Man, Past and Present - Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (most popular novels txt) 📗

its independence. The "barbarians," as the inhabitants of this district are called, would appear to be scarcely less civilised than their neighbours, although they have forgotten the teachings of the padres, and transformed the Catholic churches to wayside inns. Even as it is the descendants of the Spaniards have to a great extent forgotten their mother-tongue, and Maya-Quiche dialects are almost everywhere current except in the Campeachy district. Those also who call themselves Catholics preserve and practise many of the old rites. After burial the track from the grave to the house is carefully chalked, so that the soul of the departed may know the way back when the time comes to enter the body of some new-born babe. The descendants of the national astrologers everywhere pursue their arts, determining events, forecasting the harvests and so on by the conjunctions of the stars, and every village has its native "Zadkiel" who reads the future in the ubiquitous crystal globe. Even certain priests continue to celebrate the "Field Mass," at which a cock is sacrificed to the Mayan Aesculapius, with invocations to the Trinity and their associates, the four genii of the rain and crops. "These tutelar deities, however, have taken Christian names, the Red, or God of the East, having become St Dominic; the White, or God of the North, St Gabriel; the Black, or God of the West, St James; and the 'Yellow Goddess' of the South, Mary Magdalene[903]."

* * * * *

To the observer passing from the northern to the southern division of the New World no marked contrasts are at first perceptible, either in the physical appearance, or in the social condition of the aborigines. The substantial uniformity, which in these respects prevails from the Arctic to the Austral waters, is in fact well illustrated by the comparatively slight differences presented by the primitive populations dwelling north and south of the Isthmus of Panama.

At the discovery the West Indies were inhabited by two distinct peoples, both apparently of South American origin. The populations of the Greater Antilles, Cuba, Jamaica, Santo Domingo and Porto Rico were of Arawak stock, as were also the Lucayans of the Bahamas. The Lesser Antilles were peopled by Caribs, whose culture had been somewhat modified by the Arawaks who had preceded them. As regards influences from the north-west and west, Joyce considers that intercourse between Yucatan and Western Cuba was confined to occasional trading voyages and did not long antedate the arrival of the Spaniards. The same applies to Florida where, however, Antillean influences may be traced, especially in pottery designs[904]. According to Beuchat, however, the Guacanabibes of Cuba are of common origin with the Tekestas of Florida. Other tribes from Florida spread to the Bahamas, Cuba[905], and perhaps Hayti, but were checked by Arawaks from South America who mastered the whole of the West Indies. Last came the more vigorous but less advanced Caribs, also from the southern mainland (of Arawak origin according to Joyce and Beuchat). The statement of Columbus that the Lucayans[906] were "of good size, with large eyes and broader foreheads than he had ever seen in any other race of men" is fully borne out by the character of some old skulls from the Bahamas measured by W. K. Brooks, who regarded them as belonging to "a well-marked type of the North American Indian race which was at that time distributed over the Bahama Islands, Hayti, and the greater part of Cuba. As these islands are only a few miles from the peninsula of Florida, this race must at some time have inhabited at least the south-eastern extremity of the continent, and it is therefore extremely interesting to note that the North American crania which exhibit the closest resemblance to those from the Bahama Islands have been obtained from Florida[907]." This observer dwells on the solidity and massiveness of the Lucayan skulls, which bring them into direct relation with the races both of the Mississippi plains and of the Brazilian and Venezuelan coast-lands, though the general ethnography of Panama and Costa Rica reveals no active influence exerted by tribes of Colombia and Venezuela, except in eastern Panama[908].

Equally close is the connection established between the surviving Isthmian and Colombian peoples of the Atrato and Magdalena basins. The Chontal of Nicaragua are scarcely to be distinguished from some of the Santa Marta hillmen, while the Choco and perhaps the Cuna of Panama have been affiliated to the Choco of the Atrato and San Juan rivers. The cultural connection between the tribes of the Isthmus and of Colombia appears especially in the gold-work and pottery of the Chiriqui; at the Chiriqui Lagoon, however, Nahuan influence is perceptible[909]. Attempts, which however can hardly be regarded as successful, have even been made to establish linguistic relations between the Costa Rican Guatuso and the Timote of the Merida uplands of Venezuela, who are themselves a branch of the formerly widespread Muyscan family.

But with these Muyscans we at once enter a new ethnical and cultural domain, in which may be studied the resemblances due to the common origin of all the American aborigines, and the divergences due obviously to long isolation and independent local developments in the two continental divisions. In general the southern populations present more violent contrasts than the northern in their social and intellectual developments, so that while the wild tribes touch a lower depth of savagery, some at least of the civilised peoples rise to a higher degree of excellence, if not in letters--where the inferiority is manifest--certainly in the arts of engineering, architecture, agriculture, and political organisation. Thus we need not travel many miles inland from the Isthmus without meeting the Catio, a wild tribe between the Atrato and the Cauca, more degraded even than the Seri of Tiburon island, most debased of all North American hordes. These Catio, a now nearly extinct branch of the Choco stock, were said to dwell like the anthropoid apes, in the branches of trees; they mostly went naked, and were reported, like the Mangbattus and other Congo negroes, to "fatten their captives for the table." Their Darien neighbours of the Nore valley, who gave an alternative name to the Panama peninsula, were accustomed to steal the women of hostile tribes, cohabit with them, and carefully bring up the children till their fourteenth year, when they were eaten with much rejoicing, the mothers ultimately sharing the same fate[910]; and the Cocoma of the Maranon "were in the habit of eating their own dead relations, and grinding their bones to drink in their fermented liquor. They said it was better to be inside a friend than to be swallowed up by the cold earth[911]." In fact of the Colombian aborigines Herrera tells us that "the living are the grave of the dead; for the husband has been seen to eat his wife, the brother his brother or sister, the son his father; captives also are eaten roasted[912]."

Thus is raised the question of cannibalism in the New World, where at the discovery it was incomparably more prevalent south than north of the equator. Compare the Eskimo and the Fuegians at the two extremes, the former practically exonerated of the charge, and in distress sparing wives and children and eating their dogs; the latter sparing their dogs because useful for catching otters, and smoking and eating their old women because useless for further purposes[913]. In the north the taste for human flesh had declined, and the practice survived only as a ceremonial rite, chiefly amongst the British Columbians and the Aztecs, except of course in case of famine, when even the highest races are capable of devouring their fellows. But in the south cannibalism in some of its most repulsive forms was common enough almost everywhere. Killing and eating feeble and aged members of the tribe in kindness is still general; but the Mayorunas of the Upper Amazon waters do not wait till they have grown lean with years or wasted with disease[914]; and it was a baptized member of the same tribe who complained on his death-bed that he would not now provide a meal for his Christian friends, but must be devoured by worms[915].

In the southern continent the social conditions illustrated by these practices prevailed everywhere, except on the elevated plateaus of the western Cordilleras, which for many ages before the discovery had been the seats of several successive cultures, in some respects rivalling, but in others much inferior to those of Central America. When the Conquistadores reached this part of the New World, to which they were attracted by the not altogether groundless reports of fabulous wealth embodied in the legend of El Dorado, the "Man of Gold," they found it occupied by a cultural zone which extended almost continuously from the present republic of Colombia through Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia right into Chili. In the north the dominant people were the semi-civilised Chibcha, already mentioned under the name of Muysca[916], who had developed an organised system of government on the Bogota table-land, and had succeeded in extending their somewhat more refined social institutions to some of the other aborigines of Colombia, though not to many of the outlying members of their own race. As in Mexico many of the Nahuatlan tribes remained little better than savages to the last, so in Colombia the civilised Muyscans were surrounded by numerous kindred tribes--Coyaima, Natagaima, Tocaima and others, collectively known as Panches--who were real savages with scarcely any tribal organisation, wearing no clothes, and according to the early accounts still addicted to cannibalism.

The Muysca proper had a tradition that they owed their superiority to their culture-hero Bochica, who came from the east long ago, taught them everything, and was then placed with Chiminigagua, the creator, at the head of their pantheon, and worshipped with solemn rites and even human sacrifices. Amongst the arts thus acquired was that of the goldsmith, in which they surpassed all other peoples of the New World. The precious metal was even said to be minted in the shape of discs, which formed an almost solitary instance of a true metal currency amongst the American aborigines[917]. Brooches, pendants, and especially grotesque figurines of gold, often alloyed with silver and copper, have been found in great numbers and still occasionally turn up on the plateau. These finds are partly accounted for by the practice of offering such objects in the open air to the personified constellations and forces of nature, for the primitive religion of all the Andean tribes consisted of nature-, in particular sun-cults. Near Bogota was a temple of the Sun, where children were reared for sacrifice[918]. Any mysterious sound emanating from a forest, a rock, a mountain pass, or gloomy gorge, was accepted as a manifestation of some divine presence; a shrine was raised to the embodied spirit, and so the whole land became literally crowded with local deities. This world itself was upborne on the shoulders of Chibchacum, a national Atlas, who now and then eased himself by shifting the burden, and thus caused earthquakes. In most lands subject to underground disturbances analogous ideas prevail, and when their source is so obvious, it seems unreasonable to seek for explanations in racial affinities, contacts, foreign influences, and so forth.

It has often been remarked that at the advent of the whites the native civilisations seemed generally stricken as if by the hand of death, so that even if not suddenly arrested by the intruders they must sooner or later have perished of themselves. Such speculations are seldom convincing, because we never know what recuperative forces may be at work to ward off the evil day. When the Spaniards arrived in Colombia they found at one end of the scale naked and savage cannibals, at the other a people with a feudal form of government, whose political system was progressive, who, though possessing no form of writing, had a system of measures and a calendar, and who were skilled in the arts of weaving, pottery, and metallurgy[919]. The chiefs of the Chibcha