They build their houses with mud walls in regular villages, and, though very agricultural, make war every year with an adjoining tribe, the Parentintins, taking the women and children for slaves, and preserving the dried heads of the men in a large building or barrack, where all the men sleep at night, armed with their bows and arrows ready in case of alarm.
One of the singular facts connected with these Indians of the Amazons valley is the resemblance which exists between some of their customs and those of nations most remote from them.
The blow-pipe re-appears in the sumpitan of Borneo; the great houses of the Uaupes closely resemble those of the Dyaks of the same country, while many small baskets and bamboo boxes from Borneo and New Guinea are so similar in their form and construction to those of the Amazons that they would be supposed to belong to adjoining tribes. Then again the Mandrucus, like the Dyaks, take the heads of their enemies, smoke-dry them with equal care, preserving the skin and hair entire, and hang them up around their houses. In Australia the throwing-stick is used, and on a remote branch of the Amazons we see a tribe of Indians differing from all around them in substituting for the bow a weapon only found in such a remote portion of the earth, among a people differing from them in almost every physical character. How can such similarities be accounted for? Do they result from some remote and unknown connection between these nations, or are they mere accidental coincidences produced by the same wants acting upon people subject to the same conditions of climate, and in an equally low state of civilisation?
The Caribs, whom the cruelty of the Spaniards extirpated in the Lesser Antilles, still exist in a variety of tribes from the mouth of the Amazons to Lake Maracaybo. They are distinguished by an almost athletic stature, by a stately demeanour, and an intense national pride, for, remembering the times when they overran a considerable part of South America, they still consider themselves as a superior race. When a Carib enters the hut of another Indian he does not wait till food is offered him, but, looking round with a haughty mien, seizes what pleases him best, as if it were his own by right. Arrogant and tyrannical towards strangers, he is equally so towards his wives, and it would be difficult to find a Carib woman who does not show in numerous scars and wounds the marks of her husband’s brutality.
In point of intelligence, the Caribs are surpassed by no other Indians. They are excellent orators, and the earnest dignified manner in which they deliver their speeches shows them to be capable of a high degree of civilisation.
Among the tribes of Southern Brazil the Botocudos, who inhabit the primeval forests on the banks of the rivers Pardo, Doce, and Belmonte, are the most remarkable. The custom of piercing the ears and underlip for the purpose of inserting some ornament is found among many other nations, both of the Old and the New World, but nowhere is it carried to such an excess as among the Botocudos. At an early age pieces of round light wood, first small and gradually larger, are inserted into the apertures, until at length the ears almost reach down to the shoulders, and the lip, distended into a narrow rim, is made to project to a distance of seven or eight inches. At a later age, when the muscular fibres begin to lose their elasticity, it hangs down, and as, in consequence of the pressure of the wood, the front teeth soon fall out, it is hardly possible to conceive anything more hideous than a face thus artificially deformed. To add, probably, to their beauty, these savages shave their hair so as to leave but a small crown or tuft on the top of the head. The wourali is not in use among them, but their enormous bows and long sharp arrows render them formidable to their neighbours. A Botocudo, with his sharp eye and muscular arm, accustomed from infancy to the use of these murderous weapons, is indeed a greater object of terror in the gloomy impervious forest than the jaguar or the snake. When a horde, after having exhausted the neighbourhood of its game, is obliged to migrate to some other quarter, its removal is easily effected. A few dried palm-leaves alone remain to indicate the spot where the savages had fixed their dwellings, and soon even these slight vestiges disappear. In the primitive forest man, indeed, passes away like a shadow,
‘Sicut navis, quasi nubes, velut umbra,’
and leaves no more traces of his existence than the wild animals which he chased.
In these migratory journeys the heaviest burdens fall to the share of the women, who, besides a large heap of household articles, tied up in a bag of network, are often still obliged to carry a child on their back. Thus encumbered, they manage to cross small rivers on bridges of a very primitive construction. A cable made of bush-ropes is loosely suspended over the surface of the stream, and on this they walk, holding themselves by another cable similarly hung at a greater height.
The Botocudos are cannibals, like many other American tribes. After a battle they feast upon the dead bodies of their enemies, but more, it seems, from a spirit of vindictive rage than from a depraved taste for human flesh.