missionary, after having caused her to be mercilessly
beaten, took the cruel resolution of separating the mother from the
two children who had been carried off with her. She was conveyed alone
to the missions of the Rio Negro, going up the Atabapo. Slightly
bound, she was seated at the bow of the boat, ignorant of the fate
that awaited her; but she judged by the direction of the sun, that she
was removing farther and farther from her hut and her native country.
She succeeded in breaking her bonds, threw herself into the water, and
swam to the left bank of the Atabapo. The current carried her to a
shelf of rock, which bears her name to this day. She landed and took
shelter in the woods, but the president of the missions ordered the
Indians to row to the shore, and follow the traces of the Guahiba. In
the evening she was brought back. Stretched upon the rock (la Piedra
de la Madre) a cruel punishment was inflicted on her with those straps
of manatee leather, which serve for whips in that country, and with
which the alcaldes are always furnished. This unhappy woman, her hands
tied behind her back with strong stalks of mavacure, was then dragged
to the mission of Javita.
She was there thrown into one of the caravanserais, called las Casas
del Rey. It was the rainy season, and the night was profoundly dark.
Forests till then believed to be impenetrable separated the mission of
Javita from that of San Fernando, which was twenty-five leagues
distant in a straight line. No other route is known than that by the
rivers; no man ever attempted to go by land from one village to
another. But such difficulties could not deter a mother, separated
from her children. The Guahiba was carelessly guarded in the
caravanserai. Her arms being wounded, the Indians of Javita had
loosened her bonds, unknown to the missionary and the alcaldes. Having
succeeded by the help of her teeth in breaking them entirely, she
disappeared during the night; and at the fourth sunrise was seen at
the mission of San Fernando, hovering around the hut where her
children were confined. "What that woman performed," added the
missionary, who gave us this sad narrative, "the most robust Indian
would not have ventured to undertake!" She traversed the woods at a
season when the sky is constantly covered with clouds, and the sun
during whole days appears but for a few minutes. Did the course of the
waters direct her way? The inundations of the rivers forced her to go
far from the banks of the main stream, through the midst of woods
where the movement of the water is almost imperceptible. How often
must she have been stopped by the thorny lianas, that form a network
around the trunks they entwine! How often must she have swum across
the rivulets that run into the Atabapo! This unfortunate woman was
asked how she had sustained herself during four days. She said that,
exhausted with fatigue, she could find no other nourishment than those
great black ants called vachacos, which climb the trees in long bands,
to suspend on them their resinous nests. We pressed the missionary to
tell us whether the Guahiba had peacefully enjoyed the happiness of
remaining with her children; and if any repentance had followed this
excess of cruelty.
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