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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It
Would Be Impossible To Take Them For A Mixed Race, Like The
Descendants Of Natives And Europeans.
Some of these people are very
little, others are of the ordinary stature of the copper-coloured
Indians.
They are neither feeble nor sickly, nor are they albinos; and
they differ from the copper-coloured races only by a much less tawny
skin. It would be useless, after these considerations, to insist on
the distance of the mountains of the Upper Orinoco from the shores
inhabited by the Dutch. I will not deny that descendants of fugitive
negroes may have been seen among the Caribs, at the sources of the
Essequibo; but no white man ever went from the eastern coast to the
Rio Gehette and the Ocamo, in the interior of Guiana. It must also be
observed, although we may be struck with the singularity of several
fair tribes being found at one point to the east of Esmeralda, it is
no less certain, that tribes have been found in other parts of
America, distinguished from the neighbouring tribes by the less tawny
colour of their skin. Such are the Arivirianos and Maquiritares of the
Rio Ventuario and the Padamo, the Paudacotos and Paravenas of the
Erevato, the Viras and Araguas of the Caura, the Mologagos of Brazil,
and the Guayanas of the Uruguay.* (* The Cumanagotos, the Maypures,
the Mapojos, and some hordes of the Tamanacs, are also fair, but in a
less degree than the tribes I have just named. We may add to this list
(which the researches of Sommering, Blumenbach, and Pritchard, on the
varieties of the human species, have rendered so interesting) the Ojes
of the Cuchivero, the Boanes (now almost destroyed) of the interior of
Brazil, and in the north of America, far from the north-west coast,
the Mandans and the Akanas (Walkenaer, Geogr. page 645. Gili volume 2
page 34. Vater, Amerikan. Sprachen page 81. Southey volume 1 page
603.) The most tawny, we might almost say the blackest of the American
race, are the Otomacs and the Guamos. These have perhaps given rise to
the confused notions of American negroes, spread through Europe in the
early times of the conquest. (Herrera Dec 1 lib 3 cap 9, volume 1 page
79. Garcia, Origen de los Americanos page 259.) Who are those Negros
de Quereca, placed by Gomara page 277, in that very isthmus of Panama,
whence we received the first absurd tales of an albino American
people? In reading with attention the authors of the beginning of the
16th century, we see that the discovery of America and of a new race
of men, had singularly awakened the interest of travellers respecting
the varieties of our species. Now, if a black race had been mingled
with copper-colored men, as in the South-sea Islands, the
conquistadores would not have failed to speak of it in a precise
manner. Besides, the religious traditions of the Americans relate the
appearance, in the heroic times, of white and bearded men as priests
and legislators; but none of these traditions make mention of a black
race.)
These phenomena are so much the more worthy of attention as they are
observed in that great branch of the American nations generally ranked
in a class totally opposite to that circumpolar branch, namely the
Tschougaz-Esquimaux,* whose children are fair, and who acquire the
Mongol or yellowish tint only from the influence of the air and the
humidity. (* The Chevalier Gieseke has recently confirmed all that
Krantz related of the colour of the skin of the Esquimaux. That race
(even in the latitude of seventy-five and seventy-six degrees, where
the climate is so rigorous) is not in general so diminutive as it was
long believed to be. Ross' Voyage to the North.) In Guiana, the hordes
who live in the midst of the thickest forests are generally less tawny
than those who inhabit the shores of the Orinoco, and are employed in
fishing. But this slight difference, which is alike found in Europe
between the artisans of towns and the cultivators of the fields or the
fishermen on the coasts, in no way explains the problem of the Indios
blancos. They are surrounded by other Indians of the woods (Indios del
monte) who are of a reddish-brown, although now exposed to the same
physical influences. The causes of these phenomena are very ancient,
and we may repeat with Tacitus, "est durans originis vis."
The fair-complexioned tribes, which we had an opportunity of seeing at
the mission of Esmeralda, inhabit part of a mountainous country lying
between the sources of six tributaries of the Orinoco; that is to say,
between the Padamo, the Jao, the Ventuari, the Erevato, the Aruy, and
the Paraguay.* (* They are six tributary streams on the right bank of
the Orinoco; the first three run towards the south, or the Upper
Orinoco; the three others towards the north, or the Lower Orinoco.)
The Spanish and Portuguese missionaries are accustomed to designate
this country more particularly by the name of Parima.* (* The name
Parima, which signifies water, great water, is applied sometimes, and
more especially, to the land washed by the Rio Parima, or Rio Branco
(Rio de Aguas Blancas), a stream running into the Rio Negro; sometimes
to the mountains (Sierra Parima), which divide the Upper and Lower
Orinoco.) Here, as in several other countries of Spanish America, the
savages have reconquered what had been wrested from them by
civilization, or rather by its precursors, the missionaries. The
expedition of the boundaries under Solano, and the extravagant zeal
displayed by a governor of Guiana for the discovery of El Dorado,
partially revived in the latter half of the eighteenth century that
spirit of enterprise which characterised the Spaniards at the period
of the discovery of America. In going along the Rio Padamo, a road was
observed across the forests and savannahs (the length of ten days'
journey), from Esmeralda to the sources of the Ventuari; and in two
days more, from those sources, by the Erevato, the missions on the Rio
Caura were reached.
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