Books: Equinoctial Regions of America V2

A >> Alexander von Humboldt >> Equinoctial Regions of America V2

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47

Advancing towards the west, we find the hills or islets in the
deserted branch of the Orinoco crowned with the same palm-trees that
rise on the rocks of the cataracts. One of these hills, called Keri,
is celebrated in the country on account of a white spot which shines
from afar, and in which the natives profess to see the image of the
full moon. I could not climb this steep rock, but I believe the white
spot to be a large nodule of quartz, formed by the union of several of
those veins so common in granites passing into gneiss. Opposite Keri,
or the Rock of the Moon, on the twin mountain Ouivitari, which is an
islet in the midst of the cataracts, the Indians point out with
mysterious awe a similar white spot. It has the form of a disc; and
they say this is the image of the sun (Camosi). Perhaps the
geographical situation of these two objects has contributed to their
having received these names. Keri is on the side of the setting,
Camosi on that of the rising sun. Languages being the most ancient
historical monuments of nations, some learned men have been singularly
struck by the analogy between the American word camosi and camosch,
which seems to have signified originally, the sun, in one of the
Semitic dialects. This analogy has given rise to hypotheses which
appear to me at least very problematical. The god of the Moabites,
Chemosh, or Camosch, who has so wearied the patience of the learned;
Apollo Chomens, cited by Strabo and by Ammianus Marcellinus;
Belphegor; Amun or Hamon; and Adonis: all, without doubt, represent
the sun in the winter solstice; but what can we conclude from a
solitary and fortuitous resemblance of sounds in languages that have
nothing besides in common?

The Maypure tongue is still spoken at Atures, although the mission is
inhabited only by Guahibos and Macos. At Maypures the Guareken and
Pareni tongues only are now spoken. From the Rio Anaveni, which falls
into the Orinoco north of Atures, as far as beyond Jao, and to the
mouth of the Guaviare (between the fourth and sixth degrees of
latitude), we everywhere find rivers, the termination of which, veni,*
(* Anaveni, Mataveni, Maraveni, etc.) recalls to mind the extent to
which the Maypure tongue heretofore prevailed. Veni, or weni,
signifies water, or a river. The words camosi and keri, which we have
just cited, are of the idiom of the Pareni Indians,* (* Or Parenas,
who must not be confounded either with the Paravenes of the Rio Caura
(Caulin page 69), or with the Parecas, whose language belongs to the
great family of the Tamanac tongues. A young Indian of Maypures, who
called himself a Paragini, answered my questions almost in the same
words that M. Bonpland heard from a Pareni. I have indicated the
differences in the table, see below.) who, I think I have heard from
the natives, lived originally on the banks of the Mataveni.* (* South
of the Rio Zama. We slept in the open air near the mouth of the
Mataveni on the 28th day of May, in our return from the Rio Negro.)
The Abbe Gili considers the Pareni as a simple dialect of the Maypure.
This question cannot be solved by a comparison of the roots merely.
Being totally ignorant of the grammatical structure of the Pareni, I
can raise but feeble doubts against the opinion of the Italian
missionary. The Pareni is perhaps a mixture of two tongues that belong
to different families; like the Maquiritari, which is composed of the
Maypure and the Caribbee; or, to cite an example better known, the
modern Persian, which is allied at the same time to the Sanscrit and
to the Semitic tongues. The following are Pareni words, which I
carefully compared with Maypure words.*

TABLE OF PARENI AND MAYPURE WORDS COMPARED.

COLUMN 1 : WORD.

COLUMN 2 : PARENI WORD.

COLUMN 3 : MAYPURE WORD. (* The words of the Maypure language have
been taken from the works of Gili and Hervas. I collected the words
placed between parentheses from a young Maco Indian, who understood
the Maypure language.)

The sun : Camosi : Kie (Kiepurig).
The moon : Keri : Kejapi (Cagijapi).
A star : Ouipo : Urrupu.
The devil : Amethami : Vasuri.
Water : Oneui (ut) : Oueni.
Fire : Casi : Catti.
Lightning : Eno : Eno-ima.* (* I am ignorant of what ima signifies in
this compound word. Eno means in Maypure the sky and thunder. Ina
signifies mother.)
The head : Ossipo : Nuchibucu.* (* The syllables no and nu, joined to
the words that designate parts of the body, might have been
suppressed; they answer to the possessive pronoun my.)
The hair : Nomao.
The eyes : Nopurizi : Nupuriki.
The nose : Nosivi : Nukirri.
The mouth : Nonoma : Nunumacu.
The teeth : Nasi : Nati.
The tongue : Notate : Nuare.
The ear : Notasine : Nuakini.
The cheek : Nocaco.
The neck : Nono : Noinu.
The arm : Nocano : Nuana.
The hand : Nucavi : Nucapi.
The breast : Notoroni.
The back : Notoli.
The thigh : Nocazo.
The nipples : Nocini.
The foot : Nocizi : Nukii.
The toes : Nociziriani.
The calf of the leg : Nocavua.
A crocodile : Cazuiti : Amana.
A fish : Cimasi : Timaki.
Maize : Cana : Jomuki.
Plantain : Paratana (Teot)* : Arata.
(* We may be surprised to find the word teot denote the eminently
nutritive substance that supplies the place of corn (the gift of a
beneficent divinity), and on which the subsistence of man within the
tropics depends. I may here mention, that the word Teo, or Teot, which
in Aztec signifies God (Teotl, properly Teo, for tl is only a
termination), is found in the language of the Betoi of the Rio Meta.
The name of the moon, in this language so remarkable for the
complication of its grammatical structure, is Teo-ro. The name of the
sun is Teo-umasoi. The particle ro designates a woman, umasoi a man.
Among the Betoi, the Maypures, and so many other nations of both
continents, the moon is believed to be the wife of the sun. But what
is this root Teo? It appears to me very doubtful, that Teo-ro should
signify God-woman, for Memelu is the name of the All-powerful Being in
the Betoi langnage.)
Cacao : Cacavua* (* Has this word been introduced from a communication
with Europeans? It is almost identical with the Mexican (Aztec) word
cacava.).
Tobacco : Jema : Jema.
Pimento : (Pumake).
Mimosa inga : (Caraba).
Cecropia peltata : (Jocovi).
Agaric : (Cajuli).
Agaric : Puziana (Pagiana) : Papeta (Popetas).
Agaric : Sinapa (Achinafe) : Avanume (Avanome).
Agaric : Meteuba (Meuteufafa) : Apekiva (Pejiiveji).
Agaric : Puriana vacavi : (Jaliva).
Agaric : Puriana vacavi uschanite.
Agaric : Puriassima vacavi : (Javiji).

This comparison seems to prove that the analogies observed in the
roots of the Pareni and the Maypure tongues are not to be neglected;
they are, however, scarcely more frequent than those that have been
observed between the Maypure of the Upper Orinoco and the language of
the Moxos, which is spoken on the banks of the Marmora, from 15 to 20
degrees of south latitude. The Parenis have in their pronunciation the
English th, or tsa of the Arabians, as I clearly heard in the word
Amethami (devil, evil spirit). I need not again notice the origin of
the word camosi. Solitary resemblances of sounds are as little proof
of communication between nations as the dissimilitude of a few roots
furnishes evidence against the affiliation of the German from the
Persian and the Greek. It is remarkable, however, that the names of
the sun and moon are sometimes found to be identical in languages, the
grammatical construction of which is entirely different; I may cite as
examples the Guarany and the Omagua,* languages of nations formerly
very powerful. (* Sun and Moon, in Guarany, Quarasi and Jasi; in
Omagua, Huarassi and Jase. I shall give, farther on, these same words
in the principal languages of the old and new worlds. See note below.)
It may be conceived that, with the worship of the stars and of the
powers of nature, words which have a relation to these objects might
pass from one idiom to another. I showed the constellation of the
Southern Cross to a Pareni Indian, who covered the lantern while I was
taking the circum-meridian heights of the stars; and he called it
Bahumehi, a name which the caribe fish, or serra salme, also bears in
Pareni. He was ignorant of the name of the belt of Orion; but a
Poignave Indian,* who knew the constellations better, assured me that
in his tongue the belt of Orion bore the name of Fuebot; he called the
moon Zenquerot. (* At the Orinoco the Puignaves, or Poignaves, are
distinguished from the Guipunaves (Uipunavi). The latter, on account
of their language, are considered as belonging to the Maypure and
Cabre nations; yet water is called in Poignave, as well as in Maypure,
oueni.) These two words have a very peculiar character for words of
American origin. As the names of the constellations may have been
transmitted to immense distances from one nation to another, these
Poignave words have fixed the attention of the learned, who have
imagined they recognize the Phoenician and Moabite tongues in the word
camosi of the Pareni. Fuebot and zenquerot seem to remind us of the
Phoenician words mot (clay), ardod (oak-tree), ephod, etc. But what
can we conclude from simple terminations which are most frequently
foreign to the roots? In Hebrew the feminine plurals terminate also in
oth. I noted entire phrases in Poignave; but the young man whom I
interrogated spoke so quick that I could not seize the division of the
words, and should have mixed them confusedly together had I attempted
to write them down.* (* For a curious example of this, see the speech
of Artabanes in Aristophanes (Acharn. act 1 scene 3) where a Greek has
attempted to give a Persian oration. See also Gibbon's Roman Empire
chapter 53 note 54, for a curious example of the way in which foreign
languages have been disfigured when it has been attempted to represent
them in a totally different tongue.)

The Mission near the raudal of Maypures was very considerable in the
time of the Jesuits, when it reckoned six hundred inhabitants, among
whom were several families of whites. Under the government of the
Fathers of the Observance the population was reduced to less than
sixty. It must be observed that in this part of South America
cultivation has been diminishing for half a century, while beyond the
forests, in the provinces near the sea, we find villages that contain
from two or three thousand Indians. The inhabitants of Maypures are a
mild, temperate people, and distinguished by great cleanliness. The
savages of the Orinoco for the most part have not that inordinate
fondness for strong liquors which prevails in North America. It is
true that the Ottomacs, the Jaruros, the Achaguas, and the Caribs, are
often intoxicated by the immoderate use of chiza and many other
fermented liquors, which they know how to prepare with cassava, maize,
and the saccharine fruit of the palm-tree; but travellers have as
usual generalized what belongs only to the manners of some tribes. We
were frequently unable to prevail upon the Guahibos, or the
Maco-Piroas, to taste brandy while they were labouring for us, and
seemed exhausted by fatigue. It will require a longer residence of
Europeans in these countries to spread there the vices that are
already common among the Indians on the coast. In the huts of the
natives of Maypures we found an appearance of order and neatness,
rarely met with in the houses of the missionaries.

These natives cultivate plantains and cassava, but no maize. Cassava,
made into thin cakes, is the bread of the country. Like the greater
part of the Indians of the Orinoco, the inhabitants of Maypures have
beverages which may be considered nourishing; one of these, much
celebrated in that country, is furnished by a palm-tree which grows
wild in the vicinity of the mission on the banks of the Auvana. This
tree is the seje: I estimated the number of flowers on one cluster at
forty-four thousand; and that of the fruit, of which the greater part
fall without ripening, at eight thousand. The fruit is a small fleshy
drupe. It is immersed for a few minutes in boiling water, to separate
the kernel from the parenchymatous part of the sarcocarp, which has a
sweet taste, and is pounded and bruised in a large vessel filled with
water. The infusion yields a yellowish liquor, which tastes like milk
of almonds. Sometimes papelon (unrefined sugar) is added. The
missionary told us that the natives become visibly fatter during the
two or three months in which they drink this seje, into which they dip
their cakes of cassava. The piaches, or Indian jugglers, go into the
forests, and sound the botuto (the sacred trumpet) under the seje
palm-trees, to force the tree, they say, to yield an ample produce the
following year. The people pay for this operation, as the Mongols, the
Arabs, and nations still nearer to us, pay the chamans, the marabouts,
and other classes of priests, to drive away the white ants and the
locusts by mystic words or prayers, or to procure a cessation of
continued rain, and invert the order of the seasons.

"I have a manufacture of pottery in my village," said Father Zea, when
accompanying us on a visit to an Indian family, who were occupied in
baking, by a fire of brushwood, in the open air, large earthen
vessels, two feet and a half high. This branch of manufacture is
peculiar to the various tribes of the great family of Maypures, and
they appear to have followed it from time immemorial. In every part of
the forests, far from any human habitation, on digging the earth,
fragments of pottery and delf are found. The taste for this kind of
manufacture seems to have been common heretofore to the natives of
both North and South America. To the north of Mexico, on the banks of
the Rio Gila, among the ruins of an Aztec city; in the United States,
near the tumuli of the Miamis; in Florida, and in every place where
any traces of ancient civilization are found, the soil covers
fragments of painted pottery; and the extreme resemblance of the
ornaments they display is striking. Savage nations, and those
civilized people* (* The Hindoos, the Tibetians, the Chinese, the
ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs, the Peruvians; with whom the tendency
toward civilization in a body has prevented the free development of
the faculties of individuals.) who are condemned by their political
and religious institutions always to imitate themselves, strive, as if
by instinct, to perpetuate the same forms, to preserve a peculiar type
or style, and to follow the methods and processes which were employed
by their ancestors. In North America, fragments of delf ware have been
discovered in places where there exist lines of fortification, and the
walls of towns constructed by some unknown nation, now entirely
extinct. The paintings on these fragments have a great similitude to
those which are executed in our days on earthenware by the natives of
Louisiana and Florida. Thus too, the Indians of Maypures often painted
before our eyes the same ornaments as those we had observed in the
cavern of Ataruipe, on the vases containing human bones. They were
grecques, meanders, and figures of crocodiles, of monkeys, and of a
large quadruped which I could not recognize, though it had always the
same squat form. I might hazard the hypothesis that it belongs to
another country, and that the type had been brought thither in the
great migration of the American nations from the north-west to the
south and south-east; but I am rather inclined to believe that the
figure is intended to represent a tapir, and that the deformed image
of a native animal has become by degrees one of the types that has
been preserved.

The Maypures execute with the greatest skill grecques, or ornaments
formed by straight lines variously combined, similar to those that we
find on the vases of Magna Grecia, on the Mexican edifices at Mitla,
and in the works of so many nations who, without communication with
each other, find alike a sensible pleasure in the symmetric repetition
of the same forms. Arabesques, meanders, and grecques, please our
eyes, because the elements of which their series is composed, follow
in rhythmic order. The eye finds in this order, in the periodical
return of the same forms, what the ear distinguishes in the cadenced
succession of sounds and concords. Can we then admit a doubt that the
feeling of rhythm manifests itself in man at the first dawn of
civilization, and in the rudest essays of poetry and song?

Among the natives of Maypures, the making of pottery is an occupation
principally confined to the women. They purify the clay by repeated
washings, form it into cylinders, and mould the largest vases with
their hands. The American Indian is unacquainted with the potter's
wheel, which was familiar to the nations of the east in the remotest
antiquity. We may be surprised that the missionaries have not
introduced this simple and useful machine among the natives of the
Orinoco, yet we must recollect that three centuries have not sufficed
to make it known among the Indians of the peninsula of Araya, opposite
the port of Cumana. The colours used by the Maypures are the oxides of
iron and manganese, and particularly the yellow and red ochres that
are found in the hollows of sandstone. Sometimes the fecula of the
Bignonia chica is employed, after the pottery has been exposed to a
feeble fire. This painting is covered with a varnish of algarobo,
which is the transparent resin of the Hymenaea courbaril. The large
vessels in which the chiza is preserved are called ciamacu, the
smallest bear the name of mucra, from which word the Spaniards of the
coast have framed murcura. Not only the Maypures, but also the
Guaypunaves, the Caribs, the Ottomacs, and even the Guamos, are
distinguished at the Orinoco as makers of painted pottery, and this
manufacture extended formerly towards the banks of the Amazon.
Orellana was struck with the painted ornaments on the ware of the
Omaguas, who in his time were a populous commercial nation.

The following facts throw some light on the history of American
civilization. In the United States, west of the Allegheny mountains,
particularly between the Ohio and the great lakes of Canada, on
digging the earth, fragments of painted pottery, mingled with brass
tools, are constantly found. This mixture may well surprise us in a
country where, on the first arrival of Europeans, the natives were
ignorant of the use of metals. In the forests of South America, which
extend from the equator as far as the eighth degree of north latitude,
from the foot of the Andes to the Atlantic, this painted pottery is
discovered in the most desert places, but it is found accompanied by
hatchets of jade and other hard stones, skilfully perforated. No
metallic tools or ornaments have ever been discovered; though in the
mountains on the shore, and at the back of the Cordilleras, the art of
melting gold and copper, and of mixing the latter metal with tin to
make cutting instruments, was known. How can we account for these
contrasts between the temperate and the torrid zone? The Incas of Peru
had pushed their conquests and their religious wars as far as the
banks of the Napo and the Amazon, where their language extended over a
small space of land; but the civilization of the Peruvians, of the
inhabitants of Quito, and of the Muyscas of New Grenada, never appears
to have had any sensible influence on the moral state of the nations
of Guiana. It must be observed further, that in North America, between
the Ohio, Miami, and the Lakes, an unknown people, whom systematic
authors would make the descendants of the Toltecs and Aztecs,
constructed walls of earth and sometimes of stone without mortar,*
from ten to fifteen feet high, and seven or eight thousand feet long.
(* Of siliceous limestone, at Pique, on the Great Miami; of sandstone
at Creek Point, ten leagues from Chillakothe, where the wall is
fifteen hundred toises long.) These singular circumvallations
sometimes enclosed a hundred and fifty acres of ground. In the plains
of the Orinoco, as in those of Marietta, the Miami, and the Ohio, the
centre of an ancient civilization is found in the west on the back of
the mountains; but the Orinoco, and the countries lying between that
great river and the Amazon, appear never to have been inhabited by
nations whose constructions have resisted the ravages of time. Though
symbolical figures are found engraved on the hardest rocks, yet
further south than eight degrees of latitude, no tumulus, no
circumvallation, no dike of earth similar to those that exist farther
north in the plains of Varinas and Canagua, has been found. Such is
the contrast that may be observed between the eastern parts of North
and South America, those parts which extend from the table-land of
Cundinamarca* (* This is the ancient name of the empire of the Zaques,
founded by Bochica or Idacanzas, the high priest of Iraca, in New
Grenada.) and the mountains of Cayenne towards the Atlantic, and those
which stretch from the Andes of New Spain towards the Alleghenies.
Nations advanced in civilization, of which we discover traces on the
banks of lake Teguyo and in the Casas grandes of the Rio Gila, might
have sent some tribes eastward into the open countries of the Missouri
and the Ohio, where the climate differs little from that of New
Mexico; but in South America, where the great flux of nations has
continued from north to south, those who had long enjoyed the mild
temperature of the back of the equinoctial Cordilleras no doubt
dreaded a descent into burning plains bristled with forests, and
inundated by the periodical swellings of rivers. It is easy to
conceive how much the force of vegetation, and the nature of the soil
and climate, within the torrid zone, embarrassed the natives in regard
to migration in numerous bodies, prevented settlements requiring an
extensive space, and perpetuated the misery and barbarism of solitary
hordes.

The feeble civilization introduced in our days by the Spanish monks
pursues a retrograde course. Father Gili relates that, at the time of
the expedition to the boundaries, agriculture began to make some
progress on the banks of the Orinoco; and that cattle, especially
goats, had multiplied considerably at Maypures. We found no goats,
either in the mission or in any other village of the Orinoco; they had
all been devoured by the tigers. The black and white breeds of pigs
only, the latter of which are called French pigs (puercos franceses),
because they are believed to have come from the Caribbee Islands, have
resisted the pursuit of wild beasts. We saw with much pleasure
guacamayas, or tame macaws, round the huts of the Indians, and flying
to the fields like our pigeons. This bird is the largest and most
majestic species of parrot with naked cheeks that we found in our
travels. It is called in Marativitan, cahuei. Including the tail, it
is two feet three inches long. We had observed it also on the banks of
the Atabapo, the Temi, and the Rio Negro. The flesh of the cahuei,
which is frequently eaten, is black and somewhat tough. These macaws,
whose plumage glows with vivid tints of purple, blue, and yellow, are
a great ornament to the Indian farm-yards; they do not yield in beauty
to the peacock, the golden pheasant, the pauxi, or the alector. The
practice of rearing parrots, birds of a family so different from the
gallinaceous tribes, was remarked by Columbus. When he discovered
America he saw macaws, or large parrots, which served as food to the
natives of the Caribbee Islands, instead of fowls.

A majestic tree, more than sixty feet high, which the planters call
fruta de burro, grows in the vicinity of the little village of
Maypures. It is a new species of the unona, and has the stateliness of
the Uvaria zeylanica of Aublet. Its branches are straight, and rise in
a pyramid, nearly like the poplar of the Mississippi, erroneously
called the Lombardy poplar. The tree is celebrated for its aromatic
fruit, the infusion of which is a powerful febrifuge. The poor
missionaries of the Orinoco, who are afflicted with tertian fevers
during a great part of the year, seldom travel without a little bag
filled with frutas de burro. I have already observed that between the
tropics, the use of aromatics, for instance very strong coffee, the
Croton cascarilla, or the pericarp of the Unona xylopioides, is
generally preferred to that of the astringent bark of cinchona, or of
Bonplandia trifolatia, which is the Angostura bark. The people of
America have the most inveterate prejudice against the employment of
different kinds of cinchona; and in the very countries where this
valuable remedy grows, they try (to use their own phrase) to cut off
the fever, by infusions of Scoparia dulcis, and hot lemonade prepared
with sugar and the small wild lime, the rind of which is equally oily
and aromatic.

The weather was unfavourable for astronomical observations. I
obtained, however, on the 20th of April, a good series of
corresponding altitudes of the sun, according to which the chronometer
gave 70 degrees 37 minutes 33 seconds for the longitude of the mission
of Maypures; the latitude was found, by a star observed towards the
north, to be 5 degrees 13 minutes 57 seconds; and by a star observed
towards the south, 5 degrees 13 minutes 7 seconds. The error of the
most recent maps is half a degree of longitude and half a degree of
latitude. It would be difficult to relate the trouble and torments
which these nocturnal observations cost us. Nowhere is a denser cloud
of mosquitos to be found. It formed, as it were, a particular stratum
some feet above the ground, and it thickened as we brought lights to
illumine our artificial horizon. The inhabitants of Maypures, for the
most part, quit the village to sleep in the islets amid the cataracts,
where the number of insects is less; others make a fire of brushwood
in their huts, and suspend their hammocks in the midst of the smoke.