THE WILD INDIANS OF TROPICAL AMERICA.
The wild Forest Tribes--Their Physical Conformation and Moral
Characteristics--Their Powers of Endurance not inferior to those
of other Races--Their stoical indifference--Their Means of
Subsistence--Fishing--Hunting--The Wourali Poison--Ornaments--
Painting--Tattooing--Religion--The Moon, a Land of Abundance--
The Botuto--The Piaches--The Savage Hordes of Brazil and Guiana--
The Ottomacas--Dirt-eaters--Their Vindictive Ferocity and War
Stratagems--The extinct Tribe of the Atures--A Parrot the last
Speaker of their Language--Their Burial-cavern--The Uaupes
Indians--Their large Huts--Horrid Custom of Disinterment--The
Macus--The Purupurus--The ‘Palheta’--The Mandrucus--Singular
resemblance of some of the Customs of the American Indians to those
of Remote Nations--The Caribs--The Botocudos--Monstrous distension
of the Ears and Under-lip--Their Bow and Arrow--Their Migrations--
Bush-rope Bridge--Botocudo Funeral--‘Tanchon,’ the Evil Spirit.
Though nominally under the dominion of the European race, yet a
considerable part of tropical America still remains in the undisturbed
possession of its native tribes. While the stranger has established his
chief settlements along the coast or in those parts of the interior
which before his arrival were already the seats of a certain degree of
culture, where before him the Incas had founded cities and a large
agricultural population occupied the fertile table-lands of Anahuac,
the wild hunter, unsubjected to the rules and trammels of civilised
life, still roams over the boundless woods or interminable savannahs
through which the Amazons, the Orinoco, and a hundred other great
streams wend their way from the Andes to the Ocean. Here the primitive
American can still be studied; here he exhibits the same traits of
character and follows the same mode of life as his fathers before him,
in the times of Cortez or Pizarro.
Many of the forest tribes, indeed, have been converted to Christianity,
and live in missions or small settlements situated far apart on the
banks of the great rivers; others are willing to barter the drugs,
india-rubber, or rare birds and insects, they gather in the woods
for articles of European manufacture; but many desiring no more than
what their native wilds supply, never or but seldom cross the path of
civilised man.
Though divided into a large number of hostile tribes, and scattered
over an immense extent of country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
and far beyond the bounds which separate one tropic from the other,
yet the American Indians so nearly resemble each other, both in their
features and the qualities of their minds, as evidently to be descended
from one source. Their complexion is of a reddish-brown, more or less
resembling the colour of copper. There is, however, a great diversity
of shade among the several tribes, which appears to be less dependent
on the influence of climate than on an original disposition, varying in
the different branches of the American race. The elevation above the
sea, or the vicinity of the equator, seems to have no great influence,
for both Ulloa and Humboldt were astonished to find the Indians as
bronze-coloured or as brown in the cold regions of the Cordilleras as
in the hot plains of Venezuela. On the sultry banks of the Orinoco
there are even tribes characterised by a remarkable fairness of
complexion, living in the vicinity of others more than commonly brown.
D’Orbigny makes this lightness of colour coincide with the woody and
shady character of the quarters inhabited; the Maripas, for instance,
who inhabit the most exposed countries, being also the darkest in hue.
The hair of the American Indians is always black, long, coarse, and
uncurled. With rare exceptions they carefully eradicate their scanty
beard. Their forehead is generally low, their black and deep-seated
eyes have their upper angles turned upwards, and their cheek-bones are
broad and high. While they thus in some of their features resemble the
Mongol type, they widely differ from it by the form of their nose,
which is as prominent as in the Caucasian race. The mouth is large,
the lips broad, but not thick as those of the Negro; the chin short
and round, the jaws remarkably strong and broad. The expression of the
eye is in some tribes mild and serene, in others it shows a forbidding
mixture of melancholy and ferocity. There is generally a remarkable
rigidity in the features of the American, very different from that
lively play in a European countenance, which often reflects as a mirror
every emotion of the mind. Some tribes are of small stature, others
athletic; the limbs are generally well-turned; the feet small; the body
of just proportions.
The beardless countenance and smooth skin seem to indicate a defect
of vigour which does not exist in reality. In those parts of the
continent where hardly any labour is requisite to procure subsistence,
and the powers of the body and mind are not called forth, indolence
indeed produces its usual effects, weakness and languor; but wherever
the aboriginal American is accustomed to toil, he is found capable of
performing such tasks as equal any effort of the natives either of
Africa or of Europe. In many of the silver mines of Mexico, where the
ore is conveyed to the surface by human labour, the native Indians
will climb steep ladders with 240 to 380 pounds, and perform this hard
work for six hours consecutively. Their muscular strength seemed truly
astonishing to Humboldt, who, though having no weight but his own to
carry, felt himself utterly exhausted after ascending from a deep
mine.[9] In propelling a boat against a rapid stream, or in supporting
the fatigues of a long march, the Indian evinces similar powers of
endurance and exertion, which prove him to be not inferior in this
respect to the other races of man.
The uniformity which prevails in the features of the American
aboriginals, exists also in the qualities of their minds, which
generally exhibit an apparent indifference to pain or pleasure that
would have done honour to a Stoic. Insensible to the charms of beauty
and the power of love, they treat their women with coldness and
indifference, being at no pains to win their favour by the assiduity of
courtship, and still less solicitous to preserve it by indulgence and
gentleness. Grave, even unto sadness, they have nothing of that giddy
vivacity peculiar to many Europeans. Frequently placed in situations of
danger and distress, depending on themselves alone, and wrapped up in
their own thoughts and schemes, their minds are tinted with an habitual
melancholy. Their attention to others is small, the range of their own
ideas narrow. Hence that taciturnity which is so disgusting to men
accustomed to exchange their thoughts in social conversation. When not
engaged in some active pursuit, the wild Americans often sit whole days
in one posture without opening their lips.
When they go forth to war or to the chase, they usually march in a line
at some distance from one another, and without exchanging a word. The
same profound silence is observed when they row together in a canoe.
It is only when they are animated by intoxicating liquors, or roused
by the excitement of the dance, that they relax from their usual
insensibility and give some signs of sympathy with their kind.
All their thoughts intent upon self-preservation, they live only in
the present, and seem alike indifferent to the past and the future.
Gratitude, friendship, ambition, are sentiments of which they have no
idea; and war or the pursuit of wild animals the only occupations which
are able to rouse them from their stolid apathy.
Many tribes depend entirely upon fishing or the chase for their
subsistence; others rear a few plants, which in a rich soil and a
warm climate are soon trained to maturity. With a moderate exertion
of industry and foresight the maize, the manioc, and the plantain
would enable them to live in abundance, but such is their improvident
laziness that the provisions they obtain by cultivating the ground are
but limited and scanty, and thus when the woods and rivers withhold
their usual gifts, they are often reduced to extreme distress.
The streams and lagunes of South America abound with an infinite
variety of the most delicate fish, and Nature seems to have indulged
the indolence of the Indian by the liberality with which she ministers
in this way to his wants. They swarm in such shoals that in some places
they are caught without art or industry. In others the natives have
discovered a method of infecting the water with the juice of certain
plants, by which the fish are so intoxicated that they float on the
surface, and are taken with the hand.
In one of the shallow lagunes of the Amazons, the French traveller
Castelnau witnessed fish-catching by this means on a grand scale. On
the previous evening a quantity of branches of the Barbasco (_Jacquinia
armillaris_), after having been beaten with clubs, and divided among
the canoes that were to take part in the sport, had been steeped in
water, and then flung with the infusion into the lagune. At least five
hundred Indians stood on the banks among the high rushes or on the
trunks of trees, armed with arrows, harpoons, and clubs. At first only
small fishes appeared upon the surface, and as if stunned, and then,
suddenly awakening, sought to leap upon the bank. Then the larger
species were seen to float on the water, or to make similar efforts to
escape from the poisoned element. During the whole day the canoes of
the Indians were passing on the lagune, and the same bustle reigned
along the banks. The whistling of the arrows was incessantly heard,
together with the beating of the clubs upon the water, while on land
no less activity was displayed in cutting up, smoking, and salting the
fish. Castelnau counted thirty-five different species, and estimated
the number caught at 50,000 or 60,000, many measuring a foot or more in
length. Although the lagune was thus poisoned, the Indians drank the
water with impunity, and the river tortoises and alligators seemed to
be equally untouched by the Barbasco juice which proved so fatal to the
fishes.
The prolific quality of the rivers in South America induces many of
the natives to resort to their banks, and to depend almost entirely
for nourishment on what their waters so abundantly supply. But this
mode of life requires so little enterprise or ingenuity that the
petty nations adjacent to the Marañon and Orinoco are far inferior,
in point of activity, intelligence, and courage, to the tribes which
principally depend upon hunting for their subsistence. To form a just
estimate of the intellectual capacities of the American, he must be
seen when following the exciting pursuits of the chase. While engaged
in this favourite exercise, he shakes off his habitual indolence, the
latent powers and vigour of his mind are roused, and he becomes active,
persevering, and indefatigable. His sagacity in finding his prey is
only equalled by his address in killing it. His reason and his senses
being constantly directed to this one object, the former displays
such fertility of invention and the latter acquire such a degree of
acuteness, as appear almost incredible. He discerns the footsteps
of a wild beast, or detects it among the dark foliage, where its
vestiges or presence would escape every other eye; he follows it with
certainty through the pathless forest, and is able to subsist where the
best European hunter would perish from want. If he attacks his game
openly, his fatal arrow seldom errs from the mark; if he endeavours to
circumvent it by art, it is almost impossible to avoid his toils.
Among several tribes the young men are not permitted to marry until
they have given such proofs of their skill in hunting as put it beyond
doubt that they are capable of providing for a family. Their ingenuity,
always on the stretch and sharpened by emulation, as well as necessity,
has struck out many inventions which greatly facilitate success in the
chase.
Slow, and with noiseless step, so as scarcely to disturb the fallen
leaves beneath his feet, the wily Macusi Indian approaches. His weapons
are strong, and peculiar, and of so slight an appearance as to form a
strange contrast to their terrific power. A colossal species of Bamboo
(_Arundinacea Schomburgkii_), whose perfectly cylindrical culm often
rises to the height of fifteen feet from the root before it forms its
first knot, furnishes him with his blow-pipe; and the slender arrows
which he sends forth with unerring certainty of aim, are made of the
leaf-stalks of a species of palm tree (_Maximiliana regia_), hard
and brittle, and sharp-pointed as a needle. You would hardly suppose
these fragile missiles capable of inflicting the slightest wound at
any distance, and yet they strike more surely and effectively than the
rifleman’s bullet, for their point is dipped in the deadly juice of the
Strychnos Urari, whose venomous powers are not inferior to those of the
bush-master’s fang.
In vain, suspended by his prehensile tail, the Miriki, the largest of
the Brazilian monkeys, retires to the highest forest trees; in vain
the sloth clings like a heap of moss to the bough; touched by the fatal
poison they both let go their aërial hold, and their lifeless bodies,
whizzing through the air as they drop down, fall with a loud crash to
the ground.
In a diluted form the wourali poison merely benumbs or stuns the
faculties without killing, and is thus made use of by the Indians when
they wish to catch an old monkey alive, and tame him for sale. On his
falling down senseless, they immediately suck the wound, and wrapping
him up in a strait jacket of palm leaves, dose him for a few days
with sugar-cane juice or a strong solution of saltpetre. This method
generally answers the purpose, but should his stubborn temper not
yet be subdued, they hang him up in smoke. Then, after a short time,
his useless rage gives way, and his wild eye, assuming a plaintive
expression, humbly sues for deliverance. His bonds are now loosened,
and even the most unmanageable monkey seems to forget that he ever
roamed at liberty in the boundless woods.
It is chiefly on the Camuku mountains in Guiana that the formidable
Urari plant is found, whose sombre-coloured, brown-haired leaves and
rind seem by their sinister appearance to betray its deadly qualities.
The savage tribes of the South American woods know how to poison their
arrows with the juices of various other plants, but none equals this
in virulence and certainty of execution, and yearly the Indians of the
Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and even of the Amazons, wander to the Camuku
mountains to purchase by barter the renowned Urari or Wourali poison of
the Macusis. Nature has vouchsafed to these sons of the wilderness an
inestimable gift in these venomous juices, which she has instilled in
various plants of the forest, for by no other means would they be able
to kill the birds and monkeys on whose flesh they chiefly subsist. How,
or at what time, they made the discovery of their powers is unknown;
at all events the combination of so many means for the attainment of
the end in view--the preparation of the poison, the blow-pipe, and the
arrows--denotes a high degree of ingenuity.
The tropical Indians are generally as free from the incumbrance of
dress as it is possible to conceive, paint seeming to be looked upon
as a sufficient clothing. Red, furnished by the pulp of the fruits of
the Arnatto, or by the leaves of the Bignonia Chica, is the favourite
colour, with which some tribes only besmear their faces, while others,
who command a greater abundance of the material, not only paint their
whole bodies, but even their canoes, their stools, and other articles
of furniture. Red, yellow, and black are sometimes disposed in stripes,
or in regular patterns, which it requires much time and patience to
draw. The labour bestowed upon these paintings is the more to be
wondered at, as a strong rain suffices to efface them. Some nations
only paint when they are about to celebrate a festival, others are thus
decorated the whole year round, and would be as ashamed to be seen
unpainted as a European to appear unclothed.
The use of ornaments and trinkets of various kinds is almost confined
to the men. A circlet of parrot and other gaudily-coloured feathers is
worn round the head, but generally only on festive occasions. Tattooing
is not so general or so elaborate as among the nations of the Malayan
race, or the wild aboriginals of Australia.
The religion of the American Indians, if such it may be called,
is of the lowest description. Some tribes, indeed, acknowledge a
good principle, called Cachimana, who rules the seasons and causes
the fruits of the earth to ripen; but, thankless for the benefits
they enjoy, they pay far greater reverence to the evil principle,
Tolokiamo, who, though not so powerful, is more cunning and active.
The forest-Indians can hardly understand church and image worship.
‘Your God,’ they say to the Catholic missionaries, ‘shuts himself up
in a house as if he were old and infirm; ours is in the forest, in the
fields, in the mountains whence comes the rain.’
The moon is universally considered as the abode of the blessed, as
the land of abundance. The Esquimo, for whom a plank thrown by the
current on his treeless shore is a treasure, sees in the moon extensive
plains covered with forests, while the Indian of the Orinoco perceives
in its shining orb grassy savannahs, exempt from all insect plagues.
‘How pleasant it must be to live in the moon,’ said a Salina-Indian
to Father Gumilla; ‘she is so beautiful and bright that surely no
mosquitos can be there.’ Thus man is always disposed to transfer to
some distant spot the seat of a felicity denied to him on earth.
On the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazons no idols are worshipped,
but the Botuto, the holy trumpet, is the great object of veneration.
The Piaches, priests or medicine-men who have taken it under their
care, and who, to be initiated in its mysteries are obliged to submit
to fasts, scourging, and other painful or self-denying religious
practices, carry it under the palm trees where, as they pretend, its
sound ensures a rich harvest for the following year. Sometimes the
great spirit Cachimana blows the trumpet himself, at others he makes
known his will through the guardians of the sacred instrument. No woman
is allowed to see it on pain of death, but hurries away when the sound
of it is heard approaching through the woods, and remains invisible
till after the ceremony is over, when the instrument is taken away to
its hiding-place, and the women come out of their concealment. Some of
these Botutos are particularly renowned and venerated by more than one
tribe. Sometimes offerings of fruits and palm-wine are deposited near
them, and prove, no doubt, very acceptable to the Piaches.
The wild Indians who people the vast forests and llanos of Brazil and
Guaiana generally live in small hordes, separated from each other by
mutual distrust, and often by open war. Their enmity is aggravated
by the circumstance that even the neighbouring tribes speak totally
different languages. Though when they first settled along the
river-banks of tropical America they probably spoke one tongue; yet,
lost in interminable woods, where sometimes a single mountain or a few
miles of forest are an almost impervious barrier between hordes which,
to communicate with each other, would require a few days’ navigation
through a labyrinth of streams, mere dialects in process of time became
separate languages, which from their dissimilarity perpetuate discord
and hatred. The Indians avoid each other because they do not understand
each other, and a mutual distrust and fear is the cause of their mutual
animosity. Some of the Orinoco tribes, as for instance the Ottomacas
and the Yaruras, are nomadic savages, the outcasts of humanity; others,
like the Maquiritani and the Macos, are of milder manners, and live in
fixed settlements, on the products of the soil.
The Ottomacas, of whom it is said by other Indians, ‘that there is
nothing so disgusting that they will not eat,’ live the greater part
of the year on fishes and turtles; but when the Orinoco and its
tributaries swell during the periodical rains and render fishing next
to impossible, they become ‘_dirt-eaters_’ and assuage their hunger
with an unctuous clay. Such is their predilection for this strange
aliment, in which chemistry detects no trace of organic matter,
that even in times of abundance they mix some of it with their more
nutritious food. The most remarkable fact is that during the two months
of the year when they daily devour about three-quarters of a pound of
clay, and are restricted to a meagre supply of vegetable or animal
provisions, such as lizards, ants, and gum, the Ottomacas still remain
healthy and strong, and never complain of indigestion. These barbarians
are ugly, wild, vindictive; and besides being passionately fond of
palm-wine and maize-spirit, use the powdered pods of a leguminous
plant, the Acacia Niopo, as a means of intoxication. The hollow bone
of a bird serves as a kind of pipe, through which they sniff up the
powder, which is so irritating that a small quantity produces a strong
fit of sneezing in those who are not accustomed to it. The effect of
the Niopo is to deprive them for a couple of hours of their senses, and
to render them furious in battle. Such is their malignant ingenuity
that they poison their sharpened thumb-nails with the Wourali, so as
to be able to inflict a death-wound with the slightest scratch, and
such their tiger-like ferocity that they suck with fiendish delight the
blood of their slain enemies. The country these wretches inhabit is
described as romantically beautiful, a mournful contrast to a state of
society where man is eternally armed against man. Such is the miserable
state of insecurity of the weaker tribes that, when they approach a
river’s bank, they carefully destroy with their hands the vestiges of
their timid footsteps.
During the rainy season the swollen Orinoco, like the Amazons and
other great streams, frequently undermines the trees on his banks,
and carries them along on his turbid waters. These natural floats,
covered with a profusion of parasites and climbing plants, form so
many swimming islands, pleasing to the eye, but extremely dangerous
to navigation; for woe to the pirogue which at night is caught in
their intricate network of roots and branches! When the Indians wish
to surprise a hostile horde they bind several canoes together and,
concealing them under a covering of herbs and foliage, thus imitate the
natural floats of the Orinoco.
Lurking, like murderous reptiles, under a canopy of verdure, the
current carries them towards the unsuspecting objects of their
stratagem, and they send forth the poisoned dart ere the enemy is aware
of their approach. How happy might all these nations be if they would
but apply to the arts of peace and improvement, the intelligence they
waste upon the purposes of war!
Where the hordes are so small and the causes of destruction so great,
it cannot be wondered at that whole tribes die away like single
families, and come to be numbered among the beings of the past. Thus
the Atures, who gave their name to the far-famed cataracts of the Upper
Orinoco, are now no more, and, strange to say, the last words of their
language were heard from the lips not of the last survivor of their
race, but from those of a parrot. The Atures are also interesting from
their careful mode of sepulture, in a burial cavern thus described by
Humboldt: ‘The most remote part of the valley is covered by a thick
forest. In this shady and solitary spot, on the declivity of a steep
mountain, the cavern of Atariupe opens itself. It is less a cavern
than a jutting rock in which the waters have scooped a vast hollow;
when, in the ancient revolutions of our planet, they attained that
height. We soon reckoned in the tomb of a whole extinct tribe nearly
six hundred skeletons, well preserved, and so regularly placed that
it would have been difficult to make an error in their number. Every
skeleton reposes in a sort of basket made of the petioles of the palm
tree. These baskets, which the natives call _mapurès_, have the form
of a square bag; their sizes are proportioned to the age of the dead;
there are some for infants cut off the moment of their birth: we saw
them from ten inches to three feet long, the skeletons in them being
bent together. The bones, not one of which is wanting, have been
prepared in three different manners, either whitened in the air and
the sun, or dyed red with arnatto, or, like real mummies, varnished
with odoriferous resins, and enveloped in leaves of the heliconia
or plantain tree. The Indians related to us that the fresh corpse
is placed in damp ground, in order that the flesh remaining on the
bone may be scraped off with sharp stones. Several hordes in Guiana
still observe this custom. Earthern vases, half-baked, are found near
the mapurès or baskets; they appear to contain the bones of the same
family. The largest of the vases, or funeral urns, are three feet high
and five feet and a half long. Their colour is greenish-grey, and their
oval form is sufficiently pleasing to the eye, The handles are made
in the shape of crocodiles or serpents; the edge is ornamented with
meanders, labyrinths, and straight lines variously combined.’ When the
reverence paid to the dead thus called forth the first germs of art,
there surely must have been affectionate feelings of regret and sorrow,
which raised the Atures above the level of mere callous savages, and
add a melancholy interest to their extinction.
The Indians of the Amazons valley appear to be much superior, both
physically and intellectually, to those of South Brazil and of most
other parts of South America. Their superb figures generally equal
the finest statues in beauty of outline; their broad chests exhibit
a splendid series of convex undulations without a hollow in any part
of it. The sons of a delicious climate, their bodies, invigorated
by exercise, and enjoying from infancy an unconstrained liberty of
action, show the perfection to which the human form may attain when
circumstances favour its development. Such is the number of their
tribes that Mr. Wallace enumerates no less than thirty along the bank
of the River Uaupes, one of the tributaries of the Rio Negro, having
almost all of them some peculiarities of language and custom, but all
going under the general name of Uaupes, and distinguishing themselves
as a body from the inhabitants of other rivers.
All these tribes construct their dwellings after one plan, which is
peculiar to them. Their houses, formed in the shape of a parallelogram
with a semicircle at one end, are the abode of numerous families,
sometimes of a whole tribe. The roof is supported on the columnar
trunks of palm trees. In the centre a clear opening is left, twenty
feet wide, and on the sides are little partitions of palm-leaf
thatch, dividing off rooms for the several families. These houses are
built with much labour and skill; the main supports, beams, rafters,
and other parts, are straight, well-proportioned to the strength
required, and bound together with split creepers, in a manner that a
sailor would admire. The thatch is of the leaf of some one of the
numerous palms so well adapted to the purpose, and is laid on with
great compactness and regularity. The walls, which are very low, are
formed also of palm-thatch, but so thick and so well bound together
that neither arrow nor bullet will penetrate it. At the gable end is
a large doorway, from the top of which hangs a palm mat, supported
by a pole during the day, and let down at night. A smaller door at
the semicircular end is the private entrance of the chief, to whom
this part of the house exclusively belongs. The furniture consists
principally of hammocks, made of string twisted from the fibres of the
leaves of the Mauritia flexuosa, of pots and cooking utensils made of
baked clay, and of great quantities of small saucer-shaped baskets.
Tattooing is very little practised by the Uaupes; they all, however,
have a row of circular punctures along the arm, and one tribe, the
Tucanos, are distinguished from the rest by three vertical blue lines
on the chin. They also pierce the lower lip, through which they hang
three little threads of white beads. All the tribes bore their ears,
and wear in them little pieces of grass ornamented with feathers. The
Cobeus alone expand the hole to so large a size that a bottle cork
could be inserted. The dead are almost always buried in the houses,
but several tribes have the horrid custom of disinterring the corpse
about a month after the funeral, and putting it in a great oven over
the fire till all the volatile parts are driven off with an intolerable
stench. The black carbonaceous mass which remains is then pounded into
a fine powder and mixed in several large vats of caxiri, or maize-beer.
This is drunk by the assembled company till all is finished, for they
imagine that thus the virtues of the deceased will be transmitted to
the drinkers.
The belief, which is also common among the Negroes, that death in the
prime of life does not proceed from a natural cause, but is owing to
the evil practices of some enemy, leads to the same fatal consequences.
Some poison given at a festival in a bowl of caxiri is generally used
to avenge the dead; this is of course again retaliated--on perhaps the
wrong party--and thus a long succession of murders may result from
what at first was a mere groundless suspicion.
The Macus, one of the lowest and most uncivilised tribes of Indians
in the Amazons district, lead a vagrant life similar to that of the
African Bushmen, but with this advantage--that they have greater
facility in procuring food, and live in a country abounding in water.
They have no fixed place of abode, but sleep at night on a bundle of
palm leaves, or stick up a few leaves to make a shed if it rains, or
sometimes with bush-ropes construct a rude hammock, which, however,
serves only once. They eat all kinds of birds, and fish, roasted or
boiled in palm spathes, and all sorts of wild fruits. They have little
or no iron, and use the tusks of the wild pig to scrape and form their
bows and arrows, which they anoint with poison. As the Bushmen do
with their neighbours, they often attack the houses of other Indians,
situated in solitary places, and are consequently equally detested by
the surrounding tribes.
On the banks of the Purus we find the Purupurus, who are almost all
afflicted with a cutaneous disease, consisting in the body being
spotted and blotched with white, brown, or nearly black patches of
irregular size and shape, and having a very disagreeable appearance.
When young their skins are clear, but as they grow up they invariably
become more or less spotted. Their houses are of the rudest
construction, like those of our gipsies, and so small as to be set up
on the sandy beaches and carried away in their canoes whenever they
wish to move. These canoes are likewise extremely primitive, having a
flat bottom and upright sides--a mere square box, and quite unlike
those of all other Indians. But what distinguishes them yet more from
their neighbours is that they use neither the blow-pipe nor bow and
arrow, but have an instrument called a ‘palheta,’ which is a piece of
wood with a projection at the end, to secure the base of the arrow, the
middle of which is held with the handle of the palheta in the hand, and
thus thrown as from a sling; they have a surprising dexterity in the
use of this weapon, and with it readily kill game, birds, and fish.
They sleep in their houses, on the sandy beaches, making no hammocks
nor clothing of any kind; they make no fire in their houses, which are
too small, but are kept warm in the night by the number of persons in
them. In the wet season, when the banks of the river are all flooded,
they construct rafts of trunks of trees bound together with creepers,
and on them erect their huts, and live there till the waters fall
again, when they guide their raft to the first sandy beach that appears.
In the country between the Tapajoz and the Madeira, among the
labyrinths of lakes and channels of the great island of the
Tupinambranos, reside the Mandrucus, the most warlike Indians of the
Amazons. These are probably the only perfectly tattooed nation in South
America. The markings are extended all over the body; they are produced
by pricking with the spines of a palm, and rubbing in the soot from
burning pitch, to produce an indelible bluish tinge.
They build their houses with mud walls in regular villages, and, though
very agricultural, make war every year with an adjoining tribe, the
Parentintins, taking the women and children for slaves, and preserving
the dried heads of the men in a large building or barrack, where all
the men sleep at night, armed with their bows and arrows ready in case
of alarm.
One of the singular facts connected with these Indians of the Amazons
valley is the resemblance which exists between some of their customs
and those of nations most remote from them.
The blow-pipe re-appears in the sumpitan of Borneo; the great houses
of the Uaupes closely resemble those of the Dyaks of the same country,
while many small baskets and bamboo boxes from Borneo and New Guinea
are so similar in their form and construction to those of the Amazons
that they would be supposed to belong to adjoining tribes. Then again
the Mandrucus, like the Dyaks, take the heads of their enemies,
smoke-dry them with equal care, preserving the skin and hair entire,
and hang them up around their houses. In Australia the throwing-stick
is used, and on a remote branch of the Amazons we see a tribe of
Indians differing from all around them in substituting for the bow a
weapon only found in such a remote portion of the earth, among a people
differing from them in almost every physical character. How can such
similarities be accounted for? Do they result from some remote and
unknown connection between these nations, or are they mere accidental
coincidences produced by the same wants acting upon people subject
to the same conditions of climate, and in an equally low state of
civilisation?
The Caribs, whom the cruelty of the Spaniards extirpated in the
Lesser Antilles, still exist in a variety of tribes from the mouth of
the Amazons to Lake Maracaybo. They are distinguished by an almost
athletic stature, by a stately demeanour, and an intense national
pride, for, remembering the times when they overran a considerable
part of South America, they still consider themselves as a superior
race. When a Carib enters the hut of another Indian he does not wait
till food is offered him, but, looking round with a haughty mien,
seizes what pleases him best, as if it were his own by right. Arrogant
and tyrannical towards strangers, he is equally so towards his wives,
and it would be difficult to find a Carib woman who does not show in
numerous scars and wounds the marks of her husband’s brutality.
In point of intelligence, the Caribs are surpassed by no other Indians.
They are excellent orators, and the earnest dignified manner in which
they deliver their speeches shows them to be capable of a high degree
of civilisation.
Among the tribes of Southern Brazil the Botocudos, who inhabit the
primeval forests on the banks of the rivers Pardo, Doce, and Belmonte,
are the most remarkable. The custom of piercing the ears and underlip
for the purpose of inserting some ornament is found among many other
nations, both of the Old and the New World, but nowhere is it carried
to such an excess as among the Botocudos. At an early age pieces of
round light wood, first small and gradually larger, are inserted
into the apertures, until at length the ears almost reach down to
the shoulders, and the lip, distended into a narrow rim, is made to
project to a distance of seven or eight inches. At a later age, when
the muscular fibres begin to lose their elasticity, it hangs down, and
as, in consequence of the pressure of the wood, the front teeth soon
fall out, it is hardly possible to conceive anything more hideous than
a face thus artificially deformed. To add, probably, to their beauty,
these savages shave their hair so as to leave but a small crown or tuft
on the top of the head. The wourali is not in use among them, but their
enormous bows and long sharp arrows render them formidable to their
neighbours. A Botocudo, with his sharp eye and muscular arm, accustomed
from infancy to the use of these murderous weapons, is indeed a greater
object of terror in the gloomy impervious forest than the jaguar or
the snake. When a horde, after having exhausted the neighbourhood of
its game, is obliged to migrate to some other quarter, its removal is
easily effected. A few dried palm-leaves alone remain to indicate the
spot where the savages had fixed their dwellings, and soon even these
slight vestiges disappear. In the primitive forest man, indeed, passes
away like a shadow,
‘Sicut navis, quasi nubes, velut umbra,’
and leaves no more traces of his existence than the wild animals which
he chased.
In these migratory journeys the heaviest burdens fall to the share of
the women, who, besides a large heap of household articles, tied up in
a bag of network, are often still obliged to carry a child on their
back. Thus encumbered, they manage to cross small rivers on bridges of
a very primitive construction. A cable made of bush-ropes is loosely
suspended over the surface of the stream, and on this they walk,
holding themselves by another cable similarly hung at a greater height.
The Botocudos are cannibals, like many other American tribes. After a
battle they feast upon the dead bodies of their enemies, but more, it
seems, from a spirit of vindictive rage than from a depraved taste for
human flesh.
When a Botocudo dies he is quickly buried in or near his hut, and then
the place is forsaken. On the first day the tribe shows its grief by
a wild howling, but on the second it pursues its usual occupations.
No food, or weapon, or ornament is interred with the corpse, but for
some time a fire is kindled on each side of the grave, to scare away
the evil spirit ‘Tanchon,’ who would otherwise rob it of its contents.
From fear of this imaginary being the fierce Botocudo, who trembles
at nothing that lives, is afraid to sleep alone in the forest, and
anxiously seeks before night the society of his comrades.