Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 270 of 406 - First - Home
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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 270 of 406
Words from 140041 to 140542
of 211397