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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They Know The Duties Of Family Ties
And Of Relationship, But Not Those Of Humanity, Which Require The
Feeling Of A Common Tie With Beings Framed Like Ourselves.
No emotion
of pity prompts them to spare the wives or children of a hostile race;
and the latter are devoured in preference, at the repast given at the
conclusion of a battle or warlike incursion.
The hatred which savages for the most part feel for men who speak
another idiom, and appear to them to be of an inferior race, is
sometimes rekindled in the missions, after having long slumbered. A
short time before our arrival at Esmeralda, an Indian, born in the
forest* behind the Duida, travelled alone with another Indian, who,
after having been made prisoner by the Spaniards on the banks of the
Ventuario, lived peaceably in the village, or, as it is expressed
here, within the sound of the bell (debaxo de la campana.) (* En el
monte. The Indians born in the missions are distinguished from those
born in the woods. The word monte signifies more frequently, in the
colonies, a forest (bosque) than a mountain, and this circumstance has
led to great errors in our maps, on which chains of mountains
(sierras) are figured, where there are only thick forests, (monte
espeso.)) The latter could only walk slowly, because he was suffering
from one of those fevers to which the natives are subject, when they
arrive in the missions, and abruptly change their diet. Wearied by his
delay, his fellow-traveller killed him, and hid the body behind a
copse of thick trees, near Esmeralda. This crime, like many others
among the Indians, would have remained unknown, if the murderer had
not made preparations for a feast on the following day. He tried to
induce his children, born in the mission and become Christians, to go
with him for some parts of the dead body. They had much difficulty in
persuading him to desist from his purpose; and the soldier who was
posted at Esmeralda, learned from the domestic squabble caused by this
event, what the Indians would have concealed from his knowledge.
It is known that cannibalism and the practice of human sacrifices,
with which it is often connected, are found to exist in all parts of
the globe, and among people of very different races;* but what strikes
us more in the study of history is to see human sacrifices retained in
a state of civilization somewhat advanced; and that the nations who
hold it a point of honour to devour their prisoners are not always the
rudest and most ferocious. (* Some casual instances of children
carried off by the negroes in the island of Cuba have led to the
belief, in the Spanish colonies, that there are tribes of cannibals in
Africa. This opinion, though supported by some travellers, is not
borne out by the researches of Mr. Barrow on the interior of that
country. Superstitious practices may have given rise to imputations
perhaps as unjust as those of which Jewish families were the victims
in the ages of intolerance and persecution.) The painful facts have
not escaped the observation of those missionaries who are sufficiently
enlightened to reflect on the manners of the surrounding tribes.
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