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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I Make Use Of The
Word Indigenous (Autocthoni) Not To Indicate A Fact Of Creation, Which
Does Not Belong To
History, but simply to denote that we are ignorant
of the autocthoni having been preceded by any other people.) The
Archipelago of the large and small West India Islands forms a narrow
and broken neck of land, parallel with the isthmus of Panama, and
supposed by some geographers to join the peninsula of Florida to the
north-east extremity of South America. It is the eastern shore of an
inland sea which may be considered as a basin with several outlets.
This peculiar configuration of the land has served to support the
different systems of migration, by which it has been attempted to
explain the settlement of the nations of the Carib race in the islands
and on the neighbouring continent. The Caribs of the continent admit
that the small West India Islands were anciently inhabited by the
Arowaks,* a warlike nation, the great mass of which still inhabit the
insalubrious shores of Surinam and Berbice. (* Arouaques. The
missionary Quandt (Nachricht von Surinam, 1807 page 47) calls them
Arawackes.) They assert that the Arowaks, with the exception of the
women, were all exterminated by Caribs, who came from the mouths of
the Orinoco. In support of this tradition they refer to the traces of
analogy existing between the language of the Arowaks and that of the
Carib women; but it must be recollected that the Arowaks, though the
enemies of the Caribs, belonged to the same branch of people; and that
the same analogy exists between the Arowak and Carib languages as
between the Greek and the Persian, the German and the Sanscrit.
According to another tradition, the Caribs of the islands came from
the south, not as conquerors, but because they were expelled from
Guiana by the Arowaks, who originally ruled over all the neighbouring
nations. Finally, a third tradition, much more general and more
probable, represents the Caribs as having come from Florida, in North
America. Mr. Bristock, a traveller who has collected every particular
relating to these migrations from north to south, asserts that a tribe
of Confachites (Confachiqui* (* The province of Confachiqui, which in
1541 became subject to a woman, is celebrated by the expedition of
Hernando de Soto to Florida. Among the nations of the Huron tongue,
and the Attakapas, the supreme authority was also often exercised by
women.)) had long waged war against the Apalachites; that the latter,
having yielded to that tribe the fertile district of Amana, called
their new confederates Caribes (that is, valiant strangers); but that,
owing to a dispute respecting their religious rites, the
Confachite-Caribs were driven from Florida. They went first to the
Yucayas or Lucayes Islands (to Cigateo and the neighbouring islands);
thence to Ayay (Hayhay, now Santa Cruz), and to the lesser Caribbee
Islands; and lastly to the continent of South America.* (* Rochefort,
Hist. des Antilles volume 1 pages 326 to 353; Garcia page 322;
Robertson book 3 note 69.
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