Among the elements which comprise and influence Brazilian social conditions, that of the Portuguese of course stands first, for as Ruy Barbosa said the other day, “Americans are descendants not of Apaches, but of Anglo-Saxons; not of Guaranis, but of Latins.” The Indian admixture has left little traceable influence but that of physical hardihood. The extreme south of Brazil, as we have already seen, has had during the last century an enormous influx of European white blood other than Portuguese, chiefly Italian and Germanic, while all the large coast cities are noticeably impregnated with more or less foreign elements. In the interior of the northern promontory a noticeable feature is the blonde average of the population, partly an inheritance from the days of Dutch control and partly from that of French settlement. Among the groups of unhappy retirantes from the drought districts, encountered in the streets of Pará and Manáos, waiting for shelter and work, there are often to be seen people with fair hair and blue eyes who might have come direct from Amsterdam or Brittany.
On the coastal belt of the lower half of the northern promontory there is another very strong admixture, that of the negro. Frequently the Brazilian shakes his head over this element, but occasionally the cudgels are taken up in its defence. The author Sylvio Romero says frankly that the European was not, in early colonial days, “strong enough to repel the native savage and cultivate the soil, and so resorted to that powerful auxiliary, the negro of Africa ... the ally of the white men.” He calls the negro “a robust civilizing element,” and says that from the close association of slavery sprang the mixed-blood descendants, who constitute today “the mass of our population and the chief beauty of our race.”
“Still today,” he declares, “the most beautiful feminine types are these agile, strong, brown-skinned girls with black eyes and hair, in whose veins run, although well diluted, many drops of African blood.... The coast of Africa civilized Brazil, said one of our statesmen, and he spoke truth; the negro has influenced all our intimate life and many of our customs are transmitted from him. It is sufficient to remember that the only genuine Brazilian cooking, the cozinha bahiana, is entirely African. Many of our dances, songs and popular music, a whole literature of ardent outpourings, have this origin. It is unfortunate that this energetic race should have suffered the brand of slavery; we should make a vow to revindicate its place in our history. There are means of utilizing the negro without degrading him.”
Sylvio Romero adds that “all the first-class people of Brazil have white blood, either pure or mingled with that of another race,” but that the white element should do justice to the degree to which the black has been a mental, political, economic and social factor. He traces, in a little book of which I found a stray copy on a bookstall in Manáos market, the negro element in the folklore of Brazil (Contos Populares, Rio de Janeiro) as well as that of the native Indian, and makes the point that both Indian and negro are “inarticulate” in Brazilian society, except through the medium of a language foreign to their ideas, Portuguese, which has undoubtedly coloured their mental expression. These Folk-tales of Sylvio Romero’s collection, as well as those preserved by Couto de Magalhães in his Selvagem, are delightful tales, many hinging upon the adventures of various wild animals, and frequently displaying a decided streak of humour not unlike that of the “Uncle Remus” negro tales of North America.
At least one negro poet of Brazil has a claim to fame—Cruz e Souza; the sculptor Pinheiro was also chiefly of African blood; José de Patrocinio, who worked hard for the abolition of slavery and stood by the chair of Princess Isabel when she signed the decree of freedom, was an able and eloquent negro writer. Altogether, the debt of Brazil to the strong African races appears to be quite as important, if not much more so, than that owed to the Tupi-Guarani and other “Indian” tribes of native Brazil. Fleeing from before the hard hand of the white man, the Indian as a separate social element has disappeared from those parts of Brazil brought into touch with modern life.
This native Brazilian, the “Indian” of the coasts, inland plains, and forest-bordered rivers who lived in the country before Portuguese possession, has left no traces of civilization comparable with that of the Incas or pre-Incas of the north-west of South America, or with the culture of the Maya of Central America and their pupils and conquerors, the Aztecs. Only in the north, along the Amazonian river highway connecting with Peru are there remains of ceramic art, and survivals of weaving skill, which denote marked attainments by a people with settled homes and defined social habits.
The Museo Goldi at Pará is full of good pottery, some fairly modern, and much dug from burial grounds on the great island of Marajó at the mouth of the Amazon; Marajó has a lake which in turn shelters an island which has proved a mine for the archaeologist—and none too respectfully treated, unfortunately, by some recent excavators, who seem to have been more occupied in acquiring loot than in making historical records. This island in the lake appears to have served for a burial ground of tribes with social customs of a distinct type; many of the funerary urns are large enough to contain an entire human body, and some are of good artistic design; there is a very noticeable resemblance between certain of these Marajó pottery specimens, especially the smaller jars and domestic vessels, and ceramics found in Colombia and Southern Central America.
To the present day the Amazon Indians have preserved their skill in weaving native fibres; hammocks made of delicate threads, fine as lace and beautifully prepared, are ornamented with elaborate feather devices worked in with the fibres. They are sold on the Amazon for prices reaching several hundred milreis. Both the Museum in Pará and that in Rio de Janeiro, begun by Dom Pedro and housed in his one-time palace, contain beautiful specimens of Indian feather work, the exquisite pinks, blues and greens of Brazilian birds lending themselves to the gay effect. Allied in race, apparently, to handsome, stocky natives of British Guiana, the Amazon Indian often has a skin of a cinnamon tint, is physically strong so long as he is not called upon for regular and confined labour, is a good waterman and archer, and is not inimical while he is allowed to remain undisturbed in his forests. If it were not necessary to enlist his help or enter his retreats, his effect upon Brazilian modern social conditions would be nil; there was a time when Indian blood and labour were forcibly brought into service, but that period is past, although the effect of the former survives in the fortifying of much Portuguese blood. The hardy mixture that resulted was able to withstand a trying climate as a pure European race probably could not have done.
Igapó near the Rio Negro, Amazonas.
Caripuna Indians, on the Madeira River.