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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A Curious Geognostic Discovery Remains To Be Made
In The Eastern Part Of America, That Of Finding In A Primitive Soil A
Rock Of Euphotide Containing The Piedra De Macagua.
I shall here proceed to give some information respecting the tribes of
dwarf and fair Indians, which ancient traditions have placed near the
sources of the Orinoco.
I had an opportunity of seeing some of these
Indians at Esmeralda, and can affirm that the short stature of the
Guaicas, and the fair complexion of the Guaharibos, whom Father Caulin
calls Guaribos blancos, have been alike exaggerated. The Guaicas, whom
I measured, were in general from four feet seven inches to four feet
eight inches high (old measure of France).* (* About five feet three
inches English measure.) We were assured that the whole tribe were of
this diminutive size; but we must not forget that what is called a
tribe constitutes, properly speaking, but one family, owing to the
exclusion of all foreign connections. The Indians of the lowest
stature next to the Guaicas are the Guainares and the Poignaves. It is
singular, that all these nations are found in near proximity to the
Caribs, who are remarkably tall. They all inhabit the same climate,
and subsist on the same aliments. They are varieties in the race,
which no doubt existed previously to the settlement of these tribes
(tall and short, fair and dark brown) in the same country. The four
nations of the Upper Orinoco, which appeared to me to be the fairest,
are the Guaharibos of the Rio Gehette, the Guainares of the Ocamo, the
Guaicas of Cano Chiguire, and the Maquiritares of the sources of the
Padamo, the Jao, and the Ventuari. It being very extraordinary to see
natives with a fair skin beneath a burning sky, and amid nations of a
very dark hue, the Spaniards have attempted to explain this phenomenon
by the following hypotheses. Some assert, that the Dutch of Surinam
and the Rio Essequibo may have intermingled with the Guaharibos and
the Guainares; others insist, from hatred to the Capuchins of the
Carony, and the Observantins of the Orinoco, that the fair Indians are
what are called in Dalmatia muso di frate, children whose legitimacy
is somewhat doubtful. In either case the Indios blancos would be
mestizos, that is to say, children of an Indian woman and a white man.
Now, having seen thousands of mestizos, I can assert that this
supposition is altogether inaccurate. The individuals of the fair
tribes whom we examined, have the features, the stature, and the
smooth, straight, black hair which characterises other Indians. 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.
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