BOTOCUDO INDIANS ATTACKING A JAGUAR.
CHAPTER VII.
THE WILD INDIANS OF TROPICAL AMERICA.
The wild Forest Tribes—Their Physical Conformation and Moral Characteristics—Their Powers of Endurance not inferior to those of other Races—Their stoical indifference—Their Means of Subsistence—Fishing—Hunting—The Wourali Poison—Ornaments—Painting—Tattooing—Religion—The Moon, a Land of Abundance—The Botuto—The Piaches—The Savage Hordes of Brazil and Guiana—The Ottomacas—Dirt-eaters—Their Vindictive Ferocity and War Stratagems—The extinct Tribe of the Atures—A Parrot the last Speaker of their Language—Their Burial-cavern—The Uaupes Indians—Their large Huts—Horrid Custom of Disinterment—The Macus—The Purupurus—The ‘Palheta’—The Mandrucus—Singular resemblance of some of the Customs of the American Indians to those of Remote Nations—The Caribs—The Botocudos—Monstrous distension of the Ears and Under-lip—Their Bow and Arrow—Their Migrations—Bush-rope Bridge—Botocudo Funeral—‘Tanchon,’ the Evil Spirit.
Though nominally under the dominion of the European race, yet a considerable part of tropical America still remains in the undisturbed possession of its native tribes. While the stranger has established his chief settlements along the coast or in those parts of the interior which before his arrival were already the seats of a certain degree of culture, where before him the Incas had founded cities and a large agricultural population occupied the fertile table-lands of Anahuac, the wild hunter, unsubjected to the rules and trammels of civilised life, still roams over the boundless woods or interminable savannahs through which the Amazons, the Orinoco, and a hundred other great streams wend their way from the Andes to the Ocean. Here the primitive American can still be studied; here he exhibits the same traits of character and follows the same mode of life as his fathers before him, in the times of Cortez or Pizarro.
Many of the forest tribes, indeed, have been converted to Christianity, and live in missions or small settlements situated far apart on the banks of the great rivers; others are willing to barter the drugs, india-rubber, or rare birds and insects, they gather in the woods for articles of European manufacture; but many desiring no more than what their native wilds supply, never or but seldom cross the path of civilised man.
Though divided into a large number of hostile tribes, and scattered over an immense extent of country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and far beyond the bounds which separate one tropic from the other, yet the American Indians so nearly resemble each other, both in their features and the qualities of their minds, as evidently to be descended from one source. Their complexion is of a reddish-brown, more or less resembling the colour of copper. There is, however, a great diversity of shade among the several tribes, which appears to be less dependent on the influence of climate than on an original disposition, varying in the different branches of the American race. The elevation above the sea, or the vicinity of the equator, seems to have no great influence, for both Ulloa and Humboldt were astonished to find the Indians as bronze-coloured or as brown in the cold regions of the Cordilleras as in the hot plains of Venezuela. On the sultry banks of the Orinoco there are even tribes characterised by a remarkable fairness of complexion, living in the vicinity of others more than commonly brown. D’Orbigny makes this lightness of colour coincide with the woody and shady character of the quarters inhabited; the Maripas, for instance, who inhabit the most exposed countries, being also the darkest in hue.
The hair of the American Indians is always black, long, coarse, and uncurled. With rare exceptions they carefully eradicate their scanty beard. Their forehead is generally low, their black and deep-seated eyes have their upper angles turned upwards, and their cheek-bones are broad and high. While they thus in some of their features resemble the Mongol type, they widely differ from it by the form of their nose, which is as prominent as in the Caucasian race. The mouth is large, the lips broad, but not thick as those of the Negro; the chin short and round, the jaws remarkably strong and broad. The expression of the eye is in some tribes mild and serene, in others it shows a forbidding mixture of melancholy and ferocity. There is generally a remarkable rigidity in the features of the American, very different from that lively play in a European countenance, which often reflects as a mirror every emotion of the mind. Some tribes are of small stature, others athletic; the limbs are generally well-turned; the feet small; the body of just proportions.
The beardless countenance and smooth skin seem to indicate a defect of vigour which does not exist in reality. In those parts of the continent where hardly any labour is requisite to procure subsistence, and the powers of the body and mind are not called forth, indolence indeed produces its usual effects, weakness and languor; but wherever the aboriginal American is accustomed to toil, he is found capable of performing such tasks as equal any effort of the natives either of Africa or of Europe. In many of the silver mines of Mexico, where the ore is conveyed to the surface by human labour, the native Indians will climb steep ladders with 240 to 380 pounds, and perform this hard work for six hours consecutively. Their muscular strength seemed truly astonishing to Humboldt, who, though having no weight but his own to carry, felt himself utterly exhausted after ascending from a deep mine.[9] In propelling a boat against a rapid stream, or in supporting the fatigues of a long march, the Indian evinces similar powers of endurance and exertion, which prove him to be not inferior in this respect to the other races of man.