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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At The Time Of The Expedition Of The Boundaries,
Villages Were Built In Proportion As A Subteniente, Or A Corporal,
Advanced With His Troops.
Part of the natives, in order to preserve
their independence, retired without a struggle; others, of whom the
most powerful chiefs had been gained, joined the missions.
Where there
was no church, they contented themselves with erecting a great cross
of red wood, close to which they constructed a casa fuerte, or
block-house, the walls of which were formed of large beams resting
horizontally upon each other. This house had two stories; in the upper
story two cannon of small calibre were placed; and two soldiers lived
on the ground-floor, and were served by an Indian family. Those of the
natives with whom they were at peace cultivated spots of land round
the casa fuerte. The soldiers called them together by the sound of the
horn, or a botuto of baked earth, whenever any hostile attack was
dreaded. Such were the pretended nineteen Christian settlements
founded by Don Antonio Santos in the way from Esmeralda to the
Erevato. Military posts, which had no influence on the civilization of
the natives, figured on the maps, and in the works of the
missionaries, as villages (pueblos) and reducciones apostolicas.* (*
Signifying apostolic conquests or conversions.) The preponderance of
the military was maintained on the banks of the Orinoco till 1785,
when the system of the monks of San Francisco began. The small number
of missions founded, or rather re-established, since that period, owe
their existence to the Fathers of the Observance; for the soldiers now
distributed among the missions are dependent on the missionaries, or
at least are reputed to be so, according to the pretensions of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy.
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