The American Race / A Linguistic Classification and Ethnographic Description of the Native Tribes of North and South America

by Daniel G. Brinton

Along the coast of Brazil and up the Amazon there is current a more or less corrupted native tongue called the “common language,” lingua geral. It is derived mainly from the idiom of the Tupis, whose villages were found by the first discoverers along the seaboard, from the mouth of the La Plata to the Amazon and far up the stream of the latter. According to their traditions, which are supported by a comparison of their dialects, the Tupis wandered up the coast from the south. Their earlier home was between the Parana river and the Atlantic. There they called themselves Carai, the astute, a term they afterwards applied to the Spaniards, but later were given the name Guaranis, meaning warriors, by which they are generally known. They must have been very numerous, as a careful estimate made in 1612 computed those then living in the modern states of Corrientes and Uruguay at 365,000; a census which could not have been much exaggerated, as about a century later the Jesuits claimed to have over three hundred thousand Christianized and living in their “reductions;”[336] even to-day ninety per cent. of the population of Uruguay have Guarani blood in their veins.

The inroads of the Spaniards from the south and of the kidnapping Portuguese from the east, reduced their number greatly, and many bands sought safety in distant removals; thus the Chiriguanos moved far to the west and settled on the highlands of Bolivia, where they have increased their stock from four or five thousand to triple that number,[337] extending as far south as the Pilcomayo river. On the upper waters of the Parana were the Tapes, a nation so called from the name of their principal village. It is another form of Tupi, and means “town.” They received the early missionaries willingly, and are complimented by these as being the most docile and intelligent of any of the nations of South America.[338]

The Tupi tribes did not extend north of the immediate banks of the Amazon, nor south of the Rio de la Plata. It would appear not improbable that they started from the central highlands where the Tapajoz on the north and the Paraguay on the south have their sources. Their main body followed the latter to the Atlantic, where the Tupis proper separated and moved up the coast of Brazil. This latter migration is believed to have been as late as a few hundred years before the discovery.[339]

Like the Tapuyas, the Tupis have a tendency to dolicocephaly, but it is less pronounced. They are less prognathic, the forehead is fuller and the color of the skin brighter. The hair is generally straight, but Pöppig saw many among the Cocamas of pure blood with wavy and even curly hair.[340]

I have no hesitation in including in the Tupi family the Mundurucus, or Paris, on the upper Tapajoz. Their relationship was fully recognized by Professor Hartt, who was well acquainted with both dialects.[341] They are a superior stamp of men, tall, of athletic figures, light in color, their naked bodies artistically tattooed. Their women are skilled in weaving cotton hammocks, and the men pursue some agriculture, and manufacture handsome feather ornaments.

To the same family belong the Muras and Turas, in the swampy valley of the Madeira in its middle course, “an amphibious race of ichthyophagi,” as they are called by Martius, savage and hostile, and depraved by the use of the parica, a narcotic, intoxicating snuff prepared from the dried seeds of the Mimosa acacioides. At the beginning of this century they were estimated at 12,000 bowmen; but this was doubtless a great exaggeration. Though their dialect differs widely from the lingua geral, the majority of their words are from Tupi roots.[342] Others are related to the language of the Moxos, and in the last century certain of their tribes lived in the immediate vicinity of these, and were brought into the “reductions” of the Moxos Indians by the Jesuit missionaries.[343] The tendency of their migrations has been down the Madeira.

The tribes of this lineage in the extreme south of Brazil were numerous. The Guachaguis, corresponding apparently to the modern Guachis, are said by Lozano to speak a corrupt Guarani.[344] Vocabularies have been obtained by Castelnau and Natterer, which indicate only a remote resemblance. According to their own tradition, they migrated from near the Moxos in the Bolivian highlands.

The Gualachos, who spread from the river Iguaza to the sea coast, spoke a Guarani dialect in which the sounds of f, j and l were present, which, in pure Guarani, are absent. They built thatched houses divided into several rooms, and raised abundant harvests.[345]

The Omaguas and Cocamas, the most western of the Tupis, dwelling within the limits of Ecuador, had evidently profited by their contiguity to the civilization of Peru, as they are described by early travelers as familiar with gold, silver and copper, living in permanent villages connected by good roads, and cultivating large fields of cotton, maize and various food-plants. The art-forms which they produced and the prevalence of sun-worship, with rites similar to those of Peru, indicate the source of their more advanced culture. By some authors the Omaguas are stated to have migrated down the Rio Yupura from Popayan in New Granada, where a tribe speaking their dialect, the Mesayas are alleged still to reside.[346] The peculiar “mitred” skulls of the Omaguas are an artificial deformity prized by them as a beauty.