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

against their freedom form the topic of a noble Spanish epic poem[927], still maintain a measure of national autonomy as the friends and faithful allies of the Chilian republic. Individual freedom and equality were leading features of the social system which was in the main patriarchal. The Araucanians were led by four independent chiefs, each supported by five ulmen, or district chiefs, whose office was hereditary but whose authority was little more than nominal. It was only in time of national warfare that the tribes united under a war-chief[928]. Not only are all the tribes absolutely free, but the same is true of every clan, sept, and family group. Needless to say, there are no slaves or serfs. "The law of retaliation was the only one understood, although the commercial spirit of the Araucano led him to forego personal revenge for its accruing profit. Thus every injury had its price[929]."

The basis of their belief is a rude form of nature worship, the principal deities being malignant and requiring propitiation. The chief god was Pillan, the thunder god. Spirits of the dead go west over the sea to a place of abundance where no evil spirits have entry[930]. And this simple belief is almost the only substitute for the rewards and punishments which supply the motive for the observance of an artificial ethical code in so many more developed religious systems.

In the sonorous Araucanian language, which is still spoken by about 40,000 full-blood natives, the term che, meaning "people," occurs as the postfix of several ethnical groups, which, however, are not tribal but purely territorial divisions. Thus, while Molu-che is the collective name of the whole nation, the Picun-che, Huilli-che, and Puel-che are simply the North, South, and East men respectively. The Central and most numerous division are the Puen-che, that is, people of the pine district, who are both the most typical and most intelligent of all the Araucanian family. Ehrenreich's remark that many of the American aborigines resemble Europeans as much as or even more than the Asiatic Mongols, is certainly borne out by the facial expression of these Puenche. The resemblance is even extended to the mental characters, as reflected in their oral literature. Amongst the specimens of the national folklore preserved in the Puenche dialect and edited with Spanish translations by Rodolfo Lenz[931], is the story of a departed lover, who returns from the other world to demand his betrothed and carries her off to his grave. Although this might seem an adaptation of Buerger's "Lenore," Lenz is of opinion that it is a genuine Araucanian legend.

Of the above-mentioned groups the Puelche are now included politically in Argentina. Their original home seems to have been north of the Rio Negro, but they raided westwards and some adopted the Araucanian language[932] and to them also the Chilian affix che has also been extended. Indeed the term Puelche, meaning simply "Easterns," is applied not only to the Argentine Moluche, whose territory stretches east of the Cordilleras as far as Mendoza in Cuyo, but also to all the aborigines commonly called Pampeans (Pampas Indians) by the Europeans and Penek by the Patagonians. Under the designation of Puelche would therefore be comprised the now extinct Ranqualche (Ranqueles), who formerly raided up to Buenos-Ayres and the other Spanish settlements on the Plate River, the Mapoche of the Lower Salado, and generally all the nomads as far south as the Rio Negro.

These aborigines are now best represented by the Gauchos, who are mostly Spaniards on the father's side and Indians on the mother's, and reflect this double descent in their half-nomadic, half-civilised life. These Gauchos, who are now also disappearing before the encroachments of the "Gringos[933]," i.e. the white immigrants from almost every country in Europe, have been enveloped in an ill-deserved halo of romance, thanks mainly to their roving habits, splendid horsemanship, love of finery, and genial disposition combined with that innate grace and courtesy which belongs to all of Spanish blood. But those who knew them best described them as of sordid nature, cruel to their women-kind, reckless gamblers and libertines, ruthless political partisans, at times even religious fanatics without a spark of true religion, and at heart little better than bloodthirsty savages.

Beyond the Rio Negro follow the gigantic Patagonians, that is, the Tehuelche or Chuelche of the Araucanians, who have no true collective name unless it be Tsoneca, a word of uncertain use and origin. Most of the tribal groups--Yacana, Pilma, Chao and others--are broken up, and the former division between the Northern Tehuelche (Tehuelhet), comprising the Callilehet (Serranos or Highlanders) of the Upper Chupat, with the Calilan between the Rios Chupat and Negro, and the Southern Tehuelche (Yacana, Sehuan, etc.), south to Fuegia, no longer holds good since the general displacement of all these fluctuating nomad hordes. A branch of the Tehuelche are unquestionably the Ona of the eastern parts of Fuegia, the true aborigines of which are the Yahgans of the central and the Alakalufsof the western islands.

Hitherto to the question whence came these tall Patagonians, no answer could be given beyond the suggestion that they may have been specialised in their present habitat, where nevertheless they seem to be obviously intruders. Now, however, one may perhaps venture to look for their original home amongst the Bororo of Matto Grosso, a once powerful race who held the region between the Rios Cuyaba and Paraguay. These Bororo, who had been heard of by Martius, were visited by Ehrenreich[934] and by Karl von den Steinen[935], who found them to be a nomadic hunting people with a remarkable social organisation centring in the men's club-house (baito). Their physical characters, as described by the former observer, correspond closely with those of the Patagonians: "An exceptionally tall race rivalling the South Sea Islanders, Patagonians, and Redskins; by far the tallest Indians hitherto discovered within the tropics," their stature ranging nearly up to 6 ft. 4 in., with very large and rounded heads (men 81.2; women 77.4). With this should be compared the very large round old Patagonian skull from the Rio Negro, measured by Rudolf Martin[936]. The account reads like the description of some forerunner of a prehistoric Bororo irruption into the Patagonian steppe lands.

To the perplexing use of the term Puelche above referred to is perhaps due the difference of opinion still prevailing on the number of stock languages in this southern section of the Continent. D'Orbigny's emphatic statement[937] that the Puelche spoke a language fundamentally distinct both from the Araucanian and the Patagonian has been questioned on the strength of some Puelche words, which were collected by Hale at Carmen on the Rio Negro, and differ but slightly from Patagonian. But the Rio Negro lies on the ethnical divide between the two races, which sufficiently accounts for the resemblances, while the words are too few to prove anything. Hale calls them "Southern Puelche," but they were in fact Tehuelche (Patagonian), the true Pampean Puelche having disappeared from that region before Hale's time[938]. I have now the unimpeachable authority of T. P. Schmid, for many years a missionary amongst these aborigines, for asserting that d'Orbigny's statement is absolutely correct. His Puelche were the Pampeans, because he locates them in the region between the Rios Negro and Colorado, that is, north of Patagonian and east of Araucanian territory, and Schmid assures me that all three--Araucanian, Pampean, and Patagonian--are undoubtedly stock languages, distinct both in their vocabulary and structure, with nothing in common except their common polysynthetic form. In a list of 2000 Patagonian and Araucanian words he found only two alike, patac = 100, and huarunc = 1000, numerals obviously borrowed by the rude Tehuelche from the more cultured Moluche. In Fuegia there is at least one radically distinct tongue, the Yahgan, studied by Bridges. Here the Ona is probably a Patagonian dialect, and Alakaluf perhaps remotely allied to Araucanian. Thus in the whole region south of the Plate River the stock languages are not known to exceed four: Araucanian; Pampean (Puelche); Patagonian (Tehuelche); and Yahgan.

Few aboriginal peoples have been the subject of more glaringly discrepant statements than the Yahgans, to whom several lengthy monographs have been devoted during the last few decades. How contradictory are the statements of intelligent and even trained observers, whose good faith is beyond suspicion and who have no cause to serve except the truth, will best be seen by placing in juxtaposition the accounts of the family relations by G. Bove, a well-known Italian observer, and P. Hyades of the French Cape Horn Expedition, both summarised[939]:--

Bove.

The women are treated as slaves. The greater the number of wives or slaves a man has the easier he finds a living; hence polygamy is deep-rooted and four wives common. Owing to rigid climate and bad treatment the mortality of children under 10 years is excessive; the mother's love lasts till the child is weaned, after which it rapidly wanes, and is completely gone when the child attains the age of 7 or 8 years. The Fuegian's only lasting love is the love of self. As there are no family ties, the word "authority" is devoid of meaning.

Hyades.

The Fuegians are capable of great love which accounts for the jealousy of the men over their wives and the coquetry sometimes manifested by the women and girls.

Some men have two or more wives, but monogamy is the rule.

Children are tenderly cared for by their parents, who in return are treated by them with affection and deference.

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 debasement. Thus the Cashibo 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, homo 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 Cashibo, 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 Cashibo, the Conibo, the Karipuna, the Setebo, the Sipivio (Shipibo) 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 Japura, 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