CARAJA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
- Carajahis, about Salinas.
- Carajas, on the Rio Araguay.
- Chimbioas, on the eastern affluents of lower Araguay.
- Javahais, on upper Araguay and island of Bananal.
- Ximbioas, see Chimbioas.
A certain number of vocabularies have been obtained by travelers in Brazil from mixed-blood tribes, who spoke dialects sometimes compounded of several native tongues, sometimes of these mingled with Portuguese or negro elements. Such is the dialect of the Meniens, who lived in eastern Brazil near the Villa Belmonte, whose speech was a jargon of the Tapuya and negro languages; and that of the Cames in the interior of San Paulo, who also made use of a barbarous dialect, compounded of the African idioms of runaway slaves, and that of the Botocudos. The Catoquina, a specimen of which was obtained by Spix from a band on the affluent of the Jurua, and the Catoxa or Cotoxo of the Rio Parda, are other examples.[396]
7. The Orinoco Basin; Carib Sub-Stock; Salivas; Arawak Sub-Stock; Otomacos; Guamas; Guayoas; Garuoas; Guaraunos; Betoyas; Piaroas, etc.
The Llanos of Venezuela coincide with the former “Territory of Caqueta,” and embrace a region about forty thousand square miles in extent, covered either with grass and rushes or with dense forests. In the wet season it is a vast marsh, in the dry it is scorched by a burning sun, raising the thermometer daily to over 100° in the shade. Yet the Llanos are but a part of the vast upper water-shed of the northern affluents of the Amazon and those of the Orinoco, which together drain a country larger than the whole of France.
This wide expanse is thinly populated with bands of savages, gaining their subsistence chiefly from the rivers, few of them brought within the range of civilized influences. Linguistically the majority belong to the Arawak and the Carib stocks; but there are numbers of tribes whose affinities are uncertain, or who are apparently of quite another lineage. Scores of names are found in the records of the missions and on the pages of travelers, of peoples who have disappeared or are now known by other designations. Alexander von Humboldt named and located 186 tribes on the Orinoco and its affluents alone; but renounced as hopeless the attempt to give them a linguistic classification.[397] I shall not attempt to unravel the tangled ethnography of this region farther than to mention those tribes concerning whom specimens of language or the statements of European visitors permit a reasonable guess as to their affinities.
Something over a century ago, when Father Gilii wrote, largely from personal knowledge, his description of the tribes on the Orinoco and its affluents, he believed they could be included in nine linguistic stocks,[398] as follows:
1. The Carib in a number of dialects, as the Tamanaca, the Paiura, the Quiri-Quiripa, the Mapuya, the Guanero, the Guayquira, the Palenque, the Maquiritare, the Oje, the Mucuru, and others.
2. The Saliva, to which he assigned the dialects Ature, Piaroa and Quaqua.