THE BROWN RACE.
With M. d’Omalius d’Halloy we class in the Brown Race a great variety of peoples who have nothing in common but a complexion darker than that of the White and Yellow races, and whom we are led to believe the product of the mixture of these two with the Black Race. This theory accounts for one portion of the Brown Race possessing White characteristics, while the other has a greater resemblance to the Yellow Race.
The Brown Race forms three branches or geographical groups, viz.—
- The Hindoo branch.
- The Ethiopian branch.
- The Malay branch.
We will proceed to describe the principal peoples belonging to these three branches.
CHAPTER I.
HINDOO BRANCH.
The peoples composing the Hindoo branch have been frequently classed in the White Race. In fact, their shape, their language, and their institutions partly correspond to those of Europeans and Persians, but their darker and sometimes black skins distinguish them from either.
The civilization of the Hindoos was, in the earliest historic times, already far advanced; but for many centuries it has remained stationary, or has gone backwards.
Most Hindoos practise the creed of Brahma, a religion sprung up in their own land. A few have embraced Mahometanism, others have become Buddhists.
The most striking feature of Hindoo society is its division into castes. These castes, originating ages and ages ago, have always been the principal obstacles to the development of civilization. How can progress, talent, or remarkable works be expected from men whom society forbids ever to emerge from the conditions of their birth?
These castes are four in number. The Brahmin caste, whose members are devoted to the practice of religious rites, to the study of the law, and to teaching. The Rajpoots or Cshatriyas, who are professional soldiers. The Banians, who are agriculturists, cattle breeders, and traders. Lastly, the Sudras, who follow various callings, and who are subdivided into many sub-castes corresponding to as many different handicrafts.
Each caste has its peculiar religious observances. Its members cannot intermarry with those of other castes, and must always follow the profession in which destiny has placed their parents.
The descendants of those, who, by improper marriages or otherwise, have forfeited their caste, form an inferior caste, known under the name of Varna-Sancára. Finally below even this last division come the Pariahs, beings cursed by destiny, who exist in the most deplorable state of moral abjection.
156.—NATIVES OF HYDERABAD.
The Hindoos are well made, but their limbs are far from robust. They have small hands and feet, a high forehead, black eyes, well arched eyebrows, fine bright black hair, and a more or less brown skin, which, in the south of India, and particularly among the lowest classes, is sometimes black. Ethnologically speaking, there are two families in the Hindoo branch:—the Hindoo family, and the Malabar family.
157.—A BANIAN OF SURAT.
Hindoo Family.
The Hindoo family constitutes the greater part of the population of northern Hindostan. The dialects spoken in this country have generally some relation to Sanskrit. The colour of the skin, in the higher classes, is fair enough, but becomes darker among the lower castes.
158.—AN AGED SIKH.
Among the people belonging to the Hindoo family we may name the Sikhs, a warlike people, remarkable for the beauty of their oval countenances; the Jats, the Rajpoots, and the Mahrattas; the Bengalese, a peaceful people, devoted to trade, and the Cingalese, or inhabitants of the island of Ceylon.
An accomplished traveller, M. Alfred Grandidier, has published in the “Tour du Monde,” in 1869, the account of a “Voyage dans l’Inde.” We learn from him a few general facts that perfectly sum up the social condition of the India of to-day, especially that of the central portion of the peninsula, for it would perhaps be difficult to generalize on the manners and customs of the whole of India, of which the population amounts to more than a hundred and eighty millions, and the superficies to that of the whole of continental Europe with the exception of Russia.
India is, in fact, divided into three distinct basins; that of the Indus, that of the Ganges, and the plain of the Deccan, constituting Central India. This last is classic India, that is to say, the only part of the country thoroughly known to Europeans. M. Grandidier’s travels were in the Deccan, to which refer the remarks we are about to quote:—
“The Hindoos of the Deccan,” says M. Grandidier, “resemble the Aryan (Caucasian) race in the oval shape of their head, in the formation of their cranium, and in their facial angle. They are distinct from it, however, in colour. Their bodies are frail; the low caste native is thin and slight, but makes up for his lack of strength by his activity and lightness. His skin varies from a light copper colour to a dark brown; his hair is a fine glossy black, and grows plentifully on his face.
“Gentle and timid, the Hindoo is wanting in perseverance and firmness; gifted with a rapid comprehension, he is yet incapable of any sustained effort. A double yoke, from time immemorial, has weighed him down; caste distinctions and a foreign sway have made him a flexible creature, possessing more prudence and cunning than energy and uprightness; more keenness of wit than nobility of soul.
159.—A PARSEE GENTLEMAN.
“A lively imagination, never subdued by a rational education, has brought him under the influence of the gross superstitions sanctioned by the Hindoo religion, with its train of ignoble divinities. The timidity of his character has preserved him from the violent fanaticism of the Mussulman, but his religion is very dear to him, and the belief of the lower classes is at least a sincere one.
“Sivaism, to which belong most of the inhabitants of the Deccan, is so priceless in their eyes, that they value it far beyond their lives. They repose an ardent and lively faith in the most absurd doctrines. This form of religion pleases their imagination by its fantastic dreams and by its poetic materialism, and its ceremonies amuse them, while gratifying their passions.
“The paucity of their wants tends to render them improvident, and their lively and childish imagination, feeding on the smallest and vaguest facts, which they poetise and exaggerate in their own manner, develops in them a dreamy and indolent mode of life.
“Their doctrine of metempsychosis still further increases the natural tendency of their mind, and helps to cause their almost incredible mental inaction, which nothing can surprise or stimulate. The only lever that can move the masses must be one attacking their religious faith.
“The dress of the Hindoos is the dhoti, a long scarf of cloth rolled round the figure, passing under the legs and fastened behind the back. This garment leaves the legs and the upper part of the body uncovered. The upper classes wear a short shirt (angaskah) and a long white robe (jamah). Their head is always covered with a turban, of different size and colour, according to their caste. Few Hindoos wear shoes, sandals being in almost universal use. The women wear the choli, a little jacket with short sleeves, just covering the bosom, which it supports, and the sari, a large piece of cloth which they fold around them, and throw coquettishly over the shoulder or the head. This graceful drapery recalls the chlamyde worn by the Diana of Gabies.
“This dress of the Hindoos is, as a rule, tasteful, and suited to the climate and to their mode of life. Although each caste, each sect, has its own particular method of wearing it, it is still, all over India, the most uniform and the most characteristic feature of the population.
“Both sexes are passionately fond of jewellery; women of the very poorest class often wear gold rings set with pearls in their noses. Their arms are covered with silver, copper, and glass bracelets. The large toes of their feet are adorned with rings, and their legs with heavy metal bangles. As for their ears, they literally droop beneath the weight of the golden earrings with which they are laden; and their lobes are pierced with large holes, often nearly an inch in diameter, into which are introduced gold ornaments in the shape of small wheels, replaced on working days by pieces of rolled leaves. This custom has actually reached Polynesia.
160.—SIR SALAR JUNG, K.S.I.
“Hindoos turn all their little capital into jewellery. This habit springs from a medley of vanity and superstition, the latter leading them to consider trinkets as talismans against spells and witchcraft.
“It was also, under the ancient Mogul dynasty, a means of preserving their property from the rapacity of Mussulman tyrants, whose religion forbade them to appropriate women’s chattels.
“The Hindoos are very tenacious of their prerogatives, and India has frequently been convulsed by sanguinary struggles occasioned by some one of its castes refusing to conform to traditional custom. Terrible conflicts have, ere now, been caused by an inferior caste attempting to wear slippers of a certain shape, the privilege of a higher one, or because it wished to use, in its religious rites, certain musical instruments hitherto reserved for the worship of the superior divinities.
“The Hindoos may lay claim to a refined politeness and elegant manners; but the smallest concession in the respect to which their social position entitles them, the least relaxation in the prescribed etiquette are considered a sign of weakness and an avowal of inferiority.
“The conversational formulæ used towards a native vary according to his station. Nothing is easier than to affront their susceptibility. Never speak to an Oriental of his wife or of his daughters. To do so, is contrary to custom. To use the left hand in bowing, in eating, or in drinking, is to offer an insult; the right hand alone is reserved for the higher uses, and the left, the ignoble hand, is used for ablutions.
“In Europe, it is a sign of respect to uncover the head, in the East, to take off the turban is a disrespectful act. On entering a house, conversely to us, they keep their heads covered, but leave their shoes at the threshold. This habit seems to me a most sensible one. A white cloth is stretched on the floor of their apartments, on cushions placed on which they sit cross-legged. It appears to me that shoes were invented to preserve the feet from the roughness of the ground, from the mud and from the dust of the roads. Are they not then objectionable, or, at any rate, useless in the interior of a well-kept house?
“When paying a visit, the Hindoo waits until his host bids him adieu. They very properly suppose that a visitor can be in no hurry to leave the friend whom he has purposely come to see. The host, on the contrary, may have urgent business claiming his immediate attention. The forms of this dismissal vary:—‘Come and see me often,’ or ‘Remember that you will always be welcome.’ Presents of flowers and fruit generally terminate these visits, and betel is invariably handed round.
“The usual food of the Hindoo is very simple, and their meals are of but short duration. Rice boiled in water, and curry (a compound of vegetables, ghee—a sort of clarified butter, spices, and saffron), sometimes eggs or milk, a little fish, and occasionally coarse meal cakes, bananas, and the fruit of the bread tree, form the morning and evening meal of rich and poor. The leaves of the banana tree are used instead of plates and dishes. In eating vegetables and rice, fingers are used instead of spoons and forks; and the meat is torn by the teeth in default of the absent knife. An European is rather likely to be disgusted with the sauce trickling down the chins and the fingers of the guests at a Hindoo meal. Water is the prevailing drink, and but little use is made of arrack (a spirit extracted from the palm tree).
161.—NAUTCH GIRL OF BARODA.
“Faithful observers of their religious injunctions, which forbid them to touch animal food under pain of being excluded from society and from the bosom of their families, the high caste natives never eat meat; as for the Pariahs, they eat all kinds of animals, and are very fond of arrack.
“Betel is incessantly used all over India. In hot countries, where the inhabitants lead a sedentary life, their digestion becomes sluggish, and can neither receive nor absorb the same quantity of nourishment as it does in Northern countries. The vegetable diet of the Hindoos is not very rich in azotic matter, and its continual use would cause an internal formation of gas, without the alkaline stimulant used by all the inhabitants of India to prevent its development. This stimulant is the astringent areca nut, which they chew with a little lime placed on a betel leaf.
“This mixture dyes the lips and the tongue red; it is pernicious in its effect on the teeth, but it is certainly useful to the digestive functions.
“Tobacco, rolled in a green leaf and lighted like a cigarette, is the universal method of smoking.
“Many different languages are spoken in India. Philologists have enumerated as many as fifty-eight, but not more than ten have an alphabet and literature of their own. Sanskrit, a dead language, is more or less mixed with all the dialects of India. In the north it forms their incontestable basis, but in the south it is merely grafted on to pre-existing tongues, and frequently but faint traces are found of it. All the alphabets seem to have been invented separately, but they have been improved by the regular and philosophical arrangement of the Devanagri. This is the name of the Sanskrit alphabet, the most perfect of all. The living languages have a very simple grammatical construction.
“Hindostani, which is spoken in the province of Agra, is the most cultivated and the most generally employed of all Indian languages. It has received a large Persian element since the Mussulman conquest. Besides the local dialect of each district, Hindostani is everywhere spoken by the educated classes, and by all professing the Mussulman faith.
162.—A COOLIE OF THE GHATS.
“The ties of caste replace in India the ties of family. Hindoos love their wives and children; but this affection is subordinated to their caste duties. Expulsion from the family is principally caused by violation of religious ordinances or by the illicit connection of high caste women with men of a lower rank. The Brahmins and the Sudras, and even the Pariahs themselves, are divided into a number of sub-castes, a member of one of which can neither eat, drink, nor intermarry with one of another. If a Hindoo becomes degraded, if he loses his caste, he is disowned by his relations; his wife is considered a widow, his children orphans; he must expect no assistance, no pity, from those who hitherto have surrounded him with the most considerate care.
“Europeans are ranked with Pariahs on account of their daily habit of eating beef. It is true that the Brahmins consent to shake hands with an European, but on their return home after doing so, their first care is to undress and perform their ablutions so as to purify themselves from the stain of such an impure contact; it is even asserted by them that the mere gaze of a Pariah is enough to cause contamination.
“Every village in the Deccan is composed of two parts, separated by an interval of a few yards. These are two distinct quarters, one reserved for the men of caste, the other, surrounded by hedges, allotted to the Pariahs. These miserable beings are not allowed to enter the streets of the village without the consent of the inhabitants, and they must only presume to draw water in the wells set aside for their particular use. Where the Pariahs have no special wells, they place their chatties by the well-sides of the men of caste, and await humbly and patiently the alms offering of a few glasses of water. It is always the women that attend to this household care.
“The higher castes often make the Pariahs presents, which they invariably place on the ground, for fear of contracting by mere physical contact the moral leprosy with which in their eyes the Pariahs are affected. A person of caste never accepts a gift from the hands of a Pariah.
“If on the one hand the high-caste natives are physically and intellectually superior to the Pariahs; on the other hand the latter are more laborious, more docile, and more accessible to European influence. In the Presidency of Madras they constitute the best and the most solid nucleus of the native English army.
“If I wished to enumerate all the subdivisions of caste based on the conduct, the calling, and the occupation of every one, if I described in detail the clothes and the ornaments which vary ad infinitum according to caste, if I attempted to recite all the existing prejudices about food and the daily minutiæ of life, I should fill several volumes.
“The same tendencies are met with everywhere. The desire of making a figure in the world, and the ambition for command without having taken the necessary trouble to become worthy of it. Yet the existence of caste has always prevented the formation of a really homogeneous nation. Caste is the cause of the sharp rivalries, the endless hostilities, that have always been fatal to national independence, and facilitated the invasions of strangers.
163.—PAGODA AT SIRRHINGHAM.
“Besides the social consequences we have mentioned, the Hindoos believe in religious ones. Their different castes cannot here below receive the same education, nor be initiated into the same mysteries. These differences, according to the dogmas of Siva, are to extend into the next world.”
The preceding paragraphs refer to the inhabitants of the Deccan. It would be too tedious to describe the other populations of the peninsula, the Bengalese, the Rajpoots, the Mahrattas, &c. We will merely say a few words about the Cingalese, or inhabitants of the island of Ceylon.
The Cingalese are entirely Indian in figure, in language, in manners, in customs, in religion and in their government. Their features are not widely different from those of Europeans, but they differ from them in their colour, in their height, and in the proportions of their bodies. The hue of their skin varies from light brown to black. Black is the usual colour for their eyes and hair. They are shorter than Europeans, but well made, with well defined muscles. Their chests and their shoulders are broad, their hands and feet small. Their hair grows in large quantity and to great length, but they have little on their faces. Their women are, as a rule, well made.
The attractions which a lady ought to combine in order to be a perfect beauty are, according to a Kandian fop, as follow: her hair should be as bushy as the tail of a peacock, long enough to reach the knees, and gracefully curled at the ends; her eyebrows arched as the rainbow, eyes blue as sapphires, and her nose like a hawk’s beak; her lips must vie with coral in redness and lustre, and small, even, and closely-set teeth, resembling jessamine buds, should complete the picture.
Ceylon, as everybody knows, is indebted for its great prosperity to its coffee plantations, a large trade being carried on between the English and its inhabitants, who enjoy a well-earned reputation as cultivators of that shrub.
“The Kandians,” says M. Alfred Grandidier, “possess more robust constitutions, less feeble limbs, and features not so effeminate as their countrymen of the coast; their lusty shoulders, broad chests, and short but muscular legs, are a proof of the effect which climate can produce on the development of the human frame.
“The habits of the mountaineers have undergone scarcely any change in consequence of the foreign influences which have impressed a complex character upon the manners of the people nearer the sea. Their primitive customs, originated by the imperious necessities of life, are still found in existence among them; and they have none of the timidity and servility which are the attributes of the dwellers in the maritime districts. The feudal state in which they have long lived has preserved in them an energy and independence rare among Indian populations. The configuration of the country enabled them, in fact, to retain their freedom more easily than their brethren of the northern plains, either when aggression came from their own ruler or from foreign intruders; but, nevertheless, that indolence still prevails among them which comes naturally to every people who are not obliged to contend against any material obstacle in order to supply themselves with the necessities of life. The tyranny of their masters, whether chiefs or kings, has unhappily accustomed them to hypocrisy, and made them vindictive.
“Whilst the Cingalese of the coast have applied themselves to trade and industry, those of the high regions always show repugnance to such occupations. They have invariably shunned any connection with foreigners; and so great, even at the present day, is their desire to withdraw as much as possible from association with the English settlers, that they conceal their villages in the middle of the jungle, and at a distance of some hundreds of yards from the least frequented paths. A rice-field in the midst of forests, or a glimpse of the tall tops of cocoa-trees, alone indicate the presence of human beings in places that would otherwise be thought uninhabited. In countries like these, where nature has accumulated so many of her treasures, the relations of man with man, which assuredly conduce to the happiness of all, are not indispensable; and the natives love a solitude, where they enjoy benefits of every kind in profusion.
“The Cingalese of the hills have a traditional respect for their chiefs, and a deep attachment to ancient usages. Their costume differs from that of the inhabitants of the plains, insomuch that they do not habitually wear the vest, this garment being, in fact, exclusively reserved for their nobles, who assume it on grand occasions; their hair is allowed to grow to its full length, and is not confined by a comb. Sumptuary laws and religious injunctions settle in other respects the clothing suitable to each class, the greater part of these laws being, to the present day, still in force among the Kandians, in spite of the abolition of castes which has been decreed by the English administration.
“The length of the frock-like petticoats worn by men and women both in the high and low lands, and which seem to be the part of the national costume to which the greatest importance is attached, was formerly proportioned according to the social position of the individual.
164.—PALANQUIN.
“The pariahs were not permitted to let this skirt come lower than the knee, and males and females of inferior caste had the breast uncovered. Among the chiefs themselves a difference existed, and still exists, as to the method of wearing the comboy. After rolling it twice or three times round the hips and legs, they form with it round the waist a more or less bulky girdle, the dimensions of which depend upon their rank. The nobles are also distinguished from the lower orders by their extraordinary headgear, consisting of a sort of round, flat, white linen cap, like that worn by the Basque peasantry, while the lower classes merely surround the head with a silk handkerchief, leaving none of it bare except the top. The king alone possessed the privilege of wearing sandals. Prohibitions, such as one against wearing gold and silver chains or ornaments, are still scrupulously observed by the Kandians, who strenuously resist any encroachments of the inferior castes.”
M. Guillaume Lejean has published some interesting particulars of his travels in Cashmere and the Punjaub. It is not our intention to follow the learned wanderer in his rapid journeys across Hindostan, but we should like to draw attention to a novel opinion which has been expressed by him as to the ethnology of the Indian population.
M. Lejean believes that he has re-discovered in Hindostan the Aryans, that is to say, the primitive people from whom the Aryan or Caucasian race is descended. The features of these peoples, our own genuine ancestors, are regular and of an European type. Their complexion is not browner than that of the inhabitants of Provence, Sicily, or Southern Spain. This statement does not apply to the lower castes, whose skin grows darker and darker, until it reaches the sooty tint of the Nubian. The country people have long and slightly wavy hair, blacker and more brilliant than jet. Though not effeminate in appearance, the race is deficient in muscular vigour, an effect attributed by the traveller to the torrid heat of the climate. The women are generally of middle height, with pleasing but expressionless countenances of little originality; their eyes are large, black, and submissive, and their hands delicately beautiful.
In the opinion of M. Lejean, the fine, symmetrical heads, small, well-formed hands, and regular features of the natives of Scinde, remind one completely of the white European race, and allow us to identify the inhabitants of that part of Asia with the ancient Aryans, who were the colonizers of primitive Europe, and who springing, as is said, from the regions of Persia, spread themselves over our own continent and that of Asia.
This is an opportune moment for alluding to a race, sprung seemingly from Hindoos of the lower classes, which had probably abandoned its own land, and from which those detached groups that traverse the entire globe, without ever fixing themselves anywhere, or ever losing their peculiar characteristics, derive their origin. Under this category come the wandering tribes, commonly known in different languages, as Gipsies, Bohemians, Zingari, Gitanos, &c., who wander over countries either as beggars or in pursuit of the lowest callings. These Gipsies and Bohemians, who are especially numerous in the South of France, and enjoy a considerable repute as horse-clippers and tinkers, who are invariably vagrants, and now and then thieves, appear to be descended from low-caste Hindoos. They are travelling Pariahs. Such, at least, is the opinion entertained by some modern ethnologists.
Malabar Family.
The Malabar Family inhabiting the Deccan differs in many respects from the Hindoo, and the peoples included in it are very dark and sometimes black in complexion. This branch is divided into three principal divisions: the Malabars proper, who dwell in the country of that name; the Tamuls, in the Carnatic; and the Telingas, in the north-east. Neither the language nor the customs of the tribes composing this group, exhibit peculiarities sufficiently important to induce us to stop to describe them.
CHAPTER II.
ETHIOPIAN BRANCH.
The African populations which we class with the Brown Race have a resemblance in the formation of the body to those of the White Race, but their skin is darker in colour, being intermediate between that of the Negro and that of the White. The natives constituting this branch have never attained to any appreciable degree of civilization, and there is a complete void of positive notions as to their origin or migrations, while even the different languages in use among them, are partly unknown to us. We shall distinguish in the Ethiopian branch, two great families, the Abyssinian and the Fellan.
Abyssinian Family.
165.—ABYSSINIAN.
That portion of Eastern Africa which bears the name of Abyssinia, contains several tribes, speaking different languages. These tribes are ranked by many ethnologists as belonging to the White Race, and their complexion, though darker invariably than that of the European, is fairer than that of the negro. Their hair, which is generally frizzled, their lips usually thick, and their nose less flat than that of the Negro, are so many characteristics which assign to them a place intervening between the Black and the White races. These tribes doubtless spring from a union of black inhabitants, aborigines of the country, with the Orientals who conquered them.
166.—NOUERS OF THE WHITE NILE.
We shall instance among the principal groups belonging to this family, the Abyssinians, the Barabras, the Tibbous, and the Gallas, about any of whom, with the exception of the first named, little is as yet known.
Abyssinians.—Most authors place this people in the White Race and the Semitic family. There is, in fact, reason to believe that Abyssinia was many times overrun, and perhaps civilized, by the nations of Western Asia; but the colour of their skin, which is very much darker than that of the Arameans, is a proof that the conquerors intermarried with the conquered, and that from this union the present Abyssinian race has sprung.
According to Dr. Rüppel, there are two predominant types existing among the people of this country, the more widely spread approaching to that of the Arabs, while the second approximates closely to the Negro.
The Abyssinians forming the first group, are finely formed, showing resemblance to the Bedouins in feature and expression of countenance. Their peculiar characteristics are, an oval face, a long, thin, finely cut nose, a well proportioned mouth with lips of moderate thickness, lively eyes, regular teeth, slightly crisp or smooth hair, and a middle stature. Most of the people dwelling on the high mountains of Samen, and the plains surrounding Lake Tzana, belong to this branch, which also includes the Falæshas, or Jews, the Garnants, who are idolators, and the Agows.
The second type is chiefly distinguishable by a shorter and broader nose, slightly flattened; thick lips; long eyes, with little animation in them; and very curly and almost woolly hair, which is so close, that it stands straight out from the head. A portion of the population along the coast, in the province of Hamasen and other neighbouring districts, belongs to this second group.
The results of Baron Larrey’s comparison of the Abyssinian with the Negro, are, that the eyes of the former are larger and of a more agreeable look, and have the inner angle slightly more inclined. In the Abyssinian the cheek-bones and the zygomatic arches are more prominent than in the Negro; the cheeks form a more regular triangle with the angle of the mouth and the corner of the jaw; the lips are thick without being turned out like a Negro’s; the teeth are handsome, well set and less projecting; and the alveolar ridges are not so prominent. The complexion of the Abyssinian is not so black as that of the Negro in the interior of Africa. Baron Larrey adds, that the features which he has described above, belonged to the genuine Egyptians of olden times, and that they are to be found in the heads of Egyptian statues, and above all in that of the Sphinx.
167.—A NOUER CHIEF.
168.—CHIEF OF THE LIRA.
In the account which he published in 1865, of his journey through Abyssinia two years previously, M. Guillaume Lejean has given considerable information as to this part of Africa and its inhabitants, and the victorious enterprise undertaken by England in 1866, afforded an opportunity of establishing the accuracy of the French traveller’s statements.
At the moment when the British expedition was directed against him, the army of the Abyssinian potentate, the Negus Theodorus, numbered about 40,000 men. The infantry carry a spear, shield, and long curved sabre, and they attack their enemy impetuously at close quarters. The light cavalry is excellent. The horsemen, when charging, let go their bridles, fight with both hands, and guiding and urging their horses with leg and knee only, make them perform the most prodigious feats. Each man has a sword and two lances; the latter always hit the mark, and their wound is deadly. They are used like javelins, and are about two yards long. Every horseman is followed by an attendant retainer, whose duty it is to dash among the enemy, sword in hand, in order to recover his master’s weapon, and bring it back to him. These horsemen charge headlong against an infantry square, making their horses bound into its midst over the heads of the soldiers, and then backing them in order to break its formation.
The skirmishers are Tigré mountaineers, of cool, resolute courage, and their aim is remarkably good.
The Emperor Theodorus seldom occupied his palace. His real capital was his camp, which he kept incessantly moving from one end of his dominions to the other. He maintained strict discipline in his household and on his staff, among the members of which the bastinado was often liberally used.
Two fifths of the Abyssinian population are in the service of the wealthier classes, and probably there is no country in the world where servitude is more widely spread. A person possessed of an income equal to £160 a year, keeps at least eight dependants. M. Lejean had no fewer than seventeen attendants during his journey, and his travelling companion, an Englishman, as many as seventy.
The religion of this country forms a rare exception in Africa, as the inhabitants are Christians. The head of the Abyssinian church is styled the “Abouna,” and his theocratic powers are almost boundless. King and pontiff entertain a mutual hatred of one another, each dreading his rival and keeping close watch upon his movements. Whichever of the two possesses greater courage and energy gains the upper hand.
Monks and priests are common in Abyssinia.
The natives take a decoction of kousso once a month as a cure for the tapeworm. The fact is, that in consequence of some local circumstances, the meat used in the country is full of cysts, which, getting into the stomach along with the food, generate in the intestines this troublesome guest that must be got rid of from time to time. This remedy for tapeworm has been recently introduced into Europe.
Barabras.—The Barabras are the natives of Nubia. They occupy that part of the valley comprised between the southern frontier of Egypt and Sennaar, that is to say, Nubia.
This race differs widely from the Arabs, and all adjoining nations. They dwell on the banks of the Nile, and, wherever the soil is found favourable, plant date trees, sink wells for irrigation, and sow various kinds of leguminous plants.
Blumenbach was forcibly struck with the resemblance of the Barabras to the figures and paintings to be met with on the different monuments of ancient Egypt. This people, like the Egyptians, have a reddish black skin, but of a much darker tint. The characteristic features of the pure Barabras are oval and somewhat long faces, with aquiline noses, very well formed and slightly rounded towards the point, lips thick without being protruding, a receding chin, thin beard, animated eyes, very curly but never frizzled hair, a body perfectly in proportion and usually of the middle height, and lastly a bronze-coloured skin.
The Barabras are classed in three groups, each of which has a dialect of its own, namely, the Noubas or Nubians, the Kenous, and the Dongoulahs; all of whom inhabit the Nile valley.
According to Burckhardt the Noubas differ in many respects from the Negroes, especially in the softness of their skin, which is very smooth and flexible, while the palm of a genuine Negro’s hand is rough and as hard as wood. Their noses, too, are less flat, their lips less thick, and their cheek-bones less prominent than those of a Negro. Pritchard’s opinion is that the Barabras probably migrated from Kordofan.
A description of this race is also to be found in the “Voyage en Egypte,” by MM. Henri Cammas and André Lefèvre, by whom the country was explored in 1860, and from its pages we take the following extract:—
“We are in Nubia, and Arabic is no longer spoken. The inhabitants, though usually inoffensive, have nevertheless a warlike gait; the dagger hanging by a strap to their arm, their ironwood bow and their buckler of crocodile hide are the tokens and protectors of their liberty. Their rulers obtain nothing from them except by force.
“The moment the river recedes, these vigorous husbandmen dispute with it for the fertilizing slime which suffices for a fourfold harvest.
“Do not imagine that they labour: it is enough for them when they have sown pinches of corn in shallow holes, for nature does all the rest.
“So favoured a climate, as may well be imagined, does not impose on the Nubian the inconvenience of having to wear clothing. The majority carry nothing more upon them than a few weapons and their dusky skins. The women’s costumes are oddly fashioned. They stain their lips and twist their hair into numberless tiny plaits, which are not re-made every day. Egyptian females would look on them as indecent, for allowing the lower part of the face to be seen; and more than that even, the girls, up to the time of their marriage, wear no covering beyond a narrow girdle. The villages are rather near each other, and seldom consist of more than fifteen or twenty earthen huts, having flat roofs thatched with palm branches. In front of the cabins are ranged, as at Dolce for instance, large jars, in which the corn is kept stored.
“Ruins belonging to all ages and every ancient divinity are to be found in Nubia.”
The inhabitants of Eastern Nubia are merely wandering tribes who traverse the country included between the Nile and the Red Sea; the dwellers in the northern part are known as the Ababdehs.
The Bicharyehs spread themselves as far as the Abyssinian frontiers, and the Hadharebs are still more to the south, reaching to Souakin on the Red Sea. The Souakins belong to the last-named race.
The Bicharyehs are savage and inhospitable, and it is asserted that they drink the still warm blood of living animals. They are chiefly nomadic, and maintain themselves on the flesh or the milk of their flocks. All travellers agree in representing them as fine men with regular features, large, expressive eyes, light, elegant frames, and a dark chocolate-coloured complexion. Their method of wearing the hair is very curious. Those who possess it in sufficient length to reach below the ear, allow it to hang in straight, tangled locks, each of which terminates in a curl. This headgear is impregnated with grease, and is so much matted that there would be a difficulty in getting a comb through it. They refrain, besides, from touching it, and in order not to spoil its arrangement are always provided with a bit of pointed stick, like a large needle, which they put into requisition whenever scratching becomes necessary.
The head-dress of the Souakins is equally extraordinary, and the scratching pin is also an obligatory accompaniment of their toilet.
The Ababdehs have hair from two and a half to three inches long; their lips are slightly thick, their noses rather long, and in complexion they are almost black. They are nomadic, and live in the same way as the Bedouins.
Tibbous.—The Tibbous, who wander over the country to the east of the Sahara, have been looked upon as belonging to the Berber family, but their complexion is darker and they do not speak the Arab tongue. Their noses are aquiline, their lips but slightly thick, they have intelligent faces, and are of slender build. Their activity is very great and they are addicted to robbing caravans.
Gallas.—The Gallas are strangers to civilization, the majority scattered over the plains which extend to the south of Abyssinia, leading a pastoral and nomadic life. They are divided into a great many independent tribes, being kept united, however, by origin and language. They are warlike, cruel, and given to plunder. Their colour is very handsome and their hair usually curly or woolly; they have coarse, short features and large lips. Islamism has been embraced by a few tribes, but the greater number remain attached to the old African Paganism.
Fellan Family.
The Fellans, who are also called Fellatahs, Pouls, or Peuhls, have not been long known except by some tribes who inhabit Senegambia and who sometimes penetrated the Soudan. Their skin is extremely dark, inclining sometimes to a reddish, and sometimes to a copper colour, but being never really black; they have rather long hair, smooth and silky; their nose is not flattened; the shape of their face is oval; their stature tall and slight; the extremities of the limbs delicate and small; their step light and commanding.
We class among the Fellan family the people dwelling in the western part of Africa, such as the inhabitants of Nigritia and Bambara.
The capital of Nigritia, Sego or Segou, is a tolerably large town situated on the Niger.
Probably many other nations of Western Africa ought to be placed side by side with the Fellans and a comparison should also be established between them and the people of Madagascar, the Owas.
All these races differ from the Negroes, although dwelling on the confines of the country belonging to the latter branch, with which some authors erroneously confound them, but the physical characteristics that mark them as distinct are well-established.
CHAPTER III.
MALAY BRANCH.
This branch approaches closely to the Indo-Chinese. The races composing it are of medium height, regularly made and with well-proportioned limbs; their skin varies from an olive-yellow to a brown hue, and their hair is smooth, black, or occasionally brown. They appear susceptible of civilization and are often divided into regular nations.
Dumont d’Urville has distinguished among these races three divisions which he has designated by the appellations of Malays, Polynesians, and Micronesians; and these groups will be treated here as so many families.
Malay Family.
The Malay family, which inhabits Malaysia and the peninsula of Malacca, is made up of a vast number of nations, the widely varied characteristics of which partake more or less of those of the Indo-Chinese, the Hindoos, and even the Negroes. We shall specify in this family the Malays, Javanese, Battas, Bugs, or Bougis, the Macassars, Dyaks, and Tagals.
Malays.—The Malays constitute the most numerous and remarkable branch of this family. They are spread over the peninsula of Malacca, the islands of Java, Borneo, Sumatra, and Celebes, and in the Moluccas, etc. This group of islands was formerly known as the Indian Archipelago, and owes its name of Malaysia to the naturalist Lesson.
The chief characteristics of the Malays are a lithe and active body, medium stature, somewhat slanting eyes, prominent cheekbones, a flat nose, smooth glossy hair, and a scanty beard. Their limbs are elegantly formed and their hair is black and curling. The flatness of their noses is attributable to an artificial cause, as, immediately on the birth of an infant, this feature is compressed until the cartilage is broken, for a broad flat face is considered a point of beauty, and a projecting nose would be looked on as a snout. Their lips are deformed by the inordinate chewing of the betel leaf, and become ultimately repulsive in appearance on account of their exaggerated redness and the extravasated blood beneath their surface. The yellow colour of their skin is heightened still more by artificial means, for it is regarded as an attraction, and is the aristocratic tint; daily rubbing with henna or turmeric bring it to a saffron tinge. The natural complexion of the women is pale and dull; brown is predominant among the men. The princes and dignitaries stain a dark yellow every part of the body exposed to view.
A Malay’s clothing is of a very light description, consisting, both for men and women, of two large pieces of stuff skilfully arranged and confined at the waist by a scarf. Princes and moneyed persons alone wear a kind of drawers.
The indolence of the Malays is excessive. With the exception of the slaves, no one works. They are in fact an utterly demoralized people; murder, pillage, and outrage are familiar to them, they possess neither honour nor gratitude, and have no respect for their pledged word. Play is with them a passion, a frenzy. They gamble away their property, their wives and children, everything, in fact, except their own persons. They are victims of opium and the betel plant. Nevertheless some laws have existence among them, for murder and robbery are punishable by fines and corporal punishments.
The Malays of the Malacca peninsula are not, like the inhabitants of the Archipelago, violent, passionate, and lazy. They are an energetic, provident, trading, industrious race, but quite as rapacious and as tricky as the others. Like the inhabitants of Malaysia, too, they are prone to vengeance, and when under the influence of opium this sentiment becomes inflamed, and turns into a kind of fury, directed not only against the person of the offender but also against harmless passers-by. The Malay who is a prey to this double paroxysm of opium and frenzy, snatches up a sharp weapon, dashes forth furiously, shouting “Kill! Kill!” and strikes everyone who crosses his path.
169.—MALAY “RUNNING A MUCK.”
The police of the country employ a small body of very strong and active men whose special duty it is to seize these raging maniacs. They hunt the miserable wretch through the streets, and having caught him by the neck in a kind of fork, throw him on the ground and pin him there until a sufficient reinforcement arrives to enable them to tie him hand and foot, when he is brought before a court of justice and nearly always sentenced to death ([fig. 169]).
Javanese.—These people, who inhabit the island of Java, are rather light in complexion, and bear a close resemblance to the Indo-Chinese. For the following information about the population of this wonderful and splendid country, we are indebted to M. de Molins, who made a stay of two years there, and whose notes have been arranged and published by M. F. Coppée, in the “Tour du Monde.”
The stranger traversing Batavia, the chief town of Java, cannot be an uninterested observer of the motley crowd perpetually renewing itself before his eyes. Among the numberless half-clothed men he sees none but brawny shoulders and wiry, muscular frames. He is struck by the dull, dark brown complexion of the Indian, whose hue appears to vary with the district where he happens to be located; for his skin which seems brick-red on the sea coast assumes a violet and pinkish tinge near masses of vegetation, and becomes almost black in a dusty region. The perfectly naked children gambolling in the full rays of the sun look like fine antique bronzes, so graceful are their attitudes and so faultless their mould. The Malay in his turban, tight-fitting green vest, and grey petticoat striped with whimsical patterns, has quite a handsome head. His face is oval with eyes of almond shape and a thin, straight nose; the mouth is shaded by a slight, glossy black moustache and his high broad forehead is admirably formed. All do not perhaps possess so many advantages, but they are without exception finely made, with beautiful black, smooth, and silky hair.
The Javanese wear hats of bamboo, the plaiting of which is perfect. These are of all patterns, large and small, round, pointed, or made in the shape of shields, extinguishers, or basins. Their costume varies; some of the men wear Arab vests and wide trousers; some would be naked but for a sort of drawers; while a few swathe their loins in a piece of Indian calico which displays the form; and others are clad in a very narrow petticoat that produces a most picturesque effect. The natives make all their garments out of a broad piece of stuff manufactured in the country, the devices and colours of which manifest extraordinary variety and astonishing taste.
The women’s head-dress consists of a handkerchief which is tied and arranged in a more or less artistic manner.
| P. Sellier, p.t | Imp. Dupuy, 22, R. des Petits Hôtels | G. Regamey, lith. |
| POLYNESIAN | MALAY |
| BROWN RACE | |
At Sourabaya the traveller mingled in the throng, composed of a sprinkling of Chinese, Malays, and natives of Madura, but throughout which the Javanese element predominated. The typical costume of the country may be said to consist of the long-folded sahrong, a very close-fitting vest, and a kind of sunshade on the head, covered in blue cloth interwoven with gold and silver thread, and lined with red. The colours used here are not very gaudy, and the priests may at once be recognized by their ample turbans and white muslin vests. A few palanquins were moving about through the crowd; those of the Javanese are formed of a hammock suspended from a bamboo cross-stick and sheltered from the rays of the sun by a little roof of bamboo or palm-leaf matting. Long boats laden with cargo and having gracefully curved prows were passing up and down the river.
On fête days all the components of this motley multitude are drawn together by the performances of the Javanese bayaderes, or dancing girls ([fig. 172]).
170.—MALAY.
When visiting the cemetery M. de Molins saw the native Prince of Soerabaya, who had come there to pray at the tomb of his forefathers. His excessively simple costume was only distinguished from that of ordinary Javanese by a loop of diamonds stuck in the very small turban enveloping his head, and by a beautiful gold clasp fastening the belt of his sahrong.
171.—JAVANESE.
In the Javanese Kampong our traveller saw copper articles; such as betel-roll boxes, bowls, and water vases; which were ornamented in charming and fantastic taste with engraved arabesques representing the flowers, fruits, and animals of the country; and he was struck with surprise at the goldsmiths being able to form such marvellous trinkets with tools of the most primitive description. He went to see one of the large manufactories where are made the curious sahrongs worn by the inhabitants, the shades of colour in which rival those of the most valuable cashmeres in brilliancy, harmony, and richness. The process of making these fabrics is a slow and difficult one. A fine sahrong is worth more than £4 and does not exceed two and a half yards in length by one yard in width.
172.—JAVANESE DANCING GIRLS.
In one of his excursions M. de Molins met a wedding procession. The happy couple, who belonged to two equally rich families, were in a very pretty palanquin surmounted by a canopy ornamented with palm leaves and a trellis-work of bamboos and reeds. The garments of the newly married pair were of red silk brocaded with gold embroidery, and their heads, necks, arms and hands were covered with jewellery. Children ran alongside and in front shouting and making the air resound with the noise of gongs, tom-toms, and cymbals ([fig. 173]). Four men in yellow breeches, with blue and white girdles, their hips adorned by long pointed strips of blue and yellow silk, and their heads bound with a tightly-fitting turban of the same colours, carried at the end of long poles, bright, waving bouquets made of tiny rosettes of blue, yellow, and white paper attached to thin canes. Relatives, friends, and all those who expected to partake of the repast which was generously provided, followed the palanquin.
Ceremonies of different kinds precede this solemn procession; and for several days before it takes place the betrothed couple are obliged to submit to a public exhibition and general hubbub, and are condemned to remain nearly completely motionless and in almost total abstinence, lest they should in any way damage their clothes.
This marriage festival is the grand occasion for displaying all the resources of Javanese culinary art. The fruits are served at the beginning of the banquet, and steamed rice only slightly cooked forms the principal dish.
The feast would be a sorry one, if the bill of fare did not include pickles, salt fish dried in the sun while alive, half-hatched eggs also salted, a hash of meats perfumed with roses and jessamine, the seeds of various plants, and slices of cocoa-nut rolled in pimento. The first time a European tastes these dishes he feels a dreadful sensation of burning, which passes from the mouth to the stomach and seems to be ever increasing. But people soon appear to grow accustomed to these spicy ragouts; and M. de Molins says that in a short time this kind of cookery, which greatly tends to stimulate the appetite, becomes indispensable.
173.—JAVANESE WEDDING.
During this gentleman’s stay at Soerabaya, the Dutch Governor-General of Java was there on his tour of inspection of the island, which takes place every five years. High festivities had been ordered for the reception of this exalted personage, and M. de Molins gives us a sketch of the princes who were present at a grand revel. The skin of many was blue; their perfectly delicate and regular features bore the melancholy, stamp peculiar to Orientals, and their movements were full of ease and grace. Their sahrong, woven in silk of the most beautiful shades, was fastened at the waist by a flowing girdle that fell over extremely tight pantaloons, and sparkled with gold embroidery; their chest, shoulders, and arms were left naked, and had been thickly coated with saffron-coloured powder for the occasion. Their head-gear consisted of a truncated cone, either blue, red, or black, braided with gold or silver lace; and their ears were adorned with a kind of wing, in goldwork of the most exquisite finish and lightness. The princes were accompanied by the officers of their suite, among whom the Umbrella-Bearer was conspicuous. The enormous sunshades carried by those functionaries bear a double resemblance to a shield and a lance, and are at once warlike-looking and foppish. They are gilt or silvered, green, blue, or black, and produce the most uncommon effect.
Battas.—The Battas, who inhabit the island of Sumatra, exhibit a very singular mixture in their habits, as they unite with ideas of order and civilization practices quite as ferocious as those of the most savage people.
Bougis and Macassars.—The Bougis and Mankasses (Mangkassars, which Europeans have turned into Macassars) occupy the Celebes Islands, and are renowned for their courage.
The former nation is looked on as the most ancient and enlightened race in the Celebes group. Not only have they a secret and sacred language, but a second idiom which is familiar to all classes, and in addition a written tongue. They possess a system of writing, and even a literature. These men are upright, faithful to their promise, and thoroughly loyal in diplomatic and commercial dealings. Their mere word is of more value than the most solemn oaths of the inhabitants of Java, Sumatra, and Borneo.
Tagales.—The Tagales and Bissayes who dwell in the Philippines, the former in Luzon, and the latter in the centre group, speak dialects very different from those of the Malays, properly so-called. The anonymous author who has described the voyage of the Austrian frigate Novara, has supplied us with some details as to the varied and amusing aspect of the population of Manilla, the chief town of Luzon.
The padres, in long black soutanes, and spout-shaped felt hats, stroll under the shade of the palm trees; Christian Brothers jostle Confraternities of the Virgin and Fathers of the Conception and of the Nativity. Make way for grey, yellow, and brown-frocked monks, and for those who discipline themselves with hair shirts and whips! Galley-slaves, chained two and two, are quietly moving hither and thither with pails of water. Charming senoritas, mostly Spanish half-bloods, with mantillas falling like a cascade of black lace along their raven and glossy tresses, in which green leaves and scarlet blossoms intertwine, compel us to admire their listless mien and their well-arched eyebrows shading their almond-shaped eyes. After the half-breeds, come the native Tagales, of pure or of mixed blood; Chinese women; and little negresses selling fruit and bouquets, or lounging about with cigarettes in their mouths.
The Tagales whom M. de Molins saw at Manilla, were small and weak. Their faces were by no means disagreeable, their colour a little lighter than that of other Malays, and their hair black without being woolly. The combinations of this race with the Negroes and Chinese, appeared to him most interesting.
Many travellers have described the natives of the Philippines. They are well-made men, of elegant, easy figure, and medium stature. Their feet and hands are small, exhibiting extreme delicacy at the point where they join the limbs. They have oval faces, with small but regular noses, well-coloured lips, and teeth that are long and white until they become spoiled by chewing the betel-leaf. The men’s hair is silky and curled; that of the women, soft, fine, and glossy.
The brown tint of the complexion is very changeable among these islanders, varying from the dark shade which belongs to those living in the open air, such as fishermen, hunters, and tillers of the soil, to the fair skins of the upper and sedentary classes. That portion of the people which has not been subjected to foreign influence is ingenious, industrious, and active. The men are warlike, and make excellent boat-builders. Their junks made of plaited bamboo, and manned by a couple of hundred warriors and rowers, spread such powerful sails and possess such speed, that they are the envy of the Spanish ship-builders.
Dyaks.—There are some tribes living in the vicinity of the people of whom we have just spoken and especially in the interior of the countries of which the Malays occupy the coasts, who are generally distinguished by the name of Alfusus. They have been often regarded as members of a separate stock, and a connexion has even been traced between them and the black race, but the greater part of these tribes ought to be considered as forming part of the Malay family. Among them are the Dyaks, a numerous people inhabiting the interior of Borneo, and the Turajas who dwell in the Celebes Islands.
The Dyaks ([fig. 174]) have well-made bodies, and the women’s faces are mild and agreeable in expression, but the men’s far from attractive. The constant warfare which they carry on with the Malays of the coast may be the cause why their features become ultimately so changed under the combined influences of fear, passion, and revenge.
The Dyaks who occupy the plains, and those living on the borders of rivers or in the woods, may be separately classed. Both groups are of similar stature, possess features alike, and the same lank, black hair, with large curls, which is however never woolly or frizzled; but those occupying the dense forests rising from the river banks have fairer complexions. Mutual hatred has been sworn between the two races, and they abandon themselves to incessant conflicts, and have ever to be on their guard against terrible surprises in which many heads are cut off. No Dyak would venture to present himself to a girl, without being able to show her the head of an enemy who had been overcome and sacrificed by him. A warrior’s renown depends on the number of heads he has acquired, and skulls dried in the fire form the ornaments and trophies of his hut.
These cutters off of heads are very cleanly, and bathe twice a day regularly. They have extremely severe laws, by which murder, outrage, and robbery are punished in the same way. They profess great veneration for old age as well as towards the dead. Their chronological system is based upon the yongas, or ages, as among the Hindoos, and they believe the present to be the age of misfortune. Their notion is, that some day during an eclipse of the sun or moon, a dragon will devour the stars; consequently whenever such phenomena occur, they make a terrific uproar in order to scare the monster away, a proceeding which has been invariably successful!
In her travels along the rivers Lappas and Kapouas (western side of Borneo) Madame Ida Pfeiffer visited a tribe of independent Dyaks, who are called “Head-Cutters” by the English and Dutch. She saw an immense cabin about sixty yards long, in the verandah of which fabrics made of cotton or of plaited bark of trees, splendid mats and baskets of every shape and size, were displayed. Drums and gongs hung on the walls, and large piles of bamboos, bags of rice, and dried pork, showed that the Dyaks had exhibited all their wealth for the occasion.
Nor were their own persons by any means forgotten. They had loaded their necks down to the breast with glass beads, bears’ teeth, and shells; brass rings covered the lower part of their legs, reaching half-way to the knee, their arms were adorned in the same way to the shoulders, and similar decorations were in their ears. Some wore a sort of red stuff cap, embellished with pearls, shells, and little flat bits of brass; others had wound round their heads a fillet formed of a piece of bark, the deeply fringed ends of which stuck out like feathers. A man decked out in this fashion, covered with ornaments from head to foot, presents a rather comical appearance.
The women had fewer adornments; they wore no earrings, nor bears’ teeth collars; a few displayed some glass beads; but more were satisfied with an incalculable number of brass or leaden rings.
Madame Pfeiffer, while among the Dyaks, witnessed a sword-dance, which was executed in the most skilful and elegant manner.
This travelled lady also visited another tribe located higher up the river, where she observed the same things, and in addition saw two human heads lately cut off. When showing them to Madame Pfeiffer, the Dyaks spat in their faces, and the children cuffed them, and spat on the ground.
174.—DYAKS.
The shocking custom of decapitation owes its origin to superstition. If a rajah falls ill, or sets out on a journey among another tribe, he and his subjects undertake to sacrifice a human head in case of his recovery or safe return; and should he die, they chop off a skull or two. The heads which they have sworn to immolate must be obtained at any cost. The Dyaks hide themselves in the long jungle grass, behind felled branches of trees, or under the dry leaves, and lie in wait for entire days. If anybody, man, woman, or child, comes in sight, they shoot a poisoned arrow at him, and rush like tigers on their prey. At one blow the head is severed from the body, and placed in a little basket reserved for this purpose, and ornamented with human hair.
These assassinations frequently give rise to bloody wars; for the tribe, a member of which has been thus sacrificed to the law of chance, takes up arms, and never lays them down until the most terrible reprisals have been exacted. Severed heads are borne back in triumph and solemnly hung up in the place of honour, the retaliation being celebrated by festivities which last for a month.
On one occasion, when Madame Pfeiffer had been received with profuse respect by a tribe, she found a freshly cut off head suspended over her bed, along with others already dried. She could not close her eyes. She felt in a perfect fever at being thus encompassed by frenzied men, at being smothered by the odour of these human remains, and at being lulled to rest by the sinister sound of skulls jangled together by the wind.
Yet in spite of chopped-off heads and festoons of human skulls, this lady considers the Dyaks to be honest, prudent, and endowed with some good qualities. She places them higher in the scale than the other tribes with which she had an opportunity of coming in contact. Their domestic life, which is truly patriarchal in its nature, is alluded to by her with pleasure, as are also their morality, the love they bear their offspring, and the respect evinced by the children towards their parents.
The independent Dyaks are richer than those living subservient to the Malay yoke. They cultivate rice, maize, tobacco, and sometimes the sugar cane; find in the woods Dammana resin which answers lighting purposes, and gather large harvests of sago, yams, and cocoa-nuts. Some of these productions are exchanged by them for pearl beads, brass, salt, and cloth. Their houses, or huts, are clean and well-kept ([fig. 175]).
A Dyak can take to himself as many wives as he pleases, but he usually contents himself with one, whom he treats well and does not burden with work. Their habits are purer and better than those of the Malays. They have no system of writing. Madame Pfeiffer did not see among them either temples or idols, priests or religious sacrifices.
175.—A DYAK HUT.
Polynesian Family.
The tribes included by Dumont d’Urville under the name of Polynesians inhabit the entire eastern part of Oceania, namely, the Sandwich Islands, the Marquesas, the Friendly and Society groups, the Low Archipelago, New Zealand, etc.
The people of all these bear the closest affinity to each other. Their complexion is olive, verging on brown, but not copper-coloured; they are tall in stature, and have sinewy limbs, high foreheads, black, lively, and expressive eyes, and but slightly flattened noses. Their lips are generally larger than those of the whites, but they nevertheless have handsome mouths and splendid teeth. Their hair is black and frizzled. Throughout the whole vast expanse occupied by them they speak the same language.
Most of the tribes belonging to the Polynesian family are thorough savages, but their stock is diminishing day by day, and the final result of neighbouring civilization will be to replace the native element by European races. Meanwhile, the most cruel customs prevail among them, and even cannibalism is practised by some.
“Taboo” holds universally an important place among the populations of Oceania.
This word expresses a state of interdiction, during which the object struck with it is placed under the immediate control of the divinity. No man can infringe upon its power without becoming exposed to the most disastrous consequences, that is, unless he has impaired its action by certain formalities.
Thus, the piece of ground consecrated to a god, or which has become the burial place of a chief, is “tabooed,” and they place under the same spell a canoe which they desire to render safer for long voyages. To fight in a spot subjected to “taboo” is forbidden, and in order to prevent certain productions from becoming scarce, they are placed under similar protection. Anyone guilty of robbery or other crime, commits a fault against “taboo,” and the man who touches the dead body of a chief or anything he was in the habit of wearing, falls under a like ban, which time alone can remove, etc.
We shall allude chiefly to the aborigines of New Zealand, giving also some details about the natives of the Sandwich Islands, as well as about the Tongas, or Friendly Islanders.
New Zealanders.—The inhabitants of New Zealand, sometimes designated by the name of Maoris, are tall, robust, and of athletic frames. Their stature is generally from five feet seven inches to five feet eight inches, seldom lower, and their skin scarcely differs in colour from that of the people of the South of Europe. The expression of their countenance almost always indicates a gloomy ferocity. The face is oval, the forehead narrow, the eye large, black, and full of fire. The nose is sometimes aquiline, but oftener broad and flat, the mouth wide, the lips big, and beneath them rows of small, beautifully enamelled teeth.
The New Zealanders wear their hair long and falling in scattered locks over the face; chiefs alone take the trouble to comb it back on the head in a solitary tuft. It is rough and black, and seems occasionally reddish, because some individuals sprinkle it with powdered ochre.
Women who are not slaves possess strong vigorous figures, and are rarely under five feet and a few inches in height. The young girls have a broad face, masculine features, coarse lips frequently stained black by tattooing, a large mouth, flat nose, and uncombed hair hanging about them in disorder. Their bodies are disgustingly filthy, and impregnated with an odour of fish or of seal oil, which is revolting in the extreme.
They possess a few advantages as a set-off against the repulsiveness of this picture. The teeth of a New Zealand female are of excessive whiteness, and her black eyes beam with intelligence and fire, but household work and the birth of a family soon cause these attractions to disappear. The women have, moreover, the most deeply-rooted dirty habits. A thick layer of mud covers their bodies, which are nearly always smeared with seal or porpoise oil. Both sexes are capital swimmers.
There is little difference between the costume worn by males and females. The natives know how to weave very elegant textures from the fibres of the Phormium tenax (or New Zealand flax), and a broad mat of this material floats carelessly over their shoulders and body, while another is wrapped round the waist, descending to the knee. In winter they throw over the former garment a thick, heavy cloak generally made from the peelings of a kind of osier, but which, in the case of chiefs, consists of dogskins sewn together. These fabrics are also varied in design, some being smooth and without any pattern, while others are covered with very delicate ornamentation. The slave girls stick unthreshed slips of the Phormium tenax in their skirts, thus giving immoderate fulness to their bodies.
A warrior’s rank and bravery are denoted by a great number of little pins made of bones or green talc, which are worn across the breast at the edge of the matting. The original use of these articles was to scratch the head and kill the insects on it.
Like all the other races, the New Zealanders have a fancy for personal ornaments. They like to stick plumes in their hair, and a tuft of soft white feathers is thrust into the ears. Their unkempt locks are seldom covered by any kind of head-dress; but Lesson, the naturalist, from whom we derive these details, saw a few young girls in whom a coquettish taste was more developed, and who wore graceful wreaths of green moss.
The women adorn themselves with shell necklaces, from which little dried hippocamps are sometimes suspended. They are very fond of blue glass beads of European make. The most precious ornament of this people, however, consists of a green talc fetish, which hangs on the breast attached to some portion of a human bone. There are religious ideas connected with this amulet, and it is worn by men only.
One of the Zealanders’ superstitions is to fasten a shark’s sharp tooth to one of their ears, with the point of which the women lacerate their bosoms and faces when they happen to lose a chief or one of their relations. The greatest value attaches to these objects when they have been handed down from ancestors, and have become “tabooed,” or sacred; the happiness of a native’s whole existence seems bound up in their possession; yet they are rated as completely worthless when derived from a slain enemy.
Tattooing plays an important part among the New Zealanders, and they submit annually to the painful operation which it requires. This marking usually covers the face all over, and, as it is renewed very often, produces deep furrows stamped in regular rings, that impart the oddest expression to the countenance. Circles, one within the other, are also punctured on the lower part of the loins, and the women have a broad zone of lozenge-shaped figures engraved round their waist. Deep black lines are cut in the lips, and a design like a spear-head is traced at the angles of the mouth and in the middle of the chin. The young men draw large flies on their noses, staining them black, and the girls sketch similar insects in blue. None but slaves and persons of the lowest class are without tattooing of some sort, and it is considered a downright disgrace to have the skin in its natural state.
176.—NEW ZEALAND CHIEF.
In a region subject to the terrible storms of the Southern Hemisphere, the dwellings ought to be, and are in fact, small and low. Villages are never found in a plain, because there they might be surprised and pillaged, but are situated in steep localities difficult of access; the huts cannot be entered except on all fours; families sheltered by them, sleep huddled together on the straw in a narrow space; and there is no furniture inside, beyond a few carved boxes, and some red wooden vessels thickly covered with designs.
The industry for which these islanders are chiefly noted, is the manufacture of matting; we have already alluded to the beautiful materials made from the fibres of the Phormium tenax by the women and girls.
The soil of New Zealand does not, like that of Equatorial Asia, furnish a large supply of edible substances. The basis of the inhabitants’ food consists of the root of a fern tree, resembling our Pteris, which covers all the plains. The natives catch a large quantity of fish in the bays along the coast, and dry or smoke the greater portion of it, in order to guard against famine in time of war, and to be provided with sustenance whenever the fury of the elements makes it impossible for them to launch their boats. Europeans have introduced several vegetables among them, which grow readily in the easily tilled and fertile land.
Their cookery is as simple as their food; they drink nothing but pure water, and hate strong liquors. Their victuals are laid on the ground, and each one eats with his fingers; the warriors, however, sometimes use instruments, made of human bones, and Lesson bought from one of them a four-pronged fork, fashioned from the large bone of a man’s right arm, minutely carved, and adorned with many raised ornaments in mother-of-pearl.
New Zealand canoes are remarkable for the carving which embellishes them. Most of these boats are hollowed from the trunk of a single tree, and are generally about forty feet long. Lesson measured a specimen, made in this way from one piece, the depth of which was three, the breadth four, and the length sixty feet. They are painted red, and have their sides festooned with birds’ feathers. The stern rises to a height of about four feet, and is covered with allegorical carvings; the prow exhibits a hideous head, with mother-of-pearl eyes and a tongue protruding to an inordinate extent, in order to show contempt for an enemy. These canoes are capable of holding about forty warriors. The oars are sharp pointed, and can be used, in case of need, as weapons against an unforeseen attack. The sails consist of reed mats, coarsely woven, and triangular in shape.
Although they are eminently warlike, the New Zealanders possess no great variety of destructive implements. Arrows are unused by them: a paton-paton, or tomahawk, of green talc, which is fastened to the wrist by a strap of hide, is the weapon above all others with which they smash or scalp the skull of their enemy. They rush headlong one against the other, and conquer by dint of sheer weight and force. The badge which betokens a priest’s functions is a heavy whalebone stick, covered with carvings. Their tokis are hatchets, also made of talc, with carefully worked handles decorated with tufts of white dog’s hair. A great many of their clubs are of extremely hard polished red wood.
In latter days the numerous tribes inhabiting the islands resorted to by English and American whalers, receive firearms in exchange for the fresh provisions with which they supply the European vessels.
The chant of the New Zealanders is solemn and monotonous, made up of hoarse, drawling, and broken notes. It is always accompanied by movements of the eyes and well-practised gestures that are very significant. Most of those chants turn upon licentious subjects. Their dance is a pantomime in which the performers seldom move from one place, and consists of postures and motions of the limbs, executed with the greatest precision. Each dance has an allegorical meaning, and is applicable to declarations of war, human sacrifices, funerals, &c.
The only musical instrument that Lesson saw in the hands of the New Zealanders was a tastefully worked wooden flute. The language of these tribes is harsh: some poems of high antiquity have been transmitted to them by oral tradition. They possess a religion, a form of worship, priests, and ceremonials. Marriages are made by purchase; a chief who had some dealings with the crew of the ship to which Lesson belonged, had bought his wife for two firelocks and a male slave.
The friendship which the aborigines of the same tribe entertain for each other is very warm, and Lesson has depicted for us the strange manner in which they evince it. When one of them came on board, and met there an intimate whom he had not seen for some time, he went up to him in solemn silence, applied the end of his own nose against that of his friend’s, and remained in that attitude for half an hour, muttering some confused sentences in a doleful tone. They then separated, and remained for the rest of the time like two men utter strangers to each other. A similar formality was observed by the women among themselves.
No race cherishes the desire of avenging an insult longer than that of which we are sketching an account; consequently, eternal hatreds and frequent wars desolate their islands.
The loss of a chief is deeply felt by the whole tribe. The funeral obsequies last for several days: should the deceased be of high rank, captives are sacrificed who will have to attend him in the other world, and the women, girls, and female slaves tear their bosoms and faces with sharp sharks’ teeth. Each tribe forms a sort of republic. The districts are ruled by a chief who has a special kind of tattooing, and who is the most generally esteemed for bravery, intrepidity, and prudence.
Lesson declares that the New Zealanders are openly and cynically cannibals; that they relish with extreme satisfaction the palpitating flesh of enemies who have fallen at their hands, and regard as a festival the day on which they can gorge themselves with human flesh. A chief expressed to Lesson the pleasure which he experienced in eating it, and indicated the brain as being the most delicate morsel, and the buttock as the most substantial.
After a victory the bodies of the chiefs who have been killed in the fight are prepared for serving up at this horrible banquet. The head belongs to the victor, the fleshy parts are eaten by the men of the tribe, and the bones are distributed among them to be made tools of. Common warriors are scalped, chopped into pieces, roasted, and devoured. Their heads, if they had any reputation, are sold to the Europeans in exchange for a little powder.
A chief’s head is preserved. If the victorious clan wishes to make peace it sends this trophy to the defeated tribe. In case the latter raises loud shouts, a reconciliation will take place, but should it preserve a gloomy silence, it is a sign that preparations are being made to avenge the chief’s death, and hostilities are recommenced. When a tribe has regained the head of its chief it preserves it religiously and venerates it; or else, knowing that it will bring a respectable sum, sells it to the Europeans.
M. Hochstetter during a recent voyage visited these same islanders. A chief of Ohinemuta, named “Pini-te-Kore-Kore” came to see the travellers. He was attired in European fashion, wore a cloak and straw hat, and carried a white banner which bore in blue letters the inscription, “Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis.” He was a Christianized chief, and modified as to exterior appearance. He had been brought up at the missionary school, was about thirty years of age, and tattooed only on the lower part of the face. He had acquired much from his French masters both in manner and demeanour, and being extremely communicative gave M. Hochstetter some curious particulars about the horrible wars to which his forefathers had devoted themselves.
For the last thirty years the conflicts have not been carried on as they were formerly, that is to say, they consist no longer in a series of duels, as it were, but of musketry firing kept up by bodies of troops, from a distance, in the European style.
The traveller had occasion to pay a visit to the Maori king “Potateau-te-Whero-Whero,” before the door of whose dwelling was posted a solitary sentinel clad in a blue uniform cloak with red facings and brass buttons, forming the whole guard of the palace. About twenty persons were assembled in a hut, where his Majesty, who was blind and bent double, sate upon a straw mat. His face, though overloaded with tattooings, was fine and regular, and a deep scar on his forehead bespoke him as a warrior who had taken part in severe battles. He was wrapped in a blanket of a dark brown colour. Like Homer’s Nausicaa, the daughters of this supreme chief of a proud and warlike race were engaged in washing. His son, seated near him, was a young man with black and sparkling eyes.
The Maori tribes had risen in rebellion a few years previously, with a desire of founding a national government as soon as they had recovered their independence. But the natives were overcome after much bloodshed, and fell again under the yoke of their former ruler.
Tongas.—The inhabitants of the Tonga or Friendly Islands resemble Europeans, but their physiognomy presents such varied expressions that it would be difficult to reduce them to a characteristic type. At the first glance flatness of the nose seems a distinguishing mark of their race, but according as we examine a large number of individuals we find the different shapes of that organ grow more numerous. It is the same with the lips, which are sometimes fleshy and sometimes thin. The hair is black; but brown and light chestnut are also to be met with. The colour of the complexion is equally changeable. Women and girls of the better classes who avoid the rays of the sun are but little coloured; the others are more or less dark.
The population of these islands has been carefully described by Dumont d’Urville in an account of the voyage which he made in command of the Astrolabe, during the years 1826, 1827, 1828, and 1829.
“The natives of the Tonga Islands,” he says, “are in general tall, well-made, and of good proportions. Their countenances are agreeable and present a variety of features that may be compared with those observable in Europe. Many have aquiline noses and rather thin lips, while the hair of nearly all is smooth. Finally, the colour of their skin is only slightly dark, especially among the chiefs. Women may be seen whose tall stature, stately step, and perfect forms are united to the most delicate features and a nearly white or merely dusky complexion.”
Cook and Forster had previously affirmed that the women of the Tonga Islands might serve as models for an artist.
In their first dealings with Europeans these aborigines displayed themselves in the most favourable light. Tasman, Cook, Maurelle, and Wilson bore witness to their gentleness, politeness, and hospitality; Cook even gave the name of “Friendly” to their islands. The crew of the Astrolabe was at first led astray by these appearances; but the natives gave many and repeated proofs that at the very moment when they were overpowering the navigators with caresses and marks of friendship, they were meditating how to attack and plunder them.
These men are also endowed with a force of character and energy by no means common. Their bravery often approaches the most reckless temerity, and they do not recoil an inch from the greatest danger. They possess, nevertheless, a general tone of suavity and courtesy, and a natural ease of manner, which no one would in the least expect to find among a people verging so closely upon the savage state. Their intelligence is more developed than that of the Tahitians. They treat their wives with kindness, have great love for their children, and profess deep respect for old age.
They make canoes which are remarkable for their proportions and the elegance and finish of their handiwork; carve whales’ teeth for necklaces, and incrust their various instruments with the same material; know how to construct houses, as well as stone vaults for the burial of their chiefs; and trace delicate chasings on their clubs with a sharpened nail fastened in a handle. The culinary art has advanced to a higher degree among them than among any other of the Polynesian islanders. They prepare from thirty to forty different dishes, consisting of pork, turtle, fowl, fish, bread-fruits, bananas, cocoa-nuts, &c., mixed according to certain processes, and dressed in different methods. The peasants till the land by means of stakes flattened and sharpened at the extremity, and furnished a little way from the end with a stirrup for supporting the foot.
The manufacture of cloth, mats, and reed baskets is the special occupation of the women. In order to make the cloth in most common use, they take a certain quantity of the inner bark of the paper-mulberry tree properly prepared, beat it flat, stain it with different vegetable colours, and print patterns of all kinds upon it. Mats of the finest quality are woven from leaves of the Pandanus; others, stronger, are made from the bark of a kind of banana-tree; those resembling horsehair are worn by the common people in the canoes to protect them against wet. Mattings of other descriptions, ornamented in different patterns, and formed from the young leaves of the cocoa-tree, are used to preserve the walls of their buildings against the inclemencies of the weather.
Women of a certain rank amuse themselves by making combs, the teeth of which are formed from the ribs of cocoa-leaves. The manufacture of thread appertains to females of the lower classes, and the material for it is extracted from the bark of the banana-tree.
These islanders tattoo their bodies in various places, especially the lower part of the stomach and the thighs, with designs which are really elegant and present a vast variety of patterns, but they leave the skin in its natural state. Their tattooing never exhibits deep incisions and does not seem to be a sign of distinction or of warlike prowess. The women only tattoo the palms of their hands.
Their houses are neatly and solidly built; the master and mistress sleep in a division apart, while the other members of the family lie upon the floor without having any fixed place. The beds and their covering are composed of matting.
The clothing of the men, like that of the women, consists of a piece of cloth six feet square, which envelopes the body in such a way as to make a turn and a half round the loins, where it is confined by a belt. Common people are satisfied with wearing an apron of foliage, or a bit of narrow stuff like a girdle.
The natives of the Friendly Islands bathe every day. Their skin, besides, is constantly saturated with perfumed cocoa-nut oil. When preparing themselves for a religious feast, a general dance, or a visit to the residence of a personage of high rank, they cover themselves with oil in such profusion that it drips from their hair.
The ornaments of both sexes consist of necklaces composed of the red fruit of the Pandanus, or fragrant flowers. Some of them hang from their necks little shells, birds’ bones, sharks’ teeth, and pieces of carved and polished whalebone or of mother-of-pearl, and high up on the arm they wear bracelets of the last material or of shells. They have also mother-of-pearl or tortoise-shell rings, and hanker greatly after glass beads, especially those of a blue colour. The lobe of their ears is pierced by large holes for the reception of small wooden cylinders about three inches in length, or of little reeds filled with a yellow powder used by the women as paint.
They have flutes and tom-toms for beating time. The most ordinary form of the former instrument is a piece of bamboo closed at both ends and pierced by six holes, into which they blow with the right nostril while the left is stopped with the thumb.
Their chants are a kind of recitative which has for its subject some more or less remarkable event; or else consist of words intended to accompany different descriptions of dances or ceremonies.
The inhabitants of these islands recognize a host of divinities, who possess among themselves various degrees of preeminence. Of these gods, those of elevated rank can dispense good or evil in proportion to their relative powers. According to the natives’ notion the origin of these divine beings is beyond the intelligence of man, and their existence is eternal.
“Taboo” reigns as despotically in these islands as it does in New Zealand.
There is a barbarous ceremony in use here, by which a child is strangled as an offering to the gods and to gain from them the cure of a sick relation; the same rite also takes place when a chief inadvertently commits a sacrilege which might draw down the anger of the divinities upon the whole nation.
In other cases, they cut off a joint of the little finger in order to obtain the recovery of a parent who is ill, and consequently crowds of people may be seen who have lost in succession the two joints of the fourth finger of each hand, and even the first joint of the next.
Charms and signs occupy a prominent place in the religion of this people. Dreams are warnings from the divinity; thunder and lightning are indications of war or of some great catastrophe.
Sneezing is an act of the worst possible omen. A chief was near clubbing to death a traveller who had sneezed in his presence at the moment when the native was going to fulfil his duties at his father’s tomb.
Tahitians.—Tahiti and the whole group of the Society Islands are almost exclusively inhabited by the same branch of the Malaysio-Polynesian race. The people of these islands have become celebrated in France by the charming and interesting accounts of their manners and habits, which have been published by Bougainville. We have taken the details which follow from Lesson, the naturalist, who made a somewhat lengthened stay in this island.
The natives of Tahiti are all, with scarcely an exception, very fine men. Their limbs are at once vigorous and graceful, the muscular projections being everywhere enveloped by a thick cellular tissue, which rounds away any too prominent development of their frames. Their countenances are marked by great sweetness, and an appearance of good nature; their heads would be of the European type but for the flatness of the nostrils, and the too great size of the lips; their hair is black and thick, and their skin of light copper-colour and very varying in intensity of hue. It is smooth and soft to the touch, but emits a strong, heavy smell, attributable, in a great measure, to incessant rubbings with cocoa-nut oil. Their step wants confidence, and they become easily fatigued. Dwelling on a soil where alimentary products, once abundantly sown, harvest themselves without labour or effort, the Tahitians have preserved soft effeminate manners, and a certain childishness in their ideas.
The seductive attractions of Tahitian women have been very charmingly painted by Bougainville, Wallis, and Cook, but Lesson assures us, on the contrary, that they are extremely ugly, and that a person would hardly find in the whole island thirty passable faces, according to our ideas of beauty. He adds, that after early youth all the females become disgusting, by reason of a general flabbiness, which is all the greater because it usually succeeds considerable stoutness. There is room for believing that the good looks of the race have deteriorated in consequence of contagious diseases since the first European navigators landed in this island, a very fortunate one in the magnificence of its vegetation and the mildness of its temperature.
Tahitian girls before marriage have full legs, small hands, large mouths, flattened nostrils, prominent cheek-bones and fleshy lips; their teeth are of the finest enamel, and their well-shaped prominent eyes, shaded by long, fringed lashes, and sheltered by broad black eyebrows, beam with animation and fire. Too early marriage and suckling, however, very soon destroy any charms which they may possess. Their skin is usually of a light copper-colour, but some are remarkable for their whiteness, particularly the wives of the chiefs.
Family ties are very strong among the Tahitians. They have great love for their children, speak to them with gentleness, never strike them, and taste nothing pleasing without offering them some of it.
The women manufacture cloth, weave mats or straw hats, and take care of the house. The men build the huts, hollow canoes, plant trees, gather fruits, and cook the victuals in underground ovens. Essentially indolent, the Tahitians generally go to bed at twilight.
177.—NATIVE OF TAHITI.
All the members of the family live huddled together in the same room, on mats spread upon the ground; chiefs, alone, reposing upon similar textures stretched on frames. The siesta is also one of their habits, and they invariably sleep for three hours after noon.
Flesh-meat, fruits, and roots constitute their usual sustenance; but the basis of their food is the fruit of the bread-tree. They venerate the cocoa-tree.
Their ordinary drink is pure water. They have an unrestrained fancy for European garments, and seek by every imaginable means to get themselves coats, hats, silk cravats, and especially shirts. But as they do not possess sufficient of our manufactures to dress themselves completely in our style, they frequently exhibit a sort of motley attire. The women when within-doors are almost naked; some pieces of cloth, skilfully arranged and half-covering their bosoms, form a kind of tunic, while their feet are bare. They have a great liking for chaplets of flowers, and bright blossoms of the Hibiscus Rosa sinensis, or China rose, adorn their foreheads. They pass through the lobe of their ears the long tube of the white and perfumed corolla of the gardenia, and protect their faces from the fiery rays of the sun with small leaves of the cocoa-tree.
The chief employment of the Tahitians is the manufacture of cloth. By very simple means they form fabrics from various barks, with which they clothe themselves in a manner as ingenious as it is comfortable. The paper-mulberry tree, the bread-tree, the Hibiscus tiliaceus, &c., are the plants of which they generally use the inner bark. They dye these stuffs with the red juice extracted from the fruit of a species of fig-tree, or in canary-yellow.
Their garments are not the only things which these people embellish in brilliant colours and with different patterns. They have a passionate love for tattooing, but, nevertheless, do not bear a single device on their faces. The parts on which they trace indelible marks are the legs, arms, thighs and breast. Everything leads to the conclusion that tattooing, which is forbidden by the missionaries under the severest penalties, was, and is doubtless still, the symbol of each individual’s functions and the emblazonment of the armorial bearings of families, for its designs are always varied.
The Tahitians of former days constructed canoes ornamented with very carefully executed emblematic carvings, but since iron tools have taken the place of their imperfect implements, they do not give signs of the same pains in adorning their workmanship. Their ancient weapons are also greatly neglected since they have acquired firearms. Heretofore, they had long spears with pointed ends, slings formed from the husk of the cocoa-nut, basalt axes of perfect shape, and files made out of the rasp-like skin of a skate.
They have a passionate love for dancing. The instrument they use for beating the measure is a drum, the cylinder of which consists of a trunk of a tree scooped very thin. The dog-skins which constitute the drum-head are stretched by ribbons of bark. They blow with the nose into a little reed flute having three holes at its open end, and one only at that which is furnished with a diaphragm, and produce deep, monotonous tones from it.
The Tahitians are hospitable, and display great civility in guiding travellers in the middle of the woods, and in their mountains. Christianity has modified their habits a little. They attend the Protestant churches because they are obliged to do so, but they have little religion. Among themselves property is sacred; that of strangers is, however, eagerly coveted.
We cannot dwell here upon the sanguinary human sacrifices which their priests formerly commanded the natives of this island to offer up, nor upon their coarse mythology. The English missionaries of the Reformed Church have long since caused these fiendish customs to disappear.
Pomotouans—The Pomotouans, who inhabit the low, flat islands known to geographers and mariners by the name of the Dangerous Archipelago, are constituted in a physical point of view like the Tahitians, to whom they bear a close resemblance, but they do not possess the benevolent character nor the affectionate manners of the latter. Their look is fierce, and the play of the features savage. They cover their bodies and faces with tattooing, the figures of which consist of lozenges and numerous circles, and their nakedness seems quite to disappear beneath the mass of these designs. As the islands they inhabit are poor in alimentary productions, they only think of repelling by force any navigators who attempt to enter into communication with them. Deriving as they do their daily sustenance from the sea, they are daring sailors and skilful fishermen. They form, from a very hard wood, javelins that are sometimes fifteen feet long, and ornament them with carvings executed with much taste; their paddles are also engraved in very graceful patterns, as well as their axes, which are cut with coral. The women wear on their throats pieces of mother-of-pearl, which are shaped round and notched at the edges, making brilliant and elegant necklaces. Our spirituous liquors are frantically sought after by the natives.
Marquesans.—The aborigines of the Marquesas are closely allied to those of the Society Islands, having similar features and a colour which presents like varieties. Cook affirmed that they excelled perhaps all the other races in the nobleness and elegance of their forms, and the regularity of their lineaments. The men are tattooed from head to foot and appear very brown, but the women, who are only lightly marked, the children, and the young people, who are not so at all, have skins as white as many Europeans. The men are in general tall, and wear the beard long and arranged in different ways. Their garments are identical with those of the Tahitians, and made from stuffs of the same materials.
Sandwichians.—The colour of this people is that of Siena clay, slightly mixed with yellow. Their hair would be magnificent if they allowed it to grow, for it is as black and shining as jet. Their manners are pleasing. They usually shave the sides of the head, allowing a tuft to grow on the top, which extends down to the nape of the neck in the form of a mane. Some, however, preserve their hair entire, and let it float in very gracefully twisted locks about their shoulders. Their eyes are lively and full of expression; their nose slightly flat and often aquiline; their mouth and lips moderately large. They have splendid teeth, and it is consequently a great pity when they extract a few on the death of a friend or benefactor. Their chests are broad, but their arms show little muscle, while the thighs and legs are sinewy enough, and their feet and hands excessively small. They all tattoo their bodies or one of their limbs with designs representing birds, fans, chequer-work, and circles of different diameters. The same superstition that deprives them of their teeth at the death of a relation or of a friend also imposes upon them the obligation of cauterizing every part of their bodies with a red-hot iron.
The women are not so well-made as the men, and their stature is small rather than tall, but their ample shoulders, and the smallness of their hands and feet, are generally admired. They have a great love for coronets of green leaves. Princesses and ladies of high rank have reserved to themselves the exclusive right of wearing flowers of vacci passed through a reed. Hardly any of them use more than one earring, but they have a passion for necklaces, and make them of flowers and fruits.
These details are derived from Jacques Arago, who published under the title, “Voyage autour du Monde,” an account of the long and remarkable journey which he made in 1817, and the three following years, on board the French corvettes, L’Uranie and La Physicienne, commanded by Freycinet.
In a letter dated from Owhyhee, as was also that from which the preceding information has been taken, the same traveller gives us the following sketch of the “palace” of the Sovereign of the Sandwich Islands, as well as of its occupants.
It was a miserable thatch hut, from twelve to fifteen feet in breadth, and about five-and-twenty or thirty feet long, with no means of entrance but a low, narrow door. A few mats were spread within, on which some half-naked colossi—generals and ministers—were lying. Two chairs were visible, destined on ceremonial days for a huge, greasy, dirty, heavy, haughty man—the king. The queen, but half-dressed, was a prey to the itch and other disgusting maladies. This tasteful and imposing interior was protected by walls of cocoa leaves and a sea-weed roof, feeble obstacles to the wind and rain.
M. de la Salle in his account of the voyage of the Bonite (1836 and 1837), states that the natives of the Sandwich Islands generally possess good constitutions; that their slender and well-formed figures are usually above middle height, but far from equalling that of the chiefs and their wives, who seem from their tall stature and excessive corpulence to have a different origin from the common people. These exalted personages appear in fact to be descended from a race of conquerors, who, having subjugated the country, established there the feudal system by which it is still oppressed. The same author adds that the Sandwichians have mild, patient dispositions, are dexterous and intelligent, and capable of bearing fatigue with ease.
Such is the state of misery in which the lower classes live, that the unfortunate wretches have scarcely what will keep them from dying of starvation. This distress is not the result of idleness alone; the ever increasing exactions of the chiefs harass and discourage the labourer.
The voyagers in the Bonite when drawing near the Sandwich Islands, could think of nothing but the pictures of them which Captain Cook has left us; of those wild, energetic, kind, simple men; those warriors in mantles of feathers; those women full of grace and voluptuousness; of whom the English explorer has given the most alluring descriptions. They were first pleased by the neat and elegant shapes of the canoes as well as by the expertness of the swimmers. They beheld the islanders as naked as in the days of Cook, without any other attire than the traditional “maro;” but these men did not now come, by way of salute, to crush their noses against those of their visitors; they were profuse of handshaking all round, in the English fashion, and affected the airs of gentlemen. Bananas, potatoes, and other fresh provisions had been brought on board by them, but when, as in olden times, they were offered necklaces, bracelets, and ear-rings, the savages no longer showed the genuine admiration and fierce eagerness which were looked for from them. After a disdainful glance thrown at the beads, they asked for clothes and iron. These men had ceased to be the artless islanders of the time of Captain Cook!
178.—NATIVE OF THE SANDWICH ISLANDS.
One of the officers of the Bonite, M. Vaillant, was invited to come on shore by a district chief, named Kapis-Lani, who happened to be a woman. Her toilet did not in the least resemble that of the natives, consisting of a white muslin robe confined at the waist by a long blue riband, a silk kerchief rolled about her neck, and a head-dress of hair fastened by two horn combs.
The former customs of the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands have been completely modified, from every point of view, by the English missionaries, who, in order to gain their object have availed themselves of the weapon heretofore so powerful in the hands of priests and of kings,—“taboo.”
Formerly, when a ship arrived, a multitude of women used to come to take it by assault, either in canoes or swimming, contending among themselves, per fas et nefas, for the bounties of the strangers: the missionaries declared the sea “tabooed” for the softer sex.
In order to restrain the laxity of morals, wives were proclaimed “tabooed” for everyone except their husbands, and unmarried girls “tabooed” for all. It was necessary to proscribe the passion for strong drinks, and consequently brandy, wine, and other liquors were struck with the same interdiction.
We should add that these reformers did not limit themselves to the moral authority of “taboo,” but supported it by the stick and hard labour on the roads.
By such means they have succeeded in altering the external and public behaviour of the natives, but not in uprooting vice among them.
We shall borrow a few features from the picture which M. Vaillant has sketched of his walk in a village of Hawaii.
Scarcely had he arrived when he heard himself called from the interior of a large cabin in which were assembled about thirty persons, who invited him to enter.
The dwelling was built of straw, and along its walls calabashes, cocoa-nuts, and a few fishing utensils were to be seen hanging in confusion.
A single apartment usually answered all purposes, but it was separated into two parts. Some mats spread upon the ground at one side indicated where the occupants slept; the ground opposite was bare, and in the latter division the hearth was placed.
The officer seated himself on the matting in the same way as his hosts, who surrounded him and overpowered him with questions. Men and women, moreover, without giving a thought to decency or the civilization introduced by the English missionaries, put themselves perfectly at their ease, and were content with the very simple attire of their forefathers; the “maro” formed the whole extravagance of their toilette.
The most apparent result of the efforts of the missionaries is that the natives of the Sandwich Islands are for the most part able to read and write. These perfectly naked savages possess a prayer-book, a treatise on arithmetic, and a bible.
Any little presents which people liked to offer them were accepted by the women with gratitude; after a few coquettish advances, in case a person pressed them closely, they uttered slowly and distinctly, the word, “taboo.”
When out-of-doors their costume consisted of a piece of cloth which they draped around them not ungracefully; but they did not appear very pretty to the eyes of the voyagers in the Bonite.
The governor of Hawaii, Kona-Keni, was a man of goodly presence and pleasing face; his height was almost gigantic and his corpulence enormous, so much so that he could scarcely support himself upon his legs. His wife received M. Vaillant. She reclined on a heap of mats forming a bed raised a foot above the ground, and was covered from head to foot in a loose gown of blue brocaded silk. Her proportions also were immense. Laid heavily on the piled-up mats her prodigious mass reminded him of a seal basking in the sun. Around the bed of the lady paramount, were ranged, squatted on mats, the numerous dames forming the court of Kona, and who were clad in loose robes of cotton stuff with coloured flowers. Their head-dresses consisted of hair only, in the American style. Two of them were provided with fly-flappers, which they waved incessantly round Kona’s head. The governor wore a straw hat, a vest and shirt of printed calico, gray trowsers, and had his neck bare.
| P. Sellier, p.t | Imp. Dupuy, 22, R. des Petits Hôtels | G. Regamey, lith. |
| ABYSSINIAN | HINDOO |
| BROWN RACE | |
Micronesian Family.
The Micronesian Family inhabits the small islands lying to the north-west of Oceania, that is to say the archipelagos of the Marianne (or Ladrone) Islands, as well as of the Caroline and Mulgrave groups, &c. According to Dumont d’Urville these tribes differ from those dwelling in the east by having a darker skin, thinner face, less widely opened eyes, more slender forms, and altogether distinct dialects, which vary from one group to another. Their manners are gentle. They do not recognize “taboo.”
We shall avail ourselves of some interesting details which Lesson has given of the Caroline islands, mentioning in the first place what he has told us concerning the Gilbert group.
A solitary canoe containing three men ventured to approach his corvette, and it was only after prolonged hesitation that these individuals made up their minds to go on board. They had lank and miserable limbs; a dark colour, and broad, coarse features; their hair was cut close by means of a shell, and neither beard nor moustache was apparent. The only covering they wore was a little round cap of plaited dry leaves of the cocoa tree, and a roughly-made mat with a hole in the middle, for the protection of the shoulders and breast. Their stomachs were bound round with twists of a rope formed from the husk of cocoa-nuts.
Lesson and his companions were the first Europeans whom the natives of the island of Oualan had seen. They made a ring round the voyagers, touched them with their hands, and overwhelmed them with questions. This race is generally of low stature. The men have high and narrow foreheads, thick eyebrows, small oblique eyes, broad noses, large mouths, white teeth, and bright red gums. Their black unfrizzled hair is long, and their beard far from abundant. They possess rounded and well-formed limbs, and a hard, light bronze-coloured skin. They are spiritless and effeminate.
The women and young girls have agreeable countenances, their black eyes being full of fire, and their mouths furnished with superb teeth; but their figures are badly formed, and they have hips of immoderate size. They go about in almost complete nudity. Both sexes have a habit of making a large hole in the right ear, for the purpose of placing in it everything that people give them, and sometimes articles very unfit for earrings, such as bottles. Girls usually fill it with bouquets of pancratium, a plant of the amaryllis family, and often detach a few of these sweet-smelling flowers, and try to put them into a traveller’s ears, while smiling graciously. The men also wear chaplets of brilliant flowers or arum stalks.
These aborigines do not make use of any kind of garments as a protection against the frequent rains of their climate, but they shield their heads from the sun with a broad arum leaf.
The chiefs seem to try not to expose themselves so much to the influences of the heat, and are whiter and better made than the other islanders. The patterns of their tattooing are their sole mark of distinction; they fasten feathers, however, in the knot which confines their hair, and whenever persons give them nails they stick them around their forehead, arranging them regularly like a diadem. The women appeared chaste; nay more, the men were anxious to keep them out of the strangers’ sight, a feeling all the more remarkable because quite at variance with the usual habits of the South Sea Islanders.
Oualan was governed at that time by one chief only, whom the people encompassed with extraordinary reverence, never pronouncing his name without veneration.
The prerogatives of the chiefs appear to rest upon religious ideas. They differ in general from the people by an erect carriage, a more imposing and solemn manner, as well as by the better executed tattooing which indicates their rank. A great many chiefs rule in the districts of the island, and appear to hold absolute rights over property, and, it may be, over persons.
As regards industry, the only manufactures for which the natives of Oualan are remarkable are cloth and canoes. They draw threads from the leaves or the stems of the wild banana tree (Musa textilis), which they know how to dye in red, yellow, or black, and with which they make stuffs that are not greatly inferior to European textures.
They build their boats with hatchets formed of stone or shell, and notwithstanding the imperfection of these implements, give to their work a finish of finical nicety. The body of the canoe is hollowed from a single tree, sometimes a very big one. They polish the wood with trachyte, or by means of large rasps made from the skin of the sea-devil. These little vessels are propelled by oars, without either sails or masts.
Lesson, in alluding to the people of the Mac-Askill Islands, who bear the closest analogy to the inhabitants of Oualan both in physical characteristics and the state of their industry, remarks on the taste which some savages display for flowers as an adornment of the person. There were young females in these islands who wore on their heads crowns of Ixora, the corollas of which are a brilliant crimson; a few had passed through the holes in their ears leaves of flowers exhaling the fragrant odour of violets, and white blossoms were twined in the hair of others. These ornaments, adds the learned traveller, possessed a charm more easy to feel than to express.
[THE RED RACE.]
This race is sometimes designated as the American, because in the fifteenth century it formed in itself alone almost the whole population of the two Americas. But Europeans, and especially the English of the United States, constitute, at present, the greatest part of the inhabitants of America. They have to a certain extent monopolised the name of “Americans,” so much so that people generally call the nations of the Red Race Indians, a title which was given to them by the Spaniards, in the time of Christopher Columbus, in consequence of that strange mistake of the great Genoese navigator, who discovered the New World without knowing it, that is to say, while imagining that he had simply found a new passage by which to reach the “Great Indies,” in Asia.
The denomination of Red Race is, besides, a defective one, in so much that several tribes ranked in this group have no shade of red in their colour. This division is, in fine, rather imperfect from an ethnological point of view, but it possesses the advantage of fixing geographically the habitat of the nations included in it.
The American Indians approach closely to the Yellow Race belonging to Asia, in their hair, which is generally black, rough, and coarse, in the scarceness of their beard, and in their complexion, which varies from yellow to a red copper colour. Among one portion of them the very prominent nose and large open eyes recall to mind the White Race. Their forehead is extremely retreating, but no other race have the back part of the head more developed, or broader eye-sockets. Though usually hospitable and generous, they are cruel and implacable in their resentments, and make war for the most frivolous causes. Two of these nations, the primitive Mexicans and Peruvians, had formerly founded wide empires, and had attained a somewhat advanced civilization, though lower than that of Europeans of the same epoch. But these monarchies having been swept away by their Spanish conquerors, progress was checked. The Indians who escaped the destruction of their race, and submitted to the victors, are now no better than husbandmen or artisans, while as for those that remained independent, they wander in the woods and the prairies, and are the last representatives of man in the savage or semi-savage state. They live in the forests and savannahs, on the produce of their hunting and fishing; their wives are kept by them in a state of the greatest abjectness, and are loaded with the heaviest labour; while certain tribes still continue to offer human sacrifices to their idols.
A fact which deserves notice is, that the Indians who were already settled and who were husbandmen when the Spaniards arrived, speedily submitted to the strangers, but never has it been found possible to tame those who have shown themselves, from the fifteenth century to this day, rebels to foreign influence, and who have preferred to become masters of the forest solitudes rather than accept the yoke and customs of the Europeans. Moreover, the number and population of the wild tribes of the two Americas diminish every year, especially in the north, a result attributable to their continual wars, the ravages of the small-pox, and, above all, to the fatal passion of these savage nations for brandy.
Anthropologists have taken great trouble to discover the real origin of the Indians of America, and to establish their affinity with the other human families, but up to the present their studies have led to no satisfactory result. The Indians cannot be accurately brought into connection with either the White, Yellow, or Brown Race; nor on the other hand can the mingling of these three groups be explained, nor the American Indian be recognized as a determinate original type.
The great differences, both in the shape of the skull and the colour of the skin, which are known to exist among the Indian tribes, proclaim numerous crossings. Many circumstances prove that in very remote times some Europeans made their way into America by the north, and that they found there one or many native races, whom they partially overcame, and with whom they are mingled to the present day. The degree of civilization that had been reached by the Mexicans and Peruvians of old, when Columbus landed in the New World; the American tradition which holds that the founders of their empires were foreigners; the existence on the Northern continent of ruins announcing a state of things at least as far advanced as that of the Nahuath and the Quichuas, (the former Mexicans and Peruvians); such are the facts which establish that a blending formerly took place between the primitive Indians and Northern Europeans.
The shape of the body peculiar to the Indians of the north-east, has equally led to the supposition that they reckon some Europeans among their ancestors, an idea which appears all the more admissible, because in the tenth century the ancient Scandinavians undoubtedly had relations with America.
Consequently, the original race which has peopled the Western Hemisphere is almost impossible to be traced. Probably the population which existed in the New World before the arrival of the Europeans was made up of several types different from those that are extant at present in the other regions of the globe, types having a great tendency to modify themselves, and which were obliterated whenever they came in contact with the races of Europe. But to re-ascend back to this primordial population would now be impossible.
In commenting on the tribes of the Red Race, we shall separate the Indians who inhabit North America from those dwelling in the southern continent, for certain characteristics mark these two groups; in other words, we shall distinguish in the Red Race two divisions—the southern branch and the northern branch.
CHAPTER I.
SOUTHERN BRANCH.
The nations of the southern branch of the Red Race have affinity to those of the Yellow Race. Their complexion, which is often yellowish or olive, is never so red as that of the northern Indians; their head is usually of less length and their nose not so prominent, while they frequently have oblique eyes.
We intend to divide this branch into three families, named respectively the Andian, Pampean, and Guarani.
Andian Family.
This family contains three different peoples:—firstly, the Quichuas; secondly, the Antis Indians; and thirdly, the Araucanians.
The characteristics which the tribes belonging to this group possess in common are an olive-brown complexion, small stature, low retiring forehead, and horizontal eyes, which are not drawn down at the outer angle. They inhabit the western parts of Bolivia, Peru, and the State of Quito. These countries were completely subjugated by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, and the natives converted to Christianity.
We shall notice in the first division, Quichuas or ancient Incas, the Aymaras, the Atacamas, and the Changos.
Quichuas or Incas.—The Quichuas were the principal people of the ancient empire of the Incas, and they still constitute almost half the free Indian population of South America. In the fifteenth century the Incas were the dominant race among the nations of Peru, speaking a language of their own, called Quichu.
The former Incas, those who lived before the Spanish invasion, were possessed of a certain degree of civilization. They had calculated exactly the length of the solar year, had made rather considerable progress in the art of sculpture, preserved memorials of their history by means of hieroglyphics, and enjoyed a well-organized government and a code of good laws. Orators, poets, and musicians were to be found among them, and their figurative melodious language denoted prolonged culture. Their religion was impressed to the highest degree with a devotional character. They recognized a God, the supreme arbiter and creator of all things. This divinity was the sun, and superb temples were raised by them to its honour. Their religion and their manners breathed great sweetness. The fierce Spanish conquerors encountered this mild, inoffensive race, and never rested until they had annihilated with fire and sword these unsophisticated, peaceable men, who were of more worth than their cruel invaders.
179.—HUASCAR, THIRTEENTH EMPEROR OF THE INCAS.
[Figs. 179] and [180] represent types of Incas drawn from the genealogical tree of the imperial family, which was published in the “Tour du Monde,” in 1863.
According to Alcide d’Orbigny, the naturalist, who has given a perfect description of this race, the Quichuas are not copper-coloured, but of a mixed shade, between brown and olive; their average height is not more than five feet two inches, that of the females being still lower. They have broad, square shoulders, and an excessively full chest, very prominent, and very long. Their hands and feet are small. The cranium and features of this people are strongly characteristic, constituting a perfectly distinct type, which bears no resemblance to any but the Mexican. The head is oblong from front to back, and a little compressed at the sides; the forehead slightly rounded, low, and somewhat retreating; yet the skull is often capacious, and denotes a rather large development of the brain. The face is generally broad; the nose always prominent, somewhat long, and so extremely aquiline, as to seem as if the end were bent over the upper lip, and pierced by wide very open nostrils. The size of the mouth is large rather than moderate, and the lips protrude, although they are not thick. The teeth are invariably handsome, and remain good during old age. Without being receding, the chin is a little short; indeed it is sometimes slightly projecting. The eyes are of moderate size and frequently even small, always horizontal, and never either drawn down or up at their outer angle. The eyebrows are greatly arched, narrow, and thin. The colour of the hair is always a fine black, and it is coarse, thick, long, and extremely smooth and straight, and comes down very low at each side of the forehead. The beard is limited to a few straight and scattered hairs, which appear very late across the upper lip, at the sides of the mouth, and on the point of the chin. The countenance of these men is regular, serious, thoughtful, and even sad, and it might be said that they wish to conceal their thoughts beneath the still, set look of their features. A pretty face is seldom seen among the women.
180.—COYA CAHUANA, EMPRESS OF THE INCAS.
An ancient vase has been found on which is a painting of an Inca, who is in every way so entirely like those of the present day as to prove that during four or five centuries the lineaments of these people have not undergone any perceptible alteration.
The Aymaras bear a close resemblance, so far as physical characteristics are concerned, to the Quichuas, from whom, however, they are completely separated by language.
They formed a numerous nation, spread over a wide expanse of country, and appear to have been civilized in very remote times. We may consider the Aymaras as the descendants of that ancient race which, in far-off ages, inhabited the lofty plains now covered by the singular monuments of Tiagnanaco, the oldest city of South America, and which peopled the borders of Lake Titicaca.
The Aymaras resemble the Quichuas in the most remarkable feature of their organization, namely the length and breadth of the chest, which, by allowing the lungs to attain a great development, renders these tribes particularly suited for living on high mountains. In the shape of the head and the intellectual faculties, as well as in manners, customs, and industry, both peoples may be compared, but the architecture of the monuments and tombs of the former race diverges widely from that of the Incas.
Two nations inferior in numbers to those of which we have just spoken, may be mentioned here; they are the Atacamas, occupying the western declivities of the Peruvian Andes, and the Changos, dwelling on the slopes next the Pacific. Both one and the other are like the Incas in physical characteristics, but the colour of the skin of the Changos is of a slightly darker hue, being a blackish bistre.
Antis.—The Antis Indians comprise many tribes, namely, the Yuracares, Mocéténès, Tacanas, Maropas, and Apolistas, races which inhabit the Bolivian Andes. Their complexion is lighter than that of the Incas, they have not such bulky bodies, and their features are more effeminate.
The account which M. Paul Marcoy has given in the “Tour du Monde” of his travels across South America from the shores of the Pacific to those of the Atlantic, is accompanied by several sketches representing Antis Indians and some wandering hordes which belong to the same group; and we have reproduced a few of these drawings in our pages, the first two ([figs. 181] and [182]) being types of the heads of these people. We also derive from the same source the following details as to this race.
The Antis is of medium stature and well-proportioned, with rounded limbs. He paints his cheeks and the part round his eyes with a red dye, extracted from the rocou plant, and also colours those parts of his body exposed to the air with the black of genipa. His covering consists of a long, sack-shaped frock, woven by the women, as is also the wallet, in the shape of a hand bag, carried by him across his shoulder, and containing his toilet articles, namely:—a comb made with the thorns of the Chouta palm; some rocou in paste; half a genipa apple; a bit of looking-glass framed in wood; a ball of thread; a scrap of wax; pincers for extracting hairs, formed of two mussel-shells; a snuff-box made from a snail’s shell, and containing very finely ground tobacco gathered green; an apparatus for grating the snuff, made of the ends of reeds or two arm bones of a monkey, soldered together with black wax at an acute angle; sometimes, a knife, scissors, fish-hooks, and needles of European manufacture.
181.—AN ANTIS INDIAN.
Both sexes wear their hair hanging down like a horse’s tail, and cut straight across just over the eyes. The only trinket they carry is a piece of silver money flattened between two stones, which they pierce with a hole and hang from the cartilage of their nostrils. For ornaments they have necklaces of glass beads, cedar and styrax berries, skins of birds of brilliant plumage, tucana’s beaks, tapir’s claws, and even vanilla husks strung upon a thread.
182.—AN ANTIS INDIAN.
The Antis almost always build their dwellings on the banks of a water-course, isolated and half hidden by a screen of vegetation. The huts are low and dirty, and pervaded by a smell like that of wild beasts, for the air can scarcely circulate in them. In the fine season of the year sheds take the place of closed-up huts ([fig. 183]).
The weapons used by the Antis are clubs and bows and arrows. Fishermen capture their prey in the running streams with arrows barbed at the ends, or having three prongs like a trident. Other darts, with palm-points or bamboo-heads, are employed by the hunter for birds and quadrupeds.
The Antis occasionally poison the waters of the creeks and bays by means of the Menispermum cocculus. The fish become instantaneously intoxicated; they first struggle, then rise belly uppermost, and come floating on the surface, where they are easily taken with the hand ([fig. 184]).
The earthenware of this people is coarsely manufactured, and is painted and glazed. They live in families, or in separate couples, and have no law beyond their own caprice. They do not elect chiefs, except in time of war, and to lead them against an enemy. The girls are marriageable at twelve years of age, and accept any husband who seeks them, if he has previously made some present to their parents. They prepare their lord and master’s food, weave his clothes, look after and gather in the crops of rice, manioc, maize, and other cereals; carry his baggage on a journey, follow him to battle, and pick up the arrows which he has discharged; they also accompany him in the chase or when fishing, paddle his canoe, and bring back to their dwelling the booty gained from an enemy, and the game or fish which has been killed; and yet, notwithstanding this severe work and continual bondage, the women are always cheerful.
183.—SUMMER SHED OF THE ANTIS.
They use a large earthen vessel to cook the fish caught in the nearest stream, or the game killed in the adjoining forest.
184.—ANTIS INDIANS FISHING.
When one of this nation dies, his relatives and friends assemble in his abode, seize the corpse (which is wrapped in the loose sack-like frock usually worn,) by the head and feet, and throw it into the river. They then wreck the dwelling, break the deceased’s bow, arrows, and pottery, scatter the ashes of his hearth, devastate his crops, cut down to the ground the trees which he has planted, and finally set fire to his hut. The place is thenceforth reputed impure, and is shunned by all passers-by; vegetation very soon reasserts its sway, and the dead is for ever effaced from the memory of the living.
185.—PERUVIAN INTERPRETER.
These people who thus treat their dead so badly, profess an equal disdain for the aged, for whom they reserve the refuse of their food, their worn-out rags, and the worst place at the hearth.
Their religion is a jumble of theogonies, in which however are recognizable a notion of the existence of a supreme God, the idea of the two principles of good and evil, and finally, a belief in reward or punishment on leaving this life.
The manners of these tribes are, as may be seen, a somewhat singular medley; free will is the ruling law and, as it were, the wisdom of their race, which lives unfettered in the bosom of nature.
The Antis Indians have a soft smooth idiom, which they speak with extreme volubility in a low, gentle tone that never varies.
Araucanians.—These tribes spread themselves over the western slopes of the Andes, from 30 degrees south latitude to the extremity of Tierra del Fuego, and also occupy the upper valleys and plains situate to the east of the Cordilleras.
The Araucanians constitute two nations, namely, the people who properly bear that name, indomitable warriors, whose heroism is celebrated in the history of the Spanish conquest of Peru: and the Pecherays, who inhabit the most southern link of the American mountain chain.
According to A. d’Orbigny, both these races present a great similitude as regards their physical characteristics, which consist of a head that is large in proportion to the body, a round face, prominent cheekbones, a broad mouth, thick lips, a short, flat nose, wide nostrils, a narrow retiring forehead, horizontal eyes, and a thin beard.
[Fig. 186] is a representation, after Pritchard, of one of those Araucanian Indians who may be considered as forming the least barbarous of the independent native tribes of South America.
These people do not, in fact, lead the nomadic existence of Indians. Being protected by thick forests from the attacks and invasions of the Americans, they build what are real houses with wood and iron, and their customs denote a rudimentary civilization.
A Périgueux attorney has rendered the Araucanian nation celebrated in France. He had succeeded in getting himself chosen as its king, and when chased away by the Peruvians came to relate his Odyssey in Europe, returning afterwards to reconquer his unstable throne. Orélie, the First of the name, has according to rumour recovered at present his lofty position among the Indians of Araucania. We wish him a tranquil reign.
186.—ARAUCANIAN.
The Pecherays inhabit the coast of Tierra del Fuego and both shores of the Straits of Magellan. The life they lead and the ice covering all the interior of the hilly country they occupy, force them to remain exclusively on the borders of the sea.
Their colour is olive or tawny; they are well built but of clumsy figure, and their legs bowed, from continually sitting cross-legged, give them an unsteady gait. Their pleasant natural smile gives indication of an obliging disposition.
Being essentially nomadic, they do not form themselves into communities, but move about in small numbers, by groups of two or three families, living by hunting and fishing, and changing their resting-place as soon as they have exhausted the animals and shell-fish of the neighbourhood. Dwelling in a region which is split up into a multitude of islands, they have become navigators, and continually traverse every shore of Tierra del Fuego as well as of the countries situated to the east of the strait. They build large boats, twelve to fifteen feet long and three feet broad, from the bark of trees, with no other implements than shells or hatchets made of flint.
187.—PECHERAY HUTS.
Their huts ([fig. 187]) are covered over with earth or sealskins and some fine morning the whole family will abandon them and take to their canoes with their numerous dogs. The women ply their oars, while the men hold themselves in readiness to pierce any fish they perceive, with a dart pointed by a sharpened stone. When in this way they arrive at another island, the women, having placed their little vessel in safety, start in search of shell-fish and the men go hunting with the sling or the bow. A short stay is followed by a fresh departure.
These poor people are thus incessantly exposed to the dangers of the sea and the inclemency of the seasons, and yet they are, it may be said, without clothing. The men’s shoulders are barely covered with a scrap of sealskin, whilst the whole apparel of the women consists in a little apron of the same material.
Notwithstanding this rude existence, the Pecherays display some coquetry. They load their necks, arms, and legs with gewgaws and shells, and paint their bodies, and oftener their faces, with different designs in red, white, and black. The men occasionally ornament their heads with bunches of feathers. All wear a kind of boot made of sealskin.
Like all other tribes who subsist by hunting, the Pecherays have among themselves frequent quarrels, and even petty wars, that last only a short time but are continually renewed.
They share their food with their faithful companions, the dogs; it consists of cooked or raw shell-fish, birds, fish, and seals, and they eat the fat of the latter raw. They do not, like the inhabitants of the North Pole, pass the most rigorous period of the winter underground, but pursue their labours in the open air, protecting themselves as best they can against the cold which prevails on these shores, notwithstanding the deceitful name of Tierra del Fuego. This “Land of Fire,” by reason of its proximity to the South Pole, is, during the greater part of the year, a region of ice.
The women are subjected to the roughest labours. They row, fish, build the cabins, and plunge into the sea, even during the most intense cold, in their search for the shell-fish attached to the rocks.
The language of the Pecherays resembles that of the Patagonians and the Puelches in sound, and that of the Araucanians in form. Their weapons and their religion, as well as the paintings on their faces, are also those of these three neighbouring nations.
Pampean Family.
The rather numerous tribes of South America who compose this family are frequently of tall stature, with arched and prominent foreheads overhanging horizontal eyes which are sometimes contracted at the outer angle. They inhabit the immense plains or Pampas, situated at the foot of the eastern slope of the Andes. They rear great numbers of horses, and consequently the men, like the tribes who roam over the steppes of Asia, are nearly always mounted.
The peoples comprised in this family are: the Patagonians, properly so called; the Puelches, or the tribes of the Pampas to the south of the La Plata river; the Charruas, in the vicinity of Uruguay; the Tobas, Lenguas, and Machicuys, who occupy the greater part of Chaco; the Moxos, the Chiquitos, and the Mataguayos; and finally the famous Abipones; the centaurs of the New World. We can only speak of some of these groups.
Patagonians.—Under this name we include, besides the Patagonians proper, several other nomadic races resembling them, who are found, some to the north, and others to the south, of the La Plata. The latter wander over the pampas which stretch from that river as far as the Straits of Magellan; while the northern tribes, who bear a physical resemblance to the genuine Patagonians, inhabit that portion of the country comprised between the Paraguay river and the last spurs of the Cordilleras, and which stretches northward as far as the twentieth degree of latitude, including the inland plains of the province of Chaco.
The Patagonians are the nomads of the New World. They furnish the horsemen who scour its vast arid tracts, living under tents of skins, or who hide in its forests, in huts covered with bark and thatch. Haughty and unconquered warriors, they despise agriculture and the arts of civilization, and have always resisted the Spanish arms.
These savages have darker skins than most of those in South America. Their complexion is an olive-brown; and among the men composing them we find the tallest stature as well as the most athletic and robust frames. The tribes dwelling furthest south are the tallest, and the height of the others diminishes as the Chaco region is approached.
As has been stated in the introduction to this work, the stature of this people has been heretofore greatly exaggerated. M. Alcide d’Orbigny, who resided for seven months among many distinct divisions of the Patagonians, measured several individuals in each. He assures us that the tallest of all was only five feet eleven inches in height, and that the average is not above five feet four.
M. Victor de Rochas, in the account he has given of his voyage to Magellan’s Straits, has proved in a similar manner that the stature of the Patagonians is by no means extraordinary. He found them possessed of a brown complexion; coarse straight black hair, little beard; serious countenances—those of the men being manly and haughty, and the women’s mild and good—and regular but coarse features. The hands and feet of the females were small.
Broad, robust bodies, stout limbs, and vigorous constitutions characterise all the tribes in question, the women as well as the men. The Patagonians proper have large heads and wide flat faces with prominent cheek-bones.
Among the nations of Chaco, which we shall speak of further on, the eyes are small, horizontal, and sometimes slightly contracted at the outer corner; the nose is short, flat and broad, with open nostrils; the mouth big, the chin short, and the lips thick and prominent; they have arched eyebrows, little beard, long straight black hair, and gloomy countenances, frequently of ferocious aspect.
Though the languages of these races are essentially distinct, they have a certain analogy between themselves; all are harsh, guttural, and difficult of pronunciation.
The details which follow are derived from the narrative of a traveller, M. Guinard, who spent three years in captivity among the Patagonians. Fate threw him into the hands of the tribe of the Poyuches, who wander along the southern bank of the Rio Negro, from the neighbourhood of Pacheco Island.
Whether these nomadic Indians live in the vicinity of the Spanish Americans or in the solitudes of Patagonia, beneath the outlying woody spurs of the Cordilleras, or on the bare, wild soil of the Pampas, they lead identically the same life. Their occupations are the chase, tending their domestic animals, horsemanship, and the use of the lance, the sling, and the lasso.
Their dwellings consist of hide tents, carried by these savages from place to place in their migrations. Their costume is composed of a piece of some sort of stuff with a hole in the middle to pass the head through, and their waist is girt by another fragment of smaller size. A cloth rag is tied round their head, separating the hair in front, and allowing it to fall in long waves over the shoulders. They carefully pluck the hair from every part of their bodies, without even sparing the eyebrows. Their faces are painted with volcanic earths which the Araucanians bring them, the colours varying according to taste, but red, blue, black, and white have the preference. The women wear a frock with holes for their heads, arms, and legs; they pull out their hair and eyebrows like the men, and paint their faces, the strange and hard expression of which is enhanced by ornaments of coarse beads. Bracelets and square ear-rings complete their toilette. They can throw the lance and the lasso with as much ease as the men, and ride on horseback like them. M. Guinard learned how to manage the horses and use the weapons of this people, for they made him join in their nandu and guanaco hunts.
188.—PATAGONIAN.
The chief occupation of these Indians is, in fact, the chase, and they devote themselves to it all through the year. The Chen-elches, one of the Patagonian tribes, who have no horses, pursue their game on foot.
189.—A PATAGONIAN HORSE SACRIFICE.
On their return from hunting the Patagonians abandon themselves to gambling and debauchery. They cheat at play and become intoxicated to madness, when they fight among themselves with fury. Two religious festivals are observed by them during the year, on which occasions they dance and indulge in fantastic cavalcades.
A custom of piercing their children’s ears exists among these people, and the ceremony which then takes place is analogous to that of baptism. The child is laid on a horse, which has been thrown down by the chief of the family or tribe, and a hole is solemnly bored through the little lobe of his ear.
Let us add that the existence of a new-born infant is submitted to the consideration of the father and mother, who decide upon its life or death. Should they think fit to get rid of it, it is smothered, and its body carried a short distance, and then abandoned to wild dogs and birds of prey. If the poor little one is judged worthy to live, its mother nurses it until it is three years old, and at four years of age its ears are solemnly pierced, as described above.
The Patagonians in their religious ceremonials, sacrifice to the Deity a young horse and an ox given by the richest among them. When these animals have been thrown on the ground, with their heads turned towards the east, a man rips open the victim ([fig. 189]), tears out the heart and sticks it, still palpitating, on the end of a spear. The eager and curious crowd, with eyes fixed on the blood flowing from the gash, draw auguries, which are almost always to their own advantage, and then retire to their abodes, under the belief that God will favour their undertakings.
Marriage among these nations is a traffic, a barter of various articles and animals for a wife. The woman, moreover, is burdened with work, whilst the man takes his ease, whenever he is not hunting or engaged in minding the cattle.
The Patagonian who dies in his own home is buried with pomp. His body, covered with his handsomest ornaments, and with his weapons laid beside it, is stretched on a winding-sheet of skins. They then wrap it in these skins and tie it on the back of his favourite horse, whose left leg they break. All the women of the tribe join the wives of the deceased and utter piercing shrieks. The men, having painted their hands and faces black, escort the body as far as the place of burial, where horses and sheep are sacrificed to serve as food for the dead during his journey into the next world.
Tobas, Lenguas, and Machicuys.—These three tribes, which must, as we have said, be included in the Pampean family, are termed collectively the Indians of the Grand Chaco, or Great Desert. It will not be uninteresting, in order to give an example of the customs of the wild South American races, to quote here some pages in which an account of his visit to the Grand Chaco nations is related by Dr. Demersay in his travels in Paraguay.
“Reduced at the present day to very small numbers and, indeed, almost extinct, the remnant of the Lengua nation,” says Dr. Demersay, “lives to the north of the river Pilcomayo, in union and amalgamated with the Emmages and Machicuys, within a short distance of the Quartel. Their actual enemies are the Tobas, who are allied to the Pitiligas, Chunipis and Aguilots, and who constitute a numerous horde on the other side of the Pilcomayo.
“The remnants of the Lenguas are more especially joined and mingled with the Machicuys: in fact, they no longer form more than a dozen families, and the Mascoyian cacique is theirs as well.
“There are payes or doctors, among the Lenguas, who administer nothing to a sick person beyond water or fruit, and who practise suction with the mouth for wounds and sore places. They interlard this operation with juggleries and songs, accompanied by gourds (porongos), shaken in the invalid’s ears. These porongos are filled with little stones, and make a deafening clatter. The payes are also sorcerers, and read the future as well as heal the sick.
“Some girls, but the custom is not general, tattoo themselves in an indelible way at the age of puberty, an event which is always marked by rejoicing. This festival consists of a family gathering, during which the men intoxicate themselves with brandy, if they can obtain some by barter, or with a fermented liquor (chicha) extracted from the fruit of the algarobo.
“The tattooing of the women consists of four narrow and parallel blue lines, which descend from the top of the forehead to the end of the nose, but are not continued on the upper lip, as well as of irregular rings traced on the cheeks and chin as far as the temples.
190.—A BOLIVIAN CHIEF.
“Both sexes pierce their ears when extremely young, and pass through them a bit of wood, the width of which they keep incessantly increasing, so that towards forty years of age the holes are of enormous dimensions. I measured several of these orifices, and found their average length to be two inches and a half, whilst their diameter was somewhat less considerable. The pieces of wood are solid, irregularly rounded, and about an inch and three-quarters in thickness at their widest part. The Lenguas often replace them by a long fragment of the bark of a tree, rolled spirally like a wire spring. This ear-ring is called a barbote.
“The Lenguas comb their hair, which they cut at the top of the forehead, forming a lock which is drawn backwards, passing over the left ear, until it falls into the mass collected and tied behind with a riband or a woollen string. This body of hair, which is always black, straight, and generally very fine and even silky, then falls between the shoulders. The women do not always dress their hair in this way; I saw many who allowed it to hang in loose disorder. Moreover, though they may sometimes comb it, no one can say that these people take care of their hair; their extreme filthiness argues to the contrary, for nothing can possibly be seen dirtier than this nation, which in this respect closely resembles the others.
“The weapons of the Lenguas consist of a bow and arrows, which they carry behind their backs bound up in a hide; they have also an axe, called by them achagy, borne in a similar manner. They carry in their hand a mahana, or staff, made of hard, heavy wood; and to these is also added a spear tipped with iron, and they sometimes have the bolas and the lasso. They are excellent horsemen, riding barebacked with their wife and children, all on the same animal, and all, women and men, sitting in the same way. They use no bit, contenting themselves with a piece of stick; they make reins from the fibres of the caraguata.
“Their olive brown colour, darker than that of the Tobas, their prominent cheek-bones, small eyes, broad flat faces, slightly depressed noses, wide mouths, and large lips, give to the countenance of these savages a peculiar look which is not a little enhanced by a pair of ears that come down to the base of the neck, and with some individuals as far as the collar bone. The Lenguas, like all Indians, become hideous as they grow old.
“A few weeks had passed since my excursion in this direction, when, as I was returning to Assumption from a fresh journey into the interior of the country, I heard that the Quartel had been the object of a completely unforeseen attack on the part of the Chaco tribes, and that, after an encounter in which two Indians had lost their lives, the troops had been able to recover the stolen cattle and to take some prisoners, who were immediately sent on to the capital, where they were confided to the keeping of the guard at the cavalry barrack near the arsenal and port. A more favourable opportunity could not have offered for continuing and completing my ethnological studies, so the next day I hastened to the building.
“On arriving there I found a dozen Indians loaded with irons, seated here and there in the centre of a narrow court. They were covered with dirty European garments, in tattered ponchos, or draped in antique fashion with wretched blankets. Two boys, one eight and the other fifteen years old, were among the prisoners, and all seemed sad and dejected. They preserved a profound silence, which I had some trouble to make them break.
“Side by side with the Lenguas, whom I had seen at the Quartel, there were some Tobas and Machicuys; but although known to the first, my interpreter questioned them in vain as to the motive of their attack.
“The Tobas are generally of tall and erect stature. I measured three of them, and found their height to be respectively, 5 feet 101⁄4 inches, 5 feet 81⁄2 inches, and 5 feet 61⁄4 inches. Their muscular system is developed, and their well-formed limbs, like those of all the other nations of the Chaco, are terminated by hands and feet which would cause envy to an European.
“They have an ordinary forehead, which is not retreating; lively eyes, larger than those of the Lenguas, and narrow thin eyebrows. The iris is black, and they do not pluck out their eyelashes. Their long regular nose is rounded at the end, where it becomes slightly enlarged, and their mouth, which is a little turned up at the angles, is better proportioned and smaller than that of the Lenguas, and is furnished with fine teeth, which are preserved to a very advanced age. They are also without prominent cheek-bones, and their faces are not so broad as that of the other nation.
191.—A BOAT ON THE RIO NEGRO.
“The Tobas seem to have renounced the use of the barbote, which at the time of Azara they still wore, and none of them had any scar on the lower lip. Their ears were not pierced. They allow their hair to grow, letting it float freely without being tied; a few, however, cut it straight across the forehead, a habit which is even practised by some of the women.
“The colour of their skin is an olive brown, not so dark as that of the Lenguas, and contains no yellow tint; but I confess to the great difficulty there is in expressing shades so varied in hue.
“Nothing could draw the prisoners from their taciturnity; their countenances remained impassive, cold, and serious during all our questioning. A winning smile and interesting face are attributed by some travellers to the women while still young; but their features deteriorate at an early age, and, like the men, they grow into repulsive ugliness. Their breasts, which are of moderate size and well formed at first, lengthen to such an extent as to enable them to suckle the children carried on their backs.
“The Toba nation occupies, or, to speak more accurately, overruns a considerable extent of the Chaco plains. We meet its members on the banks of the Pilcomayo, from its mouth to the first spurs of the Andes, where they come in contact with the Chiriguanos, with whom they are often at war.
“Being usually nomadic, the Tobas occupy themselves in fishing and hunting; their weapons consist of arrows, makanas, long spears with iron points, and the bolas. Some of their tribes, more settled in their habits, add the produce of agriculture to that of the chase, by cultivating maize, manioc, and potatoes.
“The children of both sexes wear no covering; men and women roll a piece of cloth round their loins, or envelope themselves in a cloak made from the skins of wild animals. Necklaces and bracelets of glass beads or small shells form the ornaments of the females, while in some tribes the men twine round their bodies long white rows of beads, composed of little fragments of shells rounded like buttons, and strung together at regular intervals.”
Machicuys.—Dr. Demersay does not share the opinion expressed by M. d’Orbigny that the Machicuys may be nothing more than a tribe of the Tobas, whose language they perhaps speak. According to the first-named traveller, the tongues of the two nations are different, and other distinctions separate them.
“The Machicuys,” says Dr. Demersay, “are more sedentary in their habits, are greater tillers of the soil, and are endowed with less fierce manners than the Lenguas, but they resemble them in the extraordinary dimensions of the lobe of the ears as well as in their weapons and method of fighting. Azara says that they differ in the shape of their barbote, which is said to resemble that of the Charruas. To reiterate an observation we have already made, we say that none of the Machicuys we have seen showed any marks of the opening intended for the reception of this savage ornament, which they are abandoning, after the example of the Brazilian Botocudos, whilst certain tribes of the ancient continent religiously preserve it. In the same way the Berrys, a black nation on the borders of the Saubat, a tributary on the right bank of the Nile, pierce their lower lip, in order to insert a piece of crystal more than an inch long.
“In height, formation, and proportions the Machicuys are similar to the Lenguas, and like them they have small eyes, broad faces, large mouths, flat noses, and wide nostrils. Their hair is allowed to hang loosely, and its thick curls partly cover their faces and fall on their shoulders.
“The language of these nations, like that of all the Indians of the Chaco, is strongly accentuated and full of sounds that require an effort to be forced from the nose and throat; it contains double consonants extremely difficult to pronounce.”
Moxos and Chiquitos.—The interior and, to some extent, central regions of South America lying north of the Chaco, have been called by the Spaniards the “Provinces of the Moxos and Chiquitos,” from the names of the two principal families of Indian race living in these countries.
The Moxos inhabit vast plains, subject to frequent inundations and overrun by immense streams, on which they are constantly obliged to navigate in their boats. They are the ichthyophagists of the river districts of the interior.
The land of the Chiquitos is a succession of mountains inconsiderable in height, covered with forests and intersected by numerous small rivers. They are husbandmen and have fixed abodes.
192.—EXAMINADOR OF CHILI.
The Chiquitos live in clans, each of which has its own little village. The men go about naked, but the women wear a flowing garment, which they like to ornament. These Indians are gifted with a happy disposition and amiable manners; they are sociable, hospitable, inclined to gaiety, and passionately fond of dancing and music. They have become permanently converted to Christianity. Their physical characteristics include a large and spherical head, almost always circular, a round, full face, prominent cheekbones, a low, arched forehead, a short nose, slightly flattened and with narrow nostrils, small horizontal eyes, full of expression and vivacity, thin lips, fine teeth, a mediocre mouth, little beard, and long black, glossy hair, which does not whiten in extreme old age, but grows yellow.
The manners of the Moxos are strongly analogous to those of the Chiquitos. Their colour is an olive brown, and their stature of the average height. They have not very vigorous limbs, their nose is short and not very broad, their mouth of medium size, their lips and cheekbones but little prominent; their face is oval or round, and their countenances mild and rather merry. This race dwells on the confines of Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil.
Before the conquest these tribes were established on the banks of the rivers and lakes. They were fishers, hunters, and more especially agriculturists. The chase was a relaxation for them; fishing a necessity; husbandry afforded them provisions and drinks. Their customs, however, were barbarous. Superstition made a Moxos sacrifice his wife in case she miscarried, and his children if they happened to be twins. The mother rid herself of her offspring if it wearied her. Marriage could be dissolved at the will of the parties to it, and polygamy was frequent. These Indians were all, more or less, warriors; but tradition and writings have only preserved for us the memorials of one single nation, the members of which were cannibals and devoured their prisoners. The counsels of the missionaries have modified the manners of this people, without removing all its savage usages.
Both the Moxos and the Chiquitos have broad shoulders, extremely full chests, and most robust bodies.
Each of these two races includes a certain number of hordes which we see no necessity for alluding to particularly here, for their half wild habits resemble those of the tribes we have just commented on; and for similar reasons we shall pass over in silence the other races ranked in the Pampean family, and whose names have been enumerated in a preceding page.
Guarany Family.
The Guarany Family is spread over an immense space, from the Rio de La Plata as far as the Caribbean Sea. Its principal characteristics consist of a yellowish complexion, a little tinged with red, a middle stature, a very heavy frame, a but slightly arched and prominent forehead, oblique eyes turned up at the outer angle, a short, narrow nose, a moderate-sized mouth, thin lips, cheekbones without much prominence, a round, full face, effeminate features, and a pleasing countenance.
D’Orbigny has established two divisions only in this family, namely, the Guaranis and the Botocudos.
Guaranis.—At the period of the discovery of South America, all that portion of the continent lying to the east of the Paraguay and of a line drawn from the sources of that river to the delta of the Orinoco, was inhabited by numberless indigenous nations, belonging to two great families. One of these families was that of the Guaranis, diffused over the whole of Paraguay, and allied with the wild tribes of Brazil; the other included the races occupying the more northern provinces, and extending to the gulf of Mexico. The Indians appertaining to both these families strongly resemble each other in features as well as complexion, and d’Orbigny attributes to them the same physical type, one marked by a yellowish colour, medium height, foreheads that do not recede, and eyes frequently oblique and always raised at the outer angle.
The entirely exceptional aptitude which the Guarany nation has evinced for entering on the path of social improvement, renders it one of the most interesting in South America. The Southern Guaranis, or natives of Paraguay, include at the same time the tribes who have submitted to the sway of the missions, in the establishments which the Jesuits have formed in the country, and others who still roam in freedom throughout the forests of that province. Besides the Guaranis, properly so called who are all Christians, and inhabit thirty-two rather extensive villages situated on the borders of the Parana, the Paraguay, and the Uruguay rivers, there exists a certain number of wild hordes belonging to the same race, who remain hidden in the depths of the woods. These tribes bear names derived in most instances from those of the rivers or mountains in whose vicinity they dwell, and among the principal of them are mentioned the Topas, Tobatinguas, Cayuguas, Gadiguès, Magachs, etc.
M. Demersay, who has visited the Jesuit establishments in Paraguay, also traversed the forests inhabited by the wild races of which we are speaking, and the results of his observations were published by him in the “Tour du Monde” in 1865. We shall avail ourselves here of those parts of his narrative which refer to the savage nations of Paraguay.
“The history of the American races,” says M. Demersay, “might be comprised in a few pages. Some have accepted the semi-servitude which the conquerors imposed on them; the others, more rebellious, preferred to struggle, and have been destroyed; those who still struggle will also perish. The nations which chose subjection rather than death, have, by mingling their blood in strong proportions with that of the Europeans, only disappeared as a race in order to enter as an integral and sometimes dominant element into the American nationalities. The great family of the Guaranis forms the most striking example of this intimate fusion offered to the notice of the ethnologist.
“But in its midst, side by side with the unsubdued hordes of the Grand Chaco, so remarkable for their fine proportions, there exists yet another tribe, small in numbers, whose ranks grow thinner every day, and which on the eve of its disappearance, has bequeathed intact to the present generation, along with its complete independence, its creeds, its customs, and the glorious traditions of its ancestors.
“At the time of their discovery, the Payaguas, as this valiant race is called, were divided into two tribes, the Gadiguès and the Magachs, who lived on the banks and numerous islands of the Rio Paraguay, towards 21° and 25° S. latitude. Their dwelling places were by no means fixed; masters of the river and jealous of its control, they started from Lake Xarayes, and made distant excursions on the Parana as far as Corrientes and Santa Fé on one side, and to Salto Chico on the other.
“A rather rational etymology which has been proposed for the name of these Indians, is that of the two Guarany words ‘pai’ and ‘aguaà,’ which signify, ‘tied to the oar,’ a meaning quite in unison with their habits. In the term ‘Paraguay,’ applied as the denomination of the river, before it became the name of the province, some have wished to perceive a corruption of ‘Payagua,’ a likely enough derivation, and one which seems to us highly admissible.
“Whatever there may be in this supposition, the value of which we shall not discuss here, this unconquered and crafty nation was during two centuries the most redoubtable adversary of the Spaniards. The writers on the conquest, the works of Azara, the ‘Historical Essay’ of Funes, and numerous documents preserved in the archives of Assumption, contain a recital of their daring enterprises.
“. . . What their numbers were in the first half of the XVIth century it is impossible to say with certainty; but the old narratives, which do not seem on this point to deserve the reproach of exaggeration more than once and with justice attributed to them, estimate them as no fewer than several thousand combatants. In Azara’s time the entire tribe scarcely reckoned a thousand souls, and at the present day it cannot count two hundred.
“Their stature is remarkable, and unquestionably surpasses that of most nations of the globe. The measurements of eight individuals, taken at random, would justify the application of this epithet to the Payaguas, as they gave me an average of 5ft. 9in. The women’s height is no less striking: that of four females over twenty was—the first and second, 5 feet; the third, 5 feet 2 inches, and the fourth, 5 feet 33⁄4 inches; or an average of 5 feet 11⁄4 inches. Many conclusions may be drawn from this double series of measurements. On comparing the average stature of the Payaguas with that of mankind in general, which physiologists agree in fixing at about 5 feet 6 inches, it will be seen that the difference in favour of the former is no less than 3 inches. And further, if we place in comparison the measurements taken by accurate travellers of the races which pass for the tallest on the globe, of the Patagonians for instance, we find that their average height as stated by M. d’Orbigny is 5 feet 7 inches. Consequently the Payaguas actually surpass by two inches the height of a race which has from time immemorial been regarded as fabulously tall.
“The Payaguas are invariably lanky, none but the women ever showing signs of corpulence. Their shoulders are broad and the muscles of their chests, arms, and backs display a development produced by constant use of the oar, for they live in their canoes; but, as a species of compensation, the predominance of the proportions of the upper limbs causes the lower extremities to appear slight and meagre.
193.—A PARAGUAYAN MESSENGER.
“Their skin, smooth and soft to the touch, like that of the natives of the New Continent, is of an olive-brown shade, which it would be difficult to define more accurately. It seems somewhat lighter than that of the Guaranis, and does not exhibit the same yellowish or Mongolian tints.
“The Payaguas carry their massive heads erect, and have an abundant supply of long, straight, or slightly curly hair, which they cut across the foreheads, and never comb, allowing it to grow and fall about them in disorder. The young warriors alone partly gather it at the back of the crown where it is tied by a little red string, or by a strap cut from a monkey skin. A similar custom obtains among the Guatos of Cuyaba, who, we may say incidentally, have more resemblance to this nation than to the Guaranis, though a learned classification has placed them side by side with the latter. Their small, keen eyes, a little contracted but not turned up at the outer angle, have an expression of cunning and shrewdness, and the lines of the long slightly rounded nose recall the Caucasian conformation to the mind. Their cheekbones are but little prominent; their lower lip protrudes beyond the upper, thus imparting to their grave and impressive countenances an expression of scornful pride, well in keeping with the character of this unsubdued race.
“The women when young are well-proportioned without being slight, but they fatten early, their features become deformed, and their figures grow squat and dumpy. To atone for this, however, their hands and feet always retain a remarkable smallness, although they walk barefooted and take no care whatever of their persons. I have also observed this delicate formation, a distinction which European ladies covet so much, among the tribes of the Chaco, who are, with the Payaguas, the finest in America. Their hair is allowed to float about the shoulders and is never confined.
“A young girl on emerging from childhood undergoes tattooing. By means of a thorn and the fruit of the genipa, a bluish streak, about half an inch wide, is drawn perpendicularly across the forehead and down the nose as far as the upper lip; and when she marries this stripe is prolonged over the under lip to below the chin. Its shades vary from violet to a slate-coloured blue, and its marks are indelible. Some women add other lines to this, as well as designs traced with the flaming tint of the urucu; this latter fashion, however, though general half a century ago, and which Azara describes minutely, has become more and more uncommon.
“The Payaguas go about naked in their tents (toldos), but out of doors they wear a small cotton garment encircling them from the pit of the stomach to just below the knee. This piece of cloth which they lap round their bodies in the style of the chiripa of the creoles, is one of the few productions of their ingenuity. Its manufacture devolves upon the women, and they make it with no other help than that of their fingers, without using either shuttle or loom. Some others content themselves with a short shirt, devoid of collar or sleeves, rather like the tipoy of the Guarany. Nevertheless the use of clothing seems to become every day more familiar to all of them; and amongst those I saw roaming through the streets of Assumption not one was satisfied, as in former times, with covering his limbs with paintings representing vests and breeches.
“Other ancient customs have also disappeared, such as that which the men had of wearing, as the case might be, either the barbote or a little silver rod analogous to the tembeta of the wild Guaranis or Cayaguas. Others are only resumed at rare intervals or at certain epochs, on which solemn occasions long tufts of feathers fixed on the top of the head are seen to reappear, and all manner of fanciful patterns tattooed in bright colours on face, arm, and breast; as well as necklaces of beads or shells, and lastly bracelets of the claws of capivaras, rolled round wrist and ankle. But the tradition of this elaborate ornamentation has been religiously preserved by the paye or medicine-man of the tribe.
“The Payaguas live on the left bank of the Rio Paraguay. They never take up their abode on the opposite side, where the Indians of Chaco, with whom they are always at war, would not be slow to attack them. Their principal hut (tolderia) is erected on the river’s edge, and consists of a large oblong cabin from twelve to fifteen feet high, and made with bamboos laid on forked poles and covered over with unplaited cane mats. Jaguar or capivaras’ skins are spread on the ground for beds, and weapons and fishing and household utensils hang on the posts sustaining the frail roofing of the dwelling, or lie pell-mell with earthen vessels, in a corner.
“. . . The very limited occupation of this people constitutes nevertheless their sole resource, for they are perfectly ignorant of husbandry, and cultivate neither maize, potatoes, nor tobacco. They are fishermen, spend their lives on the water, and become early in life very expert sailors. Sometimes they are to be seen in the stern of a canoe, letting it float with the current while watching their lines; at another, standing upright in a row, they bend to their oars in good time and make the little craft fly along with the swiftness of an arrow. Their boats are from five to a little over six feet in length, and between two and a half to three feet wide; they are hollowed from the trunk of a timbo, and terminate in a long tapering point at each end.
194.—BRAZILIAN NEGRO.
“Their paddles are sharpened like lances, and form in their hands very formidable weapons, to which must be added bows and arrows, as well as the macana. They are cruel in warfare, and grant no quarter except to women and children. Their method of fighting shows no peculiarity. They attack the Indians of the Chaco by falling upon them unawares and endeavouring to surprise them, but they take good care not to move far from the rivers, for those tribes of famous horsemen would soon overcome them in the open country.
195.—INDIAN WOMAN OF BRAZIL.
“This nation, as the reader has doubtless surmised, lives in a state of absolute liberty and complete independence of the government of the Paraguayan Republic, which imposes neither tax nor statute labour upon it, but on the contrary pays the Payaguas for any services that are exacted of them, whether as messengers on the river or as guides in the expeditions directed against the wild hordes that wander along the right bank.
“. . . Being desirous to become acquainted with, and to be able to sketch at my ease, in the midst of all the savage luxury of his garb, the individual who was entrusted with these functions, I contrived to get him to come to my house arrayed in the emblems of his high dignity and accompanied by some other Indians. The promise of a certain quantity of his beloved liquor, coupled with the prospect of an evening’s drunkenness, speedily got the better of his reluctance.
“On the day named the paye came to see me. He was an old man, somewhat bent with years, but with nothing repulsive in his countenance, notwithstanding the disfiguration of the features, which is always premature and so remarkable among the natives. His hair was still black and confined in a fillet bordered with beadwork, over which was a tuft of feathers, while nandu plumes waved behind his head; a necklace of bivalve shells was on his neck, and from it hung, as a trophy, a whistle made from the arm-bone of an enemy. He was quite naked beneath his sleeveless and collarless vest which consisted of two jaguar-skins, and wore strings of capivaras’ claws round his ankles. Finally, his right hand contained an elongated gourd, and he held in his left a long tube of hard wood, which I had some difficulty in recognizing as a pipe.
“The curtain rises. The sorcerer gave the pipe to his companion, whose duty consisted in lighting it, and, taking it again, inhaled several puffs which he blew noisily into the calabash through the orifice bored in it; then, without removing it from his lips, he began shouting, sometimes slowly and sometimes rapidly, uttering alternately the syllables ‘ta, ta’, and ‘to, to, to’, with extraordinary, inexpressible, reiterations of voice and piercing yells. He gave way at the same time to violent contortions, and executed a measured series of leaps, now on one foot, and now on both joined together. This performance did not last any length of time, and on a pretext of fatigue he was not long without coming to a stand-still. A bumper was indispensable in order to set him on his legs again, and the monotonous chant immediately recommenced.
“My drawings being finished, I at last broke up the sitting to the general satisfaction of my guests, and dismissed them, having first purchased his pipe and whistle from the paye. The former article was made of hard and heavy wood and covered with regular tracings engraved on the surface with a good deal of skill. It was about a foot and a half long, ornamented with gilt nails, and pierced by a tube which was widened at one end and terminated at the other by a mouth-piece. This pipe is also to be found among other neighbouring nations, as well as among the Tobas and Matacos on the banks of the Pilcomayo. It gives an idea of those enormous cigars made from a roll of palm or tobacco leaves, which played so important a part in Brazil, in the ceremonies of the Tupinambas, and among the Caraibs of the Antilles, on all occasions when the question of peace or war had to be decided, when the shades of ancestors were to be conjured up, etc., and which the first navigators mistook for torches.”
196.—NATIVE OF MANAOS, BRAZIL.
The Western Guaranis include the tribes known by the names of Guarayis, Chiriguanos, and Cirionos, the first of which have been converted by the Jesuits. Between the province of the Chiquitos and that of the Moxos there are still some hordes of wild Guarayis. The uncivilized Chiriguanos are barbarians, very formidable to their neighbours. The natives of a hundred and sixty villages of the Andes, comprised between the great Chaco river and that of Mapayo, in the province of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, speak the Guarany language in all its purity. The barbarous Cirionos, among whom a dialect of that tongue is in use, dwell to the north of Santa Cruz.
The Eastern Guaranis of Brazil include the Brazilian aborigines. The general language of the country does not seem to differ more from Guarany, than Portuguese does from Spanish. The Caryis, Tameyi, Tapinaquis, Timmimnes, Tabayaris, Tupinambis, Apontis, Tapigoas, and several other tribes occupy the maritime districts situated to the south of the mouth of the Amazon, speaking the Tupi tongue with little or no alteration.
During their voyage to Brazil, of which an account was published in the “Tour du Monde,” in 1868, M. and Madame Agassiz visited many Indian tribes, and examined their habitations in the midst of the woods. We extract a few pages from their description.
“We arrive at the sitio,” writes Madame Agassiz, “and disembark. These dwellings are usually located on the banks of a lake or river, within a stone’s throw of the shore in order that fishing and bathing may be better within reach. But this one was more retired, being placed at the extremity of a pretty by-path winding beneath the trees, and on the summit of a little hill, the slopes of which at the other side plunged into a broad and deep ravine through which flowed a rivulet. The ground beyond rose undulating in uneven lines, on which an eye accustomed to the uniformly flat country of the upper Amazon cannot rest without pleasure. Wait for the time of the rains, and the brook, swollen by the increase of the river, will almost bathe the foot of the house, which, from the top of the little eminence, at present commands the valley and the embanked bed of the tiny stream. Great, consequently, is the difference between the appearance of the same places in the dry and the wet seasons. The residence consists of several buildings, the most remarkable of which is a long open hall in which the brancas (whites) of Manaos and of the neighbourhood dance when they come, as is not infrequent, to spend the night at the sitio, in high festivity.
197.—BRAZILIAN NEGRESSES.
“I learned these particulars from the old Indian lady who did me the honours of the house. A low wall, from three to four feet in height, skirted this shed. At its sides and along the whole length were placed raised wooden seats, and both ends were closed from floor to roof by thick blinds made of glittering palm-leaves, as fine as they were handsome, and of a pretty straw colour. In a corner we found an immense embroidery loom (Penelope’s was doubtless like it), which was occupied at the moment by a hammock of palm fibre, an unfinished work of the ‘senhora dona’, or mistress of the house, who allowed me to see the way in which she used the machine. She squatted herself on a little low bench, in front of the frame, and showed me that the two rows of cross threads were separated by a thick piece of polished wood in the shape of a flat rule. The shuttle is thrown between these two threads and the woof is drawn close by a sharp blow of the thick rule. I was then led to admire some hammocks of various colours and textures which were being arranged for the accommodation of the visitors, and whilst the men set off to bathe in the brook, I went through the rest of the lodge with our hostess and her daughter, a very pretty Indian. The direction of everything devolves on the elder of the two ladies; the master is absent, as he holds a captain’s commission in the army operating against Paraguay.
198.—BRAZILIAN DWELLING.
“On the same carefully-kept piece of ground where the hall I have described is situated, there are several casinhas or small buildings, more or less close to each other, which are covered with thatch, and merely consist of a single apartment ([fig. 198]). Then comes a larger cottage, with earthen walls and bare floor, containing two or three rooms, and with a wooden verandah in front. This is the private abode of the senhora. A little lower down the hill is the manioc sifting-house, with all its apparatus. No place could be better kept than the courtyard of this sitio, where two or three negresses have just been set to work with brooms of thin branches in their hands.
199.—NEGROS OF BAHIA.
“The manioc and cocoa plantation surrounds these buildings, with a few coffee trees peeping out here and there. There is a difficulty in judging of the extent of these farms, as they are irregular, and comprise a certain variety of plants; manioc, cocoa, coffee, and even cotton being cultivated together in confusion. But this part of the estate, like all the rest of the establishment, seemed larger and better cared for than those usually seen. As we were departing, our Indian hostess brought me a nice basket filled with eggs and abacatys, or alligator’s pears, according to the local name. We returned home just in time for the ten o’clock meal, which draws everyone together, both idlers and workers. The sportsmen had returned from the forest, laden with tucanas, parrots, paroquets, and a great variety of other birds, while the fishermen brought fresh treasures for M. Agassiz.
“We left the dinner-table, and while taking coffee under the trees, the president proposed an excursion on the lake at sunset. . . . . The little craft glided between the glowing sunset and the glitter of the deep sheet of water, seeming to borrow its hues from each. It rapidly drew near, and was soon quite close, when a burst of joyous shouts broke forth, and was merrily responded to by us. Then side by side the two boats descended the stream together, the guitar passing from one to the other, as Brazilian songs alternated with Indian airs. Nothing could possibly be imagined bearing the national impress more strongly marked, more deeply imbued with tropical tints, more characteristic, in fine, than this scene on the lake. When we arrived at the landing-place the rosy and gold-tinged mists had become transformed into a mass of white or ashen-grey vapour, the last rays of the sun were fled, and the moon was shining at its full. In ascending the gentle slope of the hill, someone suggested a dance on the grass, and the young Indian girls formed a quadrille. Although civilization had mingled its usages with their native customs, there were yet many original traits in their movements, and this conventional dance was deprived of much of its artificial character. At length we returned to the house, where dancing and singing recommenced, whilst groups seated on the ground here and there laughed and chatted, all, men and women, smoking with the same gusto. The use of tobacco, almost universal among females of the lower class, is not altogether confined to them. More than one senhora delights to puff her cigarette as she rocks in her hammock during the warm hours of the day.” [Fig. 200] represents some natives of French Guyana, who closely resemble the Brazilian negroes we have just mentioned.
200.—NATIVES OF FRENCH GUYANA.
The Ouragas are affiliated to the Brazilio-Guarany race, with a few other tribes very closely allied to them. They form one of the nations most widely spread over the northern parts of South America. They were formerly in possession of the banks and islands of the Amazon river for a distance of five hundred miles from the mouth of the Rio Nabo.
The Caribbee race has a close affinity to the Guarany. The Indians who have given their name to this group, one of the most numerous and extensively scattered of the southern continent, are those celebrated Caribs who in the sixteenth century occupied all the islands from Porto Rico to Trinidad, and the whole of the Atlantic coast comprised between the mouth of the Orinoco and that of the Amazon, that is to say, as far as the Brazilian frontier.
The Tamanacs belong to the same family, and live on the right bank of the Orinoco, but their numbers are at the present day greatly reduced. The same remark applies to the Arawacs or Araocas, to the Guaranns, who are said to build their houses upon trees, to the Guayquerias, Cumanogots, Phariagots, Chaymas, &c. Humboldt has written of the latter:—
“The expression of countenance of the Chaymas, without being harsh and fierce, has in it something sedate and gloomy. The forehead is small and but little prominent; the eyes are black, sunken, and lengthy, being neither so obliquely set nor so small as those of the Mongolian race. Yet the corners perceptibly slant upwards towards the temples; the eyebrows are black or dark brown, thin, and not much arched; the lids fringed with very long eyelashes; and their habit of drooping them, as if heavy with languor, softens the women’s look and makes the eye thus veiled appear smaller than it really is.”
The Botocudos ([fig. 201]) who dwell round the Rio Doce, in Brazil, have been cannibals, and are still to the present day the most savage of all Americans. They wear collars of human teeth as ornaments. Perpetually wandering and completely naked, they take a pleasure in adding to their natural ugliness, and impart a more repulsive appearance to their countenances by a habit they have of slitting their under lip and ears, in order to introduce “barbotes” into the openings thus made.
201.—BOTOCUDOS.
In his “Travels in Brazil,” M. Biard saw some Botocudos. One, who seemed to him to be the chief, carried, like his companions, in an opening in the lower lip, a “barbote” consisting of a bit of wood somewhat larger than a five-shilling piece. He made use of this projection as a little table, cutting up on it, with the traveller’s knife, a morsel of smoked meat which had then only to be slipped into his mouth. This method of utilizing the lip as a table struck M. Biard as thoroughly original. The comrades of this Botocudos had also large pieces of wood in the lobes of their ears.
CHAPTER II.
NORTHERN BRANCH.
The members of the North American Branch present more decided differences among themselves than those in the southern division, so far as race is concerned, but their characteristics are merged one in the other. Nevertheless, the populations inhabiting respectively the south, the north-east, and the north-west can be considered as forming so many distinct families, which we shall pass in review in succession.
Southern Family.
The southern family of the Northern Branch still preserves much resemblance to the families of the southern branch which we have just been considering. The complexion of its members is rather fair, the forehead depressed, and the figure tolerably well proportioned.
This group embraces a great number of tribes speaking different languages, peculiar to the central part of the northern continent. The principal among these nations are the Aztecs, or primitive Mexicans, and the Moya and Lenca Indians.
Aztecs.—When the Spaniards landed in Mexico, they found there a people whose customs were far removed from those of savage life. They were very expert in the practice of different useful and ornamental arts, and their knowledge was rather extensive, but thorough cruelty could always be laid to their charge.
The Aztecs were intelligent and hard-working cultivators. They knew how to work mines, prepare metals, and set precious stones as ornaments. Superb monuments had been erected by them, and they possessed a written language which preserved the memorials of their history. Those who dwelt in the region of the present Mexico were advanced in the sciences; they were profoundly imbued with the sentiment of religion; and their sacred ceremonies were full of pomp, but accompanied by expiatory sacrifices revolting in their barbarism. They carried their annals back to very remote antiquity. These annals were traced in historical paintings, the traditional explanation of which was imparted by the natives to some of their conquerors, as well as to a few Spanish and Italian ecclesiastics.
202.—INDIAN OF THE MEXICAN COAST.
The principal events recorded in these archives relate to the migrations of three different nations, who, leaving the distant regions of the north-west, arrived successively in Anahuac. They were the Toltecs, Chichimecas, and Nahuatlacas, divided into seven distinct tribes, one of which was that of the Aztecs, or Mexicans. The country whence the first of these people came was called Huehuetlapallan, and they commenced their exodus in the year 544 of our era. Pestilence decimated them in 1051, and they then wandered southwards, but a few remained at Tula. The Chichimecas, a barbarous race, arrived in Mexico in the year 1070, and the incursion of the Nahuatlacas, who spoke the same language as the Toltecs, took place very soon afterwards. The Aztecs, or Mexicans, separated themselves from the other nations, and in 1325 they founded Mexico. In a word, the former inhabitants of Mexico were immigrants from a country situated towards the north, on the central plateau of Anahuac, and their successive migrations had continued during several centuries long prior to the discovery of America by the Europeans.
203, 204.—INDIANS OF THE MEXICAN COAST.
The ancient portraits of the Aztecs and the faces of some of their divinities are remarkable for the depression of the forehead, from which results the smallness of the facial angle—a peculiarity which appears to have belonged to the handsome type of the race.
The aboriginal Mexicans of our own time are of good stature and well proportioned in all their limbs. They have narrow foreheads, black eyes, white, well-set, regular teeth, thick, coarse, and glossy black hair, thin beards, and are in general without any hairs on their legs, thighs, or arms. Their skin is olive coloured, and many fine young women may be seen among them with extremely light complexions. Their senses are very acute, more especially that of sight, which they enjoy unimpaired to the most advanced age.
The native Indians forming part of the Mexican population are characterized by a broad face and flat nose, recalling somewhat the lineaments of the Mongolian cast of countenance. They may be judged of from [Figs. 202], [203], [204], and [205], which represent aborigines of the interior and coast of Mexico.
M. Roudé, who has published the narrative of his travels in the state of Chihuahua, brought back accurate drawings illustrative of the usages and customs of the population of the Mexican capital.
The ladies envelope themselves very gracefully in their rebosso, with which they cover the head, partly hiding the face, and only allowing their eyes to be seen. Among the wealthy this rebosso is generally of black or white silk, embroidered with designs in bright and gaudy colours. Women of the lower classes wear a rebosso of blue wool dotted with little white squares. Their petticoat is short, and its lower part embroidered with worsted work. The favourite colour for this latter garment among common people is glaring red.
205.—MEXICAN INDIAN WOMAN.
The men’s costume ([fig. 206]) is richer and more varied than that of the women. On Sundays it is laced with silver; white trowsers are indispensable, and they are covered by another pair made of leather, open along the sides from the waist downwards, and ornamented with a row of silver buttons. A China crape sash is wound round the waist, and the vest is of deerskin or velvet with silver embroidery. The sombrero has a very broad brim, is made of straw or felt, and decorated with a thick twisted band of black velvet or of silver gilt lace. The sarapé is spangled with striking colours and with varied patterns, and the men possess a special talent for draping themselves gracefully in it.
206.—MEXICAN PICADOR.
The place above all others where the popular life of the inhabitants of Mexico should be studied is in the markets ([fig. 207]). There may you see Indians, creoles, and foreigners, beggars in rags and rich citizens, black frock coats, embroidered deerskin jackets, threadbare uniforms, soldiers, muleteers, porters, monks of all shades, shod and shoeless Carmelites, all elbowing each other fraternally. There Basil throws the lengthening shadow of his fantastic head-gear on the wall of the neighbouring church; there dealers in hats, poultry, or wooden trays offer their wares to buyers; there pretty fruit and flower girls, tidy servant maids of some decent house, or winsome Chinas with sparkling eyes, pass to and fro draped in their rebossos. They bear on the upturned palms of the left hand, on a level with the shoulder, and in the most artistic manner, a basket full of green plants, or the graceful red earthenware cantaro painted and glazed, and filled with water.
Through this noisy crowd the water-carrier (aguador), clothed in leather, treads his way with short steps, bearing on his back an enormous red earthen jar, fastened by means of two handles and a broad strap to his forehead, which is protected by a little cap of leather; another band passing across the top of the crown supports a second and much smaller pitcher, hanging before him at his knees.
207.—THE ROLDAU BRIDGE MARKET, MEXICO.
If a person wishes to become acquainted with Mexico, it is among the lower orders that he must study the country. The people are good; eager for knowledge, notwithstanding the want of instruction, and full of energy in spite of their long bondage. He need be on his guard against the higher classes only, a small minority spoiled by the priests, whose influence is all-powerful. The ignorance of the monks, who swarm in this land, is doubled by an intolerable vanity that inspires them with antipathy to all progress.
208.—MEXICAN HATTER.
The people of Mexico are very simple in their habits. Broth (pilchero) and the national dish, frijoles (beans), form the ordinary fare of the middle class, to which a stew of spiced duck is sometimes added. They allay their thirst with pure water, contained in an immense glass, which holds from one to two quarts. This flagon is placed in the centre of the table, and is the only one that appears on the board, from which decanters and bottles, and very often even knives and forks, are banished. Each in turn steeps his lips in this cup, returning it to its place or passing it to his neighbour. Besides, Mexicans in general do not drink except at the end of the meal. In the evening the circle is swelled by a few friends; guitars are taken down from the wall, and some simple ballads are sung to mournful airs, or they dance to the same measure.
209.—MEXICAN HAWKER.
The Aztecs, or primitive Mexicans, like their predecessors, the Toltecs, were, as we have said, strangers in Anahuac. Before their arrival this plateau had been inhabited by different races, some of which had acquired a certain degree of civilization, whilst others were utterly barbarous. The Aztecs spread themselves extensively in Central America.
The Olmecas are mentioned among the most ancient tribes, and they are supposed to have peopled the West India Islands and South America. This nation shared the soil of Mexico with the Xicalaucas, Coras, Tepanecas, Tarascas, Mixtecas, Tzapotecas, and the Othomis. The last named and the Totonacs were two barbarous races occupying the country near Lake Tezcuco, previously to the coming of the Chichimecas. Whilst all the other known languages of America are polysyllabic, that of the Othomis is monosyllabic.
Farther to the north, and beyond the northern frontiers of the Mexican empire, dwelt the Huaxtecas. The Tarascas inhabited the wide and fertile regions of Mechoacan, to the north of Mexico, and were always independent of that kingdom. Their sonorous and harmonious tongue differed from all the others. In civilization and the arts they advanced side by side with the Mexicans, who were never able to subdue them; but their king submitted without resistance to the rule of the Spaniards.
Moyas and Lencas.—These are tribes which still live in a wild state in the forests situated between the Isthmus of Panama and that of Thuantépec, but an inquiry into their manners and customs would offer no features of interest. The life of savage nations exhibits an uniformity which greatly abridges our task.
North-eastern Family.
In the fifteenth century the North-eastern family occupied that immense expanse of North America which is comprised between the Atlantic Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, but all its nations are now reduced to a few far from numerous tribes, confined to the west of the Mississippi.
The distinguishing qualities of the red race are strongly marked among these groups. A complexion of a light cinnamon-colour, a lengthened head, a long and aquiline nose, horizontal eyes, a depressed forehead, a robust constitution, and a tall stature constitute their principal physical characteristics, to which must be added senses sharpened to an extraordinary degree. They have a habit of painting their bodies, and especially their faces, red. Their disposition is proud and independent, and they support pain with stoical courage.
Almost all these Indian tribes have already disappeared in consequence of the furious war waged upon them by the Europeans. Those that lived in olden times on the declivities of the mountains facing the Atlantic are very nearly extinct. Among such are the Hurons, Iroquois, Algonquins, and the Natchez, rendered famous by Chateaubriand, and the Mohicans, whom Cooper has immortalized.
We cannot speak detailedly here of these different nations, but in order to give an idea of them we shall open Chateaubriand’s “Voyage en Amérique,” and, having quoted a few lines from it, we will make the reader acquainted with the pith of the observations made in our own day in these same countries by contemporary travellers.
Speaking of the Muscogulges and the Simnioles, Chateaubriand writes in the following terms:—
“The Simnioles and the Muscogulges are rather tall in stature: and, by an extraordinary contrast, their wives are the smallest race of women known in America; they seldom depass a height of four feet two or three inches; their hands and feet resemble those of an European girl nine or ten years old. But nature has compensated them for this kind of injustice: their figure is elegant and graceful; their eyes are black, extremely long, and full of languor and modesty. They lower their eyelids with a sort of voluptuous bashfulness; if a person did not see them when they speak, he would believe himself listening to children uttering only half-formed words.”
The great writer passed along the borders of the lake to which its name has been given by the Iroquois colony of the Onondagas, and visited the “Sachem” of that people:—
“He was,” says Chateaubriand, “an old Iroquois in the strictest sense of the word. His person preserved the memory of the former customs and bygone times of the desert: large, pinked ears, pearl hanging from the nose, face streaked with various colours, little tuft of hair on the top of the head, blue tunic, cloak of skins, leathern belt, with its scalping-knife and tomahawk, tattooed arm, mocassins on his feet, and a porcelain necklace in his hand.”
The following is the sketch of an Iroquois:—
“He was of lofty stature, with broad chest, muscular legs, and sinewy arms. His large round eyes sparkled with independence; his whole mien was that of a hero. Shining on his forehead might be seen high combinations of thought and exalted sentiments of soul. This fearless man was not in the least astonished at firearms when for the first time they were used against him; he stood firm to the whistling of bullets and the roar of cannon as if he had been hearing both all his life, and appeared to heed them no more than he would a storm. As soon as he could procure himself a musket, he used it better than an European. He did not abandon for it his tomahawk, his knife, or his bow and arrows, but added to them the carbine, pistol, poniard, and axe, and seemed never to possess arms sufficient for his valour. Doubly arrayed in the murderous weapons of Europe and America, with his head decked with bunches of feathers, his ears pinked, his face smeared black, his arms dyed in blood, this noble champion of the New World became as formidable to behold, as he was to contend against, on the shore which he defended foot by foot against the foreigner.”
With this terrible portrait Chateaubriand contrasts the blithe countenance of the Huron, who had nothing in common with the Iroquois but language:—
“The gay, sprightly, and volatile Huron, of rash, dazzling valour, and tall, elegant figure, had the air of being born to be the ally of the French.”
We now come to travellers of our own day. [Fig. 210] is a sketch of the costumes of the wild Indians dwelling at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Missouri, and who bear the name of Creeks.
210.—CREEK INDIANS.
In his travels through the United States and Canada, M. H. Deville had an opportunity of visiting an establishment of Iroquois. These savages were remarkable for their reddish colour and coarse features. They wore round hats with broad brims, and robed themselves in Spanish fashion in a piece of dark cloth.
The manufacture of the native coverings for the legs and feet forms the principal occupation of the women, and under the pretext of purchasing some of their handiwork M. Deville entered several Iroquois dwellings.
Divested of the thick mantle worn by them out of doors, the women had assumed a long, coloured smock-frock with tight-fitting pantaloons that reached to the ankles, and their varnished shoes allowed coarse worsted stockings to be seen. Earrings and a gold necklace constituted their chief ornament. Their hair is drawn up to the top of the head and tied there in a knot. To say that their features are agreeable would be untrue, but in early youth their figures are rather handsome. Work, order, and cleanliness reign in their household. Their brothers and husbands are wood-cutters, steersmen, or conductors of rafts.
The same traveller met with some Chippeway Indians on the heights of Lake Pepin. Their stature was tall, but they had coarse features, and a skin of a very dark reddish colour. Half their face was covered by a thick layer of vermilion extending as far as their hair, which was plaited over the crown. They wore long leather gaiters, tied at the sides by innumerable thongs, and over a sort of tattered blouse was thrown a large woollen blanket, which completely covered them. One individual, armed with a long steel blade shaped like a dagger, had stuck his pipe in his hair.
In his “Voyage dans les Mauvaises Terres du Nebraska,” M. de Girardin (of Maine-et-Loire) describes his journey across part of the Missouri basin occupied by some free and wild Indians.
He brought back with him sketches and illustrations of those tribes, the principal among which are the Blackfeet, and the Dacotas, or Sioux, and was present at a grand council of the latter nation, The chiefs of the various clans, clad in their most brilliant costumes, harangued the warriors, whilst a score of young braves, without any other covering than a thick coat of vermilion or ochre, made their steeds curvet and executed numberless fanciful manœuvres. The horses were painted yellow, red, and white, and had their long tails decked with bright-coloured feathers.
211.—ENCAMPMENT OF SIOUX INDIANS.
An immense tent, composed of five or six lodges of bison-skins, was erected in the centre of the camp. The chiefs and principal warriors formed a circle, in the midst of which the agent, the governor of Fort St. Pierre, and his interpreters were stationed. According to Indian custom, the grand chief lit the calumet of peace, a magnificent pipe of red stone, the stem of which was a yard long and adorned with feathers of every hue. After some impassioned orations the council refused the travellers permission to pass over their territory in order to reach that of the Blackfeet.
[Fig. 211] represents the encampment of these Indians visited by M. de Girardin: [fig. 212] is a sketch of one of their horsemen, and [fig. 213] a likeness of a Sioux warrior, all from the pencil of the same gentleman.
M. de Girardin happened to go to another camp, that of an old chief of the same tribe. It consisted of five or six tents, conical in shape, and made of bison-skins. Remarkable for their whiteness and cleanliness these habitations were covered with odd paintings which portrayed warriors smoking the calumet, horses, stags, and dogs. Numerous freshly scalped locks were hanging at the end of long poles. At the side of each tent, a kind of tripod supported quivers, shields of ox-hide, and spears embellished with brilliant plumage. A few young warriors of strongly marked features, with aquiline noses and herculean forms, but hideously daubed in black and white paint, were engaged in firing arrows at a ball which was rolled along the ground or thrown into the air.
212.—SIOUX WARRIOR.
The chiefs made the travellers seat themselves on skins of bears and bisons, and conversed with the interpreter, whilst M. de Girardin remained exposed to the curiosity of the young folks, women, and children. The girls ventured so far as to search his pockets and extract from them his knife, pencils, and notebook. The most inquisitive, a fine girl with very soft eyes and magnificent teeth, perceiving he had a long beard wished to assure herself that he was not shaggy all over like a bear, when the traveller took it into his head to put a little powder into the hand of the pretty inquisitor and lit it by means of a glass lens, an incident which gave a tremendous fright to the assemblage.
213.—A SIOUX CHIEF.
During a journey to the north-east of America in 1867, M. L. Simonin had an opportunity of visiting a Sioux village, and we avail ourselves of a few of his descriptions. It consisted of about a hundred huts, made with poles and bison skins, or pieces of stitched cloth. The entrance to them was by a low narrow hole covered over with a beaver skin. A fire blazed in the centre of each hovel, and around it were pots and kettles for the repast. The smoke which escaped at the top rendered this abode intolerable. Beds, mattresses, cooking utensils, quarters of wild bison, some raw, others dried and smoked, were scattered here and there. Half-naked children, girls and boys, scampered about outside, as well as troops of dogs that constituted at once their protectors, their vigilant sentinels, and their food.
M. Simonin went inside many of the huts, where warriors were silently playing cards, using leaden balls for stakes. Others, accompanied by the noise of discordant singing and tambourines, were playing at a game resembling the Italian “mora,” the score of which was marked with arrows stuck in the ground. Some tents, in which sorcery, or “great medicine,” was being practised, were prohibited to the visitor. The women were sitting in a ring round some of the wigwams, doing needle-work, ornamenting necklaces or mocassins with beads, or tracing patterns on bison skins.
Some old matrons were preparing hides stretched on stakes, by rubbing them with freestone and steel chisels set in bone handles. The squaws of the Sioux, on whom, moreover, all domestic cares fall, are far from handsome. They are the slaves of the man who purchases them for a horse or the skin of a bison. The great Sioux nation numbers about thirty-five thousand individuals.
The same gentleman from whom we have just been quoting, was enabled to make some observations among the Crows, a tribe of Prairie Indians who are neighbours of the Sioux. Their features are broadly marked, their stature gigantic, and their frames athletic, while, according to M. Simonin, their majestic countenances recall the types of the Roman Cæsars as we see them delineated on antique medals.
The traveller was admitted into the hut of the chiefs, where the “Sachems” were seated in a circle, and as he touched their hands successively, they uttered a guttural “a hou,” a sound which serves as a salutation among the Red Skins. He smoked the calumet.
These men had their cheeks tattooed in vermilion. They were scarcely covered; one had a woollen blanket, the next a buffalo hide or the incomplete uniform of an officer, while the upper part of another’s body was naked. Several wore collars or eardrops of shells or animals’ teeth. Hanging from the neck of one was a silver medal bearing the effigy of a President of the United States, which he had received when he went on a mission to Washington in 1853; and a horse, rudely carved in the same metal, adorned the breast of another of their number.
M. Simonin was afterwards present at a council of the Crow Indians, but we do not intend to give any report of this conference of savages, of which, however, the reader may form some idea by casting a glance at [fig. 214].
In dealing with the relations existing between the wild Indians of North America and the civilized inhabitants, that is to say, the Americans of the United States, M. Simonin enters into some interesting reflections which we believe we ought to reproduce.
“A singular race,” says M. Simonin, “is that of the Red Skins, among whom Nature has so lavishly apportioned the finest land existing on the globe, a rich alluvial soil, deep, level, and well watered; still this race has not yet emerged from the primitive stage which must be everywhere traversed by humanity at the outset—the stage of hunters and nomads, the age of stone! If the Whites had not brought them iron, the Indians would still use flint weapons, like man before the Deluge, who sheltered himself in caverns and was contemporary in Europe with the mammoth. Beyond the chase and war, the wild tribes of North America shun work; women, among them, perform all labour. What a contrast to the toiling, busy population around them, whose respect for women is so profound! This population hems them in, completely surrounds them at the present day, and all is over with the Red Skins if they do not consent to retire into the land reserved for them.
214.—CROW INDIANS IN COUNCIL.
“And even there will industry and the arts spring up? How poorly the Red race is gifted for music and singing is well known: the fine arts have remained in infancy among them; and writing, unless it consists in rude pictorial images, is utterly unknown. They barely know how to trace a few bead patterns on skins, and although these designs are undoubtedly often happily grouped and the colours blended with a certain harmony, that is all. Industry, apart from a coarse preparation of victuals and the tanning of hides and dressing of furs, is also entirely null. The Indian is less advanced than the African negro, who knows at least how to weave cloths and dye them. The Navajoes, alone, manufacture some coverings with wool.
“The free Indians of the Prairies, scattered between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains, may be reckoned at about a hundred thousand, while all the Indians of North America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, are estimated at four times that number. These calculations may possibly be slightly defective, statistics or any accurate census being quite wanting. The Red men themselves never give more than a notation of their tents or lodges, but the assemblage of individuals contained in each of these differs according to the tribe, and sometimes in the same tribe; hence the impossibility of any mathematically exact computation.
“In the north of the Prairies the great family of the Sioux numbering thirty-five thousand is remarkable above all others. The Crows, Bigbellies, Blackfeet, &c., who occupy Idaho and Montana, form, when taken altogether, a smaller population than the Sioux—probably about twenty thousand. In the centre and south, the Pawnees, Arapahoes, Shiennes, Yutes, Kayoways, Comanches, Apaches, &c., united, certainly exceed forty thousand in number. The territories of Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico are those which these hordes overrun. The Pawnees are cantoned in Nebraska, in the neighbourhood of the Pacific Railway, and the Yutes in the ‘parks’ of Colorado.
“These races possess many characteristics in common; they are nomadic, that is to say, they occupy no fixed place, live by fishing, or above all by hunting, and follow the wild buffalo in its migrations everywhere.
“A thoroughly democratic régime and a sort of communism control the relations of members of the same tribe with each other. The chiefs are nominated by election, and for a period, but are sometimes hereditary. The most courageous, he who has taken the greatest number of scalps in war or has slain most bisons, the performer of some brilliant exploit or a man of superior eloquence, all these have the right to be chosen chiefs. As long as he conducts himself well a chief retains his position; if he incur the least blame his successor is appointed. Chiefs lead the tribes to battle, and are consulted on occasions of difficulty, as are also the old men. The braves are the lieutenants of the chiefs, and hold second command in war. There is no judge in the tribes, and each one administers justice for himself and applies the law at his own liking.
“All these nations hunt and make war in the same manner, on horseback; with spear, bow and arrows, in default of revolvers and muskets, and using a buckler as a defence against the enemy’s blows. They scalp their dead foe and deck themselves with his locks; pillage and destroy his property, carry away his women and children captives, and frequently subject the vanquished, above all any white man falling into their hands, to horrible tortures before putting him to death.
“The squaws to whom the prisoner is abandoned exhibit the most revolting cruelty towards him, tearing out the eyes, tongue, and nails of their victim; burning him, chopping off a hand to-day, and a foot to-morrow. When the captive is well tortured, a coal fire is lighted on his stomach and a yelling dance performed round him. Almost all Red Skins commit these atrocities phlegmatically towards the Whites when engaged in a struggle with them.
“Tribes often make war among themselves on the smallest pretext, for a herd of bisons they are pursuing, or a prairie where they wish to encamp alone. They have not indeed any place reserved, but they sometimes wish to keep one so, to the exclusion of every other occupant. Nor is it uncommon for the same tribe to split itself into two hostile clans. A few years ago the Ogallallas when maddened by whisky fought among themselves with guns, and have been broken up ever since into two bands, one of which, the ‘Ugly-Faces,’ is commanded by Red Cloud, and the other, by Big-Mouth and Pawnee-Killer.
215.—PAWNEE INDIANS.
“The languages of all the tribes are distinct; but perhaps a linguist would recognize among them some common roots, in the same way as in our own day they have been found to exist between European tongues and those of India. These languages all obey the same grammatical mechanism; they are ‘agglutinative,’ or ‘polysynthetic,’ and not ‘analytic’ or ‘inflected,’ that is to say, the words can be combined with each other to form a single word expressing a complete idea; but relation, gender, number, etc., are not indicated by modifications of the substantive. I pass over the other characteristics which distinguish agglutinative from inflected languages. The dialects of the Red Skins have not, or seem not to have, any affinity in the different terms of their vocabulary, which is, besides, often very limited.
“In order to comprehend each other the tribes have adopted by common accord a language of signs and gestures which approximates to that of the deaf and dumb. In this way all the Indians are capable of a mutual understanding, and a Yute, for instance, can converse without difficulty for several hours with an Arrapahoe, or the latter with a Sioux.
“The Whites are not acquainted with the languages of the Prairie Indians, or know them very badly. Frequently, there is but one interpreter for the same tongue, often a very poor one, merely understanding the idiom he has translated, not speaking it. Many, à fortiori, are not able to write the language which they interpret. Neither Dr. Mathews, John Richard, nor Pierre Chêne could spell for me in English characters the names of the Crow chiefs. How would it be in the case of the Arrapahoes or Apaches, whose strongly guttural speech is only accentuated by the tips of the lips?
“In all this it must be understood that I speak only of the tribes of the Prairies, and not of those who lived in olden times on the declivities of the mountains overlooking the Atlantic or skirting the Mississippi. The majority of the latter are, as is known, extinct, the Algonquins, Hurons, Iroquois, Natchez and Mohicans, and it is also well to avow that France has contributed in a large measure to their disappearance.
“The residue of these tribes, which I shall term Atlantic—Delawares, Cherokees, Seminoles, Osages, and Creeks—is now cantoned in the reserves, especially in the Indian Territory, where little by little the Red Skins are losing their distinctive characteristics. Histories and authentic documents regarding all these races are extant, whilst only very little is known up to the present concerning those of the Prairies. The greater part of the legends and traditions with which people endow them are only due to the invention of travellers.
216.—A CHAYENE (SHIENNES) CHIEF.
“It is towards a new territory analogous to the one just mentioned, and bordering upon it, that the Commissioners of the Union have recently pushed back the five great nations of the south; while they intend to indicate a reserve of the same kind in the north of Dacota to the Crows and the Sioux, if they find them well disposed to accept it.
“And then, people may say, what will become of the Indians? For this is the question which every one asks when he hears the Red Skins spoken of. If the Prairie tribes go into the reserves, the same will happen to them which has befallen those of the Atlantic borders; little by little they will lose their customs, their wild habits; they will yield insensibly to the sedentary and agricultural life, and, step by step—last phase, of which the first example remains to be seen—their country will pass from the rank of a territory to that of a state. Arrived at this final stage the Indian will be altogether blended with the White; after a few generations he will not perhaps be more distinguishable from him than the Frank is discernible from the Gaul among us, or the Norman from the Saxon in England.
“But if the Indian does not submit; if he will not consent to be cantoned in the reserves? Then must ensue a death-struggle between two races differing in colour and customs, a merciless war of which, unfortunately, so many examples have already been seen on the same American soil. Where are now the Hurons, Iroquois, and Natchez, who amazed our ancestors? The Algonquins, who had no limits to their territory, where and how many are they to-day? All have gradually disappeared by disease or warfare.
“The war which will break out this time will be short, and it will be final, for in it the Indian will finally sink. He has on his side neither science nor numbers. Undoubtedly, by his ambushes, by his flights, by his isolated and totally unforeseen attacks, he bewilders scientific warfare, and the most able strategists of the United States, with General Sherman at their head, have been beaten by the Indians, who have gained no small share of glory against the Whites. But the next war will be no longer one of regulars but of volunteers. The pioneers of the territories will arm themselves, and if the Red man demands tooth for tooth, eye for eye, the Whites will inflict upon him the inflexible penalty of retaliation, and the Indian will disappear for ever.”
217.—A YUTE CHIEF.
In the narrative of his travels from the Mississippi to the coasts of the Pacific Ocean, made in 1853, M. Mollhausen has given various details concerning the remnants of the nearly extinct Atlantic tribes.
The Choctaws, to the number of twenty-two thousand souls, are spread over the regions bordering on Arkansas on the east, the plains inhabited by the Chicksaws on the south, and those occupied by the Creeks on the west, while their neighbours to the north are the Cherokees.
The vast plains which adjoin the Choctaw territories, are used for the pastimes of the Indians, and especially for their game of ball or tennis. The Choctaws, Chicksaws, Creeks, and Cherokees are passionately attached to this amusement. A challenge borne by two able performers usually gives rise to the festival, and having arranged the day for the contest, the players dispatch their heralds to all quarters. These emissaries are tattooed horsemen, accoutred in a fantastic style. Carrying a ceremonial racket, they repair from village to village and hut to hut, proclaiming throughout the entire tribe the names of the individuals who have proposed the match, and making known the day of the struggle and the place of meeting. As each of the actors is accompanied by his relatives, half the nation is often found assembled at the appointed locality on the eve of the solemn day, some to take part in the fray, and the others to bet upon the result. This game ([fig. 218]) is a tremendous tussle, a general scrimmage in which almost the whole tribe is engaged.
Between the Canadian border and Arkansas, sprinkled with flourishing farms, is the fertile domain of the Creek Indians. It is not so long since the warriors there covered themselves with whimsical tattooing; but progress has to-day penetrated into these savannas, and these same Indians to-day read a newspaper printed in their language.
Like the Choctaws, the Creeks formerly inhabited Alabama and Mississippi, which they ceded for a pecuniary consideration to the American government. Their numbers do not amount to more than twenty-two thousand.
A similar estimate may be made of the Cherokees, who have abandoned New Georgia for higher Arkansas.
Further off are the Shawnees, a nation which is reduced to about fourteen hundred members, and yet was once one of the most powerful in North America. They were the first to oppose resistance to the encroachments of civilization, and hunted from everywhere have strewn the bones of their warriors along their route.
218.—CHOCTAW INDIANS PLAYING BALL.
The Delawares, who have diminished to the insignificant total of eight hundred individuals, originally inhabited the eastern parts of the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Their fate resembled that of the Shawnees; being ever obliged to subdue new territories which they were afterwards compelled to yield to the government. Driven from the plains which contained the tombs of their forefathers, deceived and betrayed by the strangers, the Delaware Indians have repelled Christian missionaries. Placed at the extreme limits of civilization, on the very border of virgin nature, they devote themselves fearlessly to their adventurous propensities. They go to hunt the grizzly bear in California, the buffalo on the plains of Nebraska, the elk at the sources of the Yellowstone, and the mustang in Texas, scalping a few crowns on their way. A Delaware only requires to see a piece of land once, in order to be able to recognize it after the lapse of years, no matter from what side he may approach it; and wherever he sets his foot for the first time, a glance suffices to enable him to discover the spot where water should be sought for. These Indians are admirable guides, and on their services, which cannot be too dearly paid for, the existence of a whole caravan often depends.
Comanches.—The great and valiant nation of the Comanche Indians, which is divided into three tribes, overruns in every direction the vast expanse of the Prairies: outside those green savannahs they would be unable to live. Those of the north and of the centre are ever hunting the buffalo, and the flesh of that animal constitutes almost their sole sustenance. From the most tender childhood till advanced age they are in the saddle, and a whip and bridle render the Comanche the most expert, agile, and independent of men. They gallop in thousands over the Prairies hanging to the sides of their steeds, and directing their arrows and spears with marvellous skill at their mark. They plume themselves on being robbers, attack the establishments of the Whites, lead men, women, and children away prisoners, and carry off the cattle.
[Fig. 219] represents two Comanche Indians; [fig. 220], one of their encampments, and [fig. 221], a buffalo hunt among the same tribe.
Apaches.—The Apache nation is one of the most numerous of New Mexico, including many tribes, several of which are not even known by name.
219.—COMANCHE INDIANS.
The Navajoes belong to this group. They are the only Indians of New Mexico who keep large flocks of sheep and pursue a pastoral life. They know how to weave the wool of their flocks, of which they manufacture thick blankets fit to compete with the productions of the west, twisting bright colours into these rugs in a way that imparts to them a very original appearance. Their deerskin leggings are made with the utmost care, and have thick soles and a pointed end, shaped like a beak, a necessary precaution against the thorny cactus plants with which the soil bristles. Their head-gear consists of a leathern cap in the form of a helmet, adorned by a bunch of cock’s, eagle’s, or vulture’s feathers. In addition to bows and arrows, they carry long lances which they handle very skilfully as they dash along on their fleet steeds.
220.—A COMANCHE CAMP.
In the last rank of the Apache nation are to be placed the tribes of the Cosninos and Vampays, thievish, savage, and suspicious hordes with which it has been found impossible to establish any relations, and who are natives of the mountains of San Francisco. Cedar-berries, the fruit of a species of pine-tree, and the grass and root of a Mexican plant, constitute their means of subsistence, for they are wretched hunters.
221.—A BUFFALO HUNT.
Within sight of the Rio Colorado M. Mollhausen encountered some Indians belonging to the three tribes of the Chimehwebs, Cutchanas and Pah-Utahs, who bear a resemblance to each other. Their complexion was dark in colour, their faces striped with bistre, and their black hair hung down their backs in locks which were confined with wet clay. They were of fine stature, and perfectly naked but for a waistband. They bounded forward like deer to meet the travellers, and their expression of countenance was frank, kind, and merry. Their women on the contrary were small, thickset, and clumsy, but their large black eyes and pleasant manners gave them a certain charm.
The travellers also fell in with the Mohawk Indians ([fig. 222]), men of herculean forms who were tattooed from the roots of the hair to the sole of the foot in blue, red, white and yellow, and with eyes that glowed like coals under this layer of paint. Most of them wore vulture’s, magpie’s, or swan’s feathers on the top of their heads, and carried large bows and spears in their hands.
Mr. Catlin made numerous excursions among the Indian tribes of the plains of Columbia and Upper Missouri, and we shall quote presently his remarks concerning the Nayas and Flat-Heads.
Both these nations dwell to the west of the Rocky Mountains, occupying all the country situated round Lower Columbia and Vancouver’s Island. The latter tribe derives its name from the singular custom which exists among them of flattening their children’s heads at their birth.
The Flat-Heads ([fig. 223]) live in a region where very little in the way of food is to be found except fish, and their lives are spent in canoes. The artificial deformity which constitutes the national characteristic is to be found more especially among the women, with whom it is almost universal; but it is only a question of fashion, and does not appear to have any perceptible effect on the functions of the organs, for persons whose heads have been compressed seem as intelligent as those who have not undergone this strange operation.
222.—MOHAWK INDIANS.
Mr. Catlin says:—
“In the course of the year 1853 I found myself on board the Sally Anne, a little vessel flying the star-spangled flag, which having made a few trading cruises along the coast of Kamtschatka and Russian America, was on her way to land in British Columbia several passengers who had been attracted thither by the reputation of the auriferous deposits newly discovered in that country.
“On the third day from our entry into Queen Charlotte’s Sound, the long and magnificent strait separating Vancouver’s Island from the continent, we got into the long-boat to go on shore, and arrived at the village of the Nayas. The Indians had been informed of our visit and were all assembled in their huts; the chief, a very dignified man, being seated in his wigwam, with lighted pipe, ready to receive us. We squatted ourselves on mats spread upon the ground, and whilst the pipe was being passed round—this is the first ceremony on such occasions—hundreds of native dogs—half wolves,—which had followed in our track, completely invaded the approaches to the wigwam, barking and howling in the shrillest and most mournful manner. The sentinel whom the chief had stationed at the door to prevent anyone entering without permission, discharged an arrow at the leader of the band, piercing him to the heart, a proceeding which calmed the rest of the pack, which was then dispersed with many blows of oars by the Indian women. We were not a little embarrassed at having no other way of expressing our thoughts than by signs, yet we seemed to understand each other perfectly, and we gathered that the chief had sent to a village at no great distance in search of an interpreter who ought very soon to arrive. I recommended my companions not to breathe a word before his arrival as to our object in visiting the locality, and in the meantime did not myself lose an instant in endeavouring to rouse the interest of our hosts.
“I motioned to Cæsar to bring me the portfolio, and having seated myself beside the chief, opened it before him, while I gave an explanation of each portrait; he expressed no great surprise, and yet took an evident pleasure in examining them. I showed him several chiefs of the Amazons, as well as others of the Sioux, Osages, and Pawnees. The last likeness was a full-length one of Cæsar, on seeing which he could not restrain himself from bursting into the most tremendous fits of laughter, and turning towards the subject of it who was sitting opposite, signed to him to approach, gave him a grasp of the hand and made him place himself beside him. These drawings excited great animation in the assemblage; three or four under-chiefs were anxious to see them, and the chief’s wife and their young daughter came close to us for the same purpose.
223.—FLAT-HEAD INDIANS.
“One detail of their toilette attracted Cæsar’s attention: a man had a round slip of wood inserted in his under lip and the chief’s daughter also carried a similar ornament. Like Cæsar, my companions were ignorant of this strange and incredible custom, and contemplated the Indians thus adorned, with the utmost astonishment.
“The chief’s daughter wore a magnificent mantle of mountain-sheep’s wool and wild-dog’s hair, marvellously interwoven with handsome colours in the most intricate and curious patterns, and bordered all round with a fringe eighteen inches deep. The making of this robe had occupied three women during a year, and its value was that of five horses. The bowl of the pipe which the chief passed round, was of hard clay, black as jet and highly polished, and both it and the stem were embellished with sketches of men and animals carved in the most ingenious manner. I have seen several of these pipes, and have had many in my possession, with their eccentric designs representing the garments, canoes, oars, gaiters, and even the full-length likenesses of their owners. These designs of the Nayas are different from all those we saw among the other tribes of the continent. The same ornaments are found on their spoons, vases and clubs; on their earthenware, of which they make a great quantity; and on everything else manufactured by them. Up to the present these figures are inexplicable hieroglyphics to us, but they possess great interest for archæologists and etymologists.
“I did not find in this Naya Chief the same superstitious dread which the Indians of the Amazon and of other parts in the south of America evinced when I asked them to have their portraits taken; on the contrary he said of his own accord to me: ‘If you think any of us worthy of the honour, or handsome enough to be painted, we are ready!’ I thanked him; Cæsar went for my box of colours and my easel, and I began his likeness and that of his daughter, for he had told me how much he loved this child, adding that it was his rule to have her almost always with him, and that he thought I should do well to draw them together, both on the same canvas. I agreed to his request, telling him at the same time how much I appreciated such natural and noble feelings on his part.
224.—NAYA INDIANS.
“. . . . As we neared the village a great crowd came to meet us, and I noticed that the throng, especially the women, attached themselves to the steps of Cæsar as he marched solemnly along, his tall figure drawn up to its full height, and with the portfolio on his back. So large were the numbers for so small a village, that I asked the interpreter to explain what this signified. He told me that the news of our arrival and the attraction of the dance which was sure to take place in the evening had drawn and would still draw a vast concourse of Indians from the adjoining districts. At sunset we partook of a meal of venison in the chief’s wigwam, and afterwards set ourselves to smoke until night came on. Then in the midst of dreadful yelling, barking, and singing, we saw about a dozen flaming torches approaching the hut in front of which the dance of masks now began. Grotesque is an imperfect word to convey an idea of the incredible eccentricities and buffoonery that took place before us, and Cæsar was seized with such a fit of laughing as to be almost choked. Picture to yourself, fifteen or twenty individuals, all full-grown men, masked or tricked out in the most extraordinary guise, while many spectators, placed in the first rank, were costumed in similar style. A great medicine man was the conductor of the revels and the most whimsical of all. He represented the ‘King of the Bustards,’ another was ‘Monarch of the Divers,’ a third, ‘Doctor of the Rabbits;’ and there were also the ‘Brother to the Devil,’ the ‘Thunder-Maker,’ the ‘White Rook,’ the ‘Night-travelling Bear,’ the ‘Soul of the Caribout,’ and so on, until the names of every animal and every bird were entirely exhausted. The dancers’ masks, of which I procured several, are very ingeniously made. They are cleverly hollowed from a solid block of wood in such a way as to fit the face, and are held inside by a cross-strap which is taken between the teeth, thus enabling the voice to be counterfeited and disguised; they are covered, moreover, with odd patterns in various colours. With the exception of that of the leader of the dance, all these masks had a round piece of wood in the under lip, to recall the singular custom which exists in the country. Entertainments of this description are not confined to the Nayas, for I have witnessed similar recreations in many other tribes in North as well as South America.
225.—A CROW CHIEF.
“They also slit the cartilages and lobes of their ears, lengthen them, and insert little billets as ornaments. Those in the lip are principally worn by the women, though some of the men have adopted this fashion, which becomes more and more in vogue among both sexes as the coast is ascended northwards. The same may be said of the masks, which are to be found as far as among the Aloutis. All the women have not the lip pierced, and those who have do not carry the wooden ornament except on certain occasions, at settled periods, when they don full dress. They remove it when eating and sleeping or if they have to talk much, for there are plenty of words which cannot be pronounced with this inconvenient trinket.
“The lip is perforated at the earliest age, and the aperture thus formed, though almost imperceptible at first when the ‘barbote’ is taken out, is kept open and grows larger daily.”
The same traveller had the pleasure of again meeting the Crows, but as we have already spoken of the Indians of this tribe, we shall content ourselves with reproducing here his very picturesque costume of one of their chiefs ([fig. 225]).
Mr. Catlin twice visited the Mandan Indians in the course of the summer of 1832. The solitary village in which they were collected, to the number of two or three thousand, was on the left bank of the Missouri, at a distance of about 1400 miles from the city of St. Louis. Of medium stature, and comfortably clad in skins, all wore leathern leggings and mocassins elegantly embroidered with porcupine silk dyed in various colours.
Each man had his tunic and his mantle which he assumed or laid aside according to the temperature, and every woman her robe of deer or antelope skin. Many among them had a very fair skin, and their hair, which was silvery gray from childhood to old age, their light blue eyes and oval faces, doubtless testified to an infusion of white blood. Almost all the men adopted a curious fashion, peculiar to this tribe; their hair, long enough to reach the calf of their legs, was divided into matted locks, flattened and separated by hardened birdlime or by red or yellow clay.
North-Western Family.
The Indian tribes composing the North-Western family of the North American Branch, are less warlike and cruel than those of the east. They take no scalps. Their stature is not so tall, their face broader, their eyes more sunken, and their complexion browner. M. d’Omalius d’Halloy cites in this group the Koliouges (from 60° to 50° N. lat.), the Wakisches or Nootkans (Island of Nootka and neighbouring coasts), the Chinooks (mouth of the Oregon), and the Tularenos, or Indians of California.
A detailed description of these different American tribes would be devoid of interest; in fact, we should be only able to repeat with but little alteration what has been said in previous pages concerning the manners, habits, customs, &c., of the last remaining savages who still people the interior of the North American forests.
In connection with the aboriginal inhabitants of California, we must direct the reader’s attention to the fact, that the Californians have a skin of such a deep reddish-brown that it seems black. This colour is certainly exceptional among the primitive inhabitants of America, but the characteristic is so pronounced in the present instance, that we felt that we could not avoid pointing it out, although it may be opposed to the classification which we have adopted, placing in the Red Race all members of the human family proper to America. This exception is one of the inconveniences of classification to which we must submit, without however endeavouring to conceal it.