He Describes The Race Of That Tribe As Being Naked With Long Hair, And Going To The Neighbouring Countries To Trade; And Says The Women Are Cleanly, Well Dressed And Extremely Engaging (Amorosas Y Galanas).

"I have not seen," adds the Conquistador, "any women more beautiful* in all the Indian lands I have visited:

They have one fault, however, that of having too frequent intercourse with the devil." (* Cronica del Peru pages 21 and 22. The Indians of Darien, Uraba, Zenu (Sinu), Tatabe, the valleys of Nore and of Guaca, the mountains of Abibe and Antioquia, are accused, by the same author, of the most ferocious cannibalism; and perhaps that circumstance alone gives rise to the idea that they were of the same race as the Caribs of the West Indies. In the celebrated Provision Real of the 30th of October, 1503, by which the Spaniards are permitted to make slaves of the anthropophagic Indians of the archipelago of San Bernardo, opposite the mouth of the Rio Sinu, the Isla Fuerte, Isla Bura (Baru) and Carthagena, there is more of a question of morals than of race, and the denomination of Caribs is altogether avoided. Cieca asserts that the natives of the valley of Nore seized the women of neighbouring tribes, in order first to devour the children who were born of the union with foreign wives, and then the women themselves. Foreseeing that this horrible depravity would not be believed, although it had been observed by Columbus in the West Indies, he cites the testimony of Juan de Vadillo, who had observed the same facts and who was still living in 1554 when the Cronica del Peru appeared in Dutch. With respect to the etymology of the word cannibal, it seems to me entirely cleared up by the discovery of the journal kept by Columbus during his first voyage of discovery, and of which Bartholomew de las Casas has left us an abridged copy. Dice mas el Almirante que en las islas passadas estaban con gran temor de carib: y en algunas los llamaban caniba; pero en la Espanola carib y son gente arriscada, pues andan por todas estas islas y comen la gente que pueden haber. [And the Admiral moreover says that in the islands they passed, great apprehension was entertained on account of the caribs. Some call them canibas; but in Spanish they are called caribs. They are a very bold people, and they travel about these islands, and devour all the persons whom they capture.] Navarete tome 1 page 135. In this primitive form of words it is easy to perceive that the permutation of the letters r and n, resulting from the imperfection of the organs in some nations, might change carib into canib, or caniba. Geraldini who, according to the tendency of that age, sought, like Cardinal Bembo, to latinize all barbarous denominations, recognizes in the Cannibals the manners of dogs (canes) just as St. Louis desired to send the Tartars ad suas tartareas sedes unde exierint.)

The Rio Sinu, owing to its position and its fertility, is of the highest importance for provisioning Carthagena. In time of war the enemy usually stationed their ships between the Morro de Tigua and the Boca de Matunilla, to intercept barques laden with provisions. In that station they were, however, sometimes exposed to the attack of the gun-boats of Carthagena: these gun-boats can pass through the channel of Pasacaballos which, near Saint Anne, separates the isle of Baru from the continent. Lorica has, since the sixteenth century, been the principal town of Rio Sinu; but its population which, in 1778, under the government of Don Juan Diaz Pimienta, amounted to 4000 souls, has considerably diminished, because nothing has been done to secure the town from inundations and the deleterious miasmata they produce.

The gold-washings of the Rio Sinu, heretofore so important above all, between its source and the village of San Geronimo, have almost entirely ceased, as well as those of Cienega de Tolu, Uraba and all the rivers descending from the mountains of Abibe. "The Darien and the Zenu," says the bachelor Enciso in his geographical work published at the beginning of the sixteenth century, "is a country so rich in gold pepites that, in the running waters, that metal can be fished with nets." Excited by these narratives, the governor Pedrarias sent his lieutenant, Francisco Becerra, in 1515, to the Rio Sinu. This expedition was most unfortunate for Becerra and his troop were massacred by the natives, of whom the Spaniards, according to the custom of the time, had carried away great numbers to be sold as slaves in the West Indies. The province of Antioquia now furnishes, in its auriferous veins, a vast field for mining speculations; but it might be well worth while to relinquish gold-washings for the cultivation of colonial productions in the fertile lands of Sinu, the Rio Damaquiel, the Uraba and the Darien del Norte; above all, that of cacao, which is of a superior quality. The proximity of the port of Carthagena would also render the neglected cultivation of cinchona an object of great importance to European trade. That precious tree vegetates at the source of the Rio Sinu, as in the mountains of Abibe and Maria. The real febrifuge cinchona, with a hairy corolla, is nowhere else found so near the coast, if we except the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta.

The Rio Sinu and the Gulf of Darien were not visited by Columbus. The most eastern point at which that great man touched land, on the 26th November, 1503, is the Puerto do Retreto, now called Punta de Escribanos, near the Punta of San Blas, in the isthmus of Panama. Two years previously, Rodrigo de Bastidas and Alanso do Ojeda, accompanied by Amerigo Vespucci, had discovered the whole coast of the main land, from the Gulf of Maracaybo as far as the Puerto de Retreto. Having often had occasion in the preceding volumes to speak of New Andalusia, I may here mention that I found that denomination, for the first time, in the convention made by Alonso de Ojeda with the Conquistador Diego de Sicuessa, a powerful man, say the historians of his time, because he was a flattering courtier and a wit.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 86 of 170
Words from 87651 to 88700 of 174507