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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The Body Is Cut To Pieces, And Carried As
A Trophy To The Hut.
It is civilization only, that has made man feel
the unity of the human race; which has revealed to him, as we may say,
the ties of consanguinity, by which he is linked to beings to whose
language and manners he is a stranger.
Savages know only their own
family; and a tribe appears to them but a more numerous assemblage of
relations. When those who inhabit the missions see Indians of the
forest, who are unknown to them, arrive, they make use of an
expression, which has struck us by its simple candour: they are, no
doubt, my relations; I understand them when they speak to me. But
these very savages detest all who are not of their family, or their
tribe; and hunt the Indians of a neighbouring tribe, who live at war
with their own, as we hunt game. They know the duties of family ties
and of relationship, but not those of humanity, which require the
feeling of a common tie with beings framed like ourselves. No emotion
of pity prompts them to spare the wives or children of a hostile race;
and the latter are devoured in preference, at the repast given at the
conclusion of a battle or warlike incursion.
The hatred which savages for the most part feel for men who speak
another idiom, and appear to them to be of an inferior race, is
sometimes rekindled in the missions, after having long slumbered.
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