Across Unknown South America Part 19

It was only a great pity--a very great pity--that this movement for the protection of the Indians had been started when there were few pure Indians--almost none--left to protect. According to Brazilian statements, the wild Indians of Central Brazil amounted to some fifteen or twenty millions or thereabouts! A few--very few--thousands, perhaps only hundreds, would be nearer the truth. There were no great tribes left in their absolutely wild state anywhere in Brazil. There were a few small tribes or families scattered here and there, but it was seldom that these tribes numbered more than twenty or thirty members. If the tribe numbered fifty individuals it was already a large tribe. Most of them contained merely six or eight members. So that really, in the population of Brazil, these tribes, instead of being the chief factor, were in fact a negligible quant.i.ty. It would be rash to make a statement as to the exact number of wild Indians in Brazil, for in a country so big--larger, as I have already stated, than the United States of America, Germany, Portugal, and a few other states taken together--and most of which was little known or absolutely unknown--it was not easy to produce an exact census.

During my journey, which crossed that immense country in a zigzag from one end to the other in its broader width, and covered all the most important regions of the Republic, I became a.s.sured that few indeed were the pure Indians to be found in Central Brazil. One went hundreds and hundreds of miles without meeting signs of them; and that in localities where they were supposed to be swarming. The Bororos--a few dozens of them, all counted, in two or three different subdivisions--were perhaps the strongest wild tribe in all the immense State of Matto Grosso.

As I have said, I was greatly impressed, from my first contact with the Bororos, by the strongly Polynesian appearance of some of them. The more specimens I saw of them the more I became convinced that they were of the same race. In fact, more: I began to speculate whether the people of Australia and Polynesia had migrated here or whether it was just the other way--which theory might also be plausibly upheld--viz. that the people of Central South America had migrated to the west, into Polynesia and Australia. Many theories have been expounded of how races always follow certain rules in their migrations, but in my own experience I do not invariably find that those theories are always correct. Again, it does not do to rely too much on the resemblance of words in establis.h.i.+ng a relations.h.i.+p between two or more races. Nor, indeed, can one trust absolutely to the resemblance in the rudimentary ornamentation of articles of use. If you happen to be a student of languages, and have studied dozens of them, you will soon discover how far words will travel across entire continents. They can often be traced back to their origin by the knowledge of intermediate languages through which, with distortions, those words have pa.s.sed. In Central Africa I actually heard words of Mongolian origin, and not only that, but even traced Mongolian characteristics in the type of the ruling cla.s.ses of natives, as well as in the construction of their language.

It is easy to be occasionally misled. I remember on my journey across Africa how amazed I was at first at hearing some Tonkinese expressions used by the native cannibals. I really could not get over my amazement until I learnt that some years previously a number of Tonkinese convicts had been sent up the Congo and Ubanghi rivers by the French. Several of them had lived in that particular village of cannibals for some years.

Hence the adoption of certain words which had remained in frequent use, whereas the Tonkinese individuals had disappeared.

I took special care in Brazil, when making a vocabulary of the Bororo and other Indian languages, to select words which I ascertained were purely Indian and had not been contaminated either by imported Portuguese words or words from any other language. I was much struck by the extraordinary resemblance of many words in the language of the Indians of Central Brazil to the Malay language and to languages of Malay origin which I had learnt in the Philippine Islands and the Sulu Archipelago.

For instance: the Sun, which is called in Malay _mata-ari_, usually abbreviated into _'ari_, was in the Bororo language _metiri_, and in the language of the Apiacar Indians of the Arinos-Juruena river, _ahra_, which indeed closely resembles the Malay word. Moreover, the word _ahri_ in the Bororo language indicated the _moon_--a most remarkable coincidence. It became slightly distorted into _zahir_ in the Apiacar language.

Water, which is _poba_ in Bororo and _uha_ in Apiacar, was curiously enough _uhaig_ in the Bagobo language (Mindanao Island), _po-heh_ or _bo-heh_ in the Bajao language (Mindanao Island), _ayer_ in Malay, and _uhayeg_ in Tiruray (west coast of Mindanao Island, Philippine Archipelago).

Father was _bapa_ in Malay, and _pao_ in Bororo. Many were the words which bore a slight resemblance, as if they had been derived from the same root. _Langan_, arm, in Malay, was _ankan-na_ or _akkan-na_. Ear, in the Ilocano language (Philippine Archipelago) was _cabayag_; _aviyag_ in Bororo. Hair in Ilocano, _b[)o][)o]k_, in Manguianes _bohoc_, and in Sulu (Sulu Archipelago) _buhuc_; in Bororo it was _akkao_, which might easily be a corruption of the two former words.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bororo Warriors.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bororo Warriors.]

I was greatly interested, even surprised, to find that although those Indians lived thousands of miles on every side from the sea, and had never seen it, yet they talked of the _pobbo mae re u_--the immense water; (_pobbo_, water; _mae_, great; _re_, the; _u_, an expression of magnification such as our _oh_).

It was also interesting to note that they had specific words for water of streams--words which we do not possess in the English language, complete as our language is--such as down-stream, and up- or against-stream--like the French _en aval_ and _en amont_. The Bororo used _tche begki_, down-stream, and _tcheo bugkii_, up-stream.

The Bororo language was rudimentary in a way, yet most complete--extremely laconic, with innumerable contractions. The construction of sentences and the position of the verb were not unlike those of Latin languages.

The chief wealth of the Bororo language consisted in its nouns. Like all savage languages, it was wonderfully rich in botanical and zoological terms. The gender was formed by a suffix, the masculine differing from the feminine.

There were in the Bororo language three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter. The masculine was formed by adding the words _chireu_, _curi_, or _curireu_, to the noun; the feminine by the suffixes _chireuda_ and _curireuda_. There were many words which were used unaltered for either gender. In the case of animals, the additional words _medo_, male, or _aredo_, female, clearly defined the s.e.x in specific cases where the names would otherwise be ambiguous. Inanimate objects had no s.e.x, and were therefore neuter.

Most nouns had a plural as well as a singular, but there were exceptions to this rule, such as names of certain plants and animals, the sky, the wind, etc.; not to count things which were generally taken collectively, such as flies--_ruque_; macaw or macaws, _nabure_, etc.

The plural was made by the suffixes _doghe_ or _maghe_--the _maghe_ being used princ.i.p.ally in possessive cases, such as _tori-doghe_, stones; _padje-maghe_, our mothers. Exceptions to this rule were the words ending in _bo_, _co_, _go_, or _mo_, to which the suffix _e_ was sufficient to form the plural; whereas in those terminating in _do_ or _no_, _ro_, or other consonants, the _o_ was suppressed and an _e_ placed in its stead.

Example: _jomo_, otter, _jomoe_, otters; _cuno_, parrot, _cune_, parrots; _apodo_, or tucan (a bird), _apode_, tucans, etc.

There were a number of irregular exceptions, such as _aredo_, wife; _areme_, wives; _medo_, man, _ime_, men. Perhaps the most curious of plurals was _ore_, sons, the singular of which was _anareghedo_ (son).

The words ending in _go_ generally formed the plural with an interchangeable _ghe_.

The p.r.o.nouns were:

_imi_ = I _aki_ = thou _ema_ = he or she _sheghi_ or _paghi_ = we _taghi_ = you _emaghi_ = they

When immediately before a verb these were abbreviated into _I_ or _it_, _a_ or _ac_, _e_ or _ei_, _pa_ or _pag_, ta or _tag_, _e_ or _et_--I, thou, he or she, we, you, they, according to their preceding a vowel or a consonant. With words beginning with a consonant only the first syllable of the p.r.o.noun was used.

The verb itself did not vary in the various persons, but it did vary in its tenses by suffixes, sometimes after the p.r.o.noun, sometimes after the verb. In the present tense the Bororos generally used for the purpose the word _nure_, usually between the p.r.o.noun and the verb, with the p.r.o.noun occasionally repeated after the _nure_; but in general conversation, which was laconic, the p.r.o.noun was frequently suppressed altogether--similarly to the frequent omission of the p.r.o.noun in the English telegraphic language.

There were various other forms of p.r.o.nouns, but I could not quite define their absolute use--such as the _tched_ or _tcheghi_, which seemed to include everybody, corresponding to the English _we_ in orations which includes the entire audience, or the whole nation, or even the entire human race.

The Bororo language was complete enough, the conjugation of verbs being clearly defined into past, present, imperative and future.

The past was formed by interpolating between the p.r.o.noun and verb the words _re gurai_, generally abbreviated into _re_. The imperative was made chiefly by the accentuation of the words, and was susceptible of inflexion in the second person singular and plural. The future was formed by adding, sometimes after the p.r.o.noun, sometimes after the verb, the words _modde_, _uo_, or _ua_.

At the end of the second volume, in the Appendix, will be found a vocabulary of useful words needed in daily conversation which I collected during my visit to the Bororos. I had made a much more complete dictionary of their language, in a book which I kept for the purpose, but unfortunately the book was lost with a great many other things in an accident I had some months later on the Arinos River.

It was not possible to say that the Bororos shone in intelligence. It was seldom one found an individual who could count beyond two. Everything in the Bororo country was reckoned in couples--with the aid of fingers, thumbs, and toes. The learned could thus reach up to twenty, or ten pair--but beyond twenty no Bororo dared venture in his calculations. They had no written language, no sculptures or paintings, no carved idols.

Their artistic talent seemed limited to occasionally incising rudimentary representations of horns, footprints, and line figures on rocks.

They showed great skill in the manufacture of their arrows, which were indeed constructed on most scientific lines, and were turned out with wonderful workmans.h.i.+p. The arrows were from 4 to 5 ft. long, and were chiefly remarkable for the intelligent and highly scientific disposition of the two balancing parrot feathers, gently bent into a well-studied spiral curve, so as to produce a rotary movement, united with perfect balance, in the travelling weapon. The arrows were manufactured out of hard, beautifully polished black or white wood, and were provided with a point of bamboo one-third the length of the entire arrow. That bamboo point was tightly fastened to the rod by means of a careful and very precisely made contrivance of split cane fibre.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bororo Children.

(The horrors of photography.)]

The Bororos used various-shaped arrow-heads, some triangular, others flattened on one side with a raised rib on the opposite side, others triangular in section with hollowed longitudinal grooves in each face of the triangle in the pyramid, making the wound inflicted a deadly one.

Others, more uncommon, possessed a quadruple barbed point of bone.

The favourite style of arrows, however, seldom had a point broader in diameter than the stick of the arrow.

The music of the Bororos--purely vocal--had three different rhythms: one not unlike a slow waltz, most plaintive and melancholy; the second was rather of a loud warlike character, vivacious, with ululations and modulations. The third and most common was a sad melody, not too quick nor too slow, with temporary accelerations to suit words of a more slippery character in their p.r.o.nunciation, or when sung in a _pianissimo_ tone.

The songs of the Bororos could be divided into: hunting songs, war songs, love songs, and descriptive songs and recitatives.

They were fond of music in itself, and possessed fairly musical ears.

They were able to retain and repeat melodies quite foreign to them. Their hearing was acute enough to discern, with a little practice, even small intervals, and they could fairly accurately hit a note which was sung to them. They had flexible voices, quite soft and musical, even in conversation.

In males, as far as I was able to judge, baritone voices were the most prevalent; in female voices, soprano. Their typical songs were chiefly performed in a chorus by men only, although once or twice I heard solos--which, nevertheless, always had a refrain for the chorus. The Bororos sang in fair harmony more than in unison, keeping regular time, and with occasional ba.s.s notes and noises by way of accompaniment. They possessed no musical instruments of any importance--a most primitive flute, and one or several gourds filled with seeds or pebbles, being, as far as I could trace, the only two musical instruments among them.

Their songs contained progressions in chromatic intervals. Those progressions were not only frequently repeated in the same melody, but some of the favourite ones recurred in several of their melodies. They frequently broke from one key into another, not gradually or with modulations, but very abruptly. There were constant and sudden changes in the _tempo_ of their melodies, accelerations being frequently caused by excitement in the performers, by incidents occurring, by anger or other pa.s.sions being aroused. They had no set rules--nor, of course, any written music. The melodies were sung according to the temporary feelings of the performers, who occasionally adorned their performances with variations. Practically they improvised, if led by a musical talent, as they went along. Still, mind you, even when they improvised, the character of the songs was the same, although they may have added so many variations and embellishments to the theme as to make it impossible to identify them. Furthermore, no two choruses ever sang the same songs alike, nor did the same chorus sing the same song twice alike. There were in their melodies great changes in the degree of loudness. Those changes were generally gradual, although often extremely rapid.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bororo Chief.

Rattling gourds filled with pebbles, in order to call members of his tribe.]

The Bororos seemed to be greatly carried away by music, which had upon them quite an intoxicating effect. There were certain high notes and chords in a minor key which had a great attraction for them, and which constantly recurred in their melodies and their lengthy ululations. Some of the notes had undoubtedly been suggested by the song of local birds and by sounds of wild animals. The Bororos were good imitators of sounds, which they could often reproduce to perfection. They were observant with their ears--much more so than with their eyes. Even in conversation the Bororos would often repeat, accurately enough, noises they heard around them, such as the cras.h.i.+ng of falling trees, of rus.h.i.+ng water, of distant thunder, or foreign words which caught their fancy. I was amazed at their excellent memory in that direction.

There were no professional musicians in the Bororo country in the strict sense of the word, the _barih_ being the only person who might, at a stretch, be put down as one. Nor was anybody taught music. They were one and all musicians without knowing it--or at least thought they were--a belief not monopolized by the Bororos only. They all sang. They learned to sing gradually by hearing and imitating their elders.

I think that with the Bororos the steps of their dances had been suggested by the rhythm of the music, and not the other way round. They preferred music to dancing, for which latter exercise they showed little apt.i.tude. Although their melodies would appear appallingly melancholy to European ears, it did not follow that they were so to them. On the contrary, some which had a most depressing effect on me--and I felt like throwing at them anything handy but heavy to interrupt the melody--seemed to send the performers into a state of absolute beat.i.tude.

They kept up those melodies interminably, repeating constantly the same short theme dozens of times--hundreds, in fact, if nothing happened to stop them. When once they had started on one of those songs it was difficult to switch them on to another. They loved to hear it again and again.

The time of their music was "common" time, slightly modified according to the wording of the song. It generally altered into a triple time when the words were of a liquid kind in their p.r.o.nunciation, and a dual time when sung low and slowly.

When singing, especially during ululations, the Bororos swung their bodies forward and backward--not unlike the howling dervishes of Egypt--uttering occasional high and strident notes. This was generally done before starting _en ma.s.se_ on a hunt, when a feast also took place.

The women never joined in the songs, but the boys did. Even if their voices were not powerful enough to produce lengthy ululations, they spiritedly took part in the violent undulations of the body.