INDIANS OF BRAZIL.
Brazil was discovered in 1500. The first Spaniard who ventured to cross the equator was Vincent Pinzon. He landed at a point on the coast of Brazil, about twenty miles south of Pernambuco. A fleet was soon after sent out from Portugal, in which sailed that fortunate adventurer, Americus Vespucius, who has given his name to the New World.
The Indians of Brazil were real savages, perfidious, cruel, and cannibals, and appear to have had scarcely a single noble or generous trait in their characters. The dreadful depravity of these tribes seems to have infused the spirit of furies into the hearts of the females; and when the women of a people are rendered ferocious, there is little, if any, chance, that the nation will ever, by its own efforts, become civilized. The following account of the first interview between the Portuguese and the Brazilian Indians is sufficient to show the character of the latter.
When the ships arrived on the coast, in Lat. 5° S., a party of natives was discovered on a hill near the seaside. Two sailors volunteered to go ashore, and several days passed without their return. At length the Portuguese landed, sent a young man to meet the savages, and returned to their boats. Some women came forward to meet him, apparently as negotiators. They surrounded him, and seemed to be examining him with curiosity and wonder. Presently another woman came down from the hill, having a stake in her hand, with which she got behind him, and dealt him a blow that brought him to the ground. Immediately the others seized him by the feet, and dragged him away, and then the Indian men, rushing to the shore, discharged their arrows at the boats.
The sailors finally escaped, but they had to witness the horrid spectacle of their poor comrade destroyed by the ruthless savages. The women cut the body in pieces, and held up the mutilated limbs in mockery; then, broiling them over a huge fire, which had been prepared, as it seemed, for that purpose, they devoured them, with loud rejoicings, in presence of the Portuguese. The Indians also made signs that they had eaten the other two sailors!
It will be neither pleasant nor useful to give any more minute accounts of the practice of cannibalism. It is sufficient to say, that the tribes inhabiting the eastern part of South America appear to have been sunk in the grossest ignorance and most deplorable state of vice and misery to which human beings can be reduced. They were more like tigers and serpents than men; for they used poisoned arrows, deadly as the “serpent’s tooth,” in battle; and they tore and devoured their enemies with the voracity of beasts of prey.
The Europeans, who first settled in Brazil, had to gain all their possessions by the sword; and few would go voluntarily to such a place; the Portuguese settlers being mostly convicts, banished for their crimes. As might be expected, this class of men, rendered desperate by their situation, and often hardened in crime, were not very merciful to the natives, who, in turn, showed them no mercy. The bloody conflicts and the atrocities on both sides were awful; yet we can hardly feel the same sympathy for the cannibal Indian as for the gentle Peruvian, when his country is laid waste by the invader.
It was about fifty years from the time of the first landing of the Portuguese, before a regular administration was established and a governor appointed by the king of Portugal. The Jesuits then settled in Brazil, and began their labor of Christianizing the savages. Several tribes had entered into alliance with the colonists, and these Indians were forbidden, by the governor, to eat human flesh. To conquer this propensity was the great aim of the Jesuits; but finding that they could not reclaim those who had grown old in this vice, they set themselves to instructing the children.
One gentle propensity these Brazilian savages showed, which seems hardly compatible with their cruel and vindictive characters,—they were passionately fond of music,—so fond, that one Jesuit thought he could succeed in Christianizing them by means of songs. He taught the children to sing; and when he went on his preaching excursions, he usually took a number of these little choristers with him, and on approaching an inhabited place, one child carried the crucifix before them, and the others followed, singing the litany. The savages, like serpents, were won by the voice of the charmer, and received the Jesuit joyfully. He set the catechism, creed, and ordinary prayers, to sol fa; and the pleasure of learning to sing was such a temptation, that the children frequently ran away from their parents to put themselves under the care of the Jesuits.
These priests labored with devoted zeal to convert the natives. Their exertions were productive of great effect; a change has been gradually wrought, and the cannibal propensities, among those tribes that still remain independent, are no longer indulged.
Many missions, as they are called, that is, villages, where a priest resides and instructs the Indians in agriculture and the most essential arts of civilized life, as well as in their Catholic duties, were established by the Jesuits, and are still continued. One very unfortunate circumstance has done much to alienate the independent tribes from their white neighbours. It was thought best to make slaves of the savages, in order to civilize them. Walsh thus describes the decree and its effect.
“The Indians were, as late as 1798, the occupants of the woods, and were generally found resident on the banks of the rivers and streams which intersected the country. An elderly gentleman, who was secretary to the undertaking, informed me that it was necessary for the commissioners and workmen to go constantly armed, to be protected against their hostility. The Puvis lay on the River Parahiba, and others on the streams which fall into it.
“By a mistaken humanity, however, permission was afterwards given to the Brazilians to convert their neighbours to Christianity; and for this laudable object, they were allowed to retain them in a state of bondage for ten years, and then dismiss them free, when instructed in the arts of civilized life, and the more important knowledge of Christianity. This permission, as was to be expected, produced the very opposite effects.
“A decree for the purpose was issued so late as the year 1808, by Don John, and it was one of the measures which he thought best to reclaim the aborigines, who had just before committed some ravages. He directed that the Indians, who were conquered, should be distributed among the agriculturists, who should support, clothe, civilize, and instruct them in the principles of our holy religion, but should be allowed to use the services of the same Indians for a certain number of years, in compensation for the expense of their instruction and management.
“This unfortunate permission at once destroyed all intercourse between the natives and the Brazilians. The Indians were everywhere hunted down for the sake of their salvation; wars were excited among the tribes, for the laudable purpose of bringing in each other as captives, to be converted to Christianity; and the most sacred objects were prostituted to the base cupidity of man, by even this humane and limited permission of reducing his fellow-creatures to slavery.
“In the distant provinces, particularly on the banks of the Maranhāo, it is still practised, and white men set out for the woods to seek their fortunes; that is, to hunt Indians and return with slaves. The consequence was, that all who could escape retired to the remotest forests; and there is not one to be now found in a state of nature in all the wooded region.
“It frequently happened, as we passed along, that dark wreaths of what appeared like smoke arose from among distant trees on the sides of the mountains, and they seemed to us to be decisive marks of Indian wigwams; but we found them to be nothing more than misty exhalations, which shot up in thin, circumscribed columns, exactly resembling smoke issuing from the aperture of a chimney.
“We met, however, one, in the woods, with a copper-colored face, high cheek-bones, small dark eyes approaching each other, a vacant, stupid cast of countenance, and long, lank, black hair hanging on his shoulders. He had on him some approximation to a Portuguese dress, and belonged to one of the aldêas formed in this region; but he had probably once wandered about these woods in a state of nature, where he was now going peaceably along on a European road.
“We had passed, in going through Valença, one of these aldêas of the Indians of the valley of Parahiba, Christianized and instructed in the arts of civilized life. Another, called the Aldêa da Pedra, is situated on the river, nearer to its mouth, where the people still retain their erratic habits, though apparently conforming to our usages.
“They live in huts, thatched with palm-leaves; and when not engaged in hunting and fishing, which is their chief and favorite employment, they gather ipecacuanha, and fell timber. They are docile and pacific, having no cruel propensities, but are disposed to be hospitable to strangers. Their family attachments are not very strong, either for their wives or children, as they readily dispose of both to a traveller for a small compensation.”
One of the most ferocious tribes of Brazil was the Botocudos, thought to be the remains of a powerful and most cruel race, which the early settlers called Aymores. This tribe disfigured themselves by making a large hole in the under-lip, and wearing therein a piece of white wood, or some ornament. They also cut large holes in their ears, and stuck feathers in the aperture for ornaments. They used to go entirely naked, and, brown as the beasts of the forest, were frightful objects to behold.
“The Brazilian government,” says Mr. Walsh, “deserves credit for the manner in which it has managed these Indians. They lived on the Rio Doce, and laid waste every settlement attempted in that beautiful and fertile region. In 1809, a party of Europeans were sent up the river, and they found one hundred and fifty farms in ruins, whose proprietors had either perished or fled. Detachments were accordingly ordered in all directions, to restrain the inroads of the savages, and to punish their aggressions; and every encouragement was held out, to establish new settlements and civilize them.
“Every village consisting of twelve huts of Indians and ten of whites was to be considered a villa, with all its benefits and privileges; and sesmarios, or grants of land, were made to such as would become cultivators, giving all the privileges and advantages of original donotorios. New roads were then opened to form a more easy communication, and considerable effect was produced on these intractable natives. The Puvis, a neighbouring tribe, to the number of one thousand, were located in villages, called aldêas; and the arts and industry of civilized life made more progress among them, in a few years from this period, than they had before done in so many centuries.”
