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

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 classified, such as the Bororo and Karaya of Matto Grosso, while in the relatively small area between the Japura and the Waupes Koch-Gruenberg 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 Bakairi 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 hitherto 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 deg. 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 pronominal 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 constitute 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 "Associates." 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 shell-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, massive 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 asserted, 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 butts 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, crushing the hill-tops, flooding the plains and destroying multitudes 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 "God," standing merely for spirit, demon, thunder, or at most the thunder god.

Owing to the choice made by the missionaries of the Tupi language as the lingoa geral, or common medium of intercourse amongst the multitudinous 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 Auetoe 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 Mueller, 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 fashion. 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