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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I Might Hazard The Hypothesis That It Belongs To
Another Country, And That The Type Had Been Brought Thither In
The
great migration of the American nations from the north-west to the
south and south-east; but I am
Rather inclined to believe that the
figure is intended to represent a tapir, and that the deformed image
of a native animal has become by degrees one of the types that has
been preserved.
The Maypures execute with the greatest skill grecques, or ornaments
formed by straight lines variously combined, similar to those that we
find on the vases of Magna Grecia, on the Mexican edifices at Mitla,
and in the works of so many nations who, without communication with
each other, find alike a sensible pleasure in the symmetric repetition
of the same forms. Arabesques, meanders, and grecques, please our
eyes, because the elements of which their series is composed, follow
in rhythmic order. The eye finds in this order, in the periodical
return of the same forms, what the ear distinguishes in the cadenced
succession of sounds and concords. Can we then admit a doubt that the
feeling of rhythm manifests itself in man at the first dawn of
civilization, and in the rudest essays of poetry and song?
Among the natives of Maypures, the making of pottery is an occupation
principally confined to the women. They purify the clay by repeated
washings, form it into cylinders, and mould the largest vases with
their hands. The American Indian is unacquainted with the potter's
wheel, which was familiar to the nations of the east in the remotest
antiquity. We may be surprised that the missionaries have not
introduced this simple and useful machine among the natives of the
Orinoco, yet we must recollect that three centuries have not sufficed
to make it known among the Indians of the peninsula of Araya, opposite
the port of Cumana. The colours used by the Maypures are the oxides of
iron and manganese, and particularly the yellow and red ochres that
are found in the hollows of sandstone. Sometimes the fecula of the
Bignonia chica is employed, after the pottery has been exposed to a
feeble fire. This painting is covered with a varnish of algarobo,
which is the transparent resin of the Hymenaea courbaril. The large
vessels in which the chiza is preserved are called ciamacu, the
smallest bear the name of mucra, from which word the Spaniards of the
coast have framed murcura. Not only the Maypures, but also the
Guaypunaves, the Caribs, the Ottomacs, and even the Guamos, are
distinguished at the Orinoco as makers of painted pottery, and this
manufacture extended formerly towards the banks of the Amazon.
Orellana was struck with the painted ornaments on the ware of the
Omaguas, who in his time were a populous commercial nation.
The following facts throw some light on the history of American
civilization. In the United States, west of the Allegheny mountains,
particularly between the Ohio and the great lakes of Canada, on
digging the earth, fragments of painted pottery, mingled with brass
tools, are constantly found.
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