_Carajahis_, about Salinas.
_Carajas_, on the Rio Araguay.
_Chimbioas_, on the eastern affluents of lower Araguay.
_Javahais_, on upper Araguay and island of Bananal.
_Ximbioas_, see _Chimbioas_.
A certain number of vocabularies have been obtained by travelers in
Brazil from mixed-blood tribes, who spoke dialects sometimes compounded
of several native tongues, sometimes of these mingled with Portuguese
or negro elements. Such is the dialect of the _Meniens_, who lived in
eastern Brazil near the Villa Belmonte, whose speech was a jargon of
the Tapuya and negro languages; and that of the _Cames_ in the interior
of San Paulo, who also made use of a barbarous dialect, compounded of
the African idioms of runaway slaves, and that of the Botocudos. The
Catoquina, a specimen of which was obtained by Spix from a band on the
affluent of the Jurua, and the Catoxa or Cotoxo of the Rio Parda, are
other examples.[396]
_7. The Orinoco Basin; Carib Sub-Stock; Salivas; Arawak Sub-Stock;
Otomacos; Guamas; Guayoas; Garuoas; Guaraunos; Betoyas; Piaroas, etc._
The Llanos of Venezuela coincide with the former “Territory of Caqueta,”
and embrace a region about forty thousand square miles in extent, covered
either with grass and rushes or with dense forests. In the wet season
it is a vast marsh, in the dry it is scorched by a burning sun, raising
the thermometer daily to over 100° in the shade. Yet the Llanos are but a
part of the vast upper water-shed of the northern affluents of the Amazon
and those of the Orinoco, which together drain a country larger than the
whole of France.
This wide expanse is thinly populated with bands of savages, gaining
their subsistence chiefly from the rivers, few of them brought within
the range of civilized influences. Linguistically the majority belong to
the Arawak and the Carib stocks; but there are numbers of tribes whose
affinities are uncertain, or who are apparently of quite another lineage.
Scores of names are found in the records of the missions and on the pages
of travelers, of peoples who have disappeared or are now known by other
designations. Alexander von Humboldt named and located 186 tribes on the
Orinoco and its affluents alone; but renounced as hopeless the attempt
to give them a linguistic classification.[397] I shall not attempt to
unravel the tangled ethnography of this region farther than to mention
those tribes concerning whom specimens of language or the statements of
European visitors permit a reasonable guess as to their affinities.
Something over a century ago, when Father Gilii wrote, largely from
personal knowledge, his description of the tribes on the Orinoco and
its affluents, he believed they could be included in nine linguistic
stocks,[398] as follows:
1. The _Carib_ in a number of dialects, as the Tamanaca, the Paiura, the
Quiri-Quiripa, the Mapuya, the Guanero, the Guayquira, the Palenque, the
Maquiritare, the Oje, the Mucuru, and others.
2. The _Saliva_, to which he assigned the dialects Ature, Piaroa and
Quaqua.
3. The _Maipure_ (Arawak), in its dialects Avane, Meepure, Cavere,
Parene, Guipunave, and Chirupa.