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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Amidst The Plains Of North America, Some Powerful Nation, Which Has
Disappeared, Constructed Circular, Square, And Octagonal
Fortifications; Walls Six
Thousand toises in length; tumuli from seven
to eight hundred feet in diameter, and one hundred and forty feet in
Height, sometimes round, sometimes with several stories and containing
thousands of skeletons. These skeletons are the remains of men less
slender and more squat than the present inhabitants of those
countries. Other bones wrapped in fabrics resembling those of the
Sandwich and Feejee Islands are found in the natural grottoes of
Kentucky. What is become of those nations of Louisiana anterior to the
Lenni-Lenapes, the Shawanese, and perhaps even to the Sioux
(Nadowesses, Nahcotas) of the Missouri, who are strongly mongolised;
and who, it is believed, according to their own traditions, came from
the coast of Asia? 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.
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