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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On Holidays, After The Celebration Of Mass, All The
Inhabitants Of The Village Assemble In Front Of The Church.
The young
girls place at the feet of the missionary faggots of wood, bunches of
plantains, and other provision of which he stands in need for his
household.
At the same time the governador, the alguazil, and other
municipal officers, all of whom are Indians, exhort the natives to
labour, proclaim the occupations of the ensuing week, reprimand the
idle, and flog the untractable. Strokes of the cane are received with
the same insensibility as that with which they are given. It were
better if the priest did not impose these corporal punishments at the
instant of quitting the altar, and if he were not, in his sacerdotal
habits, the spectator of this chastisement of men and women; but this
abuse is inherent in the principle on which the strange government of
the missions is founded. The most arbitrary civil power is combined
with the authority exercised by the priest over the little community;
and, although the Caribs are not cannibals, and we would wish to see
them treated with mildness and indulgence, it may be conceived that
energetic measures are sometimes necessary to maintain tranquillity in
this rising society.
The difficulty of fixing the Caribs to the soil is the greater, as
they have been for ages in the habit of trading on the rivers. We have
already described this active people, at once commercial and warlike,
occupied in the traffic of slaves, and carrying merchandize from the
coasts of Dutch Guiana to the basin of the Amazon.
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