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 Perizoma
Of The Indians Of The Orinoco Is Rather A Band Than An Apron.) These
Guayucos Of The Orinoco Are Partly Bark Of Trees, And Partly
Cotton-Cloth.
Those of the men are broader than those worn by the
women, who, the missionaries say, have in general a less lively
feeling of modesty.
A similar observation was made by Christopher
Columbus. May we not attribute this in difference, this want of
delicacy in women belonging to nations of which the manners are not
much depraved, to that rude state of slavery to which the sex is
reduced in South America by male injustice and tyranny?
When we speak in Europe of a native of Guiana, we figure to ourselves
a man whose head and waist are decorated with the fine feathers of the
macaw, the toucan, and the humming-bird. Our painters and sculptors
have long since regarded these ornaments as the characteristic marks
of an American. We were surprised at not finding in the Chayma
Missions, in the encampments of Uruana and of Pararuma (I might almost
say on all the shores of the Orinoco and the Cassiquiare) those fine
plumes, those feathered aprons, which are so often brought by
travellers from Cayenne and Demerara. These tribes for the most part,
even those whose intellectual faculties are most expanded, who
cultivate alimentary plants, and know how to weave cotton, are
altogether as naked,* as poor, and as destitute of ornaments as the
natives of New Holland. (* For instance, the Macos and the Piraoas.
The Caribs must be excepted, whose perizoma is a cotton cloth, so
broad that it might cover the shoulders.) The excessive heat of the
air, the profuse perspiration in which the body is bathed at every
hour of the day and a great part of the night, render the use of
clothes insupportable. Their objects of ornament, and particularly
their plumes of feathers, are reserved for dances and solemn
festivals. The plumes worn by the Guipunaves* are the most celebrated;
being composed of the fine feathers of manakins and parrots. (* These
came originally from the banks of the Inirida, one of the rivers that
fall into the Guaviare.)
The Indians are not always satisfied with one colour uniformly spread;
they sometimes imitate, in the most whimsical manner, in painting
their skin, the form of European garments. We saw some at Pararuma,
who were painted with blue jackets and black buttons. The missionaries
related to us that the Guaynaves of the Rio Caura are accustomed to
stain themselves red with anato, and to make broad transverse stripes
on the body, on which they stick spangles of silvery mica. Seen at a
distance, these naked men appear to be dressed in laced clothes. If
painted nations had been examined with the same attention as those who
are clothed, it would have been perceived that the most fertile
imagination, and the most mutable caprice, have created the fashions
of painting, as well as those of garments.
Painting and tattooing are not restrained, in either the New or the
Old World, to one race or one zone only. These ornaments are most
common among the Malays and American races; but in the time of the
Romans they were also employed by the white race in the north of
Europe. As the most picturesque garments and modes of dress are found
in the Grecian Archipelago and western Asia, so the type of beauty in
painting and tattooing is displayed by the islanders of the Pacific.
Some clothed nations still paint their hands, their nails, and their
faces. It would seem that painting is then confined to those parts of
the body that remain uncovered; and while rouge, which recalls to mind
the savage state of man, is disappearing by degrees in Europe, in some
towns of the province of Peru the ladies think they embellish their
delicate skins by covering them with colouring vegetable matter,
starch, white-of-egg, and flour. After having lived a long time among
men painted with anato and chica, we are singularly struck with these
remains of ancient barbarism retained amidst all the usages of
civilization.
The encampment at Pararuma afforded us an opportunity of examining
several animals in their natural state, which, till then, we had seen
only in the collections of Europe. These little animals form a branch
of commerce for the missionaries. They exchange tobacco, the resin
called mani, the pigment of chica, gallitos (rock-manakins), orange
monkeys, capuchin monkeys, and other species of monkeys in great
request on the coast, for cloth, nails, hatchets, fishhooks, and pins.
The productions of the Orinoco are bought at a low price from the
Indians, who live in dependence on the monks; and these same Indians
purchase fishing and gardening implements from the monks at a very
high price, with the money they have gained at the egg-harvest. We
ourselves bought several animals, which we kept with us throughout the
rest of our passage on the river, and studied their manners.
The gallitos, or rock-manakins, are sold at Pararuma in pretty little
cages made of the footstalks of palm-leaves. These birds are
infinitely more rare on the banks of the Orinoco, and in the north and
west of equinoctial America, than in French Guiana. They have hitherto
been found only near the Mission of Encaramada, and in the Raudales or
cataracts of Maypures. I say expressly IN the cataracts, because the
gallitos choose for their habitual dwelling the hollows of the little
granitic rocks that cross the Orinoco and form such numerous cascades.
We sometimes saw them appear in the morning in the midst of the foam
of the river, calling their females, and fighting in the manner of our
cocks, folding the double moveable crest that decorates the crown of
the head. As the Indians very rarely take the full-grown gallitos, and
those males only are valued in Europe, which from the third year have
beautiful saffron-coloured plumage, purchasers should be on their
guard not to confound young females with young males.
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