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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Ponce De Leon Became Guatiao With
The Powerful Cacique Agueinaha.] One Of The Lucayes Islands, Inhabited
By A Mild And
Pacific people, was heretofore called Guatao; but we
will not insist on the etymology of this word, because the languages
Of the Lucayes Islands differed from those of Hayti.) The ethnographic
document called El Auto de Figueroa is one of the most curious records
of the barbarism of the first conquistadores. Without any attention to
the analogy of languages, every nation that could be accused of having
devoured a prisoner after a battle was arbitrarily declared of Carib
race. The inhabitants of Uriapari (on the peninsula of Paria) were
named Caribs; the Urinacos (settled on the banks of the Lower Orinoco,
or Urinucu), Guatiaos. All the tribes designated by Figueroa as Caribs
were condemned to slavery; and might at will be sold, or exterminated
by war. In these sanguinary struggles, the Carib women, after the
death of their husbands, defended themselves with such desperation
that Anghiera says they were taken for tribes of Amazons. But amidst
the cruelties exercised on the Caribs, it is consolatory to find, that
there existed some courageous men who raised the voice of humanity and
justice. Some of the monks embraced an opinion different from that
which they had at first adopted. In an age when there could be no hope
of founding public liberty on civil institutions, an attempt was at
least made to defend individual liberty. "That is a most holy law (ley
sanctissima)," says Gomara, in 1551, "by which our emperor has
prohibited the reducing of the Indians to slavery. It is just that
men, who are all born free, should not become the slaves of one
another."
During our abode in the Carib missions, we observed with surprise the
facility with which young Indians of eighteen years of age, when
appointed to the post of alguazil, would harangue the municipality for
whole hours in succession. Their tone of voice, their gravity of
deportment, the gestures which accompanied their speech, all denoted
an intelligent people capable of a high degree of civilization. A
Franciscan monk, who knew enough of the Carib language to preach in it
occasionally, pointed out to us that the long and harmonious periods
which occur in the discourses of the Indians are never confused or
obscure. Particular inflexions of the verb indicate beforehand the
nature of the object, whether it be animate or inanimate, singular or
plural. Little annexed forms (suffixes) mark the gradations of
sentiment; and here, as in every language formed by a free
development, clearness is the result of that regulating instinct which
characterises human intelligence in the various stages of barbarism
and cultivation. 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. The travelling
Caribs were the Bokharians of equinoctial America. The necessity of
counting the objects of their little trade, and transmitting
intelligence, led them to extend and improve the use of the quipos,
or, as they are called in the missions, the cordoncillos con necos
(cords with knots). These quipos or knotted cords are found in Canada,
in Mexico (where Boturini procured some from the Tlascaltecs), in
Peru, in the plains of Guiana, in central Asia, in China, and in
India. As rosaries, they have become objects of devotion in the hands
of the Christians of the East; as suampans, they have been employed in
the operations of manual arithmetic by the Chinese, the Tartars, and
the Russians. The independent Caribs who inhabit the little-known
country situated between the sources of the Orinoco and those of the
rivers Essequibo, Carony, and Parima, are divided into tribes; and,
like the nations of the Missouri, of Chili, and of ancient Germany,
form a political confederation. This system is most in accordance with
the spirit of liberty prevailing amongst those warlike hordes who see
no advantage in the ties of society but for common defence. The pride
of the Caribs leads them to withdraw themselves from every other
tribe; even from those to whom, by their language, they have some
affinity.
They claim the same separation in the missions, which seldom prosper
when any attempt is made to associate them with other mixed
communities, that is, with villages where every hut is inhabited by a
family belonging to another nation and speaking another language. The
authority of the chiefs of the independent Caribs is hereditary in the
male line only, the children of sisters being excluded from the
succession.
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