PHYSICAL CONSTITUTION AND MANNERS OF THE CHAYMAS.
THEIR LANGUAGE.
FILIATION OF THE NATIONS WHICH INHABIT NEW ANDALUCIA.
PARIAGOTOS SEEN BY COLUMBUS.
I did not wish to mingle with the narrative of our journey to the
Missions of Caripe any general considerations on the different
tribes of the indigenous inhabitants of New Andalusia; their
manners, their languages, and their common origin. Having returned
to the spot whence we set out, I shall now bring into one point of
view these considerations which are so nearly connected with the
history of the human race. As we advance into the interior of the
country, these subjects will become even more interesting than the
phenomena of the physical world. The north-east part of equinoctial
America, Terra Firma, and the banks of the Orinoco, resemble in
respect to the numerous races of people who inhabit them, the
defiles of the Caucasus, the mountains of Hindookho, at the
northern extremity of Asia, beyond the Tungouses, and the Tartare
settled at the mouth of the Lena. The barbarism which prevails
throughout these different regions is perhaps less owing to a
primitive absence of all kind of civilization, than to the effects
of long degradation; for most of the hordes which we designate
under the name of savages, are probably the descendants of nations
highly advanced in cultivation. How can we distinguish the
prolonged infancy of the human race (if, indeed, it anywhere
exists), from that state of moral degradation in which solitude,
want, compulsory misery, forced migration, or rigour of climate,
obliterate even the traces of civilization? If everything connected
with the primitive state of man, and the first population of a
continent, could from its nature belong to the domain of history,
we might appeal to the traditions of India. According to the
opinion frequently expressed in the laws of Menou and in the
Ramajan, savages were regarded as tribes banished from civilized
society, and driven into the forests. The word barbarian, which we
have borrowed from the Greeks and Romans, was possibly merely the
proper name of one of those rude hordes.
In the New World, at the beginning of the conquest, the natives
were collected into large societies only on the ridge of the
Cordilleras and the coasts opposite to Asia. The plains, covered
with forests, and intersected by rivers; the immense savannahs,
extending eastward, and bounding the horizon; were inhabited by
wandering hordes, separated by differences of language and manners,
and scattered like the remnants of a vast wreck. In the absence of
all other monuments, we may endeavour, from the analogy of
languages, and the study of the physical constitution of man, to
group the different tribes, to follow the traces of their distant
emigrations, and to discover some of those family features by which
the ancient unity of our species is manifested.
In the mountainous regions which we have just traversed,--in the
two provinces of Cumana and New Barcelona, the natives, or
primitive inhabitants, still constitute about one-half of the
scanty population. Their number may be reckoned at sixty thousand;
of which twenty-four thousand inhabit New Andalusia. This number is
very considerable, when compared with that of the hunting nations
of North America; but it appears small, when we consider those
parts of New Spain in which agriculture has existed more than eight
centuries: for instance, the Intendencia of Oaxaca, which includes
the Mixteca and the Tzapoteca of the old Mexican empire. This
Intendencia is one-third smaller than the two provinces of Cumana
and Barcelona; yet it contains more than four hundred thousand
natives of pure copper-coloured race. The Indians of Cumana do not
all live within the Missions. Some are dispersed in the
neighbourhood of the towns, along the coasts, to which they are
attracted by the fisheries, and some dwell in little farms on the
plains or savannahs. The Missions of the Aragonese Capuchins which
we visited, alone contain fifteen thousand Indians, almost all of
the Chayma race. The villages, however, are less populous there
than in the province of Barcelona. Their average population is only
between five or six hundred Indians; while more to the west, in the
Missions of the Franciscans of Piritu, we find Indian villages
containing two or three thousand inhabitants. In computing at sixty
thousand the number of natives in the provinces of Cumana and
Barcelona, I include only those who inhabit the mainland, and not
the Guayquerias of the island of Margareta, and the great mass of
the Guaraunos, who have preserved their independence in the islands
formed by the Delta of the Orinoco. The number of these is
generally reckoned at six or eight thousand; but this estimate
appears to me to be exaggerated. Except a few families of Guaraunos
who roam occasionally in the marshy grounds, called Los Morichales,
and between the Cano de Manamo and the Rio Guarapiche,
consequently, on the continent itself, there have not been for
these thirty years, any Indian savages in New Andalusia.
I use with regret the word savage, because it implies a difference
of cultivation between the reduced Indian, living in the Missions,
and the free or independent Indian; a difference which is often
belied by fact. In the forests of South America there are tribes of
natives, peacefully united in villages, and who render obedience to
chiefs.* (* These chiefs bear the designations of Pecannati, Apoto,
or Sibierne.) They cultivate the plantain-tree, cassava, and
cotton, on a tolerably extensive tract of ground, and they employ
the cotton for weaving hammocks. These people are scarcely more
barbarous than the naked Indians of the Missions, who have been
taught to make the sign of the cross. It is a common error in
Europe, to look on all natives not reduced to a state of
subjection, as wanderers and hunters. Agriculture was practised on
the American continent long before the arrival of Europeans. It is
still practised between the Orinoco and the river Amazon, in lands
cleared amidst the forests, places to which the missionaries have
never penetrated. It would be to imbibe false ideas respecting the
actual condition of the nations of South America, to consider as
synonymous the denominations of 'Christian,' 'reduced,' and
'civilized;' and those of 'pagan,' 'savage,' and 'independent.' The
reduced Indian is often as little of a Christian as the independent
Indian is of an idolater. Both, alike occupied by the wants of the
moment, betray a marked indifference for religious sentiments, and
a secret tendency to the worship of nature and her powers. This
worship belongs to the earliest infancy of nations; it excludes
idols, and recognises no other sacred places than grottoes,
valleys, and woods.
If the independent Indians have nearly disappeared for a century
past northward of the Orinoco and the Apure, that is, from the
Snowy Mountains of Merida to the promontory of Paria, it must not
thence be concluded, that there are fewer natives at present in
those regions, than in the time of the bishop of Chiapa, Bartolomeo
de las Casas. In my work on Mexico, I have shown that it is
erroneous to regard as a general fact the destruction and
diminution of the Indians in the Spanish colonies. There still
exist more than six millions of the copper-coloured race, in both
Americas; and, though numberless tribes and languages are either
extinct, or confounded together, it is beyond a doubt that, within
the tropics, in that part of the New World where civilization has
penetrated only since the time of Columbus, the number of natives
has considerably increased. Two of the Carib villages in the
Missions of Piritu or of Carony, contain more families than four or
five of the settlements on the Orinoco. The state of society among
the Caribbees who have preserved their independence, at the sources
of the Essequibo and to the south of the mountains of Pacaraimo,
sufficiently proves how much, even among that fine race of men, the
population of the Missions exceeds in number that of the free and
confederate Caribbees. Besides, the state of the savages of the
torrid zone is not like that of the savages of the Missouri. The
latter require a vast extent of country, because they live only by
hunting; whilst the Indians of Spanish Guiana employ themselves in
cultivating cassava and plantains. A very little ground suffices to
supply them with food. They do not dread the approach of the
whites, like the savages of the United States; who, being
progressively driven back behind the Alleghany mountains, the Ohio,
and the Mississippi, lose their means of subsistence, in proportion
as they find themselves reduced within narrow limits. Under the
temperate zone, whether in the provincias internas of Mexico, or in
Kentucky, the contact of European colonists has been fatal to the
natives, because that contact is immediate.
These causes have no existence in the greater part of South
America. Agriculture, within the tropics, does not require great
extent of ground. The whites advance slowly. The religious orders
have founded their establishments between the domain of the
colonists and the territory of the free Indians. The Missions may
be considered as intermediary states. They have doubtless
encroached on the liberty of the natives; but they have almost
everywhere tended to the increase of population, which is
incompatible with the restless life of the independent Indians. As
the missionaries advance towards the forests, and gain on the
natives, the white colonists in their turn seek to invade in the
opposite direction the territory of the Missions. In this
protracted struggle, the secular arm continually tends to withdraw
the reduced Indian from the monastic hierarchy, and the
missionaries are gradually superseded by vicars. The whites, and
the castes of mixed blood, favoured by the corregidors, establish
themselves among the Indians. The Missions become Spanish villages,
and the natives lose even the remembrance of their natural
language. Such is the progress of civilization from the coasts
toward the interior; a slow progress, retarded by the passions of
man, but nevertheless sure and steady.
The provinces of New Andalusia and Barcelona, comprehended under
the name of Govierno de Cumana, at present include in their
population more than fourteen tribes. Those in New Andalusia are
the Chaymas, Guayqueries, Pariagotos, Quaquas, Aruacas, Caribbees,
and Guaraunos; in the province of Barcelona, Cumanagotos, Palenkas,
Caribbees, Piritus, Tomuzas, Topocuares, Chacopatas, and Guarivas.
Nine or ten of these fifteen tribes consider themselves to be of
races entirely distinct. The exact number of the Guaraunos, who
make their huts on the trees at the mouth of the Orinoco, is
unknown; the Guayqueries, in the suburbs of Cumana and in the
peninsula of Araya, amount to two thousand. Among the other Indian
tribes, the Chaymas of the mountains of Caripe, the Caribs of the
southern savannahs of New Barcelona, and the Cumanagotos in the
Missions of Piritu, are most numerous. Some families of Guaraunos
have been reduced and dwell in Missions on the left bank of the
Orinoco, where the Delta begins. The languages of the Guaraunos and
that of the Caribs, of the Cumanagotos and of the Chaymas, are the
most general. They seem to belong to the same stock; and they
exhibit in their grammatical forms those affinities, which, to use
a comparison taken from languages more known, connect the Greek,
the German, the Persian, and the Sanscrit.
Notwithstanding these affinities, we must consider the Chaymas, the
Guaraunos, the Caribbees, the Quaquas, the Aruacas or Arrawaks, and
the Cumanagotos, as different nations. I would not venture to
affirm the same of the Guayqueries, the Pariagotos, the Piritus,
the Tomuzas, and the Chacopatas. The Guayquerias themselves admit
the analogy between their language and that of the Guaraunos. Both
are a littoral race, like the Malays of the ancient continent. With
respect to the tribes who at present speak the Cumanagota,
Caribbean, and Chayma tongues, it is difficult to decide on their
first origin, and their relations with other nations formerly more
powerful. The historians of the conquest, as well as the
ecclesiastics who have described the progress of the Missions,
continually confound, like the ancients, geographical denominations
with the names of races. They speak of Indians of Cumana and of the
coast of Paria, as if the proximity of abode proved the identity of
origin. They most commonly even give to tribes the names of their
chiefs, or of the mountains or valleys they inhabit. This
circumstance, by infinitely multiplying the number of tribes, gives
an air of uncertainty to all that the monks relate respecting the
heterogeneous elements of which the population of their Missions
are composed. How can we now decide, whether the Tomuza and Piritu
be of different races, when both speak the Cumanagoto language,
which is the prevailing tongue in the western part of the Govierno
of Cumana; as the Caribbean and the Chayma are in the southern and
eastern parts. A great analogy of physical constitution increases
the difficulty of these inquiries. In the new continent a
surprising variety of languages is observed among nations of the
same origin, and which European travellers scarcely distinguish by
their features; while in the old continent very different races of
men, the Laplanders, the Finlanders, and the Estonians, the
Germanic nations and the Hindoos, the Persians and the Kurds, the
Tartar and Mongol tribes, speak languages, the mechanism and roots
of which present the greatest analogy.
The Indians of the American Missions are all agriculturists.
Excepting those who inhabit the high mountains, they all cultivate
the same plants; their huts are arranged in the same manner; their
days of labour, their work in the conuco of the community; their
connexions with the missionaries and the magistrates chosen from
among themselves, are all subject to uniform regulations.
Nevertheless (and this fact is very remarkable in the history of
nations), these analogous circumstances have not effaced the
individual features, or the shades of character which distinguish
the American tribes. We observe in the men of copper hue, a moral
inflexibility, a steadfast perseverance in habits and manners,
which, though modified in each tribe, characterise essentially the
whole race. These peculiarities are found in every region; from the
equator to Hudson's Bay on the one hand, and to the Straits of
Magellan on the other. They are connected with the physical
organization of the natives, but they are powerfully favoured by
the monastic system.
There exist in the missions few villages in which the different
families do not belong to different tribes and speak different
languages. Societies composed of elements thus heterogeneous are
difficult to govern. In general, the monks have united whole
nations, or great portions of the same nations, in villages
situated near to each other. The natives see only those of their
own tribe; for the want of communication, and the isolated state of
the people, are essential points in the policy of the missionaries.
The reduced Chaymas, Caribs, and Tamanacs, retain their natural
physiognomy, whilst they have preserved their languages. If the
individuality of man be in some sort reflected in his idioms, these
in their turn re-act on his ideas and sentiments. It is this
intimate connection between language, character, and physical
constitution, which maintains and perpetuates the diversity of
nations; that unfailing source of life and motion in the
intellectual world.
The missionaries may have prohibited the Indians from following
certain practices and observing certain ceremonies; they may have
prevented them from painting their skin, from making incisions on
their chins, noses and cheeks; they may have destroyed among the
great mass of the people superstitious ideas, mysteriously
transmitted from father to son in certain families; but it has been
easier for them to proscribe customs and efface remembrances, than
to substitute new ideas in the place of the old ones.
The Indian of the Mission is secure of subsistence; and being
released from continual struggles against hostile powers, from
conflicts with the elements and man, he leads a more monotonous
life, less active, and less fitted to inspire energy of mind, than
the habits of the wild or independent Indian. He possesses that
mildness of character which belongs to the love of repose; not that
which arises from sensibility and the emotions of the soul. The
sphere of his ideas is not enlarged, where, having no intercourse
with the whites, he remains a stranger to those objects with which
European civilization has enriched the New World. All his actions
seem prompted by the wants of the moment. Taciturn, serious, and
absorbed in himself; he assumes a sedate and mysterious air. When a
person has resided but a short time in the Missions, and is but
little familiarized with the aspect of the natives, he is led to
mistake their indolence, and the torpid state of their faculties,
for the expression of melancholy, and a meditative turn of mind.
I have dwelt on these features of the Indian character, and on the
different modifications which that character exhibits under the
government of the missionaries, with the view of rendering more
intelligible the observations which form the subject of the present
chapter. I shall begin by the nation of the Chaymas, of whom more
than fifteen thousand inhabit the Missions above noticed. The
Chayma nation, which Father Francisco of Pampeluna* began to reduce
to subjection in the middle of the seventeenth century (* The name
of this monk, celebrated for his intrepidity, is still revered in
the province. He sowed the first seeds of civilization among these
mountains. He had long been captain of a ship; and before he became
a monk, was known by the name of Tiburtio Redin.), has the
Cumanagotos on the west, the Guaraunos on the east, and the
Caribbees on the south. Their territory occupies a space along the
elevated mountains of the Cocollar and the Guacharo, the banks of
the Guarapiche, of the Rio Colorado, of the Areo, and of the Cano
de Caripe. According to a statistical survey made with great care
by the father prefect, there were, in the Missions of the Aragonese
Capuchins of Cumana, nineteen Mission villages, of which the oldest
was established in 1728, containing one thousand four hundred and
sixty-five families, and six thousand four hundred and thirty-three
persons: sixteen doctrina villages, of which the oldest dates from
1660, containing one thousand seven hundred and sixty-six families,
and eight thousand one hundred and seventy persons. These Missions
suffered greatly in 1681, 1697, and 1720, from the invasions of the
Caribbees (then independent), who burnt whole villages. From 1730
to 1736, the population was diminished by the ravages of the
small-pox, a disease always more fatal to the copper-coloured
Indians than to the whites. Many of the Guaraunos, who had been
assembled together, fled back again to their native marshes.
Fourteen old Missions were deserted, and have not been rebuilt.
The Chaymas are in general short of stature and thick-set. Their
shoulders are extremely broad, and their chests flat. Their limbs
are well rounded, and fleshy. Their colour is the same as that of
the whole American race, from the cold table-lands of Quito and New
Grenada to the burning plains of the Amazon. It is not changed by
the varied influence of climate; it is connected with organic
peculiarities which for ages past have been unalterably transmitted
from generation to generation. If the uniform tint of the skin be
redder and more coppery towards the north, it is, on the contrary,
among the Chaymas, of a dull brown inclining to tawny. The
denomination of copper-coloured men could never have originated in
equinoctial America to designate the natives.
The expression of the countenance of the Chaymas, without being
hard or stern, has something sedate and gloomy. The forehead is
small, and but little prominent, and in several languages of these
countries, to express the beauty of a woman, they say that 'she is
fat, and has a narrow forehead.' The eyes of the Chaymas are black,
deep-set, and very elongated: but they are neither so obliquely
placed, nor so small, as in the people of the Mongol race. The
corner of the eye is, however, raised up towards the temple; the
eyebrows are black, or dark brown, thin, and but little arched; the
eyelids are edged with very long eyelashes, and the habit of
casting them down, as if from lassitude, gives a soft expression to
the women, and makes the eye thus veiled appear less than it really
is. Though the Chaymas, and in general all the natives of South
America and New Spain, resemble the Mongol race in the form of the
eye, in their high cheek-bones, their straight and smooth hair, and
the almost total absence of beard; yet they essentially differ from
them in the form of the nose. In the South Americans this feature
is rather long, prominent through its whole length, and broad at
the nostrils, the openings of which are directed downward, as with
all the nations of the Caucasian race. Their wide mouths, with lips
but little protuberant though broad, have generally an expression
of good nature. The passage from the nose to the mouth is marked in
both sexes by two furrows, which run diverging from the nostrils
towards the corners of the mouth. The chin is extremely short and
round; and the jaws are remarkable for strength and width.
Though the Chaymas have fine white teeth, like all people who lead
a very simple life, they are, however, not so strong as those of
the Negroes. The habit of blackening the teeth, from the age of
fifteen, by the juices of certain herbs* and caustic lime,
attracted the attention of the earliest travellers; but the
practice has now fallen quite into disuse. (* The early historians
of the conquest state that the blackening of the teeth was effected
by the leaves of a tree which the natives called hay, and which
resembled the myrtle. Among nations very distant from each other,
the pimento bears a similar name; among the Haitians aji or ahi,
among the Maypures of the Orinoco, ai. Some stimulant and aromatic
plants, which mostly belonging to the genus capsicum, were
designated by the same name.) Such have been the migrations of the
different tribes in these countries, particularly since the
incursions of the Spaniards, who carried on the slave-trade, that
it may be inferred the inhabitants of Paria visited by Christopher
Columbus and by Ojeda, were not of the same race as the Chaymas. I
doubt much whether the custom of blackening the teeth was
originally suggested, as Gomara supposed, by absurd notions of
beauty, or was practised with the view of preventing the toothache.
* This disorder is, however, almost unknown to the Indians; and the
whites suffer seldom from it in the Spanish colonies, at least in
the warm regions, where the temperature is so uniform. They are
more exposed to it on the back of the Cordilleras, at Santa Fe, and
at Popayan. (* The tribes seen by the Spaniards on the coast of
Paria, probably observed the practice of stimulating the organs of
taste by caustic lime, as other races employed tobacco, the chimo,
the leaves of the coca, or the betel. This practice exists even in
our days, but more towards the west, among the Guajiros, at the
mouth of the Rio de la Hacha. These Indians, still savage, carry
small shells, calcined and powdered, in the husk of a fruit, which
serves them as a vessel for various purposes, suspended to their
girdle. The powder of the Guajiros is an article of commerce, as
was anciently, according to Gomara, that of the Indians of Paria.
The immoderate habit of smoking also makes the teeth yellow and
blackens them; but would it be just to conclude from this fact,
that Europeans smoke because we think yellow teeth handsomer than
white?)
The Chaymas, like almost all the native nations I have seen, have
small, slender hands. Their feet are large, and their toes retain
an extraordinary mobility. All the Chaymas have a sort of family
look; and this resemblance, so often observed by travellers, is the
more striking, as between the ages of twenty and fifty, difference
of years is no way denoted by wrinkles of the skin, colour of the
hair, or decrepitude of the body. On entering a hut, it is often
difficult among adult persons to distinguish the father from the
son, and not to confound one generation with another. I attribute
this air of family resemblance to two different causes, the local
situation of the Indian tribes, and their inferior degree of
intellectual culture. Savage nations are subdivided into an
infinity of tribes, which, bearing violent hatred one to another,
form no intermarriages, even when their languages spring from the
same root, and when only a small arm of a river, or a group of
hills, separates their habitations. The less numerous the tribes,
the more the intermarriages repeated for ages between the same
families tend to fix a certain similarity of conformation, an
organic type, which may be called national. This type is preserved
under the system of the Missions, each Mission being formed by a
single horde, and marriages being contracted only between the
inhabitants of the same hamlet. Those ties of blood which unite
almost a whole nation, are indicated in a simple manner in the
language of the Indians born in the Missions, or by those who,
after having been taken from the woods, have learned Spanish. To
designate the individuals who belong to the same tribe, they employ
the expression mis parientes, my relations.
With these causes, common to all isolated classes, and the effects
of which are observable among the Jews of Europe, among the
different castes of India, and among mountain nations in general,
are combined some other causes hitherto unnoticed. I have observed
elsewhere, that it is intellectual culture which most contributes
to diversify the features. Barbarous nations have a physiognomy of
tribe or of horde, rather than individuality of look or features.
The savage and civilized man are like those animals of an
individual species, some of which roam in the forest, while others,
associated with mankind, share the benefits and evils which
accompany civilization. Varieties of form and colour are frequent
only in domestic animals. How great is the difference, with respect
to mobility of features and variety of physiognomy, between dogs
which have again returned to the savage state in the New World, and
those whose slightest caprices are indulged in the houses of the
opulent! Both in men and animals the emotions of the soul are
reflected in the features; and the countenance acquires the habit
of mobility, in proportion as the emotions of the mind are
frequent, varied, and durable. But the Indian of the Missions,
being remote from all cultivation, influenced only by his physical
wants, satisfying almost without difficulty his desires, in a
favoured climate, drags on a dull, monotonous life. The greatest
equality prevails among the members of the same community; and this
uniformity, this sameness of situation, is pictured on the features
of the Indians.
Under the system of the monks, violent passions, such as resentment
and anger, agitate the native more rarely than when he lives in the
forest. When man in a savage state yields to sudden and impetuous
emotions, his physiognomy, till then calm and unruffled, changes
instantly to convulsive contortions. His passion is transient in
proportion to its violence. With the Indians of the Missions, as I
have often observed on the Orinoco, anger is less violent, less
earnest, but of longer duration. Besides, in every condition of
man, it is not the energetic or the transient outbreaks of the
passions, which give expression to the features. It is rather that
sensibility of the soul, which brings us continually into contact
with the external world, multiplies our sufferings and our
pleasures, and re-acts at once on the physiognomy, the manners, and
the language. If the variety and mobility of the features embellish
the domain of animated nature, we must admit also, that both
increase by civilization, without being solely produced by it. In
the great family of nations, no other race unites these advantages
in so high a degree as the Caucasian or European. It is only in
white men that the instantaneous penetration of the dermoidal
system by the blood can produce that slight change of the colour of
the skin which adds so powerful an expression to the emotions of
the soul. "How can those be trusted who know not how to blush?"
says the European, in his dislike of the Negro and the Indian. We
must also admit, that immobility of features is not peculiar to
every race of men of dark complexion: it is much less marked in the
African than in the natives of America.
The Chaymas, like all savage people who dwell in excessively hot
regions, have an insuperable aversion to clothing. The writers of
the middle ages inform us, that in the north of Europe, articles of
clothing distributed by missionaries, greatly contributed to the
conversion of the pagan. In the torrid zone, on the contrary, the
natives are ashamed (as they say) to be clothed; and flee to the
woods, when they are compelled to cover themselves. Among the
Chaymas, in spite of the remonstrances of the monks, men and women
remain unclothed within their houses. When they go into the
villages they put on a kind of tunic of cotton, which scarcely
reaches to the knees. The men's tunics have sleeves; but women, and
young boys to the age of ten or twelve, have the arms, shoulders,
and upper part of the breast uncovered. The tunic is so shaped,
that the fore-part is joined to the back by two narrow bands, which
cross the shoulders. When we met the natives, out of the boundaries
of the Mission, we saw them, especially in rainy weather, stripped
of their clothes, and holding their shirts rolled up under their
arms. They preferred letting the rain fall on their bodies to
wetting their clothes. The elder women hid themselves behind trees,
and burst into loud fits of laughter when they saw us pass. The
missionaries complain that in general the young girls are not more
alive to feelings of decency than the men. Ferdinand Columbus*
relates that, in 1498, his father found the women in the island of
Trinidad without any clothing (* Life of the Adelantado:
Churchill's Collection 1723. This Life, written after the year
1537, from original notes in the handwriting of Christopher
Columbus himself, is the most valuable record of the history of his
discoveries. It exists only in the Italian and Spanish translations
of Alphonso de Ulloa and Gonzales Barcia: for the original, carried
to Venice in 1571 by the learned Fornari, has not been published,
and is supposed to be lost. Napione della Patria di Colombo 1804.
Cancellieri sopra Christ. Colombo 1809. ); while the men wore the
guayuco, which is rather a narrow bandage than an apron. At the
same period, on the coast of Paria, young girls were distinguished
from married women, either, as Cardinal Bembo states, by being
quite unclothed, or, according to Gomara, by the colour of the
guayuco. This bandage, which is still in use among the Chaymas, and
all the naked nations of the Orinoco, is only two or three inches
broad, and is tied on both sides to a string which encircles the
waist. Girls are often married at the age of twelve; and until they
are nine years old, the missionaries allow them to go to church
unclothed, that is to say, without a tunic. Among the Chaymas, as
well as in all the Spanish Missions and the Indian villages, a pair
of drawers, a pair of shoes, or a hat, are objects of luxury
unknown to the natives. An Indian servant, who had been with us
during our journey to Caripe and the Orinoco, and whom I brought to
France, was so much struck, on landing, when he saw the ground
tilled by a peasant with his hat on, that he thought himself in a
miserable country, where even the nobles (los mismos caballeros)
followed the plough. The Chayma women are not handsome, according
to the ideas we annex to beauty; yet the young girls have a look of
softness and melancholy, contrasting agreeably with the expression
of the mouth, which is somewhat harsh and wild. They wear their
hair plaited in two long tresses; they do not paint their skin; and
wear no other ornaments than necklaces and bracelets made of
shells, birds' bones, and seeds. Both men and women are very
muscular, but at the same time fleshy and plump. I saw no person
who had any natural deformity; and I may say the same of thousands
of Caribs, Muyscas, and Mexican and Peruvian Indians, whom we
observed during the course of five years. Bodily deformities, and
deviations from nature, are exceedingly rare among certain races of
men, especially those who have the epidermis highly coloured; but I
cannot believe that they depend solely on the progress of
civilization, a luxurious life, or the corruption of morals. In
Europe a deformed or very ugly girl marries, if she happen to have
a fortune, and the children often inherit the deformity of the
mother. In the savage state, which is a state of equality, no
consideration can induce a man to unite himself to a deformed
woman, or one who is very unhealthy. Such a woman, if she resist
the accidents of a restless and troubled life, dies without
children. We might be tempted to think, that savages all appear
well-made and vigorous, because feeble children die young for want
of care, and only the strongest survive; but these causes cannot
operate among the Indians of the Missions, whose manners are like
those of our peasants, or among the Mexicans of Cholula and
Tlascala, who enjoy wealth, transmitted to them by ancestors more
civilized than themselves. If, in every state of cultivation, the
copper-coloured race manifests the same inflexibility, the same
resistance to deviation from a primitive type, are we not forced to
admit that this peculiarity belongs in great measure to hereditary
organization, to that which constitutes the race? With
copper-coloured men, as with whites, luxury and effeminacy weaken
the physical constitution, and heretofore deformities were more
common at Cuzco and Tenochtitlan. Among the Mexicans of the present
day, who are all labourers, leading the most simple lives,
Montezuma would not have found those dwarfs and humpbacks whom
Bernal Diaz saw waiting at his table when he dined.* (* Bernal Diaz
Hist. Verd. de la Nueva Espana 1630.) The custom of marrying very
young, according to the testimony of the monks, is no way
detrimental to population. This precocious nubility depends on the
race, and not on the influence of a climate excessively warm. It is
found on the north-west coast of America, among the Esquimaux, and
in Asia, among the Kamtschatdales, and the Koriaks, where girls of
ten years old are often mothers. It may appear astonishing, that
the time of gestation--the duration of pregnancy, never alters in a
state of health, in any race, or in any climate.
The Chaymas are almost without beard on the chin, like the
Tungouses, and other nations of the Mongol race. They pluck out the
few hairs which appear; but independently of that practice, most of
the natives would be nearly beardless.* (* Physiologists would
never have entertained any difference of opinion respecting the
existence of the beard among the Americans, if they had considered
what the first historians of the Conquest have said on this
subject; for example, Pigafetta, in 1519, in his journal, preserved
in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, and published (in 1800) by
Amoretti; Benzoni Hist. del Mundo Nuovo 1572; Bembo Hist. Venet.
1557.) I say most of them, because there are tribes which, as they
appear distinct from the others, are more worthy of fixing our
attention. Such are, in North America, the Chippewas visited by
Mackenzie, and the Yabipaees, near the Toltec ruins at Moqui, with
bushy beards; in South America, the Patagonians and the Guaraunos.
Among these last are some who have hairs on the breast. When the
Chaymas, instead of extracting the little hair they have on the
chin, attempt to shave themselves frequently, their beards grow. I
have seen this experiment tried with success by young Indians, who
officiated at mass, and who anxiously wished to resemble the
Capuchin fathers, their missionaries and masters. The great mass of
the people, however, dislike the beard, no less than the Eastern
nations hold it in reverence. This antipathy is derived from the
same source as the predilection for flat foreheads, which is
evinced in so singular a manner in the statues of the Aztec heroes
and divinities. Nations attach the idea of beauty to everything
which particularly characterizes their own physical conformation,
their national physiognomy.* (* Thus, in their finest statues, the
Greeks exaggerated the form of the forehead, by elevating beyond
proportion the facial line.) Hence it ensues that among a people to
whom Nature has given very little beard, a narrow forehead, and a
brownish red skin, every individual thinks himself handsome in
proportion as his body is destitute of hair, his head flattened,
and his skin besmeared with annatto, chica, or some other
copper-red colour.
The Chaymas lead a life of singular uniformity. They go to rest
very regularly at seven in the evening, and rise long before
daylight, at half-past four in the morning. Every Indian has a fire
near his hammock. The women are so chilly, that I have seen them
shiver at church when the centigrade thermometer was not below 18
degrees. The huts of the Indians are extremely clean. Their
hammocks, their reed mats, their pots for holding cassava and
fermented maize, their bows and arrows, everything is arranged in
the greatest order. Men and women bathe every day; and being almost
constantly unclothed, they are exempted from that uncleanliness, of
which the garments are the principal cause among the lower class of
people in cold countries. Besides a house in the village, they have
generally, in their conucos, near some spring, or at the entrance
of some solitary valley, a small hut, covered with the leaves of
the palm or plantain-tree. Though they live less commodiously in
the conuco, they love to retire thither as often as they can. The
irresistible desire the Indians have to flee from society, and
enter again on a nomad life, causes even young children sometimes
to leave their parents, and wander four or five days in the
forests, living on fruits, palm-cabbage, and roots. When travelling
in the Missions, it is not uncommon to find whole villages almost
deserted, because the inhabitants are in their gardens, or in the
forests (al monte). Among civilized nations, the passion for
hunting arises perhaps in part from the same causes: the charm of
solitude, the innate desire of independence, the deep impression
made by Nature, whenever man finds himself in contact with her in
solitude.
The condition of the women among the Chaymas, like that in all
semi-barbarous nations, is a state of privation and suffering. The
hardest labour devolves on them. When we saw the Chaymas return in
the evening from their gardens, the man carried nothing but the
knife or hatchet (machete), with which he clears his way among the
underwood; whilst the woman, bending under a great load of
plantains, carried one child in her arms, and sometimes two other
children placed upon the load. Notwithstanding this inequality of
condition, the wives of the Indians of South America appear to be
in general happier than those of the savages of the North. Between
the Alleghany mountains and the Mississippi, wherever the natives
do not live chiefly on the produce of the chase, the women
cultivate maize, beans, and gourds; and the men take no share in
the labours of the field. In the torrid zone, hunting tribes are
not numerous, and in the Missions, the men work in the fields as
well as the women.
Nothing can exceed the difficulty experienced by the Indians in
learning Spanish, to which language they have an absolute aversion.
Whilst living separate from the whites, they have no ambition to be
called educated Indians, or, to borrow the phrase employed in the
Missions, 'latinized Indians' (Indios muy latinos). Not only among
the Chaymas, but in all the very remote Missions which I afterwards
visited, I observed that the Indians experience vast difficulty in
arranging and expressing the most simple ideas in Spanish, even
when they perfectly understand the meaning of the words and the
turn of the phrases. When a European questions them concerning
objects which have surrounded them from their cradles, they seem to
manifest an imbecility exceeding that of infancy. The missionaries
assert that this embarrassment is neither the effect of timidity
nor of natural stupidity, but that it arises from the impediments
they meet with in the structure of a language so different from
their native tongue. In proportion as man is remote from
cultivation, the greater is his mental inaptitude. It is not,
therefore, surprising that the isolated Indians in the Missions
should experience in the acquisition of the Spanish language, less
facility than Indians who live among mestizoes, mulattoes, and
whites, in the neighbourhood of towns. Nevertheless, I have often
wondered at the volubility with which, at Caripe, the native
alcalde, the governador, and the sergento mayor, will harangue for
whole hours the Indians assembled before the church; regulating the
labours of the week, reprimanding the idle, or threatening the
disobedient. Those chiefs who are also of the Chayma race, and who
transmit the orders of the missionary, speak all together in a loud
voice, with marked emphasis, but almost without action. Their
features remain motionless; but their look is imperious and severe.
These same men, who manifest quickness of intellect, and who were
tolerably well acquainted with the Spanish, were unable to connect
their ideas, when, in our excursions in the country around the
convent, we put questions to them through the intervention of the
monks. They were made to affirm or deny whatever the monks pleased:
and that wily civility, to which the least cultivated Indian is no
stranger, induced them sometimes to give to their answers the turn
that seemed to be suggested by our questions. Travellers cannot be
enough on their guard against this officious assent, when they seek
to confirm their own opinions by the testimony of the natives. To
put an Indian alcalde to the proof, I asked him one day, whether he
did not think the little river of Caripe, which issues from the
cavern of the Guacharo, returned into it on the opposite side by
some unknown entrance, after having ascended the slope of the
mountain. The Indian seemed gravely to reflect on the subject, and
then answered, by way of supporting my hypothesis: "How else, if it
were not so, would there always be water in the bed of the river at
the mouth of the cavern?"
The Chaymas are very dull in comprehending anything relating to
numerical facts. I never knew one of these people who might not
have been made to say that he was either eighteen or sixty years of
age. Mr. Marsden observed the same peculiarity in the Malays of
Sumatra, though they have been civilized more than five centuries.
The Chayma language contains words which express pretty large
numbers, yet few Indians know how to apply them; and having felt,
from their intercourse with the missionaries, the necessity of so
doing, the more intelligent among them count in Spanish, but
apparently with great effort of mind, as far as thirty, or perhaps
fifty. The same persons, however, cannot count in the Chayma
language beyond five or six. It is natural that they should employ
in preference the words of a language in which they have been
taught the series of units and tens. Since learned Europeans have
not disdained to study the structure of the idioms of America with
the same care as they study those of the Semitic languages, and of
the Greek and Latin, they no longer attribute to the imperfection
of a language, what belongs to the rudeness of the nation. It is
acknowledged, that almost everywhere the Indian idioms display
greater richness, and more delicate gradations, than might be
supposed from the uncultivated state of the people by whom they are
spoken. I am far from placing the languages of the New World in the
same rank with the finest languages of Asia and Europe; but no one
of these latter has a more neat, regular, and simple system of
numeration, than the Quichua and the Aztec, which were spoken in
the great empires of Cuzco and Anahuac. It is a mistake to suppose
that those languages do not admit of counting beyond four, because
in villages where they are spoken by the poor labourers of Peruvian
and Mexican race, individuals are found, who cannot count beyond
that number. The singular opinion, that so many American nations
reckon only as far as five, ten, or twenty, has been propagated by
travellers, who have not reflected, that, according to the genius
of different idioms, men of all nations stop at groups of five,
ten, or twenty units (that is, the number of the fingers of one
hand, or of both hands, or of the fingers and toes together); and
that six, thirteen, or twenty are differently expressed, by
five-one, ten-three, and feet-ten.* (* Savages, to express great
numbers with more facility, are in the habit of forming groups of
five, ten, or twenty grains of maize, according as they reckon in
their language by fives, tens, or twenties.) Can it be said that
the numbers of the Europeans do not extend beyond ten, because we
stop after having formed a group of ten units?
The construction of the languages of America is so opposite to that
of the languages derived from the Latin, that the Jesuits, who had
thoroughly examined everything that could contribute to extend
their establishments, introduced among their neophytes, instead of
the Spanish, some Indian tongues, remarkable for their regularity
and copiousness, such as the Quichua and the Guarani. They
endeavoured to substitute these languages for others which were
poorer and more irregular in their syntax. This substitution was
found easy: the Indians of the different tribes adopted it with
docility, and thenceforward those American languages generalized
became a ready medium of communication between the missionaries and
the neophytes. It would be a mistake to suppose, that the
preference given to the language of the Incas over the Spanish
tongue had no other aim than that of isolating the Missions, and
withdrawing them from the influence of two rival powers, the
bishops and civil governors. The Jesuits had other motives,
independently of their policy, for wishing to generalize certain
Indian tongues. They found in those languages a common tie, easy to
be established between the numerous hordes which had remained
hostile to each other, and had been kept asunder by diversity of
idioms; for, in uncultivated countries, after the lapse of several
ages, dialects often assume the form, or at least the appearance,
of mother tongues.
When it is said that a Dane learns the German, and a Spaniard the
Italian or the Latin, more easily than they learn any other
language, it is at first thought that this facility results from
the identity of a great number of roots, common to all the Germanic
tongues, or to those of Latin Europe; it is not considered, that,
with this resemblance of sounds, there is another resemblance,
which acts more powerfully on nations of a common origin. Language
is not the result of an arbitrary convention. The mechanism of
inflections, the grammatical constructions, the possibility of
inversions, all are the offspring of our own minds, of our
individual organization. There is in man an instinctive and
regulating principle, differently modified among nations not of the
same race. A climate more or less severe, a residence in the
defiles of mountains, or on the sea-coasts, or different habits of
life, may alter the pronunciation, render the identity of the roots
obscure, and multiply the number; but all these causes do not
affect that which constitutes the structure and mechanism of
languages. The influence of climate, and of external circumstances,
vanishes before the influence which depends on the race, on the
hereditary and individual dispositions of men.
In America (and this result of recent researches* (* See Vater's
Mithridates.) is extremely important with respect to the history of
our species) from the country of the Esquimaux to the banks of the
Orinoco, and again from these torrid regions to the frozen climate
of the Straits of Magellan, mother-tongues, entirely different in
their roots, have, if we may use the expression, the same
physiognomy. Striking analogies of grammatical construction are
acknowledged, not only in the more perfect languages, as in that of
the Incas, the Aymara, the Guarauno, the Mexican, and the Cora, but
also in languages extremely rude. Idioms, the roots of which do not
resemble each other more than the roots of the Sclavonic and the
Biscayan, have those resemblances of internal mechanism which are
found in the Sanscrit, the Persian, the Greek, and the German
languages. Almost everywhere in the New World we recognize a
multiplicity of forms and tenses in the verb,* (* In the Greenland
language, for example, the multiplicity of the pronouns governed by
the verb produces twenty-seven forms for every tense of the
Indicative mood. It is surprising to find, among nations now
ranking in the lowest degree of civilization, this desire of
graduating the relations of time, this superabundance of
modifications introduced into the verb, to characterise the object.
Matarpa, he takes it away: mattarpet, thou takest it away:
mattarpatit, he takes it away from thee: mattarpagit, I take away
from thee. And in the preterite of the same verb, mattara, he has
taken it away: mattaratit, he has taken it away from thee. This
example from the Greenland language shows how the governed and the
personal pronouns form one compound, in the American languages,
with the root of the verb. These slight differences in the form of
the verb, according to the nature of the pronouns governed by it,
is found in the Old World only in the Biscayan and Congo languages
(Vater, Mithridates. William von Humboldt, On the Basque Language).
Strange conformity in the structure of languages on spots so
distant, and among three races of men so different,--the white
Catalonians, the black Congos, and the copper-coloured Americans!)
an ingenious method of indicating beforehand, either by inflexion
of the personal pronouns, which form the terminations of the verb,
or by an intercalated suffix, the nature and the relation of its
object and its subject, and of distinguishing whether the object be
animate or inanimate, of the masculine or the feminine gender,
simple or in complex number. It is on account of this general
analogy of structure,--it is because American languages which have
no words in common (for instance, the Mexican and the Quichua),
resemble each other by their organization, and form complete
contrasts to the languages of Latin Europe, that the Indians of the
Missions familiarize themselves more easily with an American idiom
than with the Spanish. In the forests of the Orinoco I have seen
the rudest Indians speak two or three tongues. Savages of different
nations often communicate their ideas to each other by an idiom not
their own.
If the system of the Jesuits had been followed, languages, which
already occupy a vast extent of country, would have become almost
general. In Terra Firma and on the Orinoco, the Caribbean and the
Tamanac alone would now be spoken; and in the south and south-west,
the Quichua, the Guarano, the Omagua, and the Araucan. By
appropriating to themselves these languages, the grammatical forms
of which are very regular, and almost as fixed as those of the
Greek and Sanscrit, the missionaries would place themselves in more
intimate connection with the natives whom they govern. The
numberless difficulties which occur in the system of a Mission
consisting of Indians of ten or a dozen different nations would
disappear with the confusion of idioms. Those which are little
diffused would become dead languages; but the Indian, in preserving
an American idiom, would retain his individuality--his national
character. Thus by peaceful means might be effected what the Incas
began to establish by force of arms.
How indeed can we be surprised at the little progress made by the
Chaymas, the Caribbees, the Salives, or the Otomacs, in the
knowledge of the Spanish language, when we recollect that one white
man, one single missionary, finds himself alone amidst five or six
hundred Indians? and that it is difficult for him to establish
among them a governador, an alcalde, or a fiscal, who may serve him
as an interpreter? If, instead of the missionary system, some other
means of civilization were substituted, if, instead of keeping the
whites at a distance, they could be mingled with the natives
recently united in villages, the American idioms would soon be
superseded by the languages of Europe, and the natives would
receive in those languages the great mass of new ideas which are
the fruit of civilization. Then the introduction of general
tongues, such as that of the Incas, or the Guaranos, without doubt
would become useless. But after having lived so long in the
Missions of South America, after having so closely observed the
advantages and the abuses of the system of the missionaries, I may
be permitted to doubt whether that system could be easily
abandoned, though it is doubtless very capable of being improved,
and rendered more conformable with our ideas of civil liberty. To
this it may be answered, that the Romans* succeeded in rapidly
introducing their language with their sovereignty into the country
of the Gauls, into Boetica, and into the province of Africa. (* For
the reason of this rapid introduction of Latin among the Gauls, I
believe we must look into the character of the natives and the
state of their civilization, and not into the structure of their
language. The brown-haired Celtic nations were certainly different
from the race of the light-haired Germanic nations; and though the
Druid caste recalls to our minds one of the institutions of the
Ganges, this does not demonstrate that the idiom of the Celts
belongs, like that of the nations of Odin, to a branch of the
Indo-Pelasgic languages. From analogy of structure and of roots,
the Latin ought to have penetrated more easily on the other side of
the Danube, than into Gaul; but an uncultivated state, joined to
great moral inflexibility, probably opposed its introduction among
the Germanic nations.) But the natives of these countries were not
savages;--they inhabited towns; they were acquainted with the use
of money; and they possessed institutions denoting a tolerably
advanced state of cultivation. The allurement of commerce, and a
long abode of the Roman legions, had promoted intercourse between
them and their conquerors. We see, on the contrary, that the
introduction of the languages of the mother-countries was met by
obstacles almost innumerable, wherever Carthaginian, Greek, or
Roman colonies were established on coasts entirely barbarous. In
every age, and in every climate, the first impulse of the savage is
to shun the civilized man.
The language of the Chayma Indians was less agreeable to my ear
than the Caribbee, the Salive, and other languages of the Orinoco.
It has fewer sonorous terminations in accented vowels. We are
struck with the frequent repetition of the syllables guaz, ez,
puec, and pur. These terminations are derived in part from the
inflexion of the verb to be, and from certain prepositions, which
are added at the ends of words, and which, according to the genius
of the American idioms, are incorporated with them. It would be
wrong to attribute this harshness of sound to the abode of the
Chaymas in the mountains. They are strangers to that temperate
climate. They have been led thither by the missionaries; and it is
well known that, like all the inhabitants of warm regions, they at
first dreaded what they called the cold of Caripe. I employed
myself, with M. Bonpland, during our abode at the hospital of the
Capuchins, in forming a small catalogue of Chayma words. I am aware
that languages are much more strongly characterised by their
structure and grammatical forms than by the analogy of their sounds
and of their roots; and that the analogy of sounds is sometimes so
disguised in different dialects of the same tongue, as not to be
recognizable; for the tribes into which a nation is divided, often
designate the same objects by words altogether heterogeneous. Hence
it follows that we readily fall into mistakes, if, neglecting the
study of the inflexions, and consulting only the roots (for
instance, in the words which designate the moon, sky, water, and
earth), we decide on the absolute difference of two idioms from the
mere want of resemblance in sounds. But, while aware of this source
of error, travellers would do well to continue to collect such
materials as may be within their reach. If they do not make known
the internal structure, and general arrangement of the edifice,
they may point out some important parts.
The three languages now most used in the provinces of Cumana and
Barcelona, are the Chayma, the Cumanagota, and the Caribbee. They
have always been regarded in these countries as different idioms,
and a dictionary of each has been written for the use of the
Missions, by Fathers Tauste, Ruiz-blanco, and Breton. The
Vocabulario y Arte de la Lengua de los Indios Chaymas has become
extremely scarce. The few American grammars, printed for the most
part in the seventeenth century, passed into the Missions, and have
been lost in the forests. The dampness of the air and the voracity
of insects* render the preservation of books almost impossible in
those regions (* The termites, so well known in Spanish America
under the name of comegen, or 'devourer,' is one of these
destructive insects.): they are destroyed in a short space of time,
notwithstanding every precaution that may be employed. I had much
difficulty to collect in the Missions, and in the convents, those
grammars of American languages, which, on my return to Europe, I
placed in the hands of Severin Vater, professor and librarian at
the university of Konigsberg. They furnished him with useful
materials for his great work on the idioms of the New World. I
omitted, at the time, to transcribe from my journal, and
communicate to that learned gentleman, what I had collected in the
Chayma tongue. Since neither Father Gili, nor the Abbe Hervas, has
mentioned this language, I shall here explain succinctly the result
of my researches.