Books: Equinoctial Regions of America V2

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On the 8th of April we passed the mouths of the Suapure or Sivapuri,
and the Caripo, on the east, and the outlet of the Sinaruco on the
west. This last river is, next to the Rio Arauca, the most
considerable between the Apure and the Meta. The Suapure, full of
little cascades, is celebrated among the Indians for the quantity of
wild honey obtained from the forests in its neighbourhood. The
melipones there suspend their enormous hives to the branches of trees.
Father Gili, in 1766, made an excursion on the Suapure, and on the
Turiva, which falls into it. He there found tribes of the nation of
Areverians. We passed the night a little below the island Macapina.

Early on the following morning we arrived at the beach of Pararuma,
where we found an encampment of Indians similar to that we had seen at
the Boca de la Tortuga. They had assembled to search the sands, for
collecting the turtles' eggs, and extracting the oil; but they had
unfortunately made a mistake of several days. The young turtles had
come out of their shells before the Indians had formed their camp; and
consequently the crocodiles and the garzes, a species of large white
herons, availed themselves of the delay. These animals, alike fond of
the flesh of the young turtles, devour an innumerable quantity. They
fish during the night, for the tortuguillos do not come out of the
earth to gain the neighbouring river till after the evening twilight.
The zamuro vultures are too indolent to hunt after sunset. They stalk
along the shores in the daytime, and alight in the midst of the Indian
encampment to steal provisions; but they often find no other means of
satisfying their voracity than by attacking young crocodiles of seven
or eight inches long, either on land or in water of little depth. It
is curious to see the address with which these little animals defend
themselves for a time against the vultures. As soon as they perceive
the enemy, they raise themselves on their fore paws, bend their backs,
and lift up their heads, opening their wide jaws. They turn
continually, though slowly, toward their assailant to show him their
teeth, which, even when the animal has but recently issued from the
egg, are very long and sharp. Often while the attention of a young
crocodile is wholly engaged by one of the zamuros, another seizes the
favourable opportunity for an unforeseen attack. He pounces on the
crocodile, grasps him by the neck, and bears him off to the higher
regions of the air. We had an opportunity of observing this manoeuvre
during several mornings, at Mompex, on the banks of the Magdalena,
where we had collected more than forty very young crocodiles, in a
spacious court surrounded by a wall.

We found among the Indians assembled at Pararuma some white men, who
had come from Angostura to purchase the tortoise-butter. After having
wearied us for a long time with their complaints of the bad harvest,
and the mischief done by the tigers among the turtles, at the time of
laying their eggs, they conducted us beneath an ajoupa, that rose in
the centre of the Indian camp. We here found the missionary-monks of
Carichana and the Cataracts seated on the ground, playing at cards,
and smoking tobacco in long pipes. Their ample blue garments, their
shaven heads, and their long beards, might have led us to mistake them
for natives of the East. These poor priests received us in the kindest
manner, giving us every information necessary for the continuation of
our voyage. They had suffered from tertian fever for some months; and
their pale and emaciated aspect easily convinced us that the countries
we were about to visit were not without danger to the health of
travellers.

The Indian pilot, who had brought us from San Fernando de Apure as far
as the shore of Pararuma, was unacquainted with the passage of the
rapids* (* Little cascades, chorros raudalitos.) of the Orinoco, and
would not undertake to conduct our bark any farther. We were obliged
to conform to his will. Happily for us, the missionary of Carichana
consented to sell us a fine canoe at a very moderate price: and Father
Bernardo Zea, missionary of the Atures and Maypures near the great
cataracts, offered, though still unwell, to accompany us as far as the
frontiers of Brazil. The number of natives who can assist in guiding
boats through the Raudales is so inconsiderable that, but for the
presence of the monk, we should have risked spending whole weeks in
these humid and unhealthy regions. On the banks of the Orinoco, the
forests of the Rio Negro are considered as delicious spots. The air is
indeed cooler and more healthful. The river is free from crocodiles;
one may bathe without apprehension, and by night as well as by day
there is less torment from the sting of insects than on the Orinoco.
Father Zea hoped to reestablish his health by visiting the Missions of
Rio Negro. He talked of those places with that enthusiasm which is
felt in all the colonies of South America for everything far off.

The assemblage of Indians at Pararuma again excited in us that
interest, which everywhere attaches man in a cultivated state to the
study of man in a savage condition, and the successive development of
his intellectual faculties. How difficult to recognize in this infancy
of society, in this assemblage of dull, silent, inanimate Indians, the
primitive character of our species! Human nature does not here
manifest those features of artless simplicity, of which poets in every
language have drawn such enchanting pictures. The savage of the
Orinoco appeared to us to be as hideous as the savage of the
Mississippi, described by that philosophical traveller Volney, who so
well knew how to paint man in different climates. We are eager to
persuade ourselves that these natives, crouching before the fire, or
seated on large turtle-shells, their bodies covered with earth and
grease, their eyes stupidly fixed for whole hours on the beverage they
are preparing, far from being the primitive type of our species, are a
degenerate race, the feeble remains of nations who, after having been
long dispersed in the forests, are replunged into barbarism.

Red paint being in some sort the only clothing of the Indians, two
kinds may be distinguished among them, according as they are more or
less affluent. The common decoration of the Caribs, the Ottomacs, and
the Jaruros, is onoto,* (* Properly anoto. This word belongs to the
Tamanac Indians. The Maypures call it majepa. The Spanish missionaries
say onotarse, to rub the skin with anato.) called by the Spaniards
achote, and by the planters of Cayenne, rocou. It is the colouring
matter extracted from the pulp of the Bixa orellana.* (* The word
bixa, adopted by botanists, is derived from the ancient language of
Haiti (the island of St. Domingo). Rocou, the term commonly used by
the French, is derived from the Brazilian word, urucu.) The Indian
women prepare the anato by throwing the seeds of the plant into a tub
filled with water. They beat this water for an hour, and then leave it
to deposit the colouring fecula, which is of an intense brick-red.
After having separated the water, they take out the fecula, dry it
between their hands, knead it with oil of turtles' eggs, and form it
into round cakes of three or four ounces weight. When turtle oil is
wanting, some tribes mix with the anato the fat of the crocodile.

Another pigment, much more valuable, is extracted from a plant of the
family of the bignoniae, which M. Bonpland has made known by the name
of Bignonia chica. It climbs up and clings to the tallest trees by the
aid of tendrils. Its bilabiate flowers are an inch long, of a fine
violet colour, and disposed by twos or threes. The bipinnate leaves
become reddish in drying. The fruit is a pod, filled with winged
seeds, and is two feet long. This plant grows spontaneously, and in
great abundance, near Maypures; and in going up the Orinoco, beyond
the mouth of the Guaviare, from Santa Barbara to the lofty mountain of
Duida, particularly near Esmeralda. We also found it on the banks of
the Cassiquiare. The red pigment of chica is not obtained from the
fruit, like the onoto, but from the leaves macerated in water. The
colouring matter separates in the form of a light powder. It is
collected, without being mixed with turtle-oil, into little lumps
eight or nine inches long, and from two to three high, rounded at the
edges. These lumps, when heated, emit an agreeable smell of benzoin.
When the chica is subjected to distillation, it yields no sensible
traces of ammonia. It is not, like indigo, a substance combined with
azote. It dissolves slightly in sulphuric and muriatic acids, and even
in alkalis. Ground with oil, the chica furnishes a red colour that has
a tint of lake. Applied to wool, it might be confounded with
madder-red. There is no doubt but that the chica, unknown in Europe
before our travels, may be employed usefully in the arts. The nations
on the Orinoco, by whom this pigment is best prepared, are the
Salivas, the Guipunaves,* (* Or Guaypunaves; they call themselves
Uipunavi.) the Caveres, and the Piraoas. The processes of infusion and
maceration are in general very common among all the nations on the
Orinoco. Thus the Maypures carry on a trade of barter with the little
loaves of puruma, which is a vegetable fecula, dried in the manner of
indigo, and yielding a very permanent yellow colour. The chemistry of
the savage is reduced to the preparation of pigments, that of poisons,
and the dulcification of the amylaceous roots, which the aroides and
the euphorbiaceous plants afford.

Most of the missionaries of the Upper and Lower Orinoco permit the
Indians of their Missions to paint their skins. It is painful to add,
that some of them speculate on this barbarous practice of the natives.
In their huts, pompously called conventos,* (* In the Missions, the
priest's house bears the name of the convent.) I have often seen
stores of chica, which they sold as high as four francs the cake. To
form a just idea of the extravagance of the decoration of these naked
Indians, I must observe, that a man of large stature gains with
difficulty enough by the labour of a fortnight, to procure in exchange
the chica necessary to paint himself red. Thus as we say, in temperate
climates, of a poor man, "he has not enough to clothe himself," you
hear the Indians of the Orinoco say, "that man is so poor, that he has
not enough to paint half his body." The little trade in chica is
carried on chiefly with the tribes of the Lower Orinoco, whose country
does not produce the plant which furnishes this much-valued substance.
The Caribs and the Ottomacs paint only the head and the hair with
chica, but the Salives possess this pigment in sufficient abundance to
cover their whole bodies. When the missionaries send on their own
account small cargoes of cacao, tobacco, and chiquichiqui* (* Ropes
made with the petioles of a palm-tree with pinnate leaves.) from the
Rio Negro to Angostura, they always add some cakes of chica, as being
articles of merchandise in great request.

The custom of painting is not equally ancient among all the tribes of
the Orinoco. It has increased since the time when the powerful nation
of the Caribs made frequent incursions into those countries. The
victors and the vanquished were alike naked; and to please the
conqueror it was necessary to paint like him, and to assume his
colour. The influence of the Caribs has now ceased, and they remain
circumscribed between the rivers Carony, Cuyuni, and Paraguamuzi; but
the Caribbean fashion of painting the whole body is still preserved.
The custom has survived the conquest.

Does the use of the anato and chica derive its origin from the desire
of pleasing, and the taste for ornament, so common among the most
savage nations? or must we suppose it to be founded on the
observation, that these colouring and oily matters with which the skin
is plastered, preserve it from the sting of the mosquitos? I have
often heard this question discussed in Europe; but in the Missions of
the Orinoco, and wherever, within the tropics, the air is filled with
venomous insects, the inquiry would appear absurd. The Carib and the
Salive, who are painted red, are not less cruelly tormented by the
mosquitos and the zancudos, than the Indians whose bodies are
plastered with no colour. The sting of the insect causes no swelling
in either; and scarcely ever produces those little pustules which
occasion such smarting and itching to Europeans recently arrived. But
the native and the White suffer equally from the sting, till the
insect has withdrawn its sucker from the skin. After a thousand
useless essays, M. Bonpland and myself tried the expedient of rubbing
our hands and arms with the fat of the crocodile, and the oil of
turtle-eggs, but we never felt the least relief, and were stung as
before. I know that the Laplanders boast of oil and fat as the most
useful preservatives; but the insects of Scandinavia are not of the
same species as those of the Orinoco. The smoke of tobacco drives away
our gnats, while it is employed in vain against the zancudos. If the
application of fat and astringent* substances preserved the
inhabitants of these countries from the torment of insects, as Father
Gumilla alleges, why has not the custom of painting the skin become
general on these shores? (* The pulp of the anato, and even the chica,
are astringent and slightly purgative.) Why do so many naked natives
paint only the face, though living in the neighbourhood of those who
paint the whole body?* (* The Caribs, the Salives, the Tamanacs, and
the Maypures.)

We are struck with the observation, that the Indians of the Orinoco,
like the natives of North America, prefer the substances that yield a
red colour to every other. Is this predilection founded on the
facility with which the savage procures ochreous earths, or the
colouring fecula of anato and of chica? I doubt this much. Indigo
grows wild in a great part of equinoctial America. This plant, like so
many other leguminous plants, would have furnished the natives
abundantly with pigments to colour themselves blue like the ancient
Britons.* (* The half-clad nations of the temperate zone often paint
their skin of the same colour as that with which their clothes are
dyed.) Yet we see no American tribe painted with indigo. It appears to
me probable, as I have already hinted above, that the preference given
by the Americans to the red colour is generally founded on the
tendency which nations feel to attribute the idea of beauty to
whatever characterises their national physiognomy. Men whose skin is
naturally of a brownish red, love a red colour. If they be born with a
forehead little raised, and the head flat, they endeavour to depress
the foreheads of their children. If they be distinguished from other
nations by a thin beard, they try to eradicate the few hairs that
nature has given them. They think themselves embellished in proportion
as they heighten the characteristic marks of their race, or of their
national conformation.

We were surprised to see, that, in the camp of Pararuma, the women far
advanced in years were more occupied with their ornaments than the
youngest women. We saw an Indian female of the nation of the Ottomacs
employing two of her daughters in the operation of rubbing her hair
with the oil of turtles' eggs, and painting her back with anato and
caruto. The ornament consisted of a sort of lattice-work formed of
black lines crossing each other on a red ground. Each little square
had a black dot in the centre. It was a work of incredible patience.
We returned from a very long herborization, and the painting was not
half finished. This research of ornament seems the more singular when
we reflect that the figures and marks are not produced by the process
of tattooing, but that paintings executed with so much care are
effaced,* if the Indian exposes himself imprudently to a heavy shower.
(* The black and caustic pigment of the caruto (Genipa americana)
however, resists a long time the action of water, as we found with
regret, having one day, in sport with the Indians, caused our faces to
be marked with spots and strokes of caruto. When we returned to
Angostura, in the midst of Europeans, these marks were still visible.)
There are some nations who paint only to celebrate festivals; others
are covered with colour during the whole year: and the latter consider
the use of anato as so indispensable, that both men and women would
perhaps be less ashamed to present themselves without a guayaco* than
destitute of paint. (* A word of the Caribbean language. The perizoma
of the Indians of the Orinoco is rather a band than an apron.) These
guayucos of the Orinoco are partly bark of trees, and partly
cotton-cloth. Those of the men are broader than those worn by the
women, who, the missionaries say, have in general a less lively
feeling of modesty. A similar observation was made by Christopher
Columbus. May we not attribute this in difference, this want of
delicacy in women belonging to nations of which the manners are not
much depraved, to that rude state of slavery to which the sex is
reduced in South America by male injustice and tyranny?

When we speak in Europe of a native of Guiana, we figure to ourselves
a man whose head and waist are decorated with the fine feathers of the
macaw, the toucan, and the humming-bird. Our painters and sculptors
have long since regarded these ornaments as the characteristic marks
of an American. We were surprised at not finding in the Chayma
Missions, in the encampments of Uruana and of Pararuma (I might almost
say on all the shores of the Orinoco and the Cassiquiare) those fine
plumes, those feathered aprons, which are so often brought by
travellers from Cayenne and Demerara. These tribes for the most part,
even those whose intellectual faculties are most expanded, who
cultivate alimentary plants, and know how to weave cotton, are
altogether as naked,* as poor, and as destitute of ornaments as the
natives of New Holland. (* For instance, the Macos and the Piraoas.
The Caribs must be excepted, whose perizoma is a cotton cloth, so
broad that it might cover the shoulders.) The excessive heat of the
air, the profuse perspiration in which the body is bathed at every
hour of the day and a great part of the night, render the use of
clothes insupportable. Their objects of ornament, and particularly
their plumes of feathers, are reserved for dances and solemn
festivals. The plumes worn by the Guipunaves* are the most celebrated;
being composed of the fine feathers of manakins and parrots. (* These
came originally from the banks of the Inirida, one of the rivers that
fall into the Guaviare.)

The Indians are not always satisfied with one colour uniformly spread;
they sometimes imitate, in the most whimsical manner, in painting
their skin, the form of European garments. We saw some at Pararuma,
who were painted with blue jackets and black buttons. The missionaries
related to us that the Guaynaves of the Rio Caura are accustomed to
stain themselves red with anato, and to make broad transverse stripes
on the body, on which they stick spangles of silvery mica. Seen at a
distance, these naked men appear to be dressed in laced clothes. If
painted nations had been examined with the same attention as those who
are clothed, it would have been perceived that the most fertile
imagination, and the most mutable caprice, have created the fashions
of painting, as well as those of garments.

Painting and tattooing are not restrained, in either the New or the
Old World, to one race or one zone only. These ornaments are most
common among the Malays and American races; but in the time of the
Romans they were also employed by the white race in the north of
Europe. As the most picturesque garments and modes of dress are found
in the Grecian Archipelago and western Asia, so the type of beauty in
painting and tattooing is displayed by the islanders of the Pacific.
Some clothed nations still paint their hands, their nails, and their
faces. It would seem that painting is then confined to those parts of
the body that remain uncovered; and while rouge, which recalls to mind
the savage state of man, is disappearing by degrees in Europe, in some
towns of the province of Peru the ladies think they embellish their
delicate skins by covering them with colouring vegetable matter,
starch, white-of-egg, and flour. After having lived a long time among
men painted with anato and chica, we are singularly struck with these
remains of ancient barbarism retained amidst all the usages of
civilization.

The encampment at Pararuma afforded us an opportunity of examining
several animals in their natural state, which, till then, we had seen
only in the collections of Europe. These little animals form a branch
of commerce for the missionaries. They exchange tobacco, the resin
called mani, the pigment of chica, gallitos (rock-manakins), orange
monkeys, capuchin monkeys, and other species of monkeys in great
request on the coast, for cloth, nails, hatchets, fishhooks, and pins.
The productions of the Orinoco are bought at a low price from the
Indians, who live in dependence on the monks; and these same Indians
purchase fishing and gardening implements from the monks at a very
high price, with the money they have gained at the egg-harvest. We
ourselves bought several animals, which we kept with us throughout the
rest of our passage on the river, and studied their manners.

The gallitos, or rock-manakins, are sold at Pararuma in pretty little
cages made of the footstalks of palm-leaves. These birds are
infinitely more rare on the banks of the Orinoco, and in the north and
west of equinoctial America, than in French Guiana. They have hitherto
been found only near the Mission of Encaramada, and in the Raudales or
cataracts of Maypures. I say expressly IN the cataracts, because the
gallitos choose for their habitual dwelling the hollows of the little
granitic rocks that cross the Orinoco and form such numerous cascades.
We sometimes saw them appear in the morning in the midst of the foam
of the river, calling their females, and fighting in the manner of our
cocks, folding the double moveable crest that decorates the crown of
the head. As the Indians very rarely take the full-grown gallitos, and
those males only are valued in Europe, which from the third year have
beautiful saffron-coloured plumage, purchasers should be on their
guard not to confound young females with young males. Both the male
and female gallitos are of an olive-brown; but the pollo, or young
male, is distinguishable at the earliest age, by its size and its
yellow feet. After the third year the plumage of the males assumes a
beautiful saffron tint; but the female remains always of a dull dusky
brown colour, with yellow only on the wing-coverts and tips of the
wings.* (* Especially the part which ornithologists call the carpus.)
To preserve in our collections the fine tint of the plumage of a male
and full-grown rock-manakin, it must not be exposed to the light. This
tint grows pale more easy than in the other genera of the passerine
order. The young males, as in most other birds, have the plumage or
livery of their mother. I am surprised to see that so skilful a
naturalist as Le Vaillant can doubt whether the females always remain
of a dusky olive tint.* (* Oiseaux de Paradis volume 2 page 61.) The
Indians of the Raudales all assured me that they had never seen a
saffron-coloured female.

Among the monkeys, brought by the Indians to the fair of Pararuma, we
distinguished several varieties of the sai,* (* Simia capucina the
capuchin monkey.) belonging to the little groups of creeping monkeys
called matchi in the Spanish colonies; marimondes* (* Simia
belzebuth.), or ateles with a red belly; titis, and viuditas. The last
two species particularly attracted our attention, and we purchased
them to send to Europe.

The titi of the Orinoco (Simia sciurea), well-known in our
collections, is called bititeni by the Maypure Indians. It is very
common on the south of the cataracts. Its face is white; and a little
spot of bluish-black covers the mouth and the point of the nose. The
titis of the most elegant form, and the most beautiful colour (with
hair of a golden yellow), come from the banks of the Cassiquiare.
Those that are taken on the shores of the Guaviare are large and
difficult to tame. No other monkey has so much the physiognomy of a
child as the titi; there is the same expression of innocence, the same
playful smile, the same rapidity in the transition from joy to sorrow.
Its large eyes are instantly filled with tears, when it is seized with
fear. It is extremely fond of insects, particularly of spiders. The
sagacity of this little animal is so great, that one of those we
brought in our boat to Angostura distinguished perfectly the different
plates annexed to Cuvier's Tableau elementaire d'Histoire naturelle.
The engravings of this work are not coloured; yet the titi advanced
rapidly its little hand in the hope of catching a grasshopper or a
wasp, every time that we showed it the eleventh plate, on which these
insects are represented. It remained perfectly indifferent when it was
shown engravings of skeletons or heads of mammiferous animals.* (* I
may observe, that I have never heard of an instance in which a
picture, representing, in the greatest perfection, hares or deer of
their natural size, has made the least impression even on sporting
dogs, the intelligence of which appears the most improved. Is there
any authenticated instance of a dog having recognized a full length
picture of his master? In all these cases, the sight is not assisted
by the smell.) When several of these little monkeys, shut up in the
same cage, are exposed to the rain, and the habitual temperature of
the air sinks suddenly two or three degrees, they twist their tail
(which, however, is not prehensile) round their neck, and intertwine
their arms and legs to warm one another. The Indian hunters told us,
that in the forests they often met groups of ten or twelve of these
animals, whilst others sent forth lamentable cries, because they
wished to enter amid the group to find warmth and shelter. By shooting
arrows dipped in weak poison at one of these groups, a great number of
young monkeys are taken alive at once. The titi in falling remains
clinging to its mother, and if it be not wounded by the fall, it does
not quit the shoulder or the neck of the dead animal. Most of those
that are found alive in the huts of the Indians have been thus taken
from the dead bodies of their mothers. Those that are full grown, when
cured of a slight wound, commonly die before they can accustom
themselves to a domestic state. The titis are in general delicate and
timid little animals. It is very difficult to convey them from the
Missions of the Orinoco to the coast of Caracas, or of Cumana. They
become melancholy and dejected in proportion as they quit the region
of the forests, and enter the Llanos. This change cannot be attributed
to the slight elevation of the temperature; it seems rather to depend
on a greater intensity of light, a less degree of humidity, and some
chemical property of the air of the coast.