GROUP X.
INDIANS OF THE AMAZONS.
The tribes of so vast a river as the Amazons are numerous, even if we go no further than the main stream—much more so if we look to those on its feeders.
At the same time they are fragmentary, and most imperfectly known. Neither are they free from intermixture—Spanish intermixture on the western, and Portuguese on the eastern.
All the tribes, however, illustrated by the figures before us, belong to Brazil, i.e., to Portuguese America.
Their history is that of aborigines in general; there is their period of independence, their period of oppression, their period of mitigated persecution—of reaction.
Let us look at the history of the parts about the rivers Negro and Madeira—the one joining the Amazons from the north, the others from the south.
In 1671, a company of soldiers was stationed to protect the Portuguese trade, and the foundation of the Villa da Barra de Rio Negro was laid by Antonio de Albuquerque Coelho. This was the area of the Juripixunas, or Juruuna—Indians—the Blackfaces, so called because they tattooed themselves black. These also were numerous, and not intractable; handy with their canoes, and active on the water. As many as 1000 at a time found their way to the slave-market at Pera. Sometimes they were stolen without the disguise of a quarrel—stolen, because the man-stealer was the stronger. But, at times, there was a clever piece of villany put in practice. The slave-hunter would get a cross, the symbol of his religion, lay it somewhere in the track of the Indians, look for it some days afterwards, miss it, and then make a charge of sacrilege against the Indians of the locality. Out of practices like these rose regular slave-hunting settlements, with barracoons, after the fashion of the negro slave-trade. There was the usual practice, with the usual incentives, the usual organisation, the usual wars to follow, violence, unscrupulousness, cruelty, blood. The enemy to the Indian was the trader; his best friend the priest.
Weapons, &c., from the Amazons.
When King John IV., in 1652, wished to enact a favourable code for the aborigines, the governors of Maranham and Para instigated the population of their respective governments to uproarious manifestations.