The Spaniards Were Called Clothed Men, Pongheme Or Uavemi, By Way Of Distinction.) In America, As In Africa, The Cupidity Of The Europeans Has Produced The Same Evils, By Exciting The Natives To Make War, In Order To Procure Slaves.

Everywhere the contact of nations, widely different from each other in the scale of civilization, leads to the abuse of physical strength, and of intellectual preponderance.

The Phoenicians and Carthaginians formerly sought slaves in Europe. Europe now presses in her turn both on the countries whence she gathered the first germs of science, and on those where she now almost involuntarily spreads them by carrying thither the produce of her industry.

I have faithfully recorded what I could collect on the state of these countries, where the vanquished nations have become gradually extinct, leaving no other signs of their existence than a few words of their language, mixed with that of the conquerors. In the north, beyond the cataracts, the preponderant nations were at first the Caribs and the Cabres; towards the south, on the Upper Orinoco, the Guaypunaves; and on the Rio Negro, the Marepizanos and the Manitivitanos. The long resistance which the Cabres, united under a valiant chief, had made to the Caribs, became fatal to the latter subsequently to the year 1720. They at first vanquished their enemies near the mouth of the Rio Caura; and a great number of Caribs perished in a precipitate flight, between the rapids of Torno and the Isla del Infierno. The prisoners were devoured; and, by one of those refinements of cunning and cruelty which are common to the savage nations of both North and South America, the Cabres spared the life of one Carib, whom they forced to climb up a tree to witness this barbarous spectacle, and carry back the tidings to the vanquished. The triumph of Tep, the chief of the Cabres, was but of short duration. The Caribs returned in such great numbers that only a feeble remnant of the Cabres was left on the banks of the Cuchivero.

Cocuy and Cuseru were carrying on a war of extermination on the Upper Orinoco when Solano arrived at the mouth of the Guaviare. The former had embraced the cause of the Portuguese; the latter was a friend of the Jesuits, and gave them warning whenever the Manitivitanos were marching against the christian establishments of Atures and Carichana. Cuseru became a christian only a few days before his death; but in battle he had for some time worn on his left hip a crucifix, given him by the missionaries, and which he believed rendered him invulnerable. We were told an anecdote that paints the violence of his character. He had married the daughter of an Indian chief of the Rio Temi. In a paroxysm of rage against his father-in-law, he declared to his wife that he was going to fight against him. She reminded him of the courage and singular strength of her father; when Cuseru, without uttering a single word, took a poisoned arrow, and plunged it into her bosom. The arrival of a small body of Spaniards in 1756, under the order of Solano, awakened suspicion in this chief of the Guaypunaves. He was on the point of attempting a contest with them, when the Jesuits made him sensible that it would be his interest to remain at peace with the Christians. Whilst dining at the table of the Spanish general, Cuseru was allured by promises, and the prediction of the approaching fall of his enemies. From being a king he became the mayor of a village; and consented to settle with his people at the new mission of San Fernando de Atabapo. Such is most frequently the end of those chiefs whom travellers and missionaries style Indian princes. "In my mission," says the honest father Gili "I had five reyecillos, or petty kings, those of the Tamanacs, the Avarigotes, the Parecas, the Quaquas, and the Maypures. At church I placed them in file on the same bench; but I took care to give the first place to Monaiti, king of the Tamanacs, because he had helped me to found the village; and he seemed quite proud of this precedency."

When Cuseru, the chief of the Guaypunaves, saw the Spanish troops pass the cataracts, he advised Don Jose Solano to wait a whole year before he formed a settlement on the Atabapo; predicting the misfortunes which were not slow to arrive. "Let me labour with my people in clearing the ground," said Cuseru to the Jesuits; I will plant cassava, and you will find hereafter wherewith to feed all these men." Solano, impatient to advance, refused to listen to the counsel of the Indian chief, and the new inhabitants of San Fernando had to suffer all the evils of scarcity. Canoes were sent at a great expense to New Grenada, by the Meta and the Vichada, in search of flour. The provision arrived too late, and many Spaniards and Indians perished of those diseases which are produced in every climate by want and moral dejection.

Some traces of cultivation are still found at San Fernando. Every Indian has a small plantation of cacao-trees, which produce abundantly in the fifth year; but they cease to bear fruit sooner than in the valleys of Aragua. There are some savannahs and good pasturage round San Fernando, but hardly seven or eight cows are to be found, the remains of a considerable herd which was brought into these countries at the expedition for settling the boundaries. The Indians are a little more civilized here than in the rest of the missions, and we found to our surprise a blacksmith of the native race.

In the mission of San Fernando, a tree which gives a peculiar physiognomy to the landscape, is the piritu or pirijao palm. Its trunk, armed with thorns, is more than sixty feet high; its leaves are pinnated, very thin, undulated, and frizzled towards the points.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 133 of 208
Words from 134783 to 135782 of 211397