In some of the Brazilian tribes, the oblique eye of the Chinese and Mongolians occurs.
In order to show the extent to which a multiplicity of small families may not only exist, but exist in the neighbourhood of great ethnological areas, I will enumerate those tribes of the Missions, Brazil, Guiana, and Venezuela, for which vocabularies have been examined, and whereof the languages are believed, either from the comparison of specimens, or on the strength of direct evidence, to be mutually unintelligible; premising that differences are more likely to be exaggerated than undervalued, and that the number of tribes not known in respect to their languages is probably as great again as that of the known ones.
A. Between the Andes, the Missions, and the 15′ and 17′ S. L. come the Yurakares; whose language is said to differ from that of the Mocéténès, Tacana, and Apolistas, as much as these differ amongst themselves.
B. In the Missions come—1. The Moxos. 2. The Movima. 3. The Cayuvava. 4. The Sapiboconi—these belonging to Moxos. In Chiquitos are—1. The Covareca. 2. The Curuminaca. 3. The Curavi. 4. The Curucaneca. 5. The Corabeca. 6. The Samucu.
C. In Brazil, the tribes, other than Guarani, of which I have seen vocabularies representing mutually unintelligible tongues, are—
- 1. The Botocudo, fiercest of cannibals.
- 2. The Goitaca, known to the Portuguese as Coroados or Tonsured.
- 3. The Camacan with several dialects.
- 4. The Kiriri and Sabuja.
- 5. The Timbira.
- 6. The Pareci, the predominant population of the Mata Grosso.
- 7. The Mundrucu, on the southern bank of the Amazons between the rivers Mauhé and Tabajos.
- 8. The Muru.
- 9, 10, 11. The Yameo, Maina, and Chimano between the Madera and the Ucayale.
- 12. The Coretu, the only one out of forty tribes known to us by a vocabulary, for the parts between the left bank of the Amazons and the right of the Rio Negro.
D. Of French, Spanish, and Dutch Guiana I know but little. Upon British Guiana a bright light has been thrown by the researches of Sir R. Schomburgk. Here, besides numerous well-marked divisions of the Carib group, we have—
- 1. The Warows, arboreal boatmen—boatmen because they occupy the Delta of the Orinoco, and the low coast of Northern Guiana—and arboreal because the floods drive them up into the trees for a lodging. In physical form the Warows are like their neighbours; but their language has been reduced to no class, and their peculiar habits place them in strong contrast with most other South Americans. They are the Marshmen of a country which is at once a delta and a forest.
- 2. The Taruma.
- 3. The Wapisiana, with the Atúrai, Daúri, and Amaripas as extinct, or nearly extinct, sections of them—themselves only a population of four hundred.
E. Venezuela means the water-system of Orinoco, and here we have the mutually unintelligible tongues of—
- 1. The Salivi, of which the Aturi are a division—the Aturi known from Humboldt’s description of their great sepulchral cavern on the cataracts of the Orinoco; where more than six hundred bodies were preserved in woven bags or baskets—some mummies, some skeletons, some varnished with odoriferous resins, some painted with arnotto, some bleached white, some naked. This custom re-appears in parts of Guiana. The Salivi have undergone great displacement; since there is good reason for believing that their language was once spoken in Trinidad.
- 2. The Maypures.
- 3. The Achagua.
- 4. The Yarura, to which the Betoi is allied; and possibly—