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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This People Are Connected By Their Language With The Great
Branch Of The Maypure Nations.
They are more industrious, we might
also say more civilized, than the other nations of the Upper Orinoco.
The missionaries relate, that the Guaypunaves, at the time of their
sway in those countries, were generally clothed, and had considerable
villages.
After the death of Macapu, the command devolved on another
warrior, Cuseru, called by the Spaniards El capitan Cusero. He
established lines of defence on the banks of the Inirida, with a kind
of little fort, constructed of earth and timber. The piles were more
than sixteen feet high, and surrounded both the house of the apoto and
a magazine of bows and arrows. These structures, remarkable in a
country in other respects so wild, have been described by Father
Forneri.
The Marepizanas and the Manitivitanos were the preponderant nations on
the banks of the Rio Negro. The former had for its chiefs, about the
year 1750, two warriors called Imu and Cajamu. The king of the
Manitivitanos was Cocuy, famous for his cruelty. The chiefs of the
Guaypunaves and the Manitivitanos fought with small bodies of two or
three hundred men; but in their protracted struggles they destroyed
the missions, in some of which the poor monks had only fifteen or
twenty Spanish soldiers at their disposal. When the expedition of
Iturriaga and Solano arrived at the Orinoco, the missions had no
longer to fear the incursions of the Caribs. Cuseru, the chief of the
Guaypunaves, had fixed his dwelling behind the granitic mountains of
Sipapo.
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