Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Sprachen page 81. Southey volume 1 page
603.) The most tawny, we might almost say the blackest of the American
race, are the Otomacs and the Guamos. These have perhaps given rise to
the confused notions of American negroes, spread through Europe in the
early times of the conquest. (Herrera Dec 1 lib 3 cap 9, volume 1 page
79. Garcia, Origen de los Americanos page 259.) Who are those Negros
de Quereca, placed by Gomara page 277, in that very isthmus of Panama,
whence we received the first absurd tales of an albino American
people? In reading with attention the authors of the beginning of the
16th century, we see that the discovery of America and of a new race
of men, had singularly awakened the interest of travellers respecting
the varieties of our species. Now, if a black race had been mingled
with copper-colored men, as in the South-sea Islands, the
conquistadores would not have failed to speak of it in a precise
manner. Besides, the religious traditions of the Americans relate the
appearance, in the heroic times, of white and bearded men as priests
and legislators; but none of these traditions make mention of a black
race.)
These phenomena are so much the more worthy of attention as they are
observed in that great branch of the American nations generally ranked
in a class totally opposite to that circumpolar branch, namely the
Tschougaz-Esquimaux,* whose children are fair, and who acquire the
Mongol or yellowish tint only from the influence of the air and the
humidity.
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