THE ABORIGINES
The Goajiros—Lake
dwellings—Appearance—Territory—Villages—Government—Burial
customs—Religion—Medicine-men—The Caribs—A fine
race—Cannibalism—Headless man of the Caura—The
Amazons—Industries—Religion—Marriage customs—The
aborigines of Guayana—Tavera-Acosta on languages—The
Warraus—Appearance—Houses—Food—Clothing—Marriage
customs—Birth—Death—Religion—Treatment of sick—The
Banibas—Appearance—Customs—Religion—Celebration of puberty of
girls—Marriage customs—The Arawaks—Religion—Early missions
amongst Indians—Wanted, a twentieth-century apostle.
The aboriginal inhabitants of Venezuela preserve their habits and racial
customs unchanged only in two regions of the republic, namely, along the
north-west frontier and in the vast forests of Guayana. Elsewhere, a
few families remain in the less accessible and more barren regions, but
the “Indians” have been in general absorbed by intermarriage into the
Spanish-speaking Venezuela nation, slowly emerging from the mixture of
races which have at various times occupied the territory.
A powerful tribe occupy the mountains and forests along the Colombian
frontier, and these are generally known as the Goajiros. Some of their
villages are on the shores of Lake Maracaibo, as at Sinamaica, and are
of the pile-dwelling type which first gave rise to the name of the
country; most of the tribe, however, live as an independent nation within
recognised boundaries.
Both men and women may be seen in Maracaibo on market days, clothed
then in the white or blue garments which all keep for contact with
civilisation. In their own villages they wear a less elaborate costume.
The men are well built, light and agile, with keen and intelligent faces,
but the women have the amorphous figures and dull, heavy faces which
come of centuries of slavery and drudgery for their menkind. Apparently
they are ethnologically a branch of the great Carib group of which we
shall have more to say later. As might be surmised from the fact of their
independence, the Goajiros are vigorous and warlike, and incidentally
excellent horsemen.
Their territory extends from Rio Hacha, in Colombia, down into the
Goajira peninsula, and across the Venezuelan border to within eight or
ten miles of Sinamaica. The boundary is guarded by military pickets, and
most of their trading is done on the frontier, merchants travelling to
this point from all sides.
They live in small villages made up of round thatched houses, which at
a distance look like so many ant-hills; the floor inside is strewn with
grass, and on this the women and children work and sleep; the men spend
much of their time in hammocks slung from the rafters. They are more fond
of fighting than of working, but in civilised regions they are peaceable,
and make excellent boatmen, while from their secluded homes they go
out hunting and fishing, and are famous for the horses and mules which
they breed. Their fields are tended by the womenfolk or by the slaves
taken from neighbouring tribes in battle, and are of exceptionally large
size, sown with yuca or manioc, potatoes and maize; they have banana
plantations, but apparently have never cultivated cocoa or coffee.
In their homes the less wealthy members of the tribe wear the _guayuco_,
or small apron, of different patterns, common to all the Venezuelan
Indians, but some have good cloth clothing, trousers and jacket, with
embroidered white shawls or blankets for the men and long mantles or
knee-high tunics for the women. Nearly all the men carry firearms of
modern patterns.
Each village has its cacique or headman, but they acknowledge the
suzerainty of a temporal chief or king living in Tunja, and a supreme
spiritual prince or pope in Iraca. Like the ancient Incas, who possibly
influenced them and helped to make them what they are, they worship the
sun, but little is known of their modes of worship or religious festivals.
If one of the tribe dies at home his body is buried in his cattle-pen,
or where he may have been most frequently found in his lifetime, his
clothing and weapons being interred with him for use in the happy hunting
grounds to which he is shortly to depart. Their belief is, however, that
for about twenty-four hours after death the spirit remains near its
dwelling, and therefore they keep up a kind of lyke-wake all day, not
to mourn for the departed but to wish him good hunting and to speed him
on his way to the next world. At sunset his spirit departs, no more to
return.
Along with their sun-worship is a belief in a good and evil principle in
Nature, residing in the spirits of the wood, streams, rain, thunder, and
so forth. Probably this represents the original animism of the nation
before their contact with the Incas. From this animism arises the custom
of exorcising evil spirits from the bodies of the sick. The sufferer is
shielded by a curtain from the rest of the hut, and the medicine-man,
clothed in a long white mantle or blanket, first massages the patient
till both perspire freely, then flagellates himself till the blood
flows, and finally, casting a powder into the fire, which sends up
clouds of blue smoke, dances himself into convulsions, until from sheer
exhaustion he sinks to the ground, covered with the white mantle; the
fire is allowed to die down, and the sick man and his doctor are left
alone in the darkness and silence.
As we have said, these Goajiros appear to be a family of the Carib group,
but while they remain where they were at the time of the conquest,
their relations eastward have been driven southwards or absorbed by the
white races, just as they themselves at an earlier date drove back the
aborigines, who now, with them, people the forests of Guayana.
The Caribs probably spoke more than one dialect when they first invaded
the mainland from the islands of the Caribbean, but now the number of
the tribes and languages considered by Señor Tavera-Acosta to belong to
the group is about thirty, including the following: Caribe, Tamanaco,
Otomak, Maquiritare or Uayungomo (also spelt Guayungomo and Waiomgomo. In
every case for names beginning with U there is the alternative spelling
with the unsounded Spanish G, and B and V are interchangeable), Maco
or Macapure, Cuacua or Mapoyo, Taparita, Uiquire or Uiquiare, Pauare,
Pareca, Uayamara, Cadupinapo, Curasicana, Yabarana, Arecuna, Macusi,
Uaica, and others of minor importance.
The members of these tribes were those who, like the Goajiros, fought
most stoutly for their independence when they saw it menaced by the
_conquistadores_. These patriots, superior in many respects, as we have
seen, to their foes, were characterised by the European invaders as
cannibals, vicious and degraded, and the Jesuits later, in their holy
zeal for souls (_conquista espiritual_) were no less harsh in their
judgments on those who naturally resented the separation of parents
from children and husband from wife and the general atrocities of the
self-styled Christians who thus endeavoured to forcibly convert them.
In reality they were then, what they still are where unspoilt by
“civilisation,” a fine race physically, brave and intelligent,
possessing, no doubt, the vices of savagery, but also its virtues. The
charges of cannibalism brought by the European exploiters of the New
World (who had the vices of civilisation and barbarism combined, without
the virtues of either) were either entirely baseless, or due to the
ignorance which mistook the limbs of monkeys, which the Indians were
always accustomed to eat, for those of men. As we have seen (Chapter
IV.), the only substantiated cases of cannibalism occurred among the
_conquistadores_ themselves.
As an instance of the unintentional perversion of facts, it is
interesting to recall the sixteenth and seventeenth century fables
of the headless men of the Caura, the _Ewaipanomo_. The banks of the
Caura are, in point of fact, inhabited by the Uayungomo branch of the
Caribs, a name sufficiently like to be possibly the same. Whether that
be so or no, a perusal of Raleigh’s and other original accounts gives
the impression that some member of one of the shorter aboriginal tribes
told the white men, by signs, that in the direction of the Caura were
men whose shoulders were above their heads (_i.e._, the heads of the
speakers). I put this forward as a plausible hypothesis for the origin
of the fable, which may not commend itself to all, but may be compared
with that advanced by various writers to explain the legend of the Amazon
communities of this region.
The story of manless villages and tribes was told (and doubtless is
still told) to nearly all travellers in Guayana and Brazil, and it has
been suggested that the statements are founded upon actual attempts at
emancipation on the part of small groups of women intelligent enough
to realise the light esteem in which they were held in the social
organisation of the Indians, and their worthiness of better treatment.
These banded themselves together in free villages in remote parts of
the forest, were seen at times by, or perhaps fought with, members of
the normal tribes, and so gave rise to a legend of a nation of warlike
independent women living somewhere, but no man knew where.
To return to the Caribs, we find these peoples at the present day
inhabiting the forests along the banks of the Caroni, Parana, and Caura
almost entirely, and particular regions on the Upper Orinoco and its
tributaries, notably the Ventuari. They are still among the best formed
and most intelligent natives of Venezuela, and retain in their native
haunts the many industries by which they long ago learned to support
themselves upon the produce of the forest lands.
These industries include cultivation of corn and manioc, the manufacture
of fibres from the _moriche_-palm for cloth, of simple earthenware, often
decorated with hieroglyphics in colour, of pigments for this and for
painting their bodies in wartime. Their arrows are often poisoned with
_curare_, the concentrated and congealed sap of the _mavacure_ creeper,
sometimes also with the extracted juice of the poisonous manioc. From the
pith of the moriche-palm they obtain a kind of sago-meal, and this, with
maize flour, bitter and sweet manioc or cassava-bread, and fish-paste
or meat from their hunting expeditions, forms their staple diet. Their
canoes are of bark or dug out of the solid trunk with the aid of stone or
flint hatchets or fire. For hunting and war they had in early times good
bows and arrows, spears of hard, heavy wood, shields of plaited creepers
covered with hides of manati, tapir, or jaguar. Nor were they without
musical (?) instruments, of which the _maracas_ or rattles of small
dried calabashes are used all over Venezuela in the country districts
to-day.
Their religious beliefs appear to be, generally speaking, those of
the Goajiros without the sun-worship, and birth, marriage, and death
customs are much alike amongst all the tribes, whether Carib or no. The
only difference here is that, in place of the usual marriage by consent
without any religious ceremony, at the time of their conquest of the
mainland, they adopted in part a marriage by capture, which has otherwise
never been their custom.
The principal tribes of the aborigines of Guayana are thus enumerated,
with their distribution and general characteristics, by Tavera Acosta,
the spelling of the names being changed in some cases.
(1) The Warraus or Guaraunos (see note, p. 122) of the Delta; dull,
unintelligent, and dirty.
(2) Arawaks, south of the Delta; intelligent, gentle, and exceptionally
cleanly.
(3) Banibas, a branch of the Quichua nation living on the Guainia or Rio
Negro and Atabapo; intelligent, gentle, and of a sedentary mode of life,
excellent boatmen and hammock-makers.
(4) Guahibos or Uajibas, on the Vichada; dirty.
(5) Barias, on the Baria, Casiquiare, and Rio Negro; good workers and
boatmen.
(6) Yaviteras, at Yavita; like the Barias.
(7) Piaroas, including the Maipures and Atures; living on the Sipapo,
Cataniapo and Mataveni; timid and agricultural.
(8) Puinabi or Guaipunavi, on the Inirida; intelligent, but fierce.
(9) Caruzana or Marapizanos; on the Guainia, and neighbouring rivers,
cultivators of manioc.
(10) Wareca or Guareca, at San Miguel and Baltazar; intelligent and
industrious.
(11) Piapocos and Salibas, on the Guaviare, &c.; agricultural.
(12) Guaharibos, round the head-waters of the Orinoco; savage.
(13, 14, and 15) Guaicas, Pasimonabis, and Mandawaks, on the Casiquiare,
&c.; agricultural.
(16) Yaruros.
Of these the Piaroas, Guarecas, Piapocos and Salibas, Pasimonabis, and
Mandawaks are becoming extinct or are leaving Venezuela for neighbouring
countries. It may be noted that many place-names, such as Guárico,
Achaguas, Apure, Mucuchíes, are those of extinct tribes or of branches of
those given above.
Tavera-Acosta finds the languages spoken by these people divisible into
three main groups, but some appear to have an admixture of Parian or
Carib words. It is interesting to note his statement that the common
Chinese root _chi_ abounds in all the dialects of Guayana, and the system
of counting is Mongolian. In addition, he states that the languages show
some Malayan affinities.
The most numerous tribes appear to be the Warraus or Guaraunos, the
Banibas (a branch of the ancient Quichua stock of the Rio Negro), and the
Arawaks; these last, however, are chiefly to be found in British Guiana.
The Warraus occupy the Delta of the Orinoco, and extend into the lowlands
of British Guiana, having everywhere retained their racial characters to
an unusual extent. Their language appears to be akin to the Carib group
on the one hand and the Arawak on the other, while the people themselves
have at times been considered as an offshoot of the Carib nation.
They are dark copper in colour, well set up, and strong, though not as
a rule tall, and with low foreheads, long and fine black hair, and the
usual high cheek-bones and wide nostrils of the South American “Indians.”
Where they have not come into contact with civilisation they are
particularly shy and reticent, but they soon lose this character, and
some are said to show considerable aptitude as workmen.
Living as they do mainly in the Delta, their houses are of necessity near
water and are raised from the ground as a protection against floods,
being sometimes, it is said, even placed on platforms in trees. The
roof is supported in the middle by two vertical posts and a ridge pole,
and is composed of palm-leaves, supported at the corners by stakes. The
sides of this simple hut consist of light palm-leaf curtains, and the
floor is of palm-planks. The hammocks are slung on the ridge pole, and
the bows and arrows of the occupants fixed in the roof, while their
household furniture, consisting of home-made earthenware pots, calabashes
of various sizes, &c., lie promiscuously about the floor. Some of the
Warraus are nomadic and live in canoes, but the majority are grouped in
villages of these huts, with captains responsible to the Venezuelan local
government authorities.
The staple diet of these people is manioc and sago, with _chicha_ (a
mixture of manioc meal and water). For clothing they dispense with
everything in their homes, except the _buja_ or _guayuco_, a tiny apron
of palm-fibre or ordinary cloth, held in position by a belt of palm-fibre
or hair. That worn by women is triangular, and often ornamented with
feathers or pearls. Among the whites the men always wear a long strip of
blue cloth, one end of which passes round the waist, the other over the
shoulder, hanging down in front; the women have a kind of long-sleeveless
gown. For ornament they wear necklaces of pearls, or more frequently
of red, blue, and white beads, and tight bracelets and bangles of hair
or _curagua_ (palm-fibre); some pierce ears, nose, and lower lips for
the insertion of pieces of reed, feathers, or berries on fête days. The
characteristic dull red paint on their bodies is intended to act as a
preventive against mosquitoes, and it is made by boiling the powdered
bark and wood of a creeper in turtle or alligator fat. All hair is
removed from the body by the simple but painful process of pulling each
one out with a split reed.
Marriage, as is usual among savage races, takes place at a very early
age, the husband being often only fourteen, the wife ten or twelve years
of age. Polygamy is common, but not universal; where a chief or rich
man has several wives the first, or the earliest to become a mother,
takes charge of the establishment during the absence of the owner on his
hunting or fishing expeditions. The girls are sometimes betrothed at the
age of five or six years, living in the house of the future husband from
that time on.
At birth the mother is left in a separate house alone, where all food
that she may need is placed for her, though she remains unvisited by any
of her companions throughout the day; meanwhile the father remains in his
hammock for several days, apparently owing to a belief that some evil may
befall the child; there he receives the congratulations of the villagers,
who bring him presents of the best game caught on their expeditions. This
male child-bed or _couvade_ is common to many of the Indian tribes.
The dead are mourned with elaborate ceremony—shouting, weeping, and slow,
monotonous music; the nearest relatives of the defunct cut their hair.
The body is placed in leaves and tied up in the hammock used by the owner
during life, and then placed in a hollow tree-trunk or in his canoe. This
rude coffin is then generally placed on a small support, consisting of
bamboo trestles, and so left in the deserted house of the dead man.
[Illustration: LA GUAIRA HARBOUR.]
The beliefs of the Warraus have been somewhat modified by contact with
foreigners, and perhaps on this account they speak, according to
Plassard, of one Supreme Being, the _Gébu_, superior to all the lesser
spirits of plenty, famine, fire, and all phenomena of Nature. Earthquakes
are looked upon as good signs, indicating the presence of a healthy,
invigorating spirit in the earth; a belief not so strange when it is
remembered that in the alluvial plains where the Warraus live earthquakes
have seldom been sufficiently violent to do harm.
The religious rites of the communities are presided over by the
_Wicidatu_, like the piache, a mixture of priest and medicine-man. Their
worship includes invocations against disease and famine, and prayers for
good hunting. To Gébu and the lesser spirits they offer the first-fruits
of their harvest, vegetable and animal alike, at the one great festival
of the year, for which elaborate preparations are made. All the previous
day is spent in preparing provisions, and at dawn on the feast day, their
bodies decorated with lines in blue and red, they surround the house of
the wicidatu. The priest shortly comes forth, a crown of feathers on his
head, and holding a pair of maracas. Shaking these, he leads the crowd
to the _rancho_, or hut, set apart for the offerings, and there, sitting
on the trunk of a tree, smokes and chants (accompanying himself with the
maracas) to Gébu, in whose name he presently takes the offerings. After
this he holds a maraca in the air at the length of his arm, shaking it,
and after a time bringing it down to his mouth. Then, in a disguised
voice, supposed to be that of Gébu, he asks why he is called; in reply
the wicidatu salutes and offers the first-fruits, which are accepted.
This acceptance is the signal for a general chant of the assembly
recounting their petitions, which Gébu, speaking as before through the
priest, promises to consider. Finally, the priest alone sings a song
of farewell, and Gébu returns to his heaven. The ceremonies over, the
wicidatu takes the best of the food and drink, and the remainder provides
refreshment during the dancing and revels which occupy the rest of the
day.
In addition to conducting this public worship the wicidatu acts as doctor
in times of sickness, making use of certain simples and invocations to
the spirits of the disease. Religious ceremonies are performed round the
hut by night, and the medicine-man enters with a cigar of tobacco and
herbs and blows the smoke on to the abdomen and chest of the patient.
After the fumigation he is left alone for some time, until the wicidatu
returns, dances and prostrates himself round the hut, performs the
fumigation once more, and finally retires, leaving the sick man to
recover or die, according to the manner in which the spirit has been
affected by the supplications.
Not only are the Banibas probably the most numerous of the many tribes
of the hinterland of Guayana, but they are considered by Tavera-Acosta
to be the most advanced of them all. A description, therefore, of their
principal customs may be taken as a sufficient indication of the tendency
of the beliefs and practices of other aborigines of the interior.
The Banibas are found chiefly along the Guainia and the Atabapo Rivers,
their villages extending into Brazil and Colombia. They are said to be
intelligent and peaceable, of a sedentary mode of life, excellent boatmen
and hammock-makers. Tavera-Acosta, adopting the view that they are a
branch of the ancient Quichua nation, gives d’Orbigny’s description of
the latter thus: “The head is oblong, nose long, slightly aquiline, eyes
horizontal, profile almost European, though the cheek-bones are higher.
They are serious, somewhat melancholy, industrious, with an intelligent
expression, but reserved. Neither red nor copper in colour, but bronze.
The foot is small, but instep rather high.”
Their villages are composed of round conical huts, built of poles
covered with palm-leaves, each hut containing twenty or thirty of the
same family. All the work is done by the young men and women, the elders
living a life of absolute idleness; the men hunt and collect the rubber
and other produce of the forest, travelling about in canoes; the women
attend to the household duties, fish, and sow the small fields with maize
and manioc. The hammocks made by the Banibas are especially noted, some
being beautifully interwoven with feathers; the best have been known to
fetch as much as £40.
Their staple foods are maize flour, manioc meal, and the cakes of arepa
or cassava made therefrom; the meal they preserve by treating it with a
preparation of bitter yuca, known as _murujui_; fish, smoked and dried
tapir meat, and small game vary their diet, and in default of other
beverages they drink _yucuta_, the chicha of the Warraus.
Their religious beliefs and customs have been considerably affected by
the presence in the region of Jesuits and other missionaries from an
early period in the Spanish occupation; hence Roman scapularies and pagan
fetiches are found side by side, and their form of worship, as well as
their faith, is a similar mixture of pagan and heathen dogmas.
Their customs as regards birth, sickness, and death are sufficiently
similar to the rest of the aborigines to render description unnecessary,
but the marriage ceremony is bound up with the celebration of the
pubescence of the girls, which is extraordinarily barbarous in view of
the high standard of their morals and general character.
When a maiden of the tribe attains the age of puberty her mother
communicates the fact to the elders of the village, and her daughter
is shut up alone in a hut, where she is expected to lie in a hammock,
eating and drinking only a little manioc and water. Notice being given,
the eligible youths of the community apply to her father for the girl,
who is promised to him who shall bring as a present the best piece
of curare, the finest hammock, or certain kinds of fish or game. The
bridegroom having been thus selected, the girl’s seclusion is over. She
is led forth, with eyes bandaged and head covered with a kind of bonnet,
to a stake in the centre of the village, where the elders tie up and
beat the unfortunate damsel with whips of cord or fish-skin, sometimes
studded with sharp stones; the proceedings are accompanied by the blowing
of conches. The two senior elders then advance inside the revolving
circle and command the supposed demon in the girl to leave her and enter
the stake to which she is tied, and presently, at a given signal, the
flagellation ceases. The girl, often fainting from pain and weakness, is
released and taken away to a distance; her wounds are washed and soothing
herbs applied, while the youngest elder present is dispatched to advise
the bridegroom that his future wife has been freed from the demon and is
to be found in such and such a place. Then he goes from house to house
shouting, “Come and burn the demon which would have taken possession of
such and such a girl!”
Meanwhile the bridegroom has found the bride and taken her to his
father’s house, and the rest of the population is collected round the
stake, which is surrounded with faggots; the women, wearing fringed
belts and holding one another by the waist, dance round in a ring
execrating the demon; the men shout and sing and drink strong liquors
prepared previously by the girl’s parents. The bridegroom, having left
the bride with his mother, approaches with a torch to fire the pile, and
apostrophises the demon, telling him that the girl he wished to harm is
now his wife, paid for with curare (or whatever the present may have
been), and finally, in token of their vengeance, he lights the faggots
to the sound of a fearful din from the conches, tambourines, and maracas.
All the people dance up to the fire and back again, the men lined up on
one side, the women on the other, finally circling round till everything
is consumed. In this way the safety of the bride from evil influences is
secured, and she is recognised henceforth as the wife of her purchaser.
Sir Everard im Thurn described the Arawaks, of whom there are many
families, as one of the most advanced groups in British Guiana, whence
they extend into Venezuela. They build the cleanest and best houses,
sometimes square and sometimes round, especially on the savannahs. Their
standard of morality is high, and their religious belief, where untouched
by those of the colonists, is a pure animism. He notes, however, that
they use one general term very frequently in apostrophising a heavy rain,
severe thunderstorm, or other unpleasant display of the powers of the
air, without any definite idea of one being. This term, _Oenicidu_, he
suggests, represents an approach to recognition of a single force behind
all the phenomena of Nature, which might grow into a belief in a Supreme
Spirit. Those who wish to know the folklore of these and neighbouring
peoples should turn to Sir Everard’s book on the Indians of Guiana.
We have already seen that, while the early Romish missionaries in the
north of Venezuela did much good in civilising and settling the Indians
there, who have since become amalgamated with the Castilian element, in
Guiana the atrocities perpetrated by the Jesuits far outweighed any good
effect produced by the lessons of industry inculcated in the mission
settlements. It is not surprising, therefore, in view of the early
opposition of some of even the better ecclesiastics to the republic, that
foreign priests and monks of all denominations were prohibited from
entering the republic. There has been absolute freedom for all beliefs
within the country since 1854, however, and the State contributes to the
support of the Catholic churches throughout the land, while reserving
the right to make all ecclesiastical appointments and to admit or reject
papal bulls as it sees fit.
These remarks are made here in partial explanation of the absence
of any recent attempts on the part of any branch of the Christian
Church to convert or civilise the natives of Guayana. There is little
inducement for the 409 priests who serve the 547 churches of the country
to penetrate the unattractive regions of Guayana, and no Protestant
missionaries have been found willing to sacrifice their nationality in
order to take up the work. Yet these Indians are fine material for a
sincere apostle to work upon, and were they given an incentive to use
their time well, the talents of the best among them might soon lessen
the distance between that visionary prosperous future of Guayana and the
present day, when both land and inhabitants are standing still amid the
progress of the world.