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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Their Objects Of Ornament, And Particularly
Their Plumes Of Feathers, Are Reserved For Dances And Solemn
Festivals.
The plumes worn by the Guipunaves* are the most celebrated;
being composed of the fine feathers of manakins and parrots.
(* These
came originally from the banks of the Inirida, one of the rivers that
fall into the Guaviare.)
The Indians are not always satisfied with one colour uniformly spread;
they sometimes imitate, in the most whimsical manner, in painting
their skin, the form of European garments. We saw some at Pararuma,
who were painted with blue jackets and black buttons. The missionaries
related to us that the Guaynaves of the Rio Caura are accustomed to
stain themselves red with anato, and to make broad transverse stripes
on the body, on which they stick spangles of silvery mica. Seen at a
distance, these naked men appear to be dressed in laced clothes. If
painted nations had been examined with the same attention as those who
are clothed, it would have been perceived that the most fertile
imagination, and the most mutable caprice, have created the fashions
of painting, as well as those of garments.
Painting and tattooing are not restrained, in either the New or the
Old World, to one race or one zone only. These ornaments are most
common among the Malays and American races; but in the time of the
Romans they were also employed by the white race in the north of
Europe. As the most picturesque garments and modes of dress are found
in the Grecian Archipelago and western Asia, so the type of beauty in
painting and tattooing is displayed by the islanders of the Pacific.
Some clothed nations still paint their hands, their nails, and their
faces. It would seem that painting is then confined to those parts of
the body that remain uncovered; and while rouge, which recalls to mind
the savage state of man, is disappearing by degrees in Europe, in some
towns of the province of Peru the ladies think they embellish their
delicate skins by covering them with colouring vegetable matter,
starch, white-of-egg, and flour. After having lived a long time among
men painted with anato and chica, we are singularly struck with these
remains of ancient barbarism retained amidst all the usages of
civilization.
The encampment at Pararuma afforded us an opportunity of examining
several animals in their natural state, which, till then, we had seen
only in the collections of Europe. These little animals form a branch
of commerce for the missionaries. They exchange tobacco, the resin
called mani, the pigment of chica, gallitos (rock-manakins), orange
monkeys, capuchin monkeys, and other species of monkeys in great
request on the coast, for cloth, nails, hatchets, fishhooks, and pins.
The productions of the Orinoco are bought at a low price from the
Indians, who live in dependence on the monks; and these same Indians
purchase fishing and gardening implements from the monks at a very
high price, with the money they have gained at the egg-harvest.
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