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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The Conjecture Of Father Gili That The
Caribs Of The Continent May Have Come From The Islands At The Time
Of
the first conquest of the Spaniards (Saggio volume 3 page 204), is at
variance with all the statements of
The early historians.) It is
supposed that this event took place toward the year 1100 of our era.
In the course of this long migration the Caribs had not touched at the
larger islands; the inhabitants of which however also believed that
they came originally from Florida. The islanders of Cuba, Hayti, and
Boriken (Porto Rico) were, according to the uniform testimony of the
first conquistadores, entirely different from the Caribs; and at the
period of the discovery of America, the latter had already abandoned
the group of the lesser Lucayes Islands; an archipelago in which there
prevailed that variety of languages always found in lands peopled by
shipwrecked men and fugitives.* (* La gente de las islas Yucayas era
(1492) mas blanca y de major policia que la de Cuba y Haiti. Havia
mucha diversidad de lenguas. [The people of the Lucayes were (1492) of
fairer complexion and of more civilized manners than those of Cuba and
Hayti. They had a great diversity of languages.] Gomara, Hist. de Ind.
fol. 22.)
The dominion so long exercised by the Caribs over a great part of the
continent, joined to the remembrance of their ancient greatness, has
inspired them with a sentiment of dignity and national superiority
which is manifest in their manners and their discourse. "We alone are
a nation," say they proverbially; "the rest of mankind (oquili) are
made to serve us." This contempt of the Caribs for their enemies is so
strong that I saw a child of ten years of age foam with rage on being
called a Cabre or Cavere; though he had never in his life seen an
individual of that unfortunate race of people who gave their name to
the town of Cabruta (Cabritu); and who, after long resistance, were
almost entirely exterminated by the Caribs. Thus we find among half
savage hordes, as in the most civilized part of Europe, those
inveterate animosities which have caused the names of hostile nations
to pass into their respective languages as insulting appellations.
The missionary of the village of Cari led us into several Indian huts,
where extreme neatness and order prevailed. We observed with pain the
torments which the Carib mothers inflict on their infants for the
purpose not only of enlarging the calf of the leg, but also of raising
the flesh in alternate stripes from the ankle to the top of the thigh.
Narrow ligatures, consisting of bands of leather, or of woven cotton,
are fixed two or three inches apart from each other, and being
tightened more and more, the muscles between the bands become swollen.
The monks of the missions, though ignorant of the works or even of the
name of Rousseau, attempt to oppose this ancient system of physical
education: but in vain.
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