Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 32 of 170 - First - Home
In The Plains Of South America We Find Only A Very
Few Hillocks Of That Kind Called Cerros Hechos A Mano;* (* Hills Made
By The Hand, Or Artificial Hills.) And Nowhere Any Works Of
Fortification Analogous To Those Of The Ohio.
However, on a vast space
of ground, at the Lower Orinoco, as well as on the banks of the
Cassiquiare and between the sources of the Essequibo and the Rio
Branco, there are rocks of granite covered with symbolic figures.
These sculptures denote that the extinct generations belonged to
nations different from those which now inhabit the same regions. There
seems to be no connection between the history of Mexico and that of
Cundinamarca and of Peru; but in the plains of the east a warlike and
long-dominant nation betrays in its features and its physical
constitution traces of a foreign origin. The Caribs preserve
traditions that seem to indicate ancient communications between North
and South America. Such a phenomenon deserves particular attention. If
it be true that savages are for the most part degenerate races,
remnants escaped from a common wreck, as their languages, their
cosmogonic fables, and numerous other indications seem to prove, it
becomes doubly important to examine the course by which these remnants
have been driven from one hemisphere to the other.
That fine race of people, the Caribs, now occupy only a small part of
the country which they inhabited at the time of the discovery of
America. The cruelties exercised by Europeans have entirely
exterminated them from the West Indian Islands and the coasts of
Darien; while under the government of the missions they have formed
populous villages in the provinces of New Barcelona and Spanish
Guiana. The Caribs who inhabit the Llanos of Piritu and the banks of
the Carony and the Cuyuni may be estimated at more than thirty-five
thousand. If we add to this number the independent Caribs who live
westward of the mountains of Cayenne and Pacaraymo, between the
sources of the Essequibo and the Rio Branco, we shall no doubt obtain
a total of forty thousand individuals of pure race, unmixed with any
other tribes of natives. Prior to my travels, the Caribs were
mentioned in many geographical works as an extinct race. Writers
unacquainted with the interior of the Spanish colonies of the
continent supposed that the small islands of Dominica, Guadaloupe, and
St. Vincent had been the principal abodes of that nation of which the
only vestiges now remaining throughout the whole of the eastern West
India Islands are skeletons petrified, or rather enveloped in a
limestone containing madrepores.* (* These skeletons were discovered
in 1805 by M. Cortez. They are encased in a formation of madrepore
breccia, which the negroes call God's masonry, and which, like the
travertin of Italy, envelops fragments of vases and other objects
created by human skill. M. Dauxion Lavaysse and Dr. Koenig first made
known in Europe this phenomenon which has greatly interested
geologists.)
The name of Caribs, which I find for the first time in a letter of
Peter Martyr d'Anghiera is derived from Calina and Caripuna, the l and
p being transferred into r and b. It is very remarkable that this
name, which Columbus heard pronounced by the people of Hayti, was
known to exist at the same time among the Caribs of the islands and
those of the continent. From the word Carina, or Calina, has been
formed Galibi (Caribi). This is the distinctive denomination of a
tribe in French Guiana,* who are of much more diminutive stature than
the inhabitants of Cari, but speaking one of the numerous dialects of
the Carib tongue. (* The Galibis (Calibitis), the Palicours, and the
Acoquouas, also cut their hair in the style of the monks; and apply
bandages to the legs of their children for the purpose of swelling the
muscles. They have the same predilection for green stones (saussurite)
which we observed among the Carib nations of the Orinoco. There exist,
besides, in French Guiana, twenty Indian tribes which are
distinguished from the Galibis though their language proves that they
have a common origin.) The inhabitants of the islands are called
Calinago in the language of the men; and in that of the women,
Callipinan. The difference in the language of the two sexes is more
striking among the people of the Carib race than among other American
nations (the Omaguas, the Guaranis, and the Chiquitos) where it
applies only to a limited number of ideas; for instance, the words
mother and child. It may be conceived that women, from their separate
way of life, frame particular terms which men do not adopt. Cicero
observes* that old forms of language are best preserved by women
because by their position in society they are less exposed to those
vicissitudes of life, changes of place and occupation which tend to
corrupt the primitive purity of language among men. (* Cicero, de
Orat. lib. 3 cap. 12 paragraph 45 ed. Verburg. Facilius enim mulieres
incorruptam antiquitatem conservant, quod multorum sermonis expertes
ea tenent semper, quae prima didicerunt.) But in the Carib nations the
contrast between the dialect of the two sexes is so great that to
explain it satisfactorily we must refer to another cause; and this may
perhaps be found in the barbarous custom, practised by those nations,
of killing their male prisoners, and carrying the wives of the
vanquished into captivity. When the Caribs made an irruption into the
archipelago of the West India Islands, they arrived there as a band of
warriors, not as colonists accompanied by their families. The language
of the female sex was formed by degrees, as the conquerors contracted
alliances with the foreign women; it was composed of new elements,
words distinct from the Carib words,* which in the interior of the
gynaeceums were transmitted from generation to generation, but on
which the structure, the combinations, the grammatical forms of the
language of the men exercised an influence. (* The following are
examples of the difference between the language of the men (m), and
the women (w); isle, oubao (m), acaera (w); man, ouekelli (m), eyeri
(w); but, irhen (m), atica (w).) There was then manifested in a small
community the peculiarity which we now find in the whole group of the
nations of the New Continent.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 32 of 170
Words from 31881 to 32932
of 174507