The uniformity which prevails in the features of the American aboriginals, exists also in the qualities of their minds, which generally exhibit an apparent indifference to pain or pleasure that would have done honour to a Stoic. Insensible to the charms of beauty and the power of love, they treat their women with coldness and indifference, being at no pains to win their favour by the assiduity of courtship, and still less solicitous to preserve it by indulgence and gentleness. Grave, even unto sadness, they have nothing of that giddy vivacity peculiar to many Europeans. Frequently placed in situations of danger and distress, depending on themselves alone, and wrapped up in their own thoughts and schemes, their minds are tinted with an habitual melancholy. Their attention to others is small, the range of their own ideas narrow. Hence that taciturnity which is so disgusting to men accustomed to exchange their thoughts in social conversation. When not engaged in some active pursuit, the wild Americans often sit whole days in one posture without opening their lips.
When they go forth to war or to the chase, they usually march in a line at some distance from one another, and without exchanging a word. The same profound silence is observed when they row together in a canoe. It is only when they are animated by intoxicating liquors, or roused by the excitement of the dance, that they relax from their usual insensibility and give some signs of sympathy with their kind.
All their thoughts intent upon self-preservation, they live only in the present, and seem alike indifferent to the past and the future. Gratitude, friendship, ambition, are sentiments of which they have no idea; and war or the pursuit of wild animals the only occupations which are able to rouse them from their stolid apathy.
Many tribes depend entirely upon fishing or the chase for their subsistence; others rear a few plants, which in a rich soil and a warm climate are soon trained to maturity. With a moderate exertion of industry and foresight the maize, the manioc, and the plantain would enable them to live in abundance, but such is their improvident laziness that the provisions they obtain by cultivating the ground are but limited and scanty, and thus when the woods and rivers withhold their usual gifts, they are often reduced to extreme distress.
The streams and lagunes of South America abound with an infinite variety of the most delicate fish, and Nature seems to have indulged the indolence of the Indian by the liberality with which she ministers in this way to his wants. They swarm in such shoals that in some places they are caught without art or industry. In others the natives have discovered a method of infecting the water with the juice of certain plants, by which the fish are so intoxicated that they float on the surface, and are taken with the hand.
In one of the shallow lagunes of the Amazons, the French traveller Castelnau witnessed fish-catching by this means on a grand scale. On the previous evening a quantity of branches of the Barbasco (Jacquinia armillaris), after having been beaten with clubs, and divided among the canoes that were to take part in the sport, had been steeped in water, and then flung with the infusion into the lagune. At least five hundred Indians stood on the banks among the high rushes or on the trunks of trees, armed with arrows, harpoons, and clubs. At first only small fishes appeared upon the surface, and as if stunned, and then, suddenly awakening, sought to leap upon the bank. Then the larger species were seen to float on the water, or to make similar efforts to escape from the poisoned element. During the whole day the canoes of the Indians were passing on the lagune, and the same bustle reigned along the banks. The whistling of the arrows was incessantly heard, together with the beating of the clubs upon the water, while on land no less activity was displayed in cutting up, smoking, and salting the fish. Castelnau counted thirty-five different species, and estimated the number caught at 50,000 or 60,000, many measuring a foot or more in length. Although the lagune was thus poisoned, the Indians drank the water with impunity, and the river tortoises and alligators seemed to be equally untouched by the Barbasco juice which proved so fatal to the fishes.
The prolific quality of the rivers in South America induces many of the natives to resort to their banks, and to depend almost entirely for nourishment on what their waters so abundantly supply. But this mode of life requires so little enterprise or ingenuity that the petty nations adjacent to the Marañon and Orinoco are far inferior, in point of activity, intelligence, and courage, to the tribes which principally depend upon hunting for their subsistence. To form a just estimate of the intellectual capacities of the American, he must be seen when following the exciting pursuits of the chase. While engaged in this favourite exercise, he shakes off his habitual indolence, the latent powers and vigour of his mind are roused, and he becomes active, persevering, and indefatigable. His sagacity in finding his prey is only equalled by his address in killing it. His reason and his senses being constantly directed to this one object, the former displays such fertility of invention and the latter acquire such a degree of acuteness, as appear almost incredible. He discerns the footsteps of a wild beast, or detects it among the dark foliage, where its vestiges or presence would escape every other eye; he follows it with certainty through the pathless forest, and is able to subsist where the best European hunter would perish from want. If he attacks his game openly, his fatal arrow seldom errs from the mark; if he endeavours to circumvent it by art, it is almost impossible to avoid his toils.
Among several tribes the young men are not permitted to marry until they have given such proofs of their skill in hunting as put it beyond doubt that they are capable of providing for a family. Their ingenuity, always on the stretch and sharpened by emulation, as well as necessity, has struck out many inventions which greatly facilitate success in the chase.
Slow, and with noiseless step, so as scarcely to disturb the fallen leaves beneath his feet, the wily Macusi Indian approaches. His weapons are strong, and peculiar, and of so slight an appearance as to form a strange contrast to their terrific power. A colossal species of Bamboo (Arundinacea Schomburgkii), whose perfectly cylindrical culm often rises to the height of fifteen feet from the root before it forms its first knot, furnishes him with his blow-pipe; and the slender arrows which he sends forth with unerring certainty of aim, are made of the leaf-stalks of a species of palm tree (Maximiliana regia), hard and brittle, and sharp-pointed as a needle. You would hardly suppose these fragile missiles capable of inflicting the slightest wound at any distance, and yet they strike more surely and effectively than the rifleman’s bullet, for their point is dipped in the deadly juice of the Strychnos Urari, whose venomous powers are not inferior to those of the bush-master’s fang.
In vain, suspended by his prehensile tail, the Miriki, the largest of the Brazilian monkeys, retires to the highest forest trees; in vain the sloth clings like a heap of moss to the bough; touched by the fatal poison they both let go their aërial hold, and their lifeless bodies, whizzing through the air as they drop down, fall with a loud crash to the ground.