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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Man When Just Issued From The Woods And
Supposed To Be So Simple In His Manners, Is Far From Being Tractable
In His Ideas Of Beauty And Propriety.
I observed, however, with
surprise, that the manner in which these poor children are bound, and
which seems to obstruct the circulation of the blood, does not operate
injuriously on their muscular movements.
There is no race of men more
robust and swifter in running than the Caribs.
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.
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