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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It Confirmed All We Had
Already Heard Of The Moral State Of The Natives Of Those Countries.
They Live, Distributed In Hordes Of Forty Or Fifty, Under A Family
Government; And They Recognise A Common Chief (Apoto, Sibierene) Only
At Times When They Make War Against Their Neighbours.
The mistrust of
these hordes towards one another is increased by the circumstance that
those who live in the nearest neighbourhood speak languages altogether
different.
In the open plains, in the countries with savannahs, the
tribes are fond of choosing their habitations from an affinity of
origin, and a resemblance of manners and idioms. On the table-land of
Tartary, as in North America, great families of nations have been
seen, formed into several columns, extending their migrations across
countries thinly-wooded, and easily traversed. Such were the journeys
of the Toltec and Aztec race in the high plains of Mexico, from the
sixth to the eleventh century of our era; such probably was also the
movement of nations by which the petty tribes of Canada were grouped
together. As the immense country between the equator and the eighth
degree of north latitude forms one continuous forest, the hordes were
there dispersed by following the branchings of the rivers, and the
nature of the land compelled them to become more or less
agriculturists. Such is the labyrinth of these rivers, that families
settled themselves without knowing what race of men lived nearest the
spot. In Spanish Guiana a mountain, or a forest half a league broad,
sometimes separates hordes who could not meet in less than two days by
navigating rivers.
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