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 Made Up The Fish-Paste In The Form Of Bricks, And
Sometimes Mixed With It The Aromatic Seed Of Paliurus (Rhamnus), As In
Germany, And Some Other Countries, Cummin And Fennel-Seed Are Mixed
With Wheaten Bread.)
At Esmeralda, as everywhere else throughout the missions, the Indians
who will not be baptized, and who are merely aggregated in the
community, live in a state of polygamy.
The number of wives differs
much in different tribes. It is most considerable among the Caribs,
and all the nations that have preserved the custom of carrying off
young girls from the neighbouring tribes. How can we imagine domestic
happiness in so unequal an association? The women live in a sort of
slavery, as they do in most nations which are in a state of barbarism.
The husbands being in the full enjoyment of absolute power, no
complaint is heard in their presence. An apparent tranquillity
prevails in the household; the women are eager to anticipate the
wishes of an imperious and sullen master; and they attend without
distinction to their own children and those of their rivals. The
missionaries assert, what may easily be believed, that this domestic
peace, the effect of fear, is singularly disturbed when the husband is
long absent. The wife who contracted the first ties then applies to
the others the names of concubines and servants. The quarrels continue
till the return of the master, who knows how to calm their passions by
the sound of his voice, by a mere gesticulation, or, if he thinks it
necessary, by means a little more violent. A certain inequality in the
rights of the women is sanctioned by the language of the Tamanacs. The
husband calls the second and third wife the companions of the first;
and the first treats these companions as rivals and enemies
(ipucjatoje), a term which truly expresses their position. The whole
weight of labour being supported by these unhappy women, we must not
be surprised if, in some nations, their number is extremely small.
Where this happens, a kind of polyandry is formed, which we find more
fully displayed in Thibet, and on the lofty mountains at the extremity
of the Indian peninsula. Among the Avanos and Maypures, brothers have
often but one wife. When an Indian, who lives in polygamy, becomes a
christian, he is compelled by the missionaries, to choose among his
wives her whom he prefers, and to reject the others. At the moment of
separation the new convert sometimes discovers the most valuable
qualities in the wives he is obliged to abandon. One understands
gardening perfectly; another knows how to prepare chiza, an
intoxicating beverage extracted from the root of cassava; all appear
to him alike clever and useful. Sometimes the desire of preserving his
wives overcomes in the Indian his inclination to christianity; but
most frequently, in his perplexity, the husband prefers submitting to
the choice of the missionary, as to a blind fatality.
The Indians, who from May to August take journeys to the east of
Esmeralda, to gather the vegetable productions of the mountains of
Yumariquin, gave us precise notions of the course of the Orinoco to
the east of the mission.
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