If The Women Labour To Form The Legs And Thighs Of Their Children So As To Produce What Painters Call Undulating Outlines, They Abstain (At Least In The Llanos), From Flattening The Head By Compressing It Between Cushions And Planks From The Most Tender Age.

This practice, so common heretofore in the islands and among several tribes of the Caribs of Parima and French Guiana, is not observed in the missions which we visited.

The men there have foreheads rounder than those of the Chaymas, the Otomacs, the Macos, the Maravitans and most of the inhabitants of the Orinoco. A systematizer would say that the form is such as their intellectual faculties require. We were so much the more struck by this fact as some of the skulls of Caribs engraved in Europe, for works on anatomy, are distinguished from all other human skulls by the extremely depressed forehead and acute facial angle. In some osteological collections skulls supposed to be those of Caribs of the island of St. Vincent are in fact skulls shaped by having been pressed between planks. They have belonged to Zambos (black Caribs) who are descended from Negroes and true Caribs.* (* These unfortunate remnants of a nation heretofore powerful were banished in 1795 to the Island of Rattam in the Bay of Honduras because they were accused by the English Government of having connexions with the French. In 1760 an able minister, M. Lescallier, proposed to the Court of Versailles to invite the Red and Black Caribs from St. Vincent to Guiana and to employ them as free men in the cultivation of the land. I doubt whether their number at that period amounted to six thousand, as the island of St. Vincent contained in 1787 not more than fourteen thousand inhabitants of all colours.) The barbarous habit of flattening the forehead is practised by several nations,* of people not of the same race; and it has been observed recently in North America; but nothing is more vague than the conclusion that some degree of conformity in customs and manners proves identity of origin. (* For instance the Tapoyranas of Guiana (Barrere page 239), the Solkeeks of Upper Louisiana (Walckenaer, Cosmos page 583). Los Indios de Cumana, says Gomara (Hist. de Ind.), aprietan a los ninos la cabeca muy blando, pero mucho, entre dos almohadillas de algodon para ensancharlos la cara, que lo tienen por hermosura. Las donzellas traen senogiles muy apretados par debaxo y encima de las rodillas, para que los muslos y pantorillas engorden mucho. [The Indians of Cumana press down the heads of young infants tightly between cushions stuffed with cotton for the purpose of giving width to their faces, which they regard as a beauty. The young girls wear very tight bandages round their knees in order to give thickness to the thighs and calves of the legs.]) On observing the spirit of order and submission which prevails in the Carib missions, the traveller can scarcely persuade himself that he is among cannibals. This American word, of somewhat doubtful signification, is probably derived from the language of Hayti, or that of Porto Rico; and it has passed into the languages of Europe, since the end of the fifteenth century, as synonymous with that of anthropophagi. "These newly discovered man-eaters, so greedy of human flesh, are called Caribes or Cannibals,"* says Anghiera, in the third decade of his Oceanica, dedicated to Pope Leo X. (* Edaces humanarum carnium novi helluones anthropophagi, Caribes alias Canibales appellati.) There can be little doubt that the Caribs of the islands, when a conquering people, exercised cruelties upon the Ygneris, or ancient inhabitants of the West Indies, who were weak and not very warlike; but we must also admit that these cruelties were exaggerated by the early travellers, who heard only the narratives of the old enemies of the Caribs. It is not always the vanquished solely, who are calumniated by their contemporaries; the insolence of the conquerors is punished by the catalogue of their crimes being augmented.

All the missionaries of the Carony, the Lower Orinoco and the Llanos del Cari whom we had an opportunity of consulting assured us that the Caribs are perhaps the least anthropophagous nations of the New Continent. They extend this remark even to the independent hordes who wander on the east of the Esmeralda, between the sources of the Rio Branco and the Essequibo. It may be conceived that the fury and despair with which the unhappy Caribs defended themselves against the Spaniards, when in 1504 a royal decree declared them slaves, may have contributed to acquire for them a reputation for ferocity. The first idea of attacking this nation and depriving it of liberty and of its natural rights originated with Christopher Columbus, who was not in all instances so humane as he is represented to have been. Subsequently the licenciado Rodrigo de Figueroa was appointed by the court, in 1520, to determine the tribes of South America, who were to be regarded as of Carib race, or as cannibals; and those who were Guatiaos,* that is, Indians of peace, and friends of the Castilians. (* I had some trouble in discovering the origin of this denomination which has become so important from the fatal decrees of Figueroa. The Spanish historians often employ the word guatiao to designate a branch of nations. To become a guatiao of any one seems to have signified, in the language of Hayti, to conclude a treaty of friendship. In the West India Islands, as well as in the archipelago of the South Sea, names were exchanged in token of alliance. Juan de Esquivel (1502) se hice guatiao del cacique Cotubanama; el qual desde adelante se llamo Juan de Esquivel, porque era liga de perpetua amistad entre los Indios trocarse los nombres: y trocados quedaban guatiaos, que era tanto coma confederados y hermanos en armas. Ponce de Leon se hace guatiao con el poderoso cacique Agueinaha." Herrera dec. 1 pages 129, 159 and 181. [Juan de Esquivel (1502) became the guatiao of the cacique Cotubanama; and thenceforth the latter called himself Juan de Esquivel, for among the Indians the exchange of names was a bond of perpetual friendship. Those who exchanged names became guaitaos, which meant the same as confederates or brethren-in-arms.

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