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 Indians In This Mission Are Of The Nation
Of The Salives, And They Have A Disagreeable And Nasal Pronunciation.
Their language, of which the Jesuit Anisson has composed a grammar
still in manuscript, is, with the Caribbean, the Tamanac,
The Maypure,
the Ottomac, the Guahive, and the Jaruro, one of the mother-tongues
most general on the Orinoco. Father Gili thinks that the Ature, the
Piraoa, and the Quaqua or Mapoye, are only dialects of the Salive. My
journey was much too rapid to enable me to judge of the accuracy of
this opinion; but we shall soon see that, in the village of Ature,
celebrated on account of its situation near the great cataracts,
neither the Salive nor the Ature is now spoken, but the language of
the Maypures. In the Salive of Carichana, man is called cocco; woman,
gnacu; water, cagua; fire, eyussa; the earth, seke; the sky, mumeseke
(earth on high); the jaguar, impii; the crocodile, cuipoo; maize,
giomu; the plantain, paratuna; cassava, peibe. I may here mention one
of those descriptive compounds that seem to characterise the infancy
of language, though they are retained in some very perfect idioms.*
(See volume 1 chapter 1.9.) Thus, as in the Biscayan, thunder is
called the noise of the cloud (odotsa); the sun bears the name, in the
Salive dialect, of mume-seke-cocco, the man (cocco) of the earth
(seke) above (mume).
The most ancient abode of the Salive nation appears to have been on
the western banks of the Orinoco, between the Rio Vichada* and the
Guaviare, and also between the Meta and the Rio Paute. (* The Salive
mission, on the Rio Vichada, was destroyed by the Caribs.) Salives are
now found not only at Carichana, but in the Missions of the province
of Casanre, at Cabapuna, Guanapalo, Cabiuna, and Macuco. They are a
social, mild, almost timid people; and more easy, I will not say to
civilize, but to subdue, than the other tribes on the Orinoco. To
escape from the dominion of the Caribs, the Salives willingly joined
the first Missions of the Jesuits. Accordingly these fathers
everywhere in their writings praise the docility and intelligence of
that people. The Salives have a great taste for music: in the most
remote times they had trumpets of baked earth, four or five feet long,
with several large globular cavities communicating with one another by
narrow pipes. These trumpets send forth most dismal sounds. The
Jesuits have cultivated with success the natural taste of the Salives
for instrumental music; and even since the destruction of the society,
the missionaries of Rio Meta have continued at San Miguel de Macuco a
fine church choir, and musical instruction for the Indian youth. Very
lately a traveller was surprised to see the natives playing on the
violin, the violoncello, the triangle, the guitar, and the flute.
We found among these Salive Indians, at Carichana, a white woman, the
sister of a Jesuit of New Grenada. It is difficult to define the
satisfaction that is felt when, in the midst of nations of whose
language we are ignorant, we meet with a being with whom we can
converse without an interpreter. Every mission has at least two
interpreters (lenguarazes). They are Indians, a little less stupid
than the rest, through whose medium the missionaries of the Orinoco,
who now very rarely give themselves the trouble of studying the idioms
of the country, communicate with the neophytes. These interpreters
attended us in all our herborizations; but they rather understand than
speak Castilian. With their indolent indifference, they answer us by
chance, but always with an officious smile, "Yes, Father; no, Father,"
to every question addressed to them.
The vexation that arises from such a style of conversation continued
for months may easily be conceived, when you wish to be enlightened
upon objects in which you take the most lively interest. We were often
forced to employ several interpreters at a time, and several
successive translators, in order to communicate with the natives.* (*
To form a just idea of the perplexity of these communications by
interpreters, we may recollect that, in the expedition of Lewis and
Clarke to the river Columbia, in order to converse with the Chopunnish
Indians, Captain Lewis addressed one of his men in English; that man
translated the question into French to Chaboneau; Chaboneau translated
it to his Indian wife in Minnetaree; the woman translated it into
Shoshonee to a prisoner; and the prisoner translated it into
Chopunnish. It may be feared that the sense of the question was a
little altered by these successive translations.)
"After leaving my Mission," said the good monk of Uruana, "you will
travel like mutes." This prediction was nearly accomplished; and, not
to lose the advantage we might derive from intercourse even with the
rudest Indians, we sometimes preferred the language of signs. When a
native perceives that you will not employ an interpreter; when you
interrogate him directly, showing him the objects; he rouses himself
from his habitual apathy, and manifests an extraordinary capacity to
make himself comprehended. He varies his signs, pronounces his words
slowly, and repeats them without being desired. The consequence
conferred upon him, in suffering yourself to be instructed by him,
flatters his self-love. This facility in making himself comprehended
is particularly remarkable in the independent Indian. It cannot be
doubted that direct intercourse with the natives is more instructive
and more certain than the communication by interpreters, provided the
questions be simplified, and repeated to several individuals under
different forms. The variety of idioms spoken on the banks of the
Meta, the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, is so
prodigious, that a traveller, however great may be his talent for
languages, can never hope to learn enough to make himself understood
along the navigable rivers, from Angostura to the small fort of San
Carlos del Rio Negro. In Peru and Quito it is sufficient to know the
Quichua, or the Inca language; in Chile, the Araucan; and in Paraguay,
the Guarany; in order to be understood by most of the population.
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