Man, Past and Present Part 45

The Fuegians are of a generous disposition and like to share their pleasures with others. The husbands exercise due control, and punish severely any act of infidelity.

These seeming contradictions may be partly explained by the general improvement in manners due to the beneficent action of the English missionaries in recent years, and great progress has certainly been made since the accounts of King, Fitz-Roy and Darwin[940].

But even in the more favoured regions of the Parana and Amazon basins many tribes are met which yield little if at all to the Fuegians of the early writers in sheer savagery and debas.e.m.e.nt. Thus the _Cas.h.i.+bo_ or _Carapache_ of the Ucayali, who are described as "white as Germans, with long beards[941]," may be said to answer almost better than any other human group to the old saying, _h.o.m.o homini lupus_. They roam the forests like wild beasts, living almost entirely upon game, in which is included man himself. "When one of them is pursuing the chase in the woods and hears another hunter imitating the cry of an animal, he immediately makes the same cry to entice him nearer, and, if he is of another tribe, he kills him if he can, and (as is alleged) eats him."

Hence they are naturally "in a state of hostility with all their neighbours[942]."

These Cas.h.i.+bo, _i.e._ "Bats," are members of a widespread linguistic family which in ethnological writings bears the name of _Pano_, from the Pano of the Huallaga and Maranon, who are now broken up or greatly reduced, but whose language is current amongst the Cas.h.i.+bo, the Conibo, the Karipuna, the Setebo, the Sipivio (s.h.i.+pibo) and others about the head waters of the Amazons in Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil, as far east as the Madeira. Amongst these, as amongst the Moxo and so many other riverine tribes in Amazonia, a slow transformation is in progress. Some have been baptized, and while still occupying their old haunts and keeping up the tribal organisation, have been induced to forego their savage ways and turn to peaceful pursuits. They are beginning to wear clothes, usually cotton robes of some vivid colour, to till the soil, take service with the white traders, or even trade themselves in their canoes up and down the tributaries of the Amazons. Beyond the Rubber Belt, however, many tribes are quite untouched by outside influences.

The cannibal Boro and Witoto, living between the Issa and j.a.pura, are ignorant of any method of producing fire, and their women go entirely nude, though some of their arts and crafts exhibit considerable skill, notably the plaitwork and blow-pipes of the Boro[943].

In this boundless Amazonian region of moist sunless woodlands fringed north and east by Atlantic coast ranges, diversified by the open Venezuelan llanos, and merging southwards in the vast alluvial plains of the Parana-Paraguay basin, much light has been brought to bear on the obscure ethnical relations by the recent explorations especially of Paul Ehrenreich and Karl von den Steinen about the Xingu, Purus, Madeira and other southern affluents of the great artery[944]. These observers comprise the countless Brazilian aborigines in four main linguistic divisions, which in conformity with Powell's terminology may here be named the CARIBAN, ARAWAKAN, GESAN and TUPI-GUARANIAN families. There remain, however, numerous groups which cannot be so cla.s.sified, such as the Bororo and Karaya of Matto Grosso, while in the relatively small area between the j.a.pura and the Waupes Koch-Grunberg found two other language groups, Betoya and Maku in addition to Carib and Arawak[945].

Hitherto the Caribs were commonly supposed to have had their original homes far to the north, possibly in the Alleghany uplands, or in Florida, where they have been doubtfully identified with the extinct Timuquanans, and whence they spread through the Antilles southwards to Venezuela, the Guianas, and north-east Brazil, beyond which they were not known to have ranged anywhere south of the Amazons. But this view is now shown to be untenable, and several Carib tribes, such as the Bakari and Nahuqua[946] of the Upper Xingu, all speaking archaic forms of the Carib stock language, have been met by the German explorers in the very heart of Brazil; whence the inference that the cradle of this race is to be sought rather in the centre of South America, perhaps on the Goyaz and Matto Grosso table-lands, from which region they moved northwards, if not to Florida, at least to the Caribbean Sea which is named from them[947]. The wide diffusion of this stock is evidenced by the existence of an unmistakably Carib tribe in the basin of the Rio Magdalena beyond the Andes[948].

In the north the chief groups are the Makirifare of Venezuela and the Macusi, Kalina, and Galibi of British, Dutch, and French Guiana[949]

respectively. In general all the Caribs present much the same physical characters, although the southerners are rather taller (5 ft. 4 in.) with less round heads (index 79.6) than the Guiana Caribs (5 ft 2 in., and 81.3).

Perhaps even a greater extension has been given by the German explorers to the Arawakan family, which, like the Cariban, was. .h.i.therto supposed to be mainly confined to the region north of the Amazons, but is now known to range as far south as the Upper Paraguay, about 20 S. lat.

(_Layana_, _Kwana_, etc.), east to the Amazons estuary (_Aruan_), and north-west to the Goajira peninsula. To this great family--which von den Steinen proposes to call _Nu-Aruak_ from the p.r.o.nominal prefix _nu_ = I, common to most of the tribes--belong also the _Maypures_ of the Orinoco; the _Atarais_ and _Vapisiana_ of British Guiana; the _Manao_ of the Rio Negro; the _Yumana_; the _Paumari_ and _Ipurina_ of the Ipuri basin; the _Moxo_ of the Upper Mamore, and the _Mehinaku_ and _Kustenau_ of the Upper Xingu.

Physically the Arawaks differ from the Caribs scarcely, if at all, more than their Amazonian and Guiana sections differ from each other. In fact, but for their radically distinct speech it would be impossible to const.i.tute these two ethnical divisions, which are admittedly based on linguistic grounds. But while the Caribs had their cradle in Central Brazil and migrated northwards, the Arawaks would appear to have originated in eastern Bolivia, and spread thence east, north-east and south-east along the Amazons and Orinoco and into the Paraguay basin[950].

Our third great Brazilian division, the Gesan family, takes its name from the syllable ges which, like the Araucan _che_, forms the final element of several tribal names in East Brazil. Of this the most characteristic are the _Aimores_ of the Serra dos Aimores coast range, who are better known as Botocudo, and it was to the kindred tribes of the province of Goyaz that the arbitrary collective name of "Ges" was first applied by Martius. A better general designation would perhaps have been _Tapuya_, "Strangers," "Enemies," a term by which the Tupi people called all other natives of that region who were not of their race or speech, or rather who were not "Tupi," that is, "Allies" or "a.s.sociates." Tapuya had been adopted somewhat in this sense by the early Portuguese writers, who however applied it rather loosely not only to the Aimores, but also to a large number of kindred and other tribes as far north as the Amazons estuary.

To the same connection belong several groups in Goyaz already described by Milliet and Martius, and more recently visited by Ehrenreich, von den Steinen and Krause. Such are the Kayapo or Suya, a large nation with several divisions between the Araguaya and Xingu rivers; and the Akua, better known as Cherentes, about the upper course of the Tocantins.

Isolated Tapuyan tribes, such as the Kames or Kaingangs, wrongly called "Coroados," and the Chogleng of Santa Catharina and Rio Grand do Sul, are scattered over the southern provinces of Brazil.

The Tapuya would thus appear to have formerly occupied the whole of East Brazil from the Amazons to the Plate River for an unknown distance inland. Here they must be regarded as the true aborigines, who were in remote times already encroached upon, and broken into isolated fragments, by tribes of the Tupi-Guarani stock spreading from the interior seawards[951].

But in their physical characters and extremely low cultural state, or rather the almost total absence of anything that can be called "culture," the Tapuya are the nearest representatives and probably the direct descendants of the primitive race, whose osseous remains have been found in the Lagoa Santa caves, and the Santa Catharina sh.e.l.l-mounds (_sambaqui_). On anatomic grounds the Botocudo are allied both to the Lagoa Santa fossil man and to the _sambaqui_ race by J. R.

Peixoto, who describes the skull as marked by prominent glabella and superciliary arches, keel or roof-shaped vault, vertical lateral walls, simple sutures, receding brow, deeply depressed nasal root, high prognathism, ma.s.sive lower jaw, and long head (index 73.30) with cranial capacity 1480 c.c. for men, and 1212 for women[952]. It is also noteworthy that some of the Botocudo[953] call themselves _Nacnanuk_, _Nac-poruc_, "Sons of the Soil," and they have no traditions of ever having migrated from any other land. All their implements--spears, bow and arrows, mortars, water-vessels, bags--are of wood or vegetable fibre, so that they may be said not to have yet reached even the stone age. They are not, however, in the promiscuous state, as has been a.s.serted, for the unions, though temporary, are jealously guarded while they last, and, as amongst the Fuegians whom they resemble in so many respects, the women are constantly subject to the most barbarous treatment, beaten with clubs or hacked about with bamboo knives. One of those in Ribeiro's party, who visited London in 1883, had her arms, legs, and whole body covered with scars and gashes inflicted during momentary fits of brutal rage by her ephemeral partner. Their dwellings are mere branches stuck in the ground, bound together with bast, and though seldom over 4 ft. in height accommodating two or more families.

The Botocudo are pure nomads, roaming naked in the woods in quest of the roots, berries, honey, frogs, snakes, grubs, man, and other larger game which form their diet, and are eaten raw or else cooked in huge bamboo canes. Formerly they had no hammocks, but slept without any covering, either on the ground strewn with bast, or in the ashes of the fire kindled for the evening meal. About their cannibalism, which has been doubted, there is really no question. They wore the teeth of those they had eaten strung together as necklaces, and ate not only the foe slain in battle, but members of kindred tribes, all but the heads, which were stuck as trophies on stakes and used as b.u.t.ts for the practice of archery.

At the graves of the dead, fires are kept up for some time to scare away the bad spirits, from which custom the Botocudo might be credited with some notions concerning the supernatural. All good influences are attributed by them to the "day-fire" (sun), all bad things to the "night-fire" (moon), which causes the thunderstorm, and is supposed itself at times to fall on the earth, crus.h.i.+ng the hill-tops, flooding the plains and destroying mult.i.tudes of people. During storms and eclipses arrows are shot up to scare away the demons or devouring dragons, as amongst so many Indo-Chinese peoples. But beyond this there is no conception of a supreme being, or creative force, the terms _yanchong_, _tapan_, said to mean "G.o.d," standing merely for spirit, demon, thunder, or at most the thunder G.o.d.

Owing to the choice made by the missionaries of the Tupi language as the _lingoa geral_, or common medium of intercourse amongst the mult.i.tudinous populations of Brazil and Paraguay, a somewhat exaggerated idea has been formed of the range of the Tupi-Guarani family. Many of the tribes about the stations, after being induced by the padres to learn this convenient _lingua franca_, were apt in course of time to forget their own mother-tongue, and thus came to be accounted members of this family. But allowing for such a source of error, there can be no doubt that at the discovery the Tupi or Eastern, and the Guarani or Western, section occupied jointly an immense area, which may perhaps be estimated at about one-fourth of the southern continent. Tupi tribes were met as far west as Peru, where they were represented by the Omagua ("Flatheads[954]"), in French Guiana the Emerillons and the Oyampi belong to this stock, as do the Kamayura and Aueto on the Upper Xingu, and the Mundurucu of the middle Tapajoz.

Some attention has been paid to the speech of the Ticuna of the Maranon, which appears to be a stock language with strong Pana and weak Aymara[955] affinities. Although its numeral system stops at 2, it is still in advance of a neighbouring _Chiquito_ tongue, which is said to have no numerals at all, _etama_, supposed to be 1, really meaning "alone."

Yet it would be a mistake to infer that these Bolivian Chiquito, who occupy the southernmost headstreams of the Madeira, are a particularly stupid people. On the contrary, the Naquinoneis, "Men," as they call themselves, are in some respects remarkably clever, and, strange to say, their otherwise rich and harmonious language (presumably the dominant _Moncoca_ dialect is meant) has terms to express such various distinctions as the height of a tree, of a house, of a tower, and other subtle shades of difference disregarded in more cultured tongues[956].

But it is to be considered that, _pace_ Max Muller, the range of thought and of speech is not the same, and all peoples have no doubt many notions for which they have no equivalents in their necessarily defective languages. The Chiquito, _i.e._ "Little Folks," were so named because, "when the country was first invaded, the Indians fled to the forests; and the Spaniards came to their abandoned huts, where the doorways were so exceedingly low that the Indians who had fled were supposed to be dwarfs[957]." They are a peaceful industrious nation, who ply several trades, manufacture their own copper boilers for making sugar, weave ponchos and straw hats, and when they want blue trousers they plant a row of indigo, and rows of white and yellow cotton when striped trousers are in fas.h.i.+on. Hence the question arises, whether these clever little people may not after all have originally possessed some defective numeral system, which was merely superseded by the Spanish numbers.

The Gran Chaco is another area of considerable modification induced by European influence, and there only remain hybridised descendants of many of the ancient peoples, for example, the Abipone of the Guaycuru family.

Pure survivals of this family are the Mataco and Toba of the Vermejo and Pilcomayo rivers. These two tribes were visited by Ehrenreich, who noticed their disproportionately short arms and legs, and excessive development of the thorax[958]. The daily life, customs, and beliefs of these and other Chaco Indians have been admirably described and ill.u.s.trated by Erland Nordenskiold[959], who lived and travelled among them. The Toba and Mataco frequently fall out with the neighbouring Choroti and Ashluslays of the Pilcomayo anent fis.h.i.+ng rights and so on, but the conflict consists in ambuscades and treachery rather than in pitched battles. Weapons consist of bows and arrows and clubs, and lances are used on horseback. Enemies are scalped and these trophies are greatly prized, being hung outside the victor's hut when fine and playing a part on great occasions. On the conclusion of peace both sides pay the blood-price for those slain by them in sheep, horses, etc.

Within the Choroti or Ashluslay village all are equal, and though property is held individually, the fortunate will always share with those in want, so that theft is unknown. To kill old people or young children is regarded as no crime[960].

FOOTNOTES:

[873] Some Nahuas, whom the Spaniards called "Mexicans" or "Chichimecs,"

were met by Vasquez de Coronado even as far south as the Chiriqui lagoon, Panama. These Seguas, as they called themselves, have since disappeared, and it is no longer possible to say how they strayed so far from their northern homes.

[874] "Recent Maya Investigations," _Bur. Am. Eth. Bull._ 28, 1904, p.

555.

[875] _Alterthumer aus Guatemala_, p. 24.

[876] _a.n.a.lysis of the Pictorial Text inscribed on two Palenque Tablets_, N. York, 1896.

[877] H. Beuchat however considers that "the Toltec question remains insoluble"; though the hypothesis that the Toltecs formed part of the north to south movement is attractive, it is not yet proved, _Manuel d'Archeologie americaine_, Paris, 1912, pp. 258-61.

[878] Quetzalcoatl, the "Bright-feathered Snake," was one of the three chief G.o.ds of the Nahuan pantheon. He was the G.o.d of wind and inventor of all the arts, round whom cl.u.s.ters much of the mythology, and of the pictorial and plastic art of the Mexicans.

[879] _Globus_, LXVI. pp. 95-6.

[880] Herbert J. Spinden, "A Study of Maya Art," _Mem. Peabody Mus._ VI., Cambridge, Ma.s.s. 1913, p. 3 ff., and _Proc. Nineteenth Internat.

Congress Americanists_, 1917, p. 165.

[881] J. W. Powell, _16th Ann. Rep. Bur. Am. Eth._ 1894, p. xcv.

[882] Sylva.n.u.s Griswold Morley ("An Introduction to the Study of the Maya hieroglyphs," _Bur. Am. Eth. Bull._ 57, 1915), briefly summarises the theories advanced for the interpretation of Maya writing (pp.

26-30). "The theory now most generally accepted is, that while chiefly ideographic, the glyphs are sometimes phonetic." This author is of opinion "that as the decipherment of Maya writing progresses, more and more phonetic elements will be identified, though the idea conveyed by a glyph will always be found to overshadow its phonetic value" (p. 30).

[883] "Day Symbols of the Maya Year," _16th Ann. Rep. Bur. Am. Eth._ 1894, p. 205.

[884] p. 32 ff.

[885] _Manuel d'Archeologie americaine_, p. 506.

[886] _16th Ann. Rep. Bur. Am. Eth._ 1894, p. xcvi. In "The Maya Year"

(1894) Cyrus Thomas shows that "the year recorded in the Dresden codex consisted of 18 months of 20 days each, with 5 supplemental days, or of 365 days" (_ib._). S. G. Morley points out (_Bur. Am. Eth. Bull._ 57, pp. 44-5) that though the Maya doubtless knew that the true length of the year exceeded 365 days by 6 hours, yet no interpolation of intercalary days was actually made, as this would have thrown the whole calendar into confusion. The priests apparently corrected the calendar by additional calculations to show how far the recorded year was ahead of the true year. Those who have persistently appealed to these Maya-Aztec calendric systems as convincing proofs of Asiatic influences in the evolution of American cultures will now have to show where these influences come in. As a matter of fact the systems are fundamentally distinct, the American showing the clearest indications of local development, as seen in the mere fact that the day characters of the Maya codices were phonetic, _i.e._ largely rebuses explicable only in the Maya language, which has no affinities out of America. A careful study of the Maya calendric system based both on the codices and the inscriptions has been made by C. P. Bowditch, _The Numeration, Calendar Systems and Astronomical Knowledge of the Mayas_, Cambridge, Ma.s.s. 1910.

The Aztec month of 20 days is also clearly indicated by the 20 corresponding signs on the great Calendar Stone now fixed in the wall of the Cathedral tower of Mexico. This basalt stone, which weighs 25 tons and has a diameter of 11 feet, is briefly described and figured by T. A.

Joyce, _Mexican Archaeology_, 1914, pp. 73, 74; cf. Pl. VIII. fig. 1.

See also the account by Alfredo Chavero in the _a.n.a.les del Museo Nacional de Mexico_, and an excellent reproduction of the Calendar Stone in T. U. Brocklehurst's _Mexico To-day_, 1883, p. 186; also Zelia Nuttall's study of the "Mexican Calendar System," _Tenth Internat.

Congress of Americanists_, Stockholm, 1894. "The regular rotation of market-days and the day of enforced rest every 20 days were the prominent and permanent features of the civil solar year" (_ib._).

[887] _Spuren der Aztek. Sprache_, 1859, _pa.s.sim_.

[888] Linguistic and mythological affinities also exist according to Spence between the Nahuan people and the Tsims.h.i.+an-Nootka group of Columbia. Cf. _The Civilization of Ancient Mexico_, 1912, p. 6.

[889] "Chiefly of the Nahuatl race" (De Nadaillac, p. 279). It should, however be noted that this general name of Chichimec (meaning little more than "nomadic hunters") comprised a large number of barbarous tribes--Pames, Pintos, etc.--who are described as wandering about naked or wearing only the skins of beasts, living in caves or rock-shelters, armed with bows, slings, and clubs, constantly at war amongst themselves or with the surrounding peoples, eating raw flesh, drinking the blood of their captives or treating them with unheard-of cruelty, altogether a horror and terror to all the more civilised communities. "Chichimec Empire" may therefore be taken merely as a euphemistic expression for the reign of barbarism raised up on the ruins of the early Toltec civilisation. Yet it had its dynasties and dates and legendary sequence of events, according to the native historian, Ixtlilxochitl, himself of royal lineage, and he states that Xolotl, founder of the empire, had under orders 3,202,000 men and women, that his decisive victory over the Toltecs took place in 1015, that he a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of "Chichimecatl Tecuhti," Great Chief of the Chichimecs, and that after a succession of revolts, wars, conspiracies, and revolutions, Maxtla, last of the dynasty, was overthrown in 1431 by the Aztecs and their allies.

[890] H. Beuchat, _Manuel d'Archeologie americaine_, pp. 262-6.

[891] Named from the shadowy land of Aztlan away to the north, where they long dwelt in the seven legendary caves of Chicomoztoc, whence they migrated at some unknown period to the lacustrine region, where they founded Tenocht.i.tlan, seat of their empire.

[892] "The G.o.ds of the Mayas appear to have been less sanguinary than those of the Nahuas. The immolation of a dog was with them enough for an occasion that would have been celebrated by the Nahuas with hecatombs of victims. Human sacrifices did however take place" (De Nadaillac, p.

266), though they were as nothing compared with the countless victims demanded by the Aztec G.o.ds. "The dedication by Ahuizotl of the great temple of Huitzilopochtli in 1487 is alleged to have been celebrated by the butchery of 72,344 victims," and "under Montezuma II. 12,000 captives are said to have perished" on one occasion (_ib._ p. 297); all no doubt gross exaggerations, but leaving a large margin for perhaps the most terrible chapter of horrors in the records of natural religions.

Cf. T. A. Joyce, _Mexican Archaeology_, pp. 261-2.