Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Indians Of The Missions Of Piritu Especially Attracted Our
Attention, Because They Belong To A Nation Which, By Its Daring, Its
Warlike Enterprises, And Its Mercantile Spirit Has Exercised Great
Influence Over The Vast Country Extending From The Equator Towards The
Northern Coast.
Everywhere on the Orinoco we beheld traces of the
hostile incursions of the Caribs:
Incursions which heretofore extended
from the sources of the Carony and the Erevato as far as the banks of
the Ventuari, the Atacavi, and the Rio Negro. The Carib language is
consequently the most general in this part of the world; it has even
passed (like the language of the Lenni-Lenapes, or Algonkins, and the
Natchez or Muskoghees, on the west of the Allegheny mountains) to
tribes which have not a common origin.
When we survey that multitude of nations spread over North and South
America, eastward of the Cordilleras of the Andes, we fix our
attention particularly on those who, having long held dominion over
their neighbours, have acted an important part on the stage of the
world. It is the business of the historian to group facts, to
distinguish masses, to ascend to the common sources of many migrations
and popular movements. Great empires, the regular organization of a
sacerdotal hierarchy, and the culture which that organization favours
in the first ages of society, have existed only on the high mountains
of the western world. In Mexico we see a vast monarchy enclosing small
republics; at Cundinamarca and Peru we find pure theocracies.
Fortified towns, highways and large edifices of stone, an
extraordinary development of the feudal system, the separation of
castes, convents of men and women, religious congregations regulated
by discipline more or less severe, complicated divisions of time
connected with the calendars, the zodiacs, and the astrology of the
enlightened nations of Asia - all these phenomena in America belong to
one region only, the long and narrow Alpine band extending from the
thirtieth degree of north latitude to the twenty-fifth degree of
south.
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