Encaramada, and at the distance of more than a hundred leagues from
the Chaymas, live the Tamanacs (Tamanacu), whose language is
divided into several dialects. This nation, formerly very powerful,
is separated from the mountains of Caripe by the Orinoco, by the
vast steppes of Caracas and of Cumana; and by a barrier far more
difficult to surmount, the nations of Caribbean origin. But
notwithstanding distance, and the numerous obstacles in the way of
intercourse, the language of the Chayma Indians is a branch of the
Tamanac tongue. The oldest missionaries of Caripe are ignorant of
this curious fact, because the Capuchins of Aragon seldom visit the
southern banks of the Orinoco, and scarcely know of the existence
of the Tamanacs. I recognized the analogy between the idiom of this
nation, and that of the Chayma Indians long after my return to
Europe, in comparing the materials which I had collected with the
sketch of a grammar published in Italy by an old missionary of the
Orinoco. Without knowing the Chaymas, the Abbe Gili conjectured
that the language of the inhabitants of Paria must have some
relation to the Tamanac.* (* Vater has also advanced some
well-founded conjectures on the connexion between the Tamanac and
Caribbean tongues and those spoken on the north-east coast of South
America. I may acquaint the reader, that I have written the words
of the American languages according to the Spanish orthography, so
that the u should be pronounced oo, the ch like ch in English, etc.
Having during a great number of years spoken no other language than
the Castilian, I marked down the sounds according to the
orthography of that language, and now I am afraid of changing the
value of these signs, by substituting others no less imperfect. It
is a barbarous practice, to express, like the greater part of the
nations of Europe, the most simple and distinct sounds by many
vowels, or many united consonants, while they might be indicated by
letters equally simple. What a chaos is exhibited by the
vocabularies written according to English, German, French, or
Spanish notations! A new essay, which the illustrious author of the
travels in Egypt, M. Volney, is about to publish on the analysis of
sounds found in different nations, and on the notation of those
sounds according to a uniform system, will lead to great progress
In the study of languages.)
I will prove this connection by two means which serve to show the
analogy of idioms; namely, the grammatical construction, and the
identity of words and roots. The following are the personal
pronouns of the Chaymas, which are at the same time possessive
pronouns; u-re, I, me; eu-re, thou, thee; teu-re, he, him. In the
Tamanac, u-re, I; amare or anja, thou; iteu-ja, he. The radical of
the first and of third person is in the Chayma u and teu.* (* We
must not wonder at those roots which reduce themselves to a single
vowel. In a language of the Old Continent, the structure of which
is so artificially complicated, (the Biscayan,) the family name
Ugarte (between the waters) contains the u of ura (water) and arte
between. The g is added for the sake of euphony.) The same roots
are found in the Tamanac.
TABLE OF CHAYMA AND TAMANAC WORDS COMPARED:
COLUMN 1 : English.
COLUMN 2 : CHAYMA.
COLUMN 3 : TAMANAC.
I : Ure : Ure.
water : Tuna : Tuna.
rain : Conopo* : Canopo.* (* The same word, conopo,
signifies rain and year. The years
are counted by the number of winters,
or rainy seasons. They say in Chayma,
as in Sanscrit, 'so many rains,'
meaning so many years. In the Basque
language, the word urtea, year, is
derived from urten, to bring forth
leaves in spring.)
to know : Poturu : Puturo.
fire : Apoto : Uapto (in Caribbean uato).
the moon, a month : Nuna : Nuna.* (* In the Tamanac and Caribbean
languages, Nono signifies the earth,
Nuna the moon; as in the Chayma.
This affinity appears to me very
curious; and the Indians of the
Rio Caura say, that the moon is
'another earth.' Among savage nations,
amidst so many confused ideas, we find
certain reminiscences well worthy of
attention. Among the Greenlanders Nuna
signifies the earth, and Anoningat
the moon.)
a tree : Je : Jeje.
a house : Ata : Aute.
to you : Euya : Auya.
to you : Toya : Iteuya.
honey : Guane : Uane.
he has said it : Nacaramayre : Nacaramai.
a physician,
a sorcerer : Piache : Psiache.
one : Tibin : Obin (in Jaoi, Tewin).
two : Aco : Oco (in Caribbean, Occo).
two : Oroa : Orua (in Caribbean, Oroa).
flesh : Pun : Punu.
no (negation) : Pra : Pra.
The verb to be, is expressed in Chayma by az. On adding to the verb
the personal pronoun I (u from u-re), a g is placed, for the sake
of euphony, before the u, as in guaz, I am, properly g-u-az. As the
first person is known by an u, the second is designated by an m,
the third by an i; maz, thou art; muerepuec araquapemaz? why art
thou sad? properly what for sad thou art; punpuec topuchemaz, thou
art fat in body, properly flesh (pun) for (puec) fat (topuche) thou
art (maz). The possessive pronouns precede the substantive; upatay,
in my house, properly my house in. All the prepositions and the
negation pra are incorporated at the end, as in the Tamanac. They
say in Chayma, ipuec, with him, properly him with; euya, to thee,
or thee to; epuec charpe guaz, I am gay with thee, properly thee
with gay I am; ucarepra, not as I, properly I as not; quenpotupra
quoguaz, I do not know him, properly him knowing not I am; quenepra
quoguaz, I have not seen him, properly him seeing not I am. In the
Tamanac tongue, acurivane means beautiful, and acurivanepra,
ugly--not beautiful; outapra, there is no fish, properly fish none;
uteripipra, I will not go, properly I to go will not, composed of
uteri,* to go, ipiri, to choose, and pra, not. (* In Chayma:
utechire, I will go also, properly I (u) to go (the radical ute,
or, because of the preceding vowel, te) also (chere, or ere, or
ire). In utechire we find the Tamanac verb to go, uteri, of which
ute is also the radical, and ri the termination of the Infinitive.
In order to show that in Chayma chere or ere indicates the adverb
also, I shall cite from the fragment of a vocabulary in my
possession, u-chere, I also; nacaramayre, he said so also;
guarzazere, I carried also; charechere, to carry also. In the
Tamanac, as in the Chayma, chareri signifies to carry.) Among the
Caribbees, whose language also bears some relation to the Tamanac,
though infinitely less than the Chayma, the negation is expressed
by an m placed before the verb: amoyenlengati, it is very cold; and
mamoyenlengati, it is not very cold. In an analogous manner, the
particle mna added to the Tamanac verb, not at the end, but by
intercalation, gives it a negative sense, as taro, to say,
taromnar, not to say.
The verb to be, very irregular in all languages, is az or ats in
Chayma; and uochiri (in composition uac, uatscha) in Tamanac. It
serves not only to form the Passive, but it is added also, as by
agglutination, to the radical of attributive verbs, in a number of
tenses.* (* The present in the Tamanac, jarer-bae-ure, appears to
me nothing else then the verb bac, or uac (from uacschiri, to be ),
added to the radical to carry, jare (in the infinitive jareri), the
result of which is carrying to be I.) These agglutinations remind
us of the employment in the Sanscrit of the auxiliary verbs as and
bhu (asti and bhavati* (* In the branch of the Germanic languages
we find bhu under the forms bim, bist; as, in the forms vas, vast,
vesum (Bopp page 138).)); the Latin, of es and fu, or fus;* (*
Hence fu-ero; amav-issem; amav-eram; pos-sum (pot-sum).) the
Biscayan, of izan, ucan, and eguin. There are certain points in
which idioms the most dissimilar concur one with another. That
which is common in the intellectual organization of man is
reflected in the general structure of language; and every idiom,
however barbarous it may appear, discloses a regulating principle
which has presided at its formation.
The plural, in Tamanac, is indicated in seven different ways,
according to the termination of the substantive, or according as it
designates an animate or inanimate object.* (* Tamanacu, a Tamanac
(plur. Tamanakemi): Pongheme, a Spaniard (properly a man clothed);
Pongamo, Spaniards, or men clothed. The plural in cne characterizes
inanimate objects: for example, cene, a thing; cenecne, things:
jeje, a tree; jejecne, trees.) In Chayma the plural is formed as in
Caribbee, in on; teure, himself; teurecon, themselves; tanorocon,
those here; montaonocon, those below, supposing that the
interlocutor is speaking of a place where he was himself present;
miyonocon, those below, supposing he speaks of a place where he was
not present. The Chaymas have also the Castilian adverbs aqui and
alla, shades of difference which can be expressed only by
periphrasis, in the idioms of Germanic and Latin origin.
Some Indians, who were acquainted with Spanish, assured us, that
zis signified not only the sun, but also the Deity. This appeared
to me the more extraordinary, as among all other American nations
we find distinct words for God and the sun. The Carib does not
confound Tamoussicabo, the Ancient of Heaven, with veyou, the sun.
Even the Peruvian, though a worshipper of the sun, raises his mind
to the idea of a Being who regulates the movements of the stars.
The sun, in the language of the Incas, bears the name of inti,* (*
In the Quichua, or language of the Incas, the sun is inti; love,
munay; great, veypul; in Sanscrit, the sun, indre: love, manya;
great, vipulo. (Vater Mithridates tome 3 page 333.) These are the
only examples of analogy of sound, that have yet been noticed. The
grammatical character of the two languages is totally different.)
nearly the same as in Sanscrit; while God is called Vinay Huayna,
the eternally young.'* (* Vinay, always, or eternal; huayna, in the
flower of age.)
The arrangement of words in the Chayma is similar to that found in
all the languages of both continents, which have preserved a
certain primitive character. The object is placed before the verb,
the verb before the personal pronoun. The object, on which the
attention should be principally fixed, precedes all the
modifications of that object. The American would say, liberty
complete love we, instead of we love complete liberty; Thee with
happy am I, instead of I am happy with thee. There is something
direct, firm, demonstrative, in these turns, the simplicity of
which is augmented by the absence of the article. May it be
presumed that, with advancing civilization, these nations, left to
themselves, would have gradually changed the arrangement of their
phrases? We are led to adopt this idea, when we reflect on the
changes which the syntax of the Romans has undergone in the
precise, clear, but somewhat timid languages of Latin Europe.
The Chayma, like the Tamanac and most of the American languages, is
entirely destitute of certain letters, as f, b, and d. No word
begins with an l. The same observation has been made on the Mexican
tongue, though it is overcharged with the syllables tli, tla, and
itl, at the end or in the middle of words. The Chaymas substitute r
for l; a substitution that arises from a defect of pronunciation
common in every zone.* (* For example, the substitution of r for l,
characterizes the Bashmurie dialect of the Coptic language.) Thus,
the Caribbees of the Orinoco have been transformed into Galibi in
French Guiana by confounding r with l, and softening the c. The
Tamanac has made choraro and solalo of the Spanish word soldado
(soldier). The disappearance of the f and b in so many American
idioms arises out of that intimate connection between certain
sounds, which is manifested in all languages of the same origin.
The letters f, v, b, and p, are substituted one for the other; for
instance, in the Persian, peder, father (pater); burader,* (*
Whence the German bruder, with the same consonants.) brother
(frater); behar, spring (ver); in Greek, phorton (forton), a
burthen; pous (pous) a foot, (fuss, Germ.). In the same manner,
with the Americans, f and b become p; and d becomes t. The Chayma
pronounces patre, Tios, Atani, aracapucha, for padre, Dios, Adan,
and arcabuz (harquebuss).
In spite of the relations just pointed out, I do not think that the
Chayma language can be regarded as a dialect of the Tamanac, as the
Maitano, Cuchivero, and Crataima undoubtedly are. There are many
essential differences; and between the two languages there appears
to me to exist merely the same connection as is found in the
German, the Swedish, and the English. They belong to the same
subdivision of the great family of the Tamanac, Caribbean, and
Arowak tongues. As there exists no absolute measure of resemblance
between idioms, the degrees of parentage can be indicated only by
examples taken from known tongues. We consider those as being of
the same family, which bear affinity one to the other, as the
Greek, the German, the Persian, and the Sanscrit.
Some philologists have imagined, on comparing languages, that they
may all be divided into two classes, of which some, comparatively
perfect in their organization, easy and rapid in their movements,
indicate an interior development by inflexion; while others, more
rude and less susceptible of improvement, present only a crude
assemblage of small forms or agglutinated particles, each
preserving the physiognomy peculiar to itself; when it is
separately employed. This very ingenious view would be deficient in
accuracy were it supposed that there exist polysyllabic idioms
without any inflexion, or that those which are organically
developed as by interior germs, admit no external increase by means
of suffixes and affixes;* (* Even in the Sanscrit several tenses
are formed by aggregation; for example, in the first future, the
substantive verb to be is added to the radical. In a similar manner
we find in the Greek mach-eso, if the s be not the effect of
inflexion, and in Latin pot-ero (Bopp pages 26 and 66). These are
examples of incorporation and agglutination in the grammatical
system of languages which are justly cited as models of an interior
development by inflexion. In the grammatical system of the American
tongues, for example in the Tamanac, tarecschi, I will carry, is
equally composed of the radical ar (infin. jareri, to carry) and of
the verb ecschi (Infin. nocschiri, to be). There hardly exists in
the American languages a triple mode of aggregation, of which we
cannot find a similar and analogous example in some other language
that is supposed to develop itself only by inflexion.) an increase
which we have already mentioned several times under the name of
agglutination or incorporation. Many things, which appear to us at
present inflexions of a radical, have perhaps been in their origin
affixes, of which there have barely remained one or two consonants.
In languages, as in everything in nature that is organized, nothing
is entirely isolated or unlike. The farther we penetrate into their
internal structure, the more do contrasts and decided characters
vanish. It may be said that they are like clouds, the outlines of
which do not appear well defined, except when viewed at a distance.
But though we may not admit one simple and absolute principle in
the classification of languages, yet it cannot be decided, that in
their present state some manifest a greater tendency to inflexion,
others to external aggregation. It is well known, that the
languages of the Indian, Pelasgic, and German branch, belong to the
first division; the American idioms, the Coptic or ancient
Egyptian, and to a certain degree, the Semitic languages and the
Biscayan, to the second. The little we have made known of the idiom
of the Chaymas of Caripe, sufficiently proves that constant
tendency towards the incorporation or aggregation of certain forms,
which it is easy to separate; though from a somewhat refined
sentiment of euphony some letters have been dropped and others have
been added. Those affixes, by lengthening words, indicate the most
varied relations of number, time, and motion.
When we reflect on the peculiar structure of the American
languages, we imagine we discover the source of the opinion
generally entertained from the most remote time in the Missions,
that these languages have an analogy with the Hebrew and the
Biscayan. At the convent of Caripe as well as at the Orinoco, in
Peru as well as in Mexico, I heard this opinion expressed,
particularly by monks who had some vague notions of the Semitic
languages. Did motives supposed to be favourable to religion, give
rise to this extraordinary theory? In the north of America, among
the Choctaws and the Chickasaws, travellers somewhat credulous have
heard the strains of the Hallelujah* of the Hebrews (* L'Escarbot,
Charlevoix, and even Adair (Hist. of the American Indians 1775).);
as, according to the Pundits, the three sacred words of the
mysteries of the Eleusis* (konx om pax) resound still in the
Indies. (* Asiat. Res. volume 5, Ouvaroff on the Eleusinian
Mysteries 1816.) I do not mean to suggest, that the nations of
Latin Europe may have called whatever has a foreign physiognomy
Hebrew or Biscayan, as for a long time all those monuments were
called Egyptian, which were not in the Grecian or Roman style. I am
rather disposed to think that the grammatical system of the
American idioms has confirmed the missionaries of the sixteenth
century in their ideas respecting the Asiatic origin of the nations
of the New World. The tedious compilation of Father Garcia, Tratado
del Origen de los Indios,* (* Treatise on the Origin of the
Indians.) is a proof of this. The position of the possessive and
personal pronouns at the end of the noun and the verb, as well as
the numerous tenses of the latter, characterize the Hebrew and the
other Semitic languages. Some of the missionaries were struck at
finding the same peculiarities in the American tongues: they did
not reflect, that the analogy of a few scattered features does not
prove languages to belong to the same stock.
It appears less astonishing, that men, who are well acquainted with
only two languages extremely heterogeneous, the Castilian and the
Biscayan, should have found in the latter a family resemblance to
the American languages. The composition of words, the facility with
which the partial elements are detected, the forms of the verbs,
and their different modifications, may have caused and kept up this
illusion. But we repeat, an equal tendency towards aggregation or
incorporation does not constitute an identity of origin. The
following are examples of the relations between the American and
Biscayan languages; idioms totally different in their roots.
In Chayma, quenpotupra quoguaz, I do not know, properly, knowing
not I am. In Tamanac, jarer-uac-ure, bearing am I,--I bear;
anarepra aichi, he will not bear, properly, bearing not will he;
patcurbe, good; patcutari, to make himself good; Tamanacu, a
Tamanac; Tamanacutari, to make himself a Tainanac; Pongheme, a
Spaniard; ponghemtari, to Spaniardize himself; tenecchi, I will
see; teneicre, I will see again; teecha, I go; tecshare, I return;
maypur butke, a little Maypure Indian; aicabutke, a little woman;
maypuritaje, an ugly Maypure Indian; aicataje, an ugly woman.* (*
The diminutive of woman (aica) or of Maypure Indian is formed by
adding butke, which is the termination of cujuputke, little: taje
answers to the accio of the Italians.)
In Biscayan: maitetutendot, I love him, properly, I loving have
him; beguia, the eye, and beguitsa, to see; aitagana, towards the
father: by adding tu, we form the verb aitaganatu, to go towards
the father; ume-tasuna, soft and infantile ingenuity; umequeria,
disagreeable childishness.
I may add to these examples some descriptive compounds, which call
to mind the infancy of nations, and strike us equally in the
American and Biscayan languages, by a certain ingenuousness of
expression. In Tamanac, the wasp (uane-imu), father (im-de) of
honey (uane);* (* It may not be unnecessary here to acquaint the
reader that honey is produced by an insect of South America,
belonging to, or nearly allied, to the wasp genus. This honey,
however, possesses noxious qualities which are by some naturalists
attributed to the plant Paulinia Australis, the juices of which are
collected by the insect.) the toes, ptarimucuru, properly, the sons
of the foot; the fingers, amgnamucuru, the sons of the hand;
mushrooms, jeje-panari, properly, the ears (panari) of a tree
(jeje); the veins of the hand, amgna-mitti, properly, the ramified
roots; leaves, prutpe-jareri, properly, the hair at the top of the
tree; puirene-veju, properly, the sun (veju), straight or
perpendicular; lightning, kinemeru-uaptori, properly, the fire
(uapto) of the thunder, or of the storm. (I recognise in kinemeru,
thunder or storm, the root kineme black.) In Biscayan, becoquia,
the forehead, what belongs (co and quia) to the eye (beguia);
odotsa, the noise (otsa) of the cloud (odeia), or thunder;
arribicia, an echo, properly, the animated stone, from arria,
stone, and bicia, life.
The Chayma and Tamanac verbs have an enormous complication of
tenses: two Presents, four Preterites, three Futures. This
multiplicity characterises the rudest American languages. Astarloa
reckons, in like manner, in the grammatical system of the Biscayan,
two hundred and six forms of the verb. Those languages, the
principal tendency of which is inflexion, are to the common
observer less interesting than those which seem formed by
aggregation. In the first, the elements of which words are
composed, and which are generally reduced to a few letters, are no
longer recognisable: these elements, when isolated, exhibit no
meaning; the whole is assimilated and mingled together. The
American languages, on the contrary, are like complicated machines,
the wheels of which are exposed to view. The mechanism of their
construction is visible. We seem to be present at their formation,
and we should pronounce them to be of very recent origin, did we
not recollect that the human mind steadily follows an impulse once
given; that nations enlarge, improve, and repair the grammatical
edifice of their languages, according to a plan already determined;
finally, that there are countries, whose languages, institutions,
and arts, have remained unchanged, we might almost say stereotyped,
during the lapse of ages.
The highest degree of intellectual development has been hitherto
found among the nations of the Indian and Pelasgic branch. The
languages formed principally by aggregation seem themselves to
oppose obstacles to the improvement of the mind. They are devoid of
that rapid movement, that interior life, to which the inflexion of
the root is favourable, and which impart such charms to works of
imagination. Let us not, however, forget, that a people celebrated
in remote antiquity, a people from whom the Greeks themselves
borrowed knowledge, had perhaps a language, the construction of
which recalls involuntarily that of the languages of America. What
a structure of little monosyllabic and disyllabic forms is added to
the verb and to the substantive, in the Coptic language! The
semi-barbarous Chayma and Tamanac have tolerably short abstract
words to express grandeur, envy, and lightness, cheictivate, uoite,
and uonde; but in Coptic, the word malice,* metrepherpetou, is
composed of five elements, easy to be distinguished. (* See, on the
incontestable identity of the ancient Egyptian and Coptic, and on
the particular system of synthesis of the latter language, the
ingenious reflexions of M. Silvestre de Sacy, in the Notice des
Recherches de M. Etienne Quatremere sur La Litterature de l'Epypte.
) This compound signifies the quality (met) of a subject (reph),
which makes (er) the thing which is (pet), evil (ou). Nevertheless
the Coptic language has had its literature, like the Chinese, the
roots of which, far from being aggregated, scarcely approach each
other without immediate contact. We must admit that nations once
roused from their lethargy, and tending towards civilization, find
in the most uncouth languages the secret of expressing with
clearness the conceptions of the mind, and of painting the emotions
of the soul. Don Juan de la Rea, a highly estimable man, who
perished in the sanguinary revolutions of Quito, imitated with
graceful simplicity some Idylls of Theocritus in the language of
the Incas; and I have been assured, that, excepting treatises on
science and philosophy, there is scarcely any work of modern
literature that might not be translated into the Peruvian.
The intimate connection established between the natives of the New
World and the Spaniards since the conquest, have introduced a
certain number of American words into the Castilian language. Some
of these words express things not unknown before the discovery of
the New World, and scarcely recall to our minds at present their
barbarous origin.* (* For example savannah, and cannibal.) Almost
all belong to the language of the great Antilles, formerly termed
the language of Haiti, of Quizqueja, or of Itis.* (* The word Itis,
for Haiti or St. Domingo (Hispaniola), is found in the Itinerarium
of Bishop Geraldini (Rome 1631.)--"Quum Colonus Itim insulam
cerneret.") I shall confine myself to citing the words maiz,
tabaco, canoa, batata, cacique, balsa, conuco, etc. When the
Spaniards, after the year 1498, began to visit the mainland, they
already had words* to designate the vegetable productions most
useful to man, and common both to the islands and to the coasts of
Cumana and Paria. (* The following are Haitian words, in their real
form, which have passed into the Castilian language since the end
of the 15th century. Many of them are not uninteresting to
descriptive botany. Ahi (Capsicum baccatum), batata (Convolvus
batatas), bihao (Heliconia bihai), caimito (Chrysophyllum caimito),
cahoba (Swietenia mahagoni), jucca and casabi (Jatropba manihot);
the word casabi or cassava is employed only for the bread made with
the roots of the Jatropha (the name of the plant jucca was also
heard by Americo Vespucci on the coast of Paria); age or ajes
(Dioscorea alata), copei (Clusia alba), guayacan (Guaiacum
officinale), guajaba (Psidium pyriferum), guanavano (Anona
muricata), mani (Arachis hypogaea), guama (Inga), henequen (was
supposed from the erroneous accounts of the first travellers to be
an herb with which the Haitians used to cut metals; it means now
every kind of strong thread), hicaco (Chrysobalanus icaco), maghei
(Agave Americana), mahiz or maiz (Zea, maize), mamei (Mammea
Americana), mangle (Rhizophora), pitahaja (Cactus pitahaja), ceiba
(Bombax), tuna (Cactus tuna), hicotea (a tortoise), iguana (Lacerta
iguana), manatee (Trichecus manati), nigua (Pulex penetrans),
hamaca (a hammock), balsa (a raft; however balsa is an old
Castilian word signifying a pool of water), barbacoa (a small bed
of light wood, or reeds), canei or buhio (a hut), canoa (a canoe),
cocujo (Elater noctilucus, the fire-fly), chicha (fermented
liquor), macana (a large stick or club, made with the petioles of a
palm-tree), tabaco (not the herb, but the pipe through which it is
smoked), cacique (a chief). Other American words, now as much in
use among the Creoles, as the Arabic words naturalized in the
Spanish, do not belong to the Haitian tongue; for example, caiman,
piragua, papaja (Carica), aguacate (Persea), tarabita, paramo. Abbe
Gili thinks with some probability, that they are derived from the
tongue of some people who inhabited the temperate climate between
Coro, the mountains of Merida, and the tableland of Bogota. (Saggio
volume 3 page 228.) How many Celtic and German words would not
Julius Caesar and Tacitus have handed down to us, had the
productions of the northern countries visited by the Romans
differed as much from the Italian and Roman, as those of
equinoctial America!) Not satisfied with retaining these words
borrowed from the Haitians, they helped also to spread them all
over America (at a period when the language of Haiti was already a
dead language), and to diffuse them among nations who were ignorant
even of the existence of the West India Islands. Some words, which
are in daily use in the Spanish colonies, are attributed
erroneously to the Haitians. Banana is from the Chaconese, the
Mbaja language; arepa (bread of manioc, or of the Jatropha manihot)
and guayuco (an apron, perizoma) are Caribbee: curiara (a very long
boat) is Tamanac: chinchorro (a hammock), and tutuma (the fruit of
the Crescentia cujete, or a vessel to contain a liquid), are Chayma
words.
I have dwelt thus long on considerations respecting the American
tongues, because I am desirous of directing attention to the deep
interest attached to this kind of research. This interest is
analogous to that inspired by the monuments of semi-barbarous
nations, which are examined not because they deserve to be ranked
among works of art, but because the study of them throws light on
the history of our species, and the progressive development of our
faculties.
It now remains for me to speak of the other Indian nations
inhabiting the provinces of Cumana and Barcelona. These I shall
only succinctly enumerate.
1. The Pariagotos or Parias.
It is thought that the terminations in goto, as Pariagoto,
Purugoto, Avarigoto, Acherigoto, Cumanagoto, Arinagoto,
Kirikirisgoto,* (* The Kirikirisgotos (or Kirikiripas) are of Dutch
Guiana. It is very remarkable, that among the small Brazilian
tribes who do not speak the language of the Tupis, the Kiriris,
notwithstanding the enormous distance of 650 leagues, have several
Tamanac words.) imply a Caribbean origin.* (* In the Tamanac
tongue, which is of the same branch as the Caribbean, we find also
the termination goto, as in anekiamgoto an animal. Often an analogy
in the termination of names, far from showing an identity of race,
only indicates that the names of the nations are borrowed from one
language.) All these tribes, excepting the Purugotos of the Rio
Caura, formerly occupied the country which has been so long under
the dominion of the Caribbees; namely, the coasts of Berbice and of
Essequibo, the peninsula of Paria, the plains of Piritu and Parima.
By this last name the little-known country, between the sources of
the Cujuni, the Caroni, and the Mao, is designated in the Missions.
The Paria Indians are mingled in part with the Chaymas of Cumana;
others have been settled by the Capuchins of Aragon in the Missions
of Caroni; for instance, at Cupapuy and Alta-Gracia, where they
still speak their own language, apparently a dialect between the
Tamanac and the Caribbee. But it may be asked, is the name Parias
or Pariagotos, a name merely geographical? Did the Spaniards, who
frequented these coasts from their first establishment in the
island of Cubagua and in Macarapana, give the name of the
promontory of Paria* to the tribe by which it was inhabited? (*
Paria, Uraparia, even Huriaparia and Payra, are the ancient names
of the country, written as the first navigators thought they heard
them pronounced. It appears to me by no means probable, that the
promontory of Paria should derive its name from that of a cacique
Uriapari, celebrated for the manner in which he resisted Diego
Ordaz in 1530, thirty-two years after Columbus had heard the name
of Paria from the mouths of the natives themselves. The Orinoco at
its mouth had also the name of Uriapari, Yuyapari, or Iyupari. In
all these denominations of a great river, of a shore, and of a
rainy country, I think I recognise the radical par, signifying
water, not only in the languages of these countries, but also in
those of nations very distant from one another on the eastern and
western coasts of America. The sea, or great water, is in the
Caribbean, Maypure, and Brazilian languages, parana: in the
Tamanac, parava. In Upper Guiana also the Orinoco is called Parava.
In the Peruvian, or Quichua, I find rain, para; to rain, parani.
Besides, there is a lake in Peru that has been very anciently
called Paria. (Garcia, Origen de los Indios, page 292.) I have
entered into these minute details concerning the word Paria,
because it has recently been supposed that some connection might be
traced between this word and the country of the Hindoo caste called
the Parias.) This we will not positively affirm; for the Caribbees
themselves give the name of Caribana to a country which they
occupied, and which extended from the Rio Sinu to the gulf of
Darien. This is a striking example of identity of name between an
American nation and the territory it possessed. We may conceive,
that in a state of society, where residence is not long fixed, such
instances must be very rare.
2. The Guaraons or Gu-ara-una, almost all free and independent, are
dispersed in the Delta of the Orinoco, with the variously ramified
channels of which they alone are well acquainted. The Caribbees
call the Guaraons U-ara-u. They owe their independence to the
nature of their country; for the missionaries, in spite of their
zeal, have not been tempted to follow them to the tree-tops. The
Guaraons, in order to raise their abodes above the surface of the
waters at the period of the great inundations, support them on the
hewn trunks of the mangrove-tree and of the Mauritia palm-tree.* (*
Their manners have been the same from time immemorial. Cardinal
Bembo described them at the beginning of the 16th century,
"quibusdam in locis propter paludes incolae domus in arboribus
aedificant." (Hist. Venet. 1551.) Sir Walter Raleigh, in 1595,
speaks of the Guaraons under the names of Araottes, Trivitivas, and
Warawites. These were perhaps the names of some tribes, into which
the great Guaraonese nation was divided. (Barrere Essai sur l'Hist.
Naturelle de la France Equinoctiale.)) They make bread of the
medullary flour of this palm-tree, which is the sago of America.
The flour bears the name of yuruma: I have eaten it at the town of
St. Thomas, in Guiana, and it was very agreeable to the taste,
resembling rather the cassava-bread than the sago of India.* (* M.
Kunth has combined together three genera of the palms, Calamus,
Sigus, and Mauritia, in a new section, the Calameae.) The Indians
assured me that the trunks of the Mauritia, the tree of life so
much vaunted by father Gumilla, do not yield meal in any abundance,
unless the palm-tree is cut down just before the flowers appear.
Thus too the maguey,* (* Agave Americana, the aloe of our gardens.)
cultivated in New Spain, furnishes a saccharine liquor, the wine
(pulque) of the Mexicans, only at the period when the plant shoots
forth its long stem. By interrupting the blossoming, nature is
obliged to carry elsewhere the saccharine or amylaceous matter,
which would accumulate in the flowers of the maguey and in the
fruit of the Mauritia. Some families of Guaraons, associated with
the Chaymas, live far from their native land, in the Missions of
the plains or llanos of Cumana; for instance, at Santa Rosa de
Ocopi. Five or six hundred of them voluntarily quitted their
marshes, a few years ago, and formed, on the northern and southern
banks of the Orinoco, twenty-five leagues distant from Cape Barima,
two considerable villages, under the names of Zacupana and Imataca.
When I made my journey in Caripe, these Indians were still without
missionaries, and lived in complete independence. Their excellent
qualities as boatmen, their perfect knowledge of the mouths of the
Orinoco, and of the labyrinth of branches communicating with each
other, give the Guaraons a certain political importance. They
favour that clandestine commerce of which the island of Trinidad is
the centre. The Guaraons run with extreme address on muddy lands,
where the European, the Negro, or other Indians except themselves,
would not dare to walk; and it is, therefore, commonly believed,
that they are of lighter weight than the rest of the natives. This
is also the opinion that is held in Asia of the Burat Tartars. The
few Guaraons whom I saw were of middle size, squat, and very
muscular. The lightness with which they walk in places newly dried,
without sinking in, when even they have no planks tied to their
feet, seemed to me the effect of long habit. Though I sailed a
considerable time on the Orinoco, I never went so low as its mouth.
Future travellers, who may visit those marshy regions, will rectify
what I have advanced.
3. The Guaiqueries or Guaikeri, are the most able and most intrepid
fishermen of these countries. These people alone are well
acquainted with the bank abounding with fish, which surrounds the
islands of Coche, Margareta, Sola, and Testigos; a bank of more
than four hundred square leagues, extending east and west from
Maniquarez to the Boca del Draco. The Guaiqueries inhabit the
island of Margareta, the peninsula of Araya, and that suburb of
Cumana which bears their name. Their language is believed to be a
dialect of that of the Guaraons. This would connect them with the
great family of the Caribbee nations; and the missionary Gili is of
opinion that the language of the Guaiqueries is one of the numerous
branches of the Caribbean tongue.* (* If the name of the port
Pam-patar, in the island of Margareta, be Guaiquerean, as we have
no reason to doubt, it exhibits a feature of analogy with the
Cumanagoto tongue, which approaches the Caribbean and Tamanac. In
Terra Firma, in the Piritu Missions, we find the village of
Cayguapatar, which signifies house of Caygua.) These affinities are
interesting, because they lead us to perceive an ancient connection
between nations dispersed over a vast extent of country, from the
mouth of the Rio Caura and the sources of the Erevato, in Parima,
to French Guiana, and the coasts of Paria.* (* Are the Guaiqueries,
or O-aikeries, now settled on the borders of the Erevato, and
formerly between the Rio Caura and the Cuchivero near the little
town of Alta Gracia, of a different origin from the Guaikeries of
Cumana? I know also, in the interior of the country, in the
Missions of the Piritus, near the village of San Juan Evangelista
del Guarive, a ravine very anciently called Guayquiricuar. These
resemblances seem to prove migrations from the south-west towards
the coast. The termination cuar, found so often in Cumanagoto and
Caribbean names, means a ravine, as in Guaymacuar (ravine of
lizards), Pirichucuar (a ravine overshaded by pirichu or piritu
palm-trees), Chiguatacuar (a ravine of land-shells). Raleigh
describes the Guaiqueries under the name of Ouikeries. He calls the
Chaymas, Saimas, changing (according to the Caribbean
pronunciation) the ch into s.)
4. The Quaquas, whom the Tamanacs call Mapoje, are a tribe formerly
very warlike and allied to the Caribbees. It is a curious
phenomenon to find the Quaquas mingled with the Chaymas in the
Missions of Cumana, for their language, as well as the Atura, of
the cataracts of the Orinoco, is a dialect of the Salive tongue;
and their original abode was on the banks of the Assiveru, which
the Spaniards call Cuchivero. They have extended their migrations
one hundred leagues to the north-east. I have often heard them
mentioned on the Orinoco, above the mouth of the Meta; and, what is
very remarkable, it is asserted* that missionary Jesuits have found
Quaquas as far distant as the Cordilleras of Popayan. (* Vater tome
3 part 2 page 364. The name of Quaqua is found on the coast of
Guinea. The Europeans apply it to a horde of Negroes to the east of
Cape Lahou.) Raleigh enumerates, among the natives of the island of
Trinidad, the Salives, a people remarkable for their mild manners;
they came from the Orinoco, and settled south of the Quaquas.
Perhaps these two nations, which speak almost the same language,
travelled together towards the coasts.
5. The Cumanagotos, or, according to the pronunciation of the
Indians, Cumanacoto, are now settled westward of Cumana, in the
Missions of Piritu, where they live by cultivating the ground. They
number more than twenty-six thousand. Their language, like that of
the Palencas, or Palenques, and Guarivas, is between the Tamanac
and the Caribbee, but nearer to the former. These are indeed idioms
of the same family; but if we are to consider them as simple
dialects, the Latin must be also called a dialect of the Greek, and
the Swedish a dialect of the German. In considering the affinity of
languages one with another, it must not be forgotten that these
affinities may be very differently graduated; and that it would be
a source of confusion not to distinguish between simple dialects
and languages of the same family. The Cumanagotos, the Tamanacs,
the Chaymas, the Guaraons, and the Caribbees, do not understand
each other, in spite of the frequent analogy of words and of
grammatical structure exhibited in their respective idioms. The
Cumanagotos inhabited, at the beginning of the sixteenth century,
the mountains of the Brigantine and of Parabolata. I am unable to
determine whether the Piritus, Cocheymas, Chacopatas, Tomuzas, and
Topocuares, now confounded in the same villages with the
Cumanagotos, and speaking their language, were originally tribes of
the same nation. The Piritus take their name from the ravine
Pirichucuar, where the small thorny palm-tree,* called piritu,
grows in abundance (* Caudice gracili aculeato, foliis pinnatis.
Possibly of the genus Aiphanes of Willdenouw.); the wood of this
tree, which is excessively hard, and little combustible, serves to
make pipes. On this spot the village of La Concepcion de Piritu was
founded in 1556; it is the chief settlement of the Cumanagoto
Missions, known by the name of the Misiones de Piritu.
6. The Caribbees (Carives). This name, which was given them by the
first navigators, is retained throughout all Spanish America. The
French and the Germans have transformed it, I know not why, into
Caraibes. The people call themselves Carina, Calina, and Callinago.
I visited some Caribbean Missions in the Llanos,* (* I shall in
future use the word Llanos (loca plana, suppressing the p), without
adding the equivalent words pampas, savannahs, meadows, steppes, or
plains. The country between the mountains of the coast and the left
bank of the Orinoco, constitutes the llanos of Cumana, Barcelona,
and Caracas.) on returning from my journey to the Orinoco; and I
shall merely mention that the Galibes (Caribi of Cayenne), the
Tuapocas, and the Cunaguaras, who originally inhabited the plains
between the mountains of Caripe (Caribe) and the village of
Maturin, the Jaoi of the island of Trinidad and of the province of
Cumana, and perhaps also the Guarivas, allies of the Palencas, are
all tribes of the great Caribbee nation.
With respect to the other nations whose affinities of language with
the Tamanac and Caribbee have been mentioned, they are not
necessarily to be considered as of the same race. In Asia, the
nations of Mongol origin differ totally in their physical
organisation from those of Tartar origin. Such has been, however,
the intermixture of these nations, that, according to the able
researches of Klaproth, the Tartar languages (branches of the
ancient Oigour) are spoken at present by hordes incontestably of
Mongol race. Neither the analogy nor the diversity of language
suffice to solve the great problem of the filiation of nations;
they merely serve to point out probabilities. The Caribbees,
properly speaking, those who inhabit the Missions of the Cari, in
the llanos of Cumana, the banks of the Caura, and the plains to the
north-east of the sources of the Orinoco, are distinguished by
their almost gigantic size from all the other nations I have seen
in the new continent. Must it on this account be admitted, that the
Caribbees are an entirely distinct race? and that the Guaraons and
the Tamanacs, whose languages have an affinity with the Caribbee,
have no bond of relationship with them? I think not. Among the
nations of the same family, one branch may acquire an extraordinary
development of organization. The mountaineers of the Tyrol and
Salzburgh are taller than the other Germanic races; the Samoiedes
of the Altai are not so little and squat as those of the sea-coast.
In like manner it would be difficult to deny that the Galibis are
really Caribbees; and yet, notwithstanding the identity of
languages, how striking is the difference in their stature and
physical constitution!
Before Cortez entered the capital of Montezuma in 1521, the
attention of Europe was fixed on the regions we have just
traversed. In depicting the manners of the inhabitants of Paria and
Cumana, it was thought that the manners of all the inhabitants of
the new continent were described. This remark cannot escape those
who read the historians of the Conquest, especially the letters of
Peter Martyr of Anghiera, written at the court of Ferdinand the
Catholic. These letters are full of ingenious observations upon
Christopher Columbus, Leo X, and Luther, and are stamped by noble
enthusiasm for the great discoveries of an age so rich in
extraordinary events. Without entering into any detail on the
manners of the nations which have been so long confounded one with
another, under the vague denomination of Cumanians (Cumaneses), it
appears to me important to clear up a fact which I have often heard
discussed in Spanish America.
The Pariagotos of the present time are of a brown red colour, as
are the Caribbees, the Chaymas, and almost all the nations of the
New World. Why do the historians of the sixteenth century affirm
that the first navigators saw white men with fair hair at the
promontory of Paria? Were they of the same race as those Indians of
a less tawny hue, whom M. Bonpland and myself saw at Esmeralda,
near the sources of the Orinoco? But these Indians had hair as
black as the Otomacs and other tribes, whose complexion is the
darkest. Were they albinos, such as have been found heretofore in
the isthmus of Panama? But examples of that degeneration are very
rare in the copper-coloured race; and Anghiera, as well as Gomara,
speaks of the inhabitants of Paria in general, and not of a few
individuals. Both describe them as if they were people of Germanic
origin,* (* "Aethiopes nigri, crispi lanati; Pariae incolae albi,
capillis oblongis protensis flavis."--Pet. Martyr Ocean., dec. 50
lib. 6 (edition 1574). "Utriusque sexus indigenae albi veluti
nostrates, praeter eos qui sub sole versantur." (The natives of
both sexes are as white as our people [Spaniards], except those who
are exposed to the sun.)--Ibid. Gomara, speaking of the natives
seen by Columbus at the mouth of the river of Cumana, says: "Las
donzellas eran amorosas, desnudas y blancas (las de la casa); los
Indios que van al campo estan negros del sol." (The young women are
engaging in their manners: they wear no clothing, and those who
live in the houses ARE WHITE. The Indians who are much in the open
country are black, from the effect of the sun.)--Hist. de los
Indios, cap. 74. "Los Indios de Paria son BLANCOS y rubios."--(The
Indians of Paria are WHITE and red.) Garcia, Origen de los Indios
1729, lib. 4 cap. 9.) they call them 'Whites with light hair;' they
even add, that they wore garments like those of the Turks.* (*
"They wear round their head a striped cotton handkerchief"--Ferd.
Columb. cap. 71. (Churchill volume 2.) Was this kind of head-dress
taken for a turban? (Garcia, Origen de los Ind., page 303). I am
surprised that people of these regions should have worn a
head-dress; but, what is more curious still, Pinzon, in a voyage
which he made alone to the coast of Paria, the particulars of which
have been transmitted to us by Peter Martyr of Anghiera, professes
to have seen natives who were clothed: "Incolas omnes genu tenus
mares, foeminas surarum tenus, gossampinis vestibus amictos
simplicibus repererunt; sed viros more Turcorum insuto minutim
gossypio ad belli usum duplicibus." (The natives were clothed in
thin cotton garments; the men's reaching to the knee, and the
women's to the calf of the leg. Their war-dress was thicker, and
closely stitched with cotton after the Turkish manner.)--Pet.
Martyr, dec. 2 lib. 7. Who were these people described as being
comparatively civilized, and clothed with tunics (like those who
lived an the summit of the Andes), and seen on a coast, where
before and since the time of Pinzon, only naked men have ever been
seen?) Gomara and Anghiera wrote from such oral information as they
had been able to collect.
These marvels disappear, if we examine the recital which Ferdinand
Columbus drew up from his father's papers. There we find simply,
that "the admiral was surprised to see the inhabitants of Paria,
and those of the island of Trinidad, better made, more civilized
(de buena conversacion), and whiter than the natives whom he had
previously seen."* (* Churchill's Collection volume 2, Herrera
pages 80, 83, 84. Munoz, Hist. del Nuevo Mundo volume 1, "El color
era baxo como es regular en los Indios, pero mas clara que en las
islas reconocidas." (Their colour was dark, as is usual among the
Indians; but lighter than that of the people of the islands
previously known.) The missionaries are accustomed to call those
Indians who are less black, less tawny, WHITISH, and even ALMOST
WHITE.--Gumilla, Hist. de l'Orenoque volume 1 chapter 5 paragraph
2. Such incorrect expressions may mislead those who are not
accustomed to the exaggerations in which travellers often indulge.)
This certainly did not mean that the Pariagotos are white. The
lighter colour of the skin of the natives and the great coolness of
the mornings on the coast of Paria, seemed to confirm the fantastic
hypothesis which that great man had framed, respecting the
irregularity of the curvature of the earth, and the height of the
plains in this region, which he regarded as the effect of an
extraordinary swelling of the globe in the direction of the
parallels of latitude. Amerigo Vespucci (in his pretended FIRST
voyage, apparently written from the narratives of other navigators)
compares the natives to the Tartar nations,* (* Vultu non multum
speciosi sunt, quoniam latas facies Tartariis adsimilatas habent.
(Their countenances are not handsome, their cheek-bones being broad
like those of the Tartars.)--Americi Vesputii Navigatio Prima, in
Gryn's Orbis Novus 1555.) not in regard to their colour, but on
account of the breadth of their faces, and the general expression
of their physiognomy.
But if it be certain, that at the end of the fifteenth century
there were on the coast of Cumana a few men with white skins, as
there are in our days, it must not thence be concluded, that the
natives of the New World exhibit everywhere a similar organization
of the dermoidal system. It is not less inaccurate to say, that
they are all copper-coloured, than to affirm that they would not
have a tawny hue, if they were not exposed to the heat of the sun,
or tanned by the action of the air. The natives may be divided into
two very unequal portions with respect to numbers; to the first
belong the Esquimaux of Greenland, of Labrador, and the northern
coast of Hudson's Bay, the inhabitants of Behring's Straits, of the
peninsula of Alaska, and of Prince William's Sound. The eastern and
western branches* of this polar race (* Vater, in Mithridates
volume 3. Egede, Krantz, Hearne, Mackenzie, Portlock, Chwostoff,
Davidoff, Resanoff, Merk, and Billing, have described the great
family of these Tschougaz-Esquimaux.), the Esquimaux and the
Tschougases, though at the vast distance of eight hundred leagues
apart, are united by the most intimate analogy of languages. This
analogy extends even to the inhabitants of the north-east of Asia;
for the idiom of the Tschouktsches* at the mouth of the Anadir (* I
mean here only the Tschouktsches who have fixed dwelling-places,
for the wandering Tschouktsches approach very near the Koriaks.),
has the same roots as the language of the Esquimaux who inhabit the
coast of America opposite to Europe. The Tschouktsches are the
Esquimaux of Asia. Like the Malays, that hyperborean race reside
only on the sea-coasts. They are almost all smaller in stature than
the other Americans, and are quick, lively, and talkative. Their
hair is almost straight, and black; but their skin (and this is
very characteristic of the race, which I shall designate under the
name of Tschougaz-Esquimaux) is originally whitish. It is certain
that the children of the Greenlanders are born white; some retain
that whiteness; and often in the brownest (the most tanned) the
redness of the blood is seen to appear on their cheeks.* (* Krantz,
Hist. of Greenland 1667 tome 1. Greenland does not seem to have
been inhabited in the eleventh century; at least the Esquimaux
appeared only in the fourteenth, coming from the west.)
The second portion of the natives of America includes all those
nations which are not Tschougaz-Esquimaux, beginning from Cook's
River to the Straits of Magellan, from the Ugaljachmouzes and the
Kinaese of Mount St. Elias, to the Puelches and Tehuelhets of the
southern hemisphere. The men who belong to this second branch, are
taller, stronger, more warlike, and more taciturn than the others.
They present also very remarkable differences in the colour of
their skin. In Mexico, Peru, New Grenada, Quito, on the banks of
the Orinoco and of the river Amazon, in every part of South America
which I have explored, in the plains as well as on the coldest
table-lands, the Indian children of two or three months old have
the same bronze tint as is observed in adults. The idea that the
natives may be whites tanned by the air and the sun, could never
have occurred to a Spanish inhabitant of Quito, or of the banks of
the Orinoco. In the north-east of America, on the contrary, we meet
with tribes among whom the children are white, and at the age of
virility they acquire the bronze colour of the natives of Mexico
and Peru. Michikinakoua, chief of the Miamis, had his arms, and
those parts of his body not exposed to the sun, almost white. This
difference of hue between the parts covered and not covered is
never observed among the natives of Peru and Mexico, even in
families who live much at their ease, and remain almost constantly
within doors. To the west of the Miamis, on the coast opposite to
Asia, among the Kolouches and Tchinkitans* of Norfolk Sound (*
Between 54 and 58 degrees of latitude. These white nations have
been visited successively by Portlock, Marchand, Baranoff, and
Davidoff. The Tchinkitans, or Schinkit, are the inhabitants of the
island of Sitka. Vater Mithridates volume 3 page 2. Marchand
Voyages volume 2.), grown-up girls, when they have gashed their
skin, display the white hue of Europeans. This whiteness is found
also, according to some accounts, among the mountaineers of Chile.*
(* Molina, Saggio sull' Istoria Nat. del Chile edition 2 page 293.
May we believe the existence of those blue eyes of the Boroas of
Chile and Guayanas of Uruguay; represented to us as nations of the
race of Odin? Azara Voyage tome 2.)
These facts are very remarkable, and contrary to the opinion so
generally spread, of the extreme conformity of organization among
the natives of America. If we divide them into Esquimaux and
non-Esquimaux, we readily admit that this classification is not
more philosophical than that of the ancients, who saw in the whole
of the habitable world only Celts and Scythians, Greeks, and
Barbarians. When, however, our purpose is to group numerous
nations, we gain something by proceeding in the mode of exclusion.
All we have sought to establish here is, that, in separating the
whole race of Tschougaz-Esquimaux, there remain still, among the
coppery-brown Americans, other races, the children of which are
born white, without our being able to prove, by going back as far
as the history of the Conquest, that they have been mingled with
European blood. This fact deserves to be cleared up by travellers
who may possess a knowledge of physiology, and may have
opportunities of examining the brown children of the Mexicans at
the age of two years, as well as the white children of the Miamis,
and those hordes* on the Orinoco (* These whitish tribes are the
Guaycas, the Ojos, and the Maquiritares.), who, living in the most
sultry regions, retain during their whole life, and in the fulness
of their strength, the whitish skin of the Mestizoes.
In man, the deviations from the common type of the whole race are
apparent in the stature, the physiognomy, or the form of the body,
rather than on the colour of the skin.* (* The circumpolar nations
of the two continents are small and squat, though of races entirely
different.) It is not so with animals, where varieties are found
more in colour than in form. The hair of the mammiferous class of
animals, the feathers of birds, and even the scales of fishes,
change their hue, according to the lengthened influence of light
and darkness, and the intensity of heat and cold. In man, the
colouring matter seems to be deposited in the epidermis by the
roots or the bulbs of the hair:* (* Adverting to the interesting
researches of M. Gaultier, on the organisation of the human skin,
John Hunter observes, that in several animals the colorating of the
hair is independent of that of the skin.) and all sound
observations prove, that the skin varies in colour from the action
of external stimuli on individuals, and not hereditarily in the
whole race. The Esquimaux of Greenland and the Laplanders are
tanned by the influence of the air; but their children are born
white. We will not decide on the changes which nature may have
produced in a space of time exceeding all historical tradition.
Reason stops short in these matters, when no longer under the
guidance of experience and analogy.
All white-skinned nations begin their cosmogony by white men; they
allege that the negroes and all tawny people have been blackened or
embrowned by the excessive heat of the sun. This theory, adopted by
the Greeks,* (* Strabo, liv. 15.) though it did not pass without
contradiction,* (* Onesicritus, apud Strabonem, lib. 15.
Alexander's expedition appears to have contributed greatly to fix
the attention of the Greeks on the great question of the influence
of climates. They had learned from the accounts of travellers, that
in Hindostan the nations of the south were of darker colour than
those of the north, near the mountains: and they supposed that they
were both of the same race.) has been propagated even to our own
times. Buffon has repeated in prose what Theodectes had expressed
in verse two thousand years before: "that nations wear the livery
of the climate in which they live." If history had been written by
black nations, they would have maintained what even Europeans have
recently advanced,* that man was originally black, or of a very
tawny colour (* See the work of Mr. Prichard, abounding with
curious research. "Researches into the Physical History of Man,
1813," page 239.); and that mankind have become white in some
races, from the effect of civilization and progressive
debilitation, as animals, in a state of domestication, pass from
dark to lighter colours. In plants and in animals, accidental
varieties, formed under our own eyes, have become fixed, and have
been propagated;* (* For example, the sheep with very short legs,
called ancon sheep in Connecticut, and examined by Sir Everard
Home. This variety dates only from the year 1791.) but nothing
proves, that in the present state of human organization, the
different races of black, yellow, copper-coloured, and white men,
when they remain unmixed, deviate considerably from their primitive
type, by the influence of climate, of food, and other external
agents.
These opinions are founded on the authority of Ulloa.* (* "The
Indians [Americans] are of a copper-colour, which by the action of
the sun and the air grows darker. I must remark, that neither heat
nor cold produces any sensible change in the colour, so that the
Indians of the Cordilleras of Peru are easily confounded with those
of the hottest plains; and those who live under the Line cannot be
distinguished, by their colour, from those who inhabit the fortieth
degree of north and south latitude."--Noticias Americanas. No
ancient author has so clearly stated the two forms of reasoning, by
which we still explain in our days the differences of colour and
features among neighbouring nations, as Tacitus. He makes a just
distinction between the influence of climate, and hereditary
dispositions; and, like a philosopher persuaded of our profound
ignorance of the origin of things, he leaves the question
undecided. "Habitus corporum varii; atque ex eo argumenta, seu
durante originis vi, seu procurrentibus in diversa terris, positio
coeli corporibus habitum dedit."--Agricola, cap 2.) That learned
writer saw the Indians of Chile, of the Andes of Peru, of the
burning coasts of Panama, and those of Louisiana, situated in the
northern temperate zone. He had the good fortune to live at a
period when theories were less numerous; and, like me, he was
struck by seeing the natives equally bronzed under the Line, in the
cold climate of the Cordilleras, and in the plains. Where
differences of colour are observed, they depend on the race. We
shall soon find on the burning banks of the Orinoco Indians with a
whitish skin. Durans originis vis est.