The errors of Schmidt went so far in names of persons that he did not write correctly those of his chiefs, not even that of Domingo Martinez de Irala, under whose immediate orders he served for twenty years. Schmidt repeatedly insists on naming him Martino Domingo de Eyollas. Another of his chiefs was Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, whom he always names Abernunzo Cabessa de Bacha. The most curious thing is, that the editors who attempted to correct these errors, were not free from similar faults; even M. Camus,[8] who, in correcting that of Cabeza de Vaca, rendered it by Alvare Nugnez Cabera di Vacha; and M. Ternaux Compans, who supposed the settlement named “Duechkamin” by Schmidt, to be Tucuman,[9] because he did not know that neither the city nor the province of this name were founded at the moment to which he is referring.
[8] Mémoire sur la Collection des Grands et Petits Voyages, par A. G. Camus, 1802.
[9] Voyages, Relations et Mémoires originaux pour servir à l’histoire de la découverte de l’Amérique, etc., vol. v.
I believe that in my notes I have removed all these blunders, leaving some of them as they are, because they are incomprehensible and have no importance for history or geography.
In all this, and in chronology, the work of Schmidt is extremely defective, so much so, that I am unable to understand how the Spanish geographer Azara, recommending the merits of this adventurer, should have affirmed the following enormity in his Voyages dans l’Amérique Méridionale:—“Je fais grand cas de ce petit ouvrage, à cause de son impartialité et de l’exactitude des distances et des situations, choses en quoi personne ne l’égale.”[10] I do not accept this judgment, and in my notes and observations the reader will see if I have good reason for differing from Azara, whose merits I recognise, as I also know his grave faults.
[10] Voyages dans l’Amérique Méridionale, par Don Felix Azara; Paris, 1809; Introduction, p. 20.
Azara is one of the few who deny that the country was inhabited by a multitude of various nations, as many writers have asserted, and nevertheless enumerates and describes no less than thirty-two nations and more than fifty tribes. I maintain there was only one nation, the Guaraní; and in the province of La Plata, described by Alvar Nuñez and by Schmidt, the Guaranís were divided into twenty-one tribes, who differed only in their habits, or their arms, or in the nature of the country inhabited by them. These are the tribes entered on my ethnographical map. The others, mentioned by the writers in question, would be merely unimportant groups, designated by the name of their chief, or by some nickname applied to them by their neighbours or enemies. The tribes I record are the following: Quîrandís, Chanás, Charuas, Yarós, Arechanés, Minhuános, Timbús, Tobas, Mocobís or Mbocoys, Abipones, Agaces, Mepenes, Mbaiás, Payaguás, Guaicurús, Cheriguanos, Xarayos, Itatines, Guatós, Cariyós, Tapiis; all these are Guaranís. I do not treat of the other principal tribes, situated in the interior of the country between Paraná and the Andes, because they do not concern the narratives of Schmidt and Alvar Nuñez.
To the errors of Schmidt in nomenclature and distances must be added others of fact, doubtless more important. These also are rectified in the notes, which the reader will find in the corresponding place. In these, however, I have not touched on the subject of cannibalism attributed to the natives, because this deserves separate treatment here.
I believe there is not a single author of history and travel, at the time of the conquest of America, who has not admitted the assertion, and repeated it, that the natives were anthropophagi. Even the name cannibals was invented in the early years of the conquest. When Christopher Columbus established himself in Hayti, he asked the feeble, unarmed, and hospitable Indians he found there, for some information concerning other islands and their inhabitants, and they informed him that further on there were perverse men who made war upon them to rob and enslave them. These Indians of Hayti gave the name of Carib and Caniba to the islands inhabited by their enemies, called Caribes.