THE WILD INDIANS OF TROPICAL AMERICA.
The wild Forest Tribes—Their Physical Conformation and Moral Characteristics—Their Powers of Endurance not inferior to those of other Races—Their stoical indifference—Their Means of Subsistence—Fishing—Hunting—The Wourali Poison—Ornaments—Painting—Tattooing—Religion—The Moon, a Land of Abundance—The Botuto—The Piaches—The Savage Hordes of Brazil and Guiana—The Ottomacas—Dirt-eaters—Their Vindictive Ferocity and War Stratagems—The extinct Tribe of the Atures—A Parrot the last Speaker of their Language—Their Burial-cavern—The Uaupes Indians—Their large Huts—Horrid Custom of Disinterment—The Macus—The Purupurus—The ‘Palheta’—The Mandrucus—Singular resemblance of some of the Customs of the American Indians to those of Remote Nations—The Caribs—The Botocudos—Monstrous distension of the Ears and Under-lip—Their Bow and Arrow—Their Migrations—Bush-rope Bridge—Botocudo Funeral—‘Tanchon,’ the Evil Spirit.
Though nominally under the dominion of the European race, yet a considerable part of tropical America still remains in the undisturbed possession of its native tribes. While the stranger has established his chief settlements along the coast or in those parts of the interior which before his arrival were already the seats of a certain degree of culture, where before him the Incas had founded cities and a large63 agricultural population occupied the fertile table-lands of Anahuac, the wild hunter, unsubjected to the rules and trammels of civilised life, still roams over the boundless woods or interminable savannahs through which the Amazons, the Orinoco, and a hundred other great streams wend their way from the Andes to the Ocean. Here the primitive American can still be studied; here he exhibits the same traits of character and follows the same mode of life as his fathers before him, in the times of Cortez or Pizarro.
Many of the forest tribes, indeed, have been converted to Christianity, and live in missions or small settlements situated far apart on the banks of the great rivers; others are willing to barter the drugs, india-rubber, or rare birds and insects, they gather in the woods for articles of European manufacture; but many desiring no more than what their native wilds supply, never or but seldom cross the path of civilised man.
Though divided into a large number of hostile tribes, and scattered over an immense extent of country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and far beyond the bounds which separate one tropic from the other, yet the American Indians so nearly resemble each other, both in their features and the qualities of their minds, as evidently to be descended from one source. Their complexion is of a reddish-brown, more or less resembling the colour of copper. There is, however, a great diversity of shade among the several tribes, which appears to be less dependent on the influence of climate than on an original disposition, varying in the different branches of the American race. The elevation above the sea, or the vicinity of the equator, seems to have no great influence, for both Ulloa and Humboldt were astonished to find the Indians as bronze-coloured or as brown in the cold regions of the Cordilleras as in the hot plains of Venezuela. On the sultry banks of the Orinoco there are even tribes characterised by a remarkable fairness of complexion, living in the vicinity of others more than commonly brown. D’Orbigny makes this lightness of colour coincide with the woody and shady character of the quarters inhabited; the Maripas, for instance, who inhabit the most exposed countries, being also the darkest in hue.
The hair of the American Indians is always black, long, coarse,64 and uncurled. With rare exceptions they carefully eradicate their scanty beard. Their forehead is generally low, their black and deep-seated eyes have their upper angles turned upwards, and their cheek-bones are broad and high. While they thus in some of their features resemble the Mongol type, they widely differ from it by the form of their nose, which is as prominent as in the Caucasian race. The mouth is large, the lips broad, but not thick as those of the Negro; the chin short and round, the jaws remarkably strong and broad. The expression of the eye is in some tribes mild and serene, in others it shows a forbidding mixture of melancholy and ferocity. There is generally a remarkable rigidity in the features of the American, very different from that lively play in a European countenance, which often reflects as a mirror every emotion of the mind. Some tribes are of small stature, others athletic; the limbs are generally well-turned; the feet small; the body of just proportions.
The beardless countenance and smooth skin seem to indicate a defect of vigour which does not exist in reality. In those parts of the continent where hardly any labour is requisite to procure subsistence, and the powers of the body and mind are not called forth, indolence indeed produces its usual effects, weakness and languor; but wherever the aboriginal American is accustomed to toil, he is found capable of performing such tasks as equal any effort of the natives either of Africa or of Europe. In many of the silver mines of Mexico, where the ore is conveyed to the surface by human labour, the native Indians will climb steep ladders with 240 to 380 pounds, and perform this hard work for six hours consecutively. Their muscular strength seemed truly astonishing to Humboldt, who, though having no weight but his own to carry, felt himself utterly exhausted after ascending from a deep mine.9 In propelling a boat against a rapid stream, or in supporting the fatigues of a long march, the Indian evinces similar powers of endurance and exertion, which prove him to be not inferior in this respect to the other races of man.
The uniformity which prevails in the features of the American aboriginals, exists also in the qualities of their minds, which generally exhibit an apparent indifference to pain or pleasure65 that would have done honour to a Stoic. Insensible to the charms of beauty and the power of love, they treat their women with coldness and indifference, being at no pains to win their favour by the assiduity of courtship, and still less solicitous to preserve it by indulgence and gentleness. Grave, even unto sadness, they have nothing of that giddy vivacity peculiar to many Europeans. Frequently placed in situations of danger and distress, depending on themselves alone, and wrapped up in their own thoughts and schemes, their minds are tinted with an habitual melancholy. Their attention to others is small, the range of their own ideas narrow. Hence that taciturnity which is so disgusting to men accustomed to exchange their thoughts in social conversation. When not engaged in some active pursuit, the wild Americans often sit whole days in one posture without opening their lips.
When they go forth to war or to the chase, they usually march in a line at some distance from one another, and without exchanging a word. The same profound silence is observed when they row together in a canoe. It is only when they are animated by intoxicating liquors, or roused by the excitement of the dance, that they relax from their usual insensibility and give some signs of sympathy with their kind.
All their thoughts intent upon self-preservation, they live only in the present, and seem alike indifferent to the past and the future. Gratitude, friendship, ambition, are sentiments of which they have no idea; and war or the pursuit of wild animals the only occupations which are able to rouse them from their stolid apathy.
Many tribes depend entirely upon fishing or the chase for their subsistence; others rear a few plants, which in a rich soil and a warm climate are soon trained to maturity. With a moderate exertion of industry and foresight the maize, the manioc, and the plantain would enable them to live in abundance, but such is their improvident laziness that the provisions they obtain by cultivating the ground are but limited and scanty, and thus when the woods and rivers withhold their usual gifts, they are often reduced to extreme distress.
The streams and lagunes of South America abound with an infinite variety of the most delicate fish, and Nature seems to have indulged the indolence of the Indian by the liberality66 with which she ministers in this way to his wants. They swarm in such shoals that in some places they are caught without art or industry. In others the natives have discovered a method of infecting the water with the juice of certain plants, by which the fish are so intoxicated that they float on the surface, and are taken with the hand.
In one of the shallow lagunes of the Amazons, the French traveller Castelnau witnessed fish-catching by this means on a grand scale. On the previous evening a quantity of branches of the Barbasco (Jacquinia armillaris), after having been beaten with clubs, and divided among the canoes that were to take part in the sport, had been steeped in water, and then flung with the infusion into the lagune. At least five hundred Indians stood on the banks among the high rushes or on the trunks of trees, armed with arrows, harpoons, and clubs. At first only small fishes appeared upon the surface, and as if stunned, and then, suddenly awakening, sought to leap upon the bank. Then the larger species were seen to float on the water, or to make similar efforts to escape from the poisoned element. During the whole day the canoes of the Indians were passing on the lagune, and the same bustle reigned along the banks. The whistling of the arrows was incessantly heard, together with the beating of the clubs upon the water, while on land no less activity was displayed in cutting up, smoking, and salting the fish. Castelnau counted thirty-five different species, and estimated the number caught at 50,000 or 60,000, many measuring a foot or more in length. Although the lagune was thus poisoned, the Indians drank the water with impunity, and the river tortoises and alligators seemed to be equally untouched by the Barbasco juice which proved so fatal to the fishes.
The prolific quality of the rivers in South America induces many of the natives to resort to their banks, and to depend almost entirely for nourishment on what their waters so abundantly supply. But this mode of life requires so little enterprise or ingenuity that the petty nations adjacent to the Marañon and Orinoco are far inferior, in point of activity, intelligence, and courage, to the tribes which principally depend upon hunting for their subsistence. To form a just estimate of the intellectual capacities of the American, he must be seen when following the exciting pursuits of the chase.67 While engaged in this favourite exercise, he shakes off his habitual indolence, the latent powers and vigour of his mind are roused, and he becomes active, persevering, and indefatigable. His sagacity in finding his prey is only equalled by his address in killing it. His reason and his senses being constantly directed to this one object, the former displays such fertility of invention and the latter acquire such a degree of acuteness, as appear almost incredible. He discerns the footsteps of a wild beast, or detects it among the dark foliage, where its vestiges or presence would escape every other eye; he follows it with certainty through the pathless forest, and is able to subsist where the best European hunter would perish from want. If he attacks his game openly, his fatal arrow seldom errs from the mark; if he endeavours to circumvent it by art, it is almost impossible to avoid his toils.
Among several tribes the young men are not permitted to marry until they have given such proofs of their skill in hunting as put it beyond doubt that they are capable of providing for a family. Their ingenuity, always on the stretch and sharpened by emulation, as well as necessity, has struck out many inventions which greatly facilitate success in the chase.
Slow, and with noiseless step, so as scarcely to disturb the fallen leaves beneath his feet, the wily Macusi Indian approaches. His weapons are strong, and peculiar, and of so slight an appearance as to form a strange contrast to their terrific power. A colossal species of Bamboo (Arundinacea Schomburgkii), whose perfectly cylindrical culm often rises to the height of fifteen feet from the root before it forms its first knot, furnishes him with his blow-pipe; and the slender arrows which he sends forth with unerring certainty of aim, are made of the leaf-stalks of a species of palm tree (Maximiliana regia), hard and brittle, and sharp-pointed as a needle. You would hardly suppose these fragile missiles capable of inflicting the slightest wound at any distance, and yet they strike more surely and effectively than the rifleman’s bullet, for their point is dipped in the deadly juice of the Strychnos Urari, whose venomous powers are not inferior to those of the bush-master’s fang.
In vain, suspended by his prehensile tail, the Miriki, the largest of the Brazilian monkeys, retires to the highest68 forest trees; in vain the sloth clings like a heap of moss to the bough; touched by the fatal poison they both let go their aërial hold, and their lifeless bodies, whizzing through the air as they drop down, fall with a loud crash to the ground.
In a diluted form the wourali poison merely benumbs or stuns the faculties without killing, and is thus made use of by the Indians when they wish to catch an old monkey alive, and tame him for sale. On his falling down senseless, they immediately suck the wound, and wrapping him up in a strait jacket of palm leaves, dose him for a few days with sugar-cane juice or a strong solution of saltpetre. This method generally answers the purpose, but should his stubborn temper not yet be subdued, they hang him up in smoke. Then, after a short time, his useless rage gives way, and his wild eye, assuming a plaintive expression, humbly sues for deliverance. His bonds are now loosened, and even the most unmanageable monkey seems to forget that he ever roamed at liberty in the boundless woods.
It is chiefly on the Camuku mountains in Guiana that the formidable Urari plant is found, whose sombre-coloured, brown-haired leaves and rind seem by their sinister appearance to betray its deadly qualities.
The savage tribes of the South American woods know how to poison their arrows with the juices of various other plants, but none equals this in virulence and certainty of execution, and yearly the Indians of the Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and even of the Amazons, wander to the Camuku mountains to purchase by barter the renowned Urari or Wourali poison of the Macusis. Nature has vouchsafed to these sons of the wilderness an inestimable gift in these venomous juices, which she has instilled in various plants of the forest, for by no other means would they be able to kill the birds and monkeys on whose flesh they chiefly subsist. How, or at what time, they made the discovery of their powers is unknown; at all events the combination of so many means for the attainment of the end in view—the preparation of the poison, the blow-pipe, and the arrows—denotes a high degree of ingenuity.
The tropical Indians are generally as free from the incumbrance of dress as it is possible to conceive, paint seeming to be looked upon as a sufficient clothing. Red, furnished by the69 pulp of the fruits of the Arnatto, or by the leaves of the Bignonia Chica, is the favourite colour, with which some tribes only besmear their faces, while others, who command a greater abundance of the material, not only paint their whole bodies, but even their canoes, their stools, and other articles of furniture. Red, yellow, and black are sometimes disposed in stripes, or in regular patterns, which it requires much time and patience to draw. The labour bestowed upon these paintings is the more to be wondered at, as a strong rain suffices to efface them. Some nations only paint when they are about to celebrate a festival, others are thus decorated the whole year round, and would be as ashamed to be seen unpainted as a European to appear unclothed.
The use of ornaments and trinkets of various kinds is almost confined to the men. A circlet of parrot and other gaudily-coloured feathers is worn round the head, but generally only on festive occasions. Tattooing is not so general or so elaborate as among the nations of the Malayan race, or the wild aboriginals of Australia.
The religion of the American Indians, if such it may be called, is of the lowest description. Some tribes, indeed, acknowledge a good principle, called Cachimana, who rules the seasons and causes the fruits of the earth to ripen; but, thankless for the benefits they enjoy, they pay far greater reverence to the evil principle, Tolokiamo, who, though not so powerful, is more cunning and active. The forest-Indians can hardly understand church and image worship. ‘Your God,’ they say to the Catholic missionaries, ‘shuts himself up in a house as if he were old and infirm; ours is in the forest, in the fields, in the mountains whence comes the rain.’
The moon is universally considered as the abode of the blessed, as the land of abundance. The Esquimo, for whom a plank thrown by the current on his treeless shore is a treasure, sees in the moon extensive plains covered with forests, while the Indian of the Orinoco perceives in its shining orb grassy savannahs, exempt from all insect plagues. ‘How pleasant it must be to live in the moon,’ said a Salina-Indian to Father Gumilla; ‘she is so beautiful and bright that surely no mosquitos can be there.’ Thus man is always disposed to transfer70 to some distant spot the seat of a felicity denied to him on earth.
On the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazons no idols are worshipped, but the Botuto, the holy trumpet, is the great object of veneration. The Piaches, priests or medicine-men who have taken it under their care, and who, to be initiated in its mysteries are obliged to submit to fasts, scourging, and other painful or self-denying religious practices, carry it under the palm trees where, as they pretend, its sound ensures a rich harvest for the following year. Sometimes the great spirit Cachimana blows the trumpet himself, at others he makes known his will through the guardians of the sacred instrument. No woman is allowed to see it on pain of death, but hurries away when the sound of it is heard approaching through the woods, and remains invisible till after the ceremony is over, when the instrument is taken away to its hiding-place, and the women come out of their concealment. Some of these Botutos are particularly renowned and venerated by more than one tribe. Sometimes offerings of fruits and palm-wine are deposited near them, and prove, no doubt, very acceptable to the Piaches.
The wild Indians who people the vast forests and llanos of Brazil and Guaiana generally live in small hordes, separated from each other by mutual distrust, and often by open war. Their enmity is aggravated by the circumstance that even the neighbouring tribes speak totally different langu............