Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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I Know Also, In The Interior Of The Country, In The
Missions Of The Piritus, Near The Village Of San Juan Evangelista
Del Guarive, A Ravine Very Anciently Called Guayquiricuar.
These
resemblances seem to prove migrations from the south-west towards
the coast.
The termination cuar, found so often in Cumanagoto and
Caribbean names, means a ravine, as in Guaymacuar (ravine of
lizards), Pirichucuar (a ravine overshaded by pirichu or piritu
palm-trees), Chiguatacuar (a ravine of land-shells). Raleigh
describes the Guaiqueries under the name of Ouikeries. He calls the
Chaymas, Saimas, changing (according to the Caribbean
pronunciation) the ch into s.)
4. The Quaquas, whom the Tamanacs call Mapoje, are a tribe formerly
very warlike and allied to the Caribbees. It is a curious
phenomenon to find the Quaquas mingled with the Chaymas in the
Missions of Cumana, for their language, as well as the Atura, of
the cataracts of the Orinoco, is a dialect of the Salive tongue;
and their original abode was on the banks of the Assiveru, which
the Spaniards call Cuchivero. They have extended their migrations
one hundred leagues to the north-east. I have often heard them
mentioned on the Orinoco, above the mouth of the Meta; and, what is
very remarkable, it is asserted* that missionary Jesuits have found
Quaquas as far distant as the Cordilleras of Popayan. (* Vater tome
3 part 2 page 364. The name of Quaqua is found on the coast of
Guinea. The Europeans apply it to a horde of Negroes to the east of
Cape Lahou.) Raleigh enumerates, among the natives of the island of
Trinidad, the Salives, a people remarkable for their mild manners;
they came from the Orinoco, and settled south of the Quaquas.
Perhaps these two nations, which speak almost the same language,
travelled together towards the coasts.
5. The Cumanagotos, or, according to the pronunciation of the
Indians, Cumanacoto, are now settled westward of Cumana, in the
Missions of Piritu, where they live by cultivating the ground. They
number more than twenty-six thousand. Their language, like that of
the Palencas, or Palenques, and Guarivas, is between the Tamanac
and the Caribbee, but nearer to the former. These are indeed idioms
of the same family; but if we are to consider them as simple
dialects, the Latin must be also called a dialect of the Greek, and
the Swedish a dialect of the German. In considering the affinity of
languages one with another, it must not be forgotten that these
affinities may be very differently graduated; and that it would be
a source of confusion not to distinguish between simple dialects
and languages of the same family. The Cumanagotos, the Tamanacs,
the Chaymas, the Guaraons, and the Caribbees, do not understand
each other, in spite of the frequent analogy of words and of
grammatical structure exhibited in their respective idioms. The
Cumanagotos inhabited, at the beginning of the sixteenth century,
the mountains of the Brigantine and of Parabolata. I am unable to
determine whether the Piritus, Cocheymas, Chacopatas, Tomuzas, and
Topocuares, now confounded in the same villages with the
Cumanagotos, and speaking their language, were originally tribes of
the same nation.
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