  The linguistic classification of the South American tribes offers far greater difficulties than that of North America. Not only has it been studied less diligently, but the geographical character of the interior, the facilities with which tribes move along its extensive water-ways, and the less stable temperament of the white population have combined to obscure the relationship of the native tribes and to limit our knowledge about them. The first serious attempt to take a comprehensive survey of the idioms of this portion of the continent was that of the AbbÉ Hervas in his general work on the languages of the globe. This eminent naturalist, however, overlooked no opportunity to collect material for the study of the native tongues, and on his return to Europe placed what he had secured in the hands of his distinguished brother for analysis. William von Humboldt, who was the profoundest linguist of his day, gave close attention to the subject, but rather from a purely critical than an ethnographic aspect. He based upon the South American languages many principles of his linguistic philosophy; but so little general attention was given the subject that his most valuable study was first given to the press by myself in 1885. Sixty years ago the French traveler, Alcide D’Orbigny, published his important work devoted to South American Ethnography, but confined to that portion of the continent he had visited, south of the parallel of 12° south latitude.
In this classification, the distinctions of “races” and “branches” are based exclusively on physical characteristics, and are at times in conflict with a linguistic arrangement. The Botocudos and Guaranis, for instance, are wholly dissimilar and should no more be classed together than the Peruvians and the Tupis; the Saravecas and Paiconecas speak Arawak dialects; and other examples could be cited. About the middle of this century, two German travelers, Von Tschudi and Von Martius, gave close attention to the linguistic ethnology of the continent, Von Tschudi in Peru and Von Martius in Brazil. The former found the field so unoccupied that he did not hesitate to write in a work published less than ten years ago, “In fact, the knowledge of the languages of South America is to-day less than it was two hundred years ago.” These are so far from meeting the requirements of our linguistic possessions at present that scarcely one of them can be accepted. Von Tschudi was an able and critical scholar in his particular field, that of the Kechua tongue, but he had not made a wide study of South American languages. Von Martius was much more of a comparative linguist. His work on the ethnography and linguistics of South America It is especially in studying the vast and largely unexplored regions watered by the upper streams of the mighty Amazon, that one is yet at a loss to bring the native inhabitants into ethnic order. Of the various explorers and travellers who have visited that territory, few have paid attention to the dialects of the natives, and of those few, several have left their collections unpublished. Thus, I have been unable to learn that Richard Spruce, who obtained numerous vocabularies along the Amazon and its branches, gave It is also a matter of much regret that no copy can be found of the work of the celebrated missionary, Alonso de Barcena, Lexica et Precepta in quinque Indorum Linguis, published at Lima, in 1590—if, indeed, it was ever really printed. It contained grammars of the Kechua, Aymara, Yunca, Puquina and KatamareÑa, (spoken by the Calchaquis). Of the two last mentioned idioms no other grammar is known, which makes the complete disappearance of this early printed book particularly unfortunate. Another Jesuit, Father Guillaume D’ÉtrÉ, wrote out the catechism and instructions for the sacraments in eighteen languages of eastern Peru and the upper Orinoco; Of late years no one has paid such fruitful attention to the relationship and classification of the South American tribes and languages as M. Lucien Adam. Although I have not in all points followed his nomenclature, and have not throughout felt in accordance with his grouping, I have always placed my main dependence on his work in the special fields he has The general plan which I shall adopt is rather for convenience of arranging the subject than for reasons based on similarities either of language or physical habitus. It is that which allows the presentation of the various stocks most in accordance with their geographic distribution and their historic associations. It is as follows:
I. THE SOUTH PACIFIC GROUP.1. THE COLUMBIAN REGION.This region includes the mountainous district in northwestern South America, west of the basin of the Orinoco and north of the equator—but without rigid adherence to these lines. The character of its culture differed considerably from that found in the Atlantic regions and was much more closely assimilated to that of Peru. Three lofty mountain chains traverse New Granada from north to south, the intervening valleys being beds of powerful rivers, rich in fish and with fertile banks. This configuration of the soil has exerted a profound influence on the life and migrations of the native inhabitants, severing them from the fellow-members of their race to the east and directing their rovings in a north and south direction. The productive valleys were no doubt densely populated; though we must regard as a wild extravagance the estimate of a modern writer that at the conquest the native inhabitants of New Granada reached “six to eight millions” 1. Tribes of the Isthmus and Adjacent Coast.At the discovery, the Isthmus of Panama was in the possession of the Cunas tribe, as they call themselves. They are the same to whom were applied later the names Darien Indians (Wafer), Tules, Cunacunas, Cuevas, Coybas, Mandingas, Bayanos, Irriacos, San Blas Indians, Chucunacos, Tucutis, etc. They extended from the Gulf of Uraba and the river Atrato on the east to the river Chagres on the west. In that direction they were contiguous to the Guaymis, while on the right bank of the Atrato their neighbors were the Chocos. The Cunas are slightly undersized (about 1.50), but symmetrical and vigorous. Their color is light, and individuals with chestnut or reddish hair and grey eyes have always been noted among them, and have erroneously been supposed to be albinos. Their skulls are markedly brachycephalic (88) and their faces broad. In spite of the severe measures of the Spaniards, they have never been thoroughly reduced, and still manifest an unconquerable love of freedom and a wild life. When first met they lived in small villages composed of communal houses, raised maize and cotton, working the latter into garments for the women, and possessed some gold, which they obtained from the mountain streams and by working auriferous The Cuna language does not seem to be positively connected with any other stock, nor have dialects of it been discovered elsewhere. A number of verbal similarities have been pointed out with the Chibcha, and it has also a certain similarity to the Carib; The Changuina or Dorasque tribes of the Isthmus lived latterly on the River Puan, a branch of the Telorio, and are said to have numbered 5000 persons, though but a few miserable remnants are surviving. They are lighter in color than the Guaymis, with whom they were in a constant state of quarreling. In earlier times they were bold warriors, lived by hunting, and were less cultured than their neighbors; yet a remarkable megalithic monument in the pueblo of Meza is attributed to them. CHANGUINA LINGUISTIC STOCK.The Chocos were the first nation encountered in South America on passing beyond the territory of the Cunas. They occupied the eastern shore of the Gulf of Uraba, and much of the lower valley of the Atrato. Thence they extended westerly across the Sierra to the Pacific coast, which they probably occupied from the Gulf of San Miguel, in north latitude 8°, where some of them still live under the name of Sambos, down to the mouth of the San Juan River, about north latitude 4°, on the affluents of which stream are the Tados and Noanamas, speaking well-marked dialects of the tongue. To the east they reached the valley of the Cauca, in the province of Antioquia. The Tucuras, at the junction of the Sinu and the Rio Verde, are probably their easternmost branch. Anthropologically, they resemble the Cunas, having brachycephalic skulls, with large faces, but are rather taller and of darker color. Here the resemblance ceases, for they are widely dissimilar in language, in customs and in temperament. Instead of being warlike and quarrelsome, they are mild and peaceable; they lived less in villages and communal houses than in single isolated huts. Most of them are now Catholics and cultivate the soil. They have little energy and live miserably. At the time of the conquest they were a trafficking people, obtaining salt from the saline springs and gold from the quartz lodes, which they exchanged with the tribes of the interior. Some of them were skilful in working the metal, and fine specimens of their products have been obtained from their ancestral tombs. CHOCO LINGUISTIC STOCK.
It is worth while recording the names and positions of the other native tribes along the northern coast at the time of the discovery, even if we are unable to identify their linguistic connections. An official report made in 1546 furnishes a part of this information. Along the eastern border of Lake Maracaibo were the Onotes, “The Lords of the Lagoon,” SeÑores de la Laguna, a fine race, whose women were the handsomest along the shore. These warriors probably belonged to the Goajiros, who then, as now, occupied the peninsula on the northwest of Lake Maracaibo. It is not easy to say who were the Tirripis and Turbacos, who lived about the mouth of the Magdalena River, though the names remind us of the Chibcha stock. Approaching the Gulf of Darien from the east, we find the highlands and shores on its west peopled by the Caimanes. These undoubtedly belonged to the Cunas, as is proved by the words collected among them in 1820 by Joaquin Acosta. In the mountainous district of MÉrida, south of the plains in the interior from Lake Maracaibo, there still dwell the remains of a number of small bands speaking dialects of a stock which has been called from one of its principal members, the Timote. It has been asserted to display a relationship to the Chibcha, but the comparisons I have made do not reveal such connection. It seems to stand alone, as an independent tongue. All the Timotes paid attention to agriculture, raising maize, pepper and esculent roots of the potato character. Those who lived in the warm regions painted their bodies red and went naked; while those in the uplands threw around them a square cotton blanket fastened at the waist. Some of them buried their dead in caves, as the Quindoraes on the banks of the Motatan. With them they placed small figures in terra cotta. The Mocochies, living where caves are rare, built underground vaults for their dead, closing the entrance with a great stone. From the writings of Lares and Ernst I make the following list of the members of the TIMOTE LINGUISTIC STOCK.
Few of these names are found in the older writers. In the Taparros we recognize the “Zaparas,” who, in the last century, lived in contiguity to the Goajiros of the adjacent peninsula. In the highlands near the present city of Caracas, and in the fertile valleys which surround the beautiful inland lake of Valencia to the southeast, were at the discovery a number of tribes whose names, Arbacos, Mariches, Merigotos, etc., give us no information as to their affinities. They are now extinct, and nothing of their languages has been preserved. All the more store do we set by the archÆology of the district, about which valuable information has been contributed by Dr. G. Marcano. 2. The Chibchas.Most of the writers on the Chibchas have spoken of them as a nation standing almost civilized in the midst of barbarous hordes, and without affinities to any other. Both of these statements are erroneous. The Chibchas proper, or Muyscas, are but one member of a numerous family of tribes which extended in both directions from the Isthmus of Panama, and thus had representatives in North as well as South America. The Chibcha language was much more widely disseminated throughout New Granada at the time of the discovery than later writers have appreciated. It was the general tongue of nearly all the provinces, and occupied the same position with reference to the other idioms that the Kechua did in Peru. No doubt the Chibchas had carried this culture to the highest point of all the family. Their home was on the southern confines of the stock, in the valleys of Bogota and Tunja, where their land extended from the fourth to the sixth degree of north latitude, about the head-waters of the Sogamoso branch of the Magdalena. Near the mouth of this river on its eastern shore, rises the Sierra of Santa Marta, overlooking the open sea, and continuing to the neck of the peninsula of Goajira. These mountains were the home time out of mind of the Aroacos, a tribe in a condition of barbarism, but not distantly related in language to the Chibchas. When the Spaniards first undertook the conquest of this Sierra, they met with stubborn resistance from the Tayronas and Chimilas, who lived among these hills. They were energetic tribes, cultivating fields of maize, yucca, beans and cotton, which latter they wove and dyed for clothing. Not only were they versed in stratagems, but they knew some deadly In later generations the Tayronas disappear entirely from history, but I think the suggestion is well founded that they merely became merged with the Chimilas, with whom they were always associated, and who still survive in the same locality as a civilized tribe. We have some information about their language. An imperfect vocabulary of the native residents of Siquisique in the state of Lara, formerly the province of Barquisimetro, inclines me to unite them with the Aroac branch of this stock, though their dialect is evidently a mixed one. A still more interesting extension of this stock was that which it appears to have had at one time in the northern continent. A number of tribes beyond the straits, in the states of Panama and Costa Rica, were either filially connected or deeply influenced by the Thus Lucien Adam has pointed out that the two groups of the Guaymi dialects differ as widely, as follows:
Dr. Max Uhle, in a late essay, has collected numerous verbal identities between the various Guaymi and Talamanca dialects on the one hand, and the Aroac and Chibcha on the other, including most of the simple numerals and many words besides those which would be likely to be introduced by commerce. Not stopping with this, he has successfully developed a variety of laws of vowel and consonant changes in the dialects, which bring the resemblance of the two groups into strong relief and do away with much of their seeming diversity. Moreover, he points out that the terminations of the present and imperative are identical, and the placement of words in the sentence alike in both. These and his other arguments are sufficient, I think, to establish his thesis; and I am at greater pains to set it forth, as I regard it as one of unusual importance in its bearing on the relations which existed in pre-historic times between tribes along the boundary of the two continents. As to the course of migration, I do not think that the discussion of the dialectic changes leaves any room for doubt. They all indicate attrition and loss of the original form as we trace them from South into North America; evidently the wandering hordes moved into the latter from the southern continent. So far, there is no evidence that any North American tribe migrated into South America. To illustrate these points I quote from Uhle’s tables the following: Comparison of the Chibcha with the Costa Rican Dialects. (T. = Talamanca. G. = Guaymi.)
The numerous relics which since 1859 have been disinterred from the ancient sepulchres of Chiriqui may be attributed to the members of this stock; perhaps, as M. Pinart has suggested, to the ancestors of the Guaymis, or, as Dr. Berendt thought, to the Cunas or Coibas. These relics are in stone, in pottery of many varieties and forms, and in the metals gold, copper, silver and tin in various alloys. So large was the quantity of gold that from a single cemetery over fifty thousand dollars in value have been extracted. No wonder that Columbus and his companions gave to this region the appellation Castillo del Oro, Golden CastilÉ. Such a condition of civilization is in accord with the earliest descriptions of the Chiriqui tribes. When in 1521 Francisco CompaÑon overran their country, he found the Borucas and their neighbors living in villages surrounded with high wooden palisades, the posts firmly lashed together, making a solid wall of defence. The culture of the Chibchas has been portrayed by numerous writers, and it deserves to rank as next to that of the Nahuas and Kechuas, though in many respects inferior to both of these. Their chiefs held by succession through the female side, the matriarchal system prevailing throughout their tribes. In spite of what has sometimes been brought forward, it is not likely that they had any method of writing, and much that has been advanced about their calendar is of doubtful correctness. They had neither the quipos of the Peruvians nor the picture writing of the Mexicans. The carved stones which have sometimes been produced as a species of calendar were probably merely moulds for hammering gold into shape. Quite a body of their mythologic legends have been preserved, replete with interest to the student of the religious sentiment of this race. They indicate an active imagination and may be regarded as quite authentic. The Chibchas proper, as well as the Aroacos, were meso- or brachycephalic, the cephalic index ranging above 80. They were of moderate stature, dark in color, the face broad, the eyes dark and often slightly CHIBCHA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
3. The Paniquitas and Paezes.A number of tribes living to the north and west of the Chibchas seem to have belonged to one stock. They are mentioned by the older historians as acting in alliance, as in constant war with the Chibchas, PANIQUITA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
My reasons for identifying the modern Paniquitas and Paezes with the ancient tribes named are, first, the identity of the location, and secondly, the presence of the initial syllable pan in the names of two of the principal extinct peoples, a word which in Paniquita means “mountain,” and clearly refers to the position of their villages in the sierra, between the head-waters of the Cauca and Magdalena Rivers. Among the references in the older writers, I may mention that Herrera states that the language of the Panches was one of the most extended in that part of the country, and that the tribes speaking it almost surrounded the Muyscas; Some fragments have been preserved from the mythology of the Musos, who lived about 24 leagues northwest of Santa FÉ, on the right bank of the Magdalena. Their legends pointed for the home of their ancestors to the left or western side of the river. Here dwelt, lying in a position of eternal repose, the Creator, a shadow whose name was Are. Ages ago he carved for his amusement two figures in wood, a man and a woman, and threw them into the river. They rose from its waters as living beings, and marrying, became the ancestors of the human species. Most of these tribes are reported to have flattened artificially their heads, and to have burned the bodies of their dead, or, in Popoyan, to have mummified them by long exposure to a slow fire. The Paezes live on both slopes of the central Cordillera, across the valley of the Magdalena from Bogota, some two thousand in number, in twenty-one villages. They prefer the high altitudes, and are a
4. South Columbian Tribes, Natives of Cauca, Coconucos, Barbacoas, Andaquis, Mocoas, CaÑaris.In the states of Cauca and Antioquia there are scarcely any full-blood natives remaining, and the tribes after the conquest were so shifted about that it is difficult to know to which of them we should attribute the abundant remains of ancient art which are scattered profusely over this region. There are In an attempt to restore the ancient ethnography of this region, Dr. Posada-Arango thinks the former tribes can be classed under three principal nations: 1. The Catios, west of the river Cauca. 2. The Nutabes, on the right bank of the Cauca, in its central course. 3. The Tahamies, toward the east and south. In addition to these, there are the Yamacies, near the present city of Saragossa. According to the early records, these tribes lived in fixed habitations constructed of wood and roofed with thatch. They were cultivators of the soil, skilled From the unfortunate absence of linguistic material, I am unable to classify these interesting peoples. In the valleys of the Sierra south of the Paezes dwelt the Guanucos, described by the first explorers as a warlike people in an advanced stage of culture. Their houses were of stone, roofed with straw. The sun was worshipped with elaborate ceremonies, including choruses of virgins and the ministration of thousands of priests. The informant of the AbbÉ Hervas, SeÑor Velasco, asserted that the Guanucos were a branch of the Coconucos, who dwelt near the foot of the mountain of that name in Popayan, and figure considerably in some of the older histories. COCONUCA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
To these should probably be added the Conchucos and Guaycos, who appear to have been adjacent tribes speaking the same tongue, although also being familiar with the Kechua language. In the upper valleys of the rivers Daule, Chone and Tachi, there still survive some families of the “painted Indians,” who were referred to by Cieza de Leon as Manivis, now usually called Colorados, but whose own name is Sacchas, men or people. They are naturally of a light yellow hue, some with light hair and eyes, but are accustomed to go naked and cover their skin with a reddish vegetable pigment, which on the face is laid on in decorative lines. Their language, Velasco mentions that the Barbacoas, Telembis and Iscuandes formed a confederation governed by a council of nine members chosen equally from the three tribes. To the south of the Telembis and adjoining the Kechua-speaking Malabas in the district of La Tola were the Cayapas, of whom some remnants remain, still preserving their native tongue. A vocabulary of it, obtained by H. Wilcszynski, has recently been published.
The Cayapas are described as well-built, with oval faces and roman noses. As the Barbacoas were the first known and probably the most numerous member of this family, I shall select their name to apply to them all, and classify the group as follows: BARBACOA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
I have, in obedience to a sense of caution, treated of this stock as separate from the Cocanuca; but the fragmentary vocabularies at my command offer a number of resemblances between the two, and I expect that ampler material will show increased analogies, probably to the extent of proving them branches of the same family tree. In the roughest part of the Eastern Cordillera, about the head-waters of the two rivers Fragua, (between 1° and 2° north latitude), live the Andaquis. They are wild and warlike, and are the alleged guardians of the legendary Indeguau, “House of the Sun,” a cavern in which, according to local tradition, lies piled the untold gold of the ancient peoples. The only specimen I have found of the Andaqui language is the vocabulary collected by the Presbyter The home of the Mocoas is between 1° and 2° north lat. along the Rio de los EngaÑos or Yari, (whence they are sometimes called EngaÑos or Inganos), and other tributaries of the Caqueta. MOCOA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
Of these, the Patias dwelt on the lofty and sterile plain between the two chains of the Cordilleras in Popayan. The Sebondoyes had a village on the Putumayo, five leagues south of the Lake of Mocoa (Coleti). The region around the Gulf of Guayaquil was conquered by the Inca Tupac Yupanqui about 1450. The original language of the CaÑaris, if it was other than the Kechua, appears to have been lost. 2. THE PERUVIAN REGION.The difficulty of a linguistic classification of the tribes of the Peruvian region is presented in very formidable terms by the old writers. Cieza de Leon said of this portion of the continent: “They have such a variety of languages that there is almost a new language at every league in all parts of the country;” Like most such statements, these are gross exaggerations. In fact, from all the evidence which I have been able to find, the tribes in the inter-Andean valley, and on the coast, all the way from Quito, under the equator, to the desert of Atacama in 25° south latitude, belonged to probably four or at most five linguistic stocks. These are the Kechua, the Aymara, the Puquina, the Yunca, and the AtacameÑo. Of these, the first three were known in the early days of the conquest, as “the three general languages”—lenguas generales—of Peru, on account of their wide distribution. But it is quite likely, as I shall show later, that the Aymara was a dialect, and 1. The Kechuas.The Kechua in its various dialects, was spoken by an unbroken chain of tribes for nearly two thousand miles from north to south; that is, from 3° north of the equator to 32° south latitude. Its influence can be traced over a far wider area. In the dialects of Popayan in Ecuador, in those on the Rio Putumayo and Rio Napo, in those on the Ucayali and still further east, on the banks of the Beni and Mamore, in the Moxa of the Bolivian highlands, and southeast quite to the languages of the Pampas, do we find numerous words clearly borrowed from this widespread stock. This dissemination was due much more to culture than to conquest. It was a tribute to the intellectual superiority, the higher civilization, of this remarkable people, as is evident by the character of the words borrowed. It is a historic error to suppose that the extension of the Kechua was the result of the victories of the Incas. These occurred but a few centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards, and their influence was not great on the native tongues, as even the panegyrist of the Incas, Garcilasso de la Vega, confesses. Where should we look for the starting-point, the “cradle,” of the far-spread Kechua stock? The traditions of the Incas pointed to the shores and islands of Lake Titicaca as the birth-place of their remotest ancestors; but as Markham has abundantly shown, this was a pure myth. He himself is decidedly of the opinion that we must search for the cradle of the stock in the district of Cuzco, perhaps not far from Paucartambo, “The House of the Dawning,” to which other venerable Incarian legends assigned the scene of the creation of their common ancestors. But there are many reasons, and to me satisfactory ones, for believing that the first Kechuas appeared in South America at the extreme north of the region they later occupied, and that the course of their migration was constantly from north to south. This was also the opinion of the learned Von Tschudi. He traces the early wandering of the Kechua tribes from the vicinity of Quito to the district between the Andes and the upper MaraÑon, thence in the direction of Huaraz, and so gradually southward, following The grounds for this opinion are largely linguistic. Mr. Markham indeed says: “In my opinion there is no sufficient evidence that the people of Quito did speak Quichua previous to the Inca conquest;” and he quotes Cieza de Leon to the effect that at the time of the Spanish conquest they had a tongue of their own. This opinion is further supported by a strong consensus of ancient tradition, which, in spite of its vagueness, certainly carries some weight. Many of the southern Kechua tribes referred for their origin to the extreme northwest as known to them, to the ancient city of Lambayeque on the Pacific coast, a locality which, according to Bastian, The legends of the ancient Quitus have been preserved in the work of Juan de Velasco, and although they are dismissed with small respect by Markham, I am myself of the opinion that there is both external and internal evidence to justify us in accepting them as at least genuine native productions. They relate that at a remote epoch two Kechua-speaking tribes, the Mantas on the south, and the Caras on the north, occupied the coast from the Gulf of Guayaquil to the Esmeraldas River. The Caras were the elder, and its ancestors had reached that part of the coast in rafts and canoes from some more northern home. For many generations they remained a maritime people, but at length followed up the Esmeraldas and its affluents until they reached the vicinity of Quito, where they developed into a powerful nation under the rule of their scyri, or chiefs. Of these they claimed a dynasty of nineteen previous to the conquest of their territory by the Inca Huayna Capac. They inherited in the male line, and were monogamous to the extent that the issue of only one of their wives could be regarded as legal heirs. The extent of the Kechua tongue to the north has not been accurately defined. Under the name Yumbos, Whether we should include in this stock the Macas, who dwell on the eastern slope of the Andes a few degrees south of the equator, is not clear, as I have found no vocabularies. Velasco refers to them as a part of the Scyra stock, and they are in the The southern limit of the Kechua tongue, before the Spanish conquest, has been variously put by different writers; but I think we can safely adopt Coquimbo, in south latitude 30°, as practically the boundary of the stock. We are informed that in 1593 the priests addressed their congregations in Kechua at this place, Cieza de Leon and other early Spanish writers frequently refer to the general physical sameness of the Peruvian tribes. They found all of them somewhat undersized, brown in color, beardless, and of but moderate muscular force. The craniology of Peru offers peculiar difficulties. It was the policy of the rulers to remove large numbers of conquered tribes to distant portions of the realm in order to render the population more homogeneous. This led to a constant blending of physical traits. Furthermore, nowhere on the continent do we find skulls presenting more grotesque artificial deformities, which render it difficult to decide upon their normal form. When the latter element is carefully excluded, we still find a conflicting diversity in the results of measurements. Of 245 Peruvian crania in the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, 168 are brachycephalic, 50 are dolichocephalic, and 27 mesocephalic. Of 13 from near Arica, all but one are dolichocephalic. Of 104 from Pachacamac, 93 are brachycephalic and none dolichocephalic. It is evident that along the coast there lived tribes of contrasted skull forms. From the material at hand I should say that the dividing line was near Pisco, those south of that point having elongated, those north of it rounded heads. The true Kechuas and Aymaras are meso or brachycephalic. The crania from the celebrated cemetery of Ancon, which is situated on the coast near Lima, are mostly deformed, but when obtained in natural form prove the population to have been mesocephalic, with rounded orbits (megasemes) and narrow prominent noses (leptorhines). An average of six specimens The cubical capacity of the Peruvian skulls from the coast generally averages remarkably low—lower than that of the Bushmen or Hottentots. Careful measurements give the capacity at 1230 cubic centimeters. Although the Spanish writers speak of the Inca as an autocratic despot, a careful analysis of the social organization of ancient Peru places it in the light of a government by a council of the gentes, quite in accordance with the system so familiar elsewhere on the continent. The Inca was a war-chief, elected by the council as an executive officer to carry out its decision, and had practically no initiative of his own. Associated with him, and nearly equal in power, was the huillac huma, or “speaking head,” who acted as president of the tribal council, and was the executive officer in the Inca’s absence. The totemic system still controlled the social life of the people, although it is evident that the idea of the family had begun to assert itself. The land continued to be owned by the gens or ayllu, and not by individuals. Agriculture had reached its highest level in Peru among the native tribes. The soil was artificially enriched with manure and guano brought from the islands; extensive systems of irrigation were carried out, and implements of bronze, as spades and hoes, took the place of the ruder tools of stone or wood. The crops were maize, potatoes both white and sweet, yucca, peppers, tobacco and cotton. Of domestic animals the llama and paco were bred for their hair, for sacrifices and as beasts of burden, but not for draft, for riding nor for milking. Cotton and hair of the various species of the llama were spun and woven into a large variety of fabrics, often ornamented with geometric designs in color. The pottery was exceedingly varied in forms. Natural objects were imitated in clay with fidelity and expression, and when a desirable model was not at hand, the potter was an adept in moulding curious trick-jars that would not empty their contents in the expected direction, or would emit a strange note from the gurgling fluid, or such as could be used as whistles, or he could turn out terra-cotta flutes and the like. Not less adroit were the artists in metal, Peruvian architecture was peculiar and imposing. It showed no trace of an inspiration from Yucatan or Mexico. Its special features were cyclopean walls of huge stones fitted together without mortar; structures of several stories in height, not erected upon tumuli or pyramids; the doors narrowing in breadth toward the top; the absence of pillars or arches; the avoidance of exterior and mural decoration; the artistic disposition of niches in the walls; and the extreme solidity of the foundations. These points show that Inca architecture was not derived from that north of the isthmus of Panama. In the decorative effects of the art they were deficient; neither their sculpture in stone nor their mural paintings at all equalled those of Yucatan. The only plan they had devised to record or to recall ideas was by means of knotted strings of various colors and sizes, called quipus. These could have been nothing more than mere mnemonic aids, highly artificial and limited in their application. The official religion was a worship of the sun; but along with it were carried the myths of Viracocha, the national hero-god, whom it is not difficult to identify with the personifications of light so common in American religions. The ceremonies of the cult were elaborate, and were not associated with the bloody sacrifices frequent in Yucatan and Mexico. Their mythology was rich, and many legends were current of the white and bearded Viracocha, the culture hero, who gave them their civilization, and of his emergence from the “house of the dawn.” According to some authorities which appear to be trustworthy, the more intelligent of the Kechuas appear to have risen above object-worship, and to have advocated the belief in a single and incorporeal divinity. A variety of ancestral worship also prevailed, that of the pacarina, or forefather of the ayllu or gens, idealized as the soul or essence of his descendants. The emblem worshipped was the actual body, called malqui, which was mummied and preserved with reverential care in sacred underground temples. The morality of the Peruvians stood low. Their art relics abound in obscene devices and the portraiture of unnatural passions. We can scarcely err in seeing in them a nation which had been deteriorated by a long indulgence in debasing tastes. The Kechua language is one of harsh phonetics, especially in the southern dialects, but of considerable linguistic development. The modifications of the theme are by means of suffixes, which are so numerous as to give it a flexibility and power of conveying slight shades of meaning rare in American KECHUA LINGUISTIC STOCK.I have thought it best to treat of the Aymara as a distinct linguistic stock, although the evidence is steadily accumulating that it is, if not merely a dialect of the Kechua, then a jargon made up of the Kechua and other stocks. In the first place, the name “Aymara” appears to have been a misnomer, or, as Markham strongly puts it, a “deplorable blunder,” of the Jesuit missionaries stationed at Juli. Its grammar and phonetics are closely analogous to those of the southern Kechua dialects, and about one-fourth of its vocabulary is clearly traceable to Kechua radicals. Moreover, the Colla, Lupaca, Pacasa and allied dialects of that region are considered by various authorities as derived from the Kechua. For these reasons, Markham, Von Tschudi, and later, Professor Steinthal, have pronounced in favor of the opinion that the so-called Aymara is a member of the Kechua linguistic stock. On the other hand, the decided majority of its radicals have no affinity with Kechua, and betray a preponderating influence of some other stock. What this may have been must be left for future investigation. It does not seem to have been the Puquina; The Aymara was spoken with the greatest purity and precision by the Pacasas; and next to these, by the Lupacas; and it was especially on these two dialects that Bertonio founded his Grammar, and not upon the mongrel dialect of the imported laborers, as Markham would have us believe. The physical traits of the Aymara Indians offer some peculiarities. These consist mainly in an unusual length of the trunk in proportion to the height, in a surprising development of the chest, and short extremities. The proportion of the thigh to the leg in length is under the average. The leg and calf are well developed, and the general muscular force good. The hands and feet are smaller even than is common in the American race. The skull has a tendency to dolichocephaly. The location they occupied was generally to the south and east of the Kechuas, upon the plateau and western slopes of the Andes, from south latitude 15° to 20°, and through about six degrees of longitude. It may be said roughly to have been three hundred miles from north to south, and four hundred from east to west. The total native population of this area to-day is about six hundred thousand, two-thirds of whom are of pure blood, and the remainder mixed. Some of them dwell along the sea coast, but the majority are on the Bolivian plateau, the average altitude of which is more than twelve thousand feet above sea level. The old writers furnish us very little information about the Aymaras. At the time of the discovery they were subject to the Kechuas and had long been thus dependent. Many, however, believe that they were the creators or inspirers of the civilization which the Kechuas extended so widely over the western coast. Certain it is that the traditions of the latter relate that their first king and the founder of their higher culture, Manco Capac, journeyed northward from his home on the shores of Lake Titicaca, which was situated in Aymara territory. From the white foam of this inland sea rose the Kechua culture-hero Viracocha, who brought them the knowledge of useful arts and the mysteries of their cult. On the cold plain, higher than the summit of the Jungfrau, which borders this elevated sea are also found the enigmatical ruins of Tiahuanuco, much the most remarkable of any in America. They are the remains of imposing edifices of stone, the cyclopean blocks polished and adjusted so nicely one to No tradition records the builders of these strange structures. No one occupied them at the time of the conquest. When first heard of, they were lonely ruins as they are to-day, whose designers and whose purposes were alike unknown. The sepulchral structures of the Aymaras also differed from those of the Incas. They were not underground vaults, but stone structures erected on the surface, with small doors through which the corpse was placed in the tomb. They were called chulpas, and in construction resembled the tolas of the Quitus. Sometimes they are in large groups, as the Pataca Chulpa, “field of a hundred tombs,” in the province of Carancas. AYMARA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
3. The Puquinas.The Puquinas are also known under the names Urus or Uros, Hunos and Ochozomas. They formerly lived on the islands and shores of Lake Titicaca, in the neighborhood of Pucarini, and in several villages of the diocese of Lima. Oliva avers that some of them were found on the coast near Lambayeque. They are alleged to have been jealous about their language, and unwilling for any stranger to learn it. Their religious exercises were conducted in Kechua, with which they were all more or less acquainted. The only specimen of their tongue in modern treatises is the Lord’s Prayer, printed by Hervas and copied by Adelung. None of these authorities had other material than the Pater Noster referred to. Hervas credits it to a work of the missionary Geronimo de Ore, which it is evident that neither he nor any of the other writers named had ever seen, as they all speak of the specimen as the only printed example of the tongue. This work is the Rituale seu Manuale Peruanum, published at Naples in 1607. It contains about thirty pages in the Puquina tongue, with translations into Aymara, Kechua, Spanish and Latin, and thus forms a mine of material for the student. Though rare, a copy of it is in the BibliothÈque Nationale at Paris, and is thus readily accessible. I have published a number of extracts from its Puquina renderings in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical The dissimilarity of the three tongues is well seen in their numerals, which are as follows:
In these lists the Aymara numerals, one, two and four are independent; three, five, six and ten are taken from the Kechua; and the remaining three are compound, pa-callco, being 2+5; quimsa-callco, 3+5; and llalla-tunca meaning “less than ten.” Callco is derived from the word for “foot,” the counting being with the toes. On the other hand, there is not a single numeral in the Puquina which can be derived from either Kechua or Aymara; and what is more remarkable, there is apparently not one which is compounded. It remains puzzling to me why the Puquina, which seems to have been spoken only by a few wretched villagers about Lake Titicaca, should have been 4. The Yuncas.The Yuncas occupied the hot valleys near the sea between south latitude 5° and 10°, their capital being in the vicinity of the present city of Truxillo. Their tongue belongs to an entirely different stock from the Kechua, and was not influenced by it. It still survives in a few sequestered valleys. The extreme difficulty of its phonetics aided to prevent its extension. There is little doubt but that the Yuncas immigrated to their locality at some not very distant period before the conquest. According to their own traditions their ancestors journeyed down the coast in their canoes from a home to the north, until they reached the port of Truxillo. Near by, in the valley of Chicama and vicinity, they constructed capacious reservoirs and canals for irrigation which watered their well-tilled fields, and were so solidly constructed that some of them have been utilized by enterprising planters in this generation. Doubtless some of these were the work of the Incas after their conquest of this valley by the Inca Pachacutec, as is related by Garcilasso de la Vega, The term yunca-cuna is a generic one in the Kechua language, and means simply “dwellers in the warm country,” the tierra caliente, near the sea coast. It was more particularly applied to the Chimus near Truxillo, but included a number of other tribes, all of whom, it is said, spoke related dialects. Of the list which I append we are sure of the Mochicas or Chinchas, as the Yunca portion of Geronimo de Ore’s work is in this dialect; The location of the stock at the conquest may be said to have been from south lat. 4° to 10°; and to have included the three departments of modern Peru called Ancachs, Libertad, and Piura. YUNCA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
5. The AtacameÑos and Changos.In the valley of the river Loa, about 20°-23° south latitude, and in the vicinity of Atacama, there still survive remnants of a tribe called AtacameÑos by the Spaniards, but by themselves Lican-Antais, people of the villages. Their language appears to be of an independent stock, equally remote from that of The Lican-antais are fishermen and live in a condition of destitution. The aridity of the climate is unfavorable to agriculture. In physical habitus they are short, with dark complexions, flat broad noses and low foreheads. D’Orbigny identifies the Lican-Antais with the Olipes, Lipes or Llipis of the older writers Immediately to the south of the AtacameÑos, bordering upon the sterile sands of the desert of Atacama, between south latitude 22° and 24°, are the Changos. In their country it never rains, and for food they depend entirely on the yield of the sea, fish, crustacea and edible algae. Like the Bushmen of the Kalihari desert, and doubtless for the same reason of insufficient nutrition, they are undersized, as a tribe perhaps of the shortest stature of any on the continent. The average of the males is four feet nine inches, and very few reach five feet. Nothing satisfactory is reported about their language, which is asserted to be different from the Aymara or any other stock. The tribe has been confounded by some writers with the AtacameÑos, and the Spaniards apparently included both under the term Changos; which is at present used as a term of depreciation. But both in location and appearance they are diverse. Whether this extends also to language, as is alleged, I have not the material to determine, and probably the tongue is extinct. II. THE SOUTH ATLANTIC GROUP.1. THE AMAZONIAN REGION.Those two mighty rivers, the Amazon and the Orinoco, belong to one hydrographic system, the upper affluents of the latter pouring their waters for six months of the year into the majestic expanse of the former. Together they drain over three million square miles of land, 1. The Tupis.Along the coast of Brazil and up the Amazon there is current a more or less corrupted native tongue called the “common language,” lingua geral. It is derived mainly from the idiom of the Tupis, whose villages were found by the first discoverers along the The inroads of the Spaniards from the south and of the kidnapping Portuguese from the east, reduced their number greatly, and many bands sought safety in distant removals; thus the Chiriguanos moved far to the west and settled on the highlands of Bolivia, where they have increased their stock from four or five thousand to triple that number, The Tupi tribes did not extend north of the immediate banks of the Amazon, nor south of the Rio de la Plata. It would appear not improbable that they started from the central highlands where the Tapajoz on the north and the Paraguay on the south have their sources. Their main body followed the latter to the Atlantic, where the Tupis proper separated and moved up the coast of Brazil. This latter migration is believed to have been as late as a few hundred years before the discovery. Like the Tapuyas, the Tupis have a tendency to dolicocephaly, but it is less pronounced. They are less prognathic, the forehead is fuller and the color of the skin brighter. The hair is generally straight, but PÖppig saw many among the Cocamas of pure blood with wavy and even curly hair. I have no hesitation in including in the Tupi family the Mundurucus, or Paris, on the upper Tapajoz. Their relationship was fully recognized by Professor Hartt, who was well acquainted with both dialects. To the same family belong the Muras and Turas, in the swampy valley of the Madeira in its middle course, “an amphibious race of ichthyophagi,” as they are called by Martius, savage and hostile, and depraved by the use of the parica, a narcotic, intoxicating snuff prepared from the dried seeds of the Mimosa acacioides. At the beginning of this century they were estimated at 12,000 bowmen; but this was doubtless a great exaggeration. Though their dialect differs widely from the lingua geral, the majority of their words are from Tupi roots. The tribes of this lineage in the extreme south of Brazil were numerous. The Guachaguis, corresponding apparently to the modern Guachis, are said by Lozano to speak a corrupt Guarani. The Gualachos, who spread from the river Iguaza to the sea coast, spoke a Guarani dialect in which the sounds of f, j and l were present, which, in pure Guarani, are absent. They built thatched houses divided into several rooms, and raised abundant harvests. The Omaguas and Cocamas, the most western of the Tupis, dwelling within the limits of Ecuador, had evidently profited by their contiguity to the civilization of Peru, as they are described by early travelers as familiar with gold, silver and copper, living in permanent villages connected by good roads, and cultivating large fields of cotton, maize and various food-plants. The art-forms which they produced and the prevalence of sun-worship, with rites similar to those of Peru, indicate the source of their more advanced culture. By some authors the Omaguas are stated to have migrated down the Rio Yupura from Popayan in New Granada, where a tribe speaking their dialect, the Mesayas are alleged still to reside. The Tupi is rich in mythological tales which have been collected by several competent students of their tongue. (Hartt, Magalhaes, etc.) Their religion is a simple animistic nature-worship. The dead were buried in large urns, usually in localities set aside for the purpose. One such on the island Maraho, near the mouth of the Amazon, has yielded a rich harvest to archÆologists. The general culture of the Tupis was superior to that of any other Brazilian tribes, but much inferior to that of the Incas. They were to a slight extent agricultural, raising maize, manioc, tobacco, which they smoked in pipes, and several vegetables. Some fowls, monkeys and peccaries were tamed and used as food. Their houses were of straw, lattice work and leaves, sometimes plastered with mud. The communal system prevailed, twenty or thirty families occupying one residence. A number of such houses would be erected on some favorable site and surrounded by a palisade of strong poles. These towns were, however, not permanent, and nearly half the year was spent in hunting and fishing expeditions along the streams. They went entirely naked, but wove excellent hammocks from the bark of trees and other vegetable fibres. Devoid of a knowledge of metals, they were in the height of the age of polished stone, many of their products in this direction being celebrated for symmetry and delicacy. The language which characterizes this widely distributed stock is polysynthetic and incorporating, with the flexibility peculiar to this class of tongues. It has been the subject of a number of works, but still lacks a thorough comparative treatment. The Jesuit missionaries adopted the Guarani dialect throughout their extensive “reductions,” and translated into it a variety of works for the instruction of their acolytes, some of which have been printed. TUPI LINGUISTIC STOCK.
2. The Tapuyas.The Tapuya stock is at once the most ancient and the most extensive now living on the soil of Brazil. Its various tribes are found from s. lat. 5° to s. lat. 20°, and from the Atlantic to the Schingu river. The name Tapuya was applied to them by the Tupis, and means “enemies” or “strangers”—two ideas which are always synonymous in primitive life. They are also called Crens or Guerens, the Old Ones or Ancient People. This seems to have reference to their possession of the coast before the arrival of the Tupi hordes from the south. By some writers they are believed to have been the earliest constructors of the sambaquis, the shell-heaps or kitchen-middens, which are of great size and numerous, Their appearance is that of an antique race of men. They are of middle height, with long upper and short lower extremities. The face is broad, the eyes small and under prominent ridges, the forehead low and retreating; the sutures are simple, the face prognathic, and the skull decidedly dolichocephalic (73), but of good capacity (1470 cub. cent.), and leptorhinic; the mouth is large and the nose prominent. In color they present a variety of shades of reddish-brown, and their hair, which is coarse, verges rather on the dark-brown than the black. In culture the Tapuyas are reported to stand on the lowest scale. When free in their native woods they go absolutely naked; they have no other houses than temporary shelters of leaves and branches; they manufacture no pottery, build no canoes, and do not know how to swim. When first in contact with the whites they had no dogs, knew nothing of the use of tobacco or salt, and were common cannibals. They have no tribal organizations and no definite religious rites. To counterbalance all these negatives, I hasten to add that they are hunters of singular skill, using strong bows with long arrows, manufacture polished stone axes and weave baskets of reeds, and, what is rare among the Indians, use tapers made from wild bees-wax and bark fibre. Their language is difficult in its phonetics, and presents a contrast to most American tongues by its tendency toward the isolating form, with slight agglutination. A carefully prepared vocabulary of it has recently been published by Dr. Paul Ehrenreich, TAPUYA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
The Goyotacas in the province of Goyaz and the regions adjacent include a large number of tribes which Von Martius has shown to have sufficient linguistic affinity among themselves to unite in one group, and connections enough with the Tapuya stem to be regarded as one of its sub-stocks. GOYOTACA SUB-STOCK.
Another group believed by Martius to be a mixed off-shoot of the Tapuya family belong to what I may call the TUCANO SUB-STOCK.
All these tribes are found in the vicinity of the river Uaupes, and are distinguished by three vertical lines tattooed or incised on the cheeks. They take their name, as do some other Brazilian tribes not related to them, from the beautiful toucan bird, which is frequently held sacred among them, and is sometimes I also attach to this stock the Carnijos or Fornio, a vocabulary of whose language has been published by Professor John C. Branner, and which hitherto has not been identified.
3. The Arawaks.The Arawak stock of languages is the most widely disseminated of any in South America. It begins at the south with the Guanas, on the head-waters of the river Paraguay, and with the Baures and Moxos on the highlands of southern Bolivia, and thence extends almost in continuity to the Goajiros peninsula, the most northern land of the continent. Nor did it cease there. All the Antilles, both Greater and Less, were originally occupied by its members, and so were the Bahama Islands, They were thus the first of the natives of the New World to receive the visitors from European climes, and the words picked up by Columbus and his successors on the Bahamas, Cuba and Hayti, are readily explained by the modern dialects of this stock. No other nation was found on any part of the archipelago except the two I have mentioned. The whole of the coast between the mouths of the Orinoco and Amazon appears to have been in their possession at or a short time before the epoch of the discovery. The Antis or Campas, who perhaps occupy the original home of the stock, own as the centre of their domain the table-land known as El Gran Pajonal, or the Great Grass Field, bounded by the rivers Ucayali, Pachitea and Perene. Their hue is a bistre and their habits wild; some slight tillage is carried on, and the women spin and weave the wild cotton into coarse garments. The taming of animals is one of their arts, and around their huts are seen monkeys, parrots, peccaries and tapirs. The names Campas and Antis were used as generic terms, the latter applied to the tribes on the slopes of the Cordilleras and the former to those on the plains. A large number of sub-tribes are named by the older writers, the principal of which were the Choseosos, Machigangas, Pilcosumis and Sepaunabos. The Machigangas lived on the Pilcopata and Vilcanota, and their language has been erroneously stated by Von Tschudi to be an independent stock. The Guanas are a nation who have long lived on the upper Paraguay, in the province Mato Grosso on the river Mambaya, and vicinity. D’Orbigny believed that they were a member of the Mataco group, Castelnau describes them as occupying four settlements near Albuquerque and Miranda, and comprising the Chualas or Guanas proper, the Terenos, the Laianas, and the Quiniquinaos. The Paiconecas or Paunacas were attached to the mission of the Conception in Bolivia, in 16° south latitude. They numbered about 500 in 1831. In customs and appearance they approached the Chiquitos. Their former home was between the sources of the Rio Blanco and Rio Verde. The Saravecas, three or four hundred in number in 1831, were attached to the mission of Santa Anna, in Bolivia, and were its handsomest members. Their former homes were in the eastern hills of the Cordillera, about 16° south latitude. Although these are classed as irreducible stocks by D’Orbigny and others who have followed him, they are both clearly branches of the Arawak stem,
Others could readily be added, but the above are sufficient. Another important tribe of this stock in this region were the Piros, otherwise called Chuntaquiros and Simirenchis, whose home was about the junction of the Ucayali and Apurimac, and thence along both these rivers. The vocabularies of their tongue obtained by Castelnau and Paul Marcoy leave no doubt of their affiliations. They were largely converted by the Jesuits between 1683 and 1727. The Wapisianas, or Wapianas in British Guiana, with their sub-tribe the Atorai (Tauri or Dauri), are stated by Im Thurn to speak a tongue wholly different from the Arawak; but an analysis of its expression and an extended comparison place it beyond doubt in this stock. The Tarumas and Maopityans, who now live in southern British Guiana, but are said to have originally They enjoy a rather high degree of culture, being celebrated for the manufacture of cassava graters, for the hunting dogs which they breed and train, and for the fine pottery they manufacture. Both Schomburgk and Im Thurn regard them as an independent stock; but from a comparison of the fifteen nouns given by the former in their language,
This comparison leaves little doubt but that this mixed dialect is chiefly of Arawak lineage. The Arawaks wandered as far east as the upper Schingu river, where Von den Steinen found the Kustenau, a distant member of the stem, with various minor tribes, as the Vauras, Mehinacus, etc. Along There is a prevailing similarity in their physical type. The adults are slightly undersized, rarely reaching above five feet six inches, with low foreheads and straight narrow noses. The form of the skull is short and the jaws are not protruding—orthognathic and brachycephalic. The culture of the Arawak stock was generally somewhat above the stage of savagery. On the West Indian islands Columbus found them cultivating maize, potatoes, manioc, yams and cotton. They were the first to introduce to Europeans the wondrous art of tobacco smoking. They wove cotton into garments, and were skilful in polishing stone. They hammered the native gold into ornaments, carved curious masks of wood, blocked rude idols out of large stones, and hollowed the trunks of trees to construct what they called canoes. Such is approximately the culture of the existing tribes of the stock. The Arawaks of Guiana also raise cassava and maize, though they depend largely on hunting and fishing. Like the northern tribes, they have well-developed gentile or totemic systems, with descent in the female line. The Haytian mythology was quite extensive, and the legends of the Arawaks of Guiana have been collected, and are also rich. In all the tribes the dead were generally buried, and often the house of the deceased was destroyed or the spot deserted. ARAWAK LINGUISTIC STOCK.The BarÉs are now found along the banks of the Casaquiare and the Guainia, the Felipe, the Atabapo and some portions of the Rio Negro. They belong to the Arawak stock, their dialect being related to those of the Banivas and Maipures. About the middle of this century the traveller Richard Spruce found them in the regions assigned by Gilii to other tribes, indicating a displacement of the population. He collected a number of vocabularies, offering sufficient evidence in his opinion to establish the relationship of the following bands: BARÉ FAMILY OF THE ARAWAK STOCK.
To these I would add the Uirinas of the Rio Marari, on the strength of a vocabulary collected by Natterer. 4. The Caribs.The Carib stock is one of the most extensively distributed in the southern continent. At the discovery its dialects were found on the Lesser Antilles, the Caribby Islands, and on the mainland from the mouth of the Essequibo River to the Gulf of Maracaibo. West of the latter it did not reach the coast, nor has any positive traces of its introduction above the straits of Panama earlier than the conquest been found, in spite of frequent assertions to the contrary. Inland from the Arawaks on the shore of Guiana are a number of Carib tribes, as the Macusi and Woyawoi, so numerous that this region has been thought by some to have been the original home of the stock; but the discovery by Dr. Karl von den Steinen of a tribe, the Bakairi, on the head-waters of the Schingu River, speaking a very pure form of the language, These islands in turn were peopled from the mainland to the east, as I have already shown, their earlier population having been Arawak. All the Island, Orinoco and Guiana Caribs can thus be traced back to the mainland of northern Venezuela. In this The sierra which divides the head-waters of the Caura from those of the Rio Branco and other streams flowing into the Rio Negro and Amazon, are peopled on both slopes by wandering tribes of the Carib stock. Near the sources of the Caura, Chaffanjon found the once formidable Guaharibos, now naked and wretched fugitives, fearing the white far more than they are feared by him. The hill tribes of French Guiana are known as Roucouyennes, from the roucou, a vegetable coloring matter with which they paint their skins. They exhale a peculiar odor like that of new leather, probably from the action of the tannin in the roucou on the skin. Naturally they are light in color, and at birth almost white. A connecting link between these Caribs of Guiana and the Bakairis of the south is supplied by the Apiacas of the Rio Tocantins, who speak a pure dialect of the stock, midway in character between those of the two extremes named. The Arubas, who occupied the island of that name off the coast of Venezuela, and whose mixed descendants now speak the Papamiento jargon, are no doubt correctly assigned to this stock by M. Pinart. They were skillful potters, and buried their dead in large urns. The numerous polychromatic petroglyphs they Sir Robert H. Schomburgk classifies the Carib stock in Guiana as follows, giving a short specimen of each dialect, which differ, he says, among themselves about as much as French and Italian. CARIB SUB-STOCK IN GUIANA.
The Guaques, who live on the head-waters of the Caqueta or Yapura river, have not been heretofore identified as Caribs; but their dialect, as collected by Presbyter Manuel P. Albis in 1853, leaves no doubt as to its relationship. He describes them as intelligent and kindly, but incorrigible and dexterous thieves, skillful in the collection of wax and the preparation of poisons. Nowhere is the couvade with its associate superstitions more rigidly observed. No woman must be seen by men during her catamenia, and at childbirth she must separate from the household for three months. During all that time her husband strictly observes a diet and seclusion. The lower Orinoco basin was for a long time the center of distribution of the stock; they probably had driven from it nations of Arawak lineage, some of whom, as the Goajiros, they pushed to the west, where they were in contact with the Carib Motilones, The physical features of the Caribs assimilate closely to those of the Arawaks. They are taller in the average and more vigorous, but their skulls are equally brachycephalic and orthognathic. They are beardless, and have the same variability in color of skin. As good specimens of the modern Caribs we may take the tribes of Venezuela. These are spoken of as “the strongest, handsomest and most intelligent of any of the natives in northern South America.” The Caribs have had a bad reputation as to culture on account of their anthropophagous tendencies. Indeed, the word cannibal is a mispronunciation of their proper name, Karina. But they were quite on a par with their neighbors, the Arawaks, and in some respects superior to them. For instance, their canoes were larger and finer, and they had invented the device of the sail, which seems to have been unknown to all the other tribes on the continent. To some extent they were agricultural, and their pottery was of superior quality. The beginnings of picture-writing were in use among them, and the remarkable rock inscriptions still visible on the Orinoco and the Essequibo are attributable to them, and were probably intended as conjurations to the supernatural powers, similar to others which remain in St. Vincent and other islands from the date of the Carib occupation. The religious rites they observed were often elaborate. Their principal divinities are said to have been the sun, moon and earth, the latter of which was spoken of as the mother of the race. They practiced the couvade, and their priests, called piaye, exercised unlimited power, and were correspondingly feared. It was the opinion of Von Martius that the Carib, the Tupi-Guarani and the Arawak stocks are traceable to some very ancient common tongue. This view is at first sight strengthened by a wide comparison of vocabularies, but is weakened by an examination of the grammars of the three families, especially their pronominal elements. It is probable that the three ancestral tribes had early and close communication, but not original identity. The seeming relationship has been rendered more prominent in certain instances by free later borrowings. M. Adam has shown that some of the northern dialects are in the condition of jargons, their grammar on the Carib model, their words drawn from various stocks. Such are the “Island Carib,” which is largely Arawak, and the Boni-Ouyana, described by Dr. CrÉvaux. CARIB LINGUISTIC STOCK.
5. The Cariris.In his enumeration of the tribes of Central Brazil, Von Martius brings together a large number who once dwelt in the provinces of Bahia and Pernambuco, under the general title, “the Guck or Coco stem,” so called from the word which in many of them means “the paternal uncle.” Among these, the most prominent were the Cariris or Kiriri. They are now reduced to about 600 souls, but at one time were a powerful nation, and in 1699 The Sabuyas, who dwell near them, speak a closely related dialect; but further affinities have not been verified. They have, indeed, many loan words from the Tupi, and some from the Carib stock, but the ground-work of these tongues is different. Von den Steinen offers some reasons for believing that they moved down the Amazon from a far western residence. 6. The Coroados, Carajas and others.The Coroados derive their name from the Portuguese word coroa, a crown, the term “crowned” being applied to several native tribes who wore their hair in a peculiar manner. It is not at all an ethnic designation, and I use it to bring into relief the need of some term of greater precision. Thus, there are the Coroados who are neighbors and linguistically related to the Puris, dwelling on the Paruahyba river. By some they have been included among the Tapuyas as alleged relatives of the Botocudos. But not only There are other Coroados in the extreme south of Brazil, in the province of Rio Grande do Sul, whither they are said to have wandered from the north. These do not appear to be Botocudos either. They have round heads, dark brown eyes, low foreheads, and are of a light coffee color. They are noticeable for their clean and ornamental huts, and for their skill in hunting, in which they employ arrows five feet in length, with bone points. They pray to certain stars as protective divinities, and like some northern tribes, clean and preserve the bones of the dead. The Carajas belong to a stock who dwell on the affluents of the river Araguay, in the province of Goyaz in southern Brazil. The traveler Castelnau The Caraja language is known too imperfectly to permit a proper study of its relationship. It is complex and difficult, and spoken differently by the men and the women. From the scant material at hand I perceive lexical relationship in some important words to the Tapuya stock, CARAJA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
A certain number of vocabularies have been obtained by travelers in Brazil from mixed-blood tribes, who spoke dialects sometimes compounded of several native tongues, sometimes of these mingled with Portuguese or negro elements. Such is the dialect of the Meniens, who lived in eastern Brazil near the Villa Belmonte, whose speech was a jargon of the Tapuya and negro languages; and that of the Cames in the interior of San Paulo, who also made use of a barbarous dialect, compounded of the African idioms of runaway slaves, and that of the Botocudos. The Catoquina, a specimen of which was obtained by Spix from a band on the affluent of the Jurua, and the Catoxa or Cotoxo of the Rio Parda, are other examples. 7. The Orinoco Basin; Carib Sub-Stock; Salivas; Arawak Sub-Stock; Otomacos; Guamas; Guayoas; Garuoas; Guaraunos; Betoyas; Piaroas, etc.The Llanos of Venezuela coincide with the former “Territory of Caqueta,” and embrace a region about forty thousand square miles in extent, covered either with grass and rushes or with dense forests. In the wet season it is a vast marsh, in the dry it is scorched by This wide expanse is thinly populated with bands of savages, gaining their subsistence chiefly from the rivers, few of them brought within the range of civilized influences. Linguistically the majority belong to the Arawak and the Carib stocks; but there are numbers of tribes whose affinities are uncertain, or who are apparently of quite another lineage. Scores of names are found in the records of the missions and on the pages of travelers, of peoples who have disappeared or are now known by other designations. Alexander von Humboldt named and located 186 tribes on the Orinoco and its affluents alone; but renounced as hopeless the attempt to give them a linguistic classification. Something over a century ago, when Father Gilii wrote, largely from personal knowledge, his description of the tribes on the Orinoco and its affluents, he believed they could be included in nine linguistic stocks, 1. The Carib in a number of dialects, as the Tamanaca, the Paiura, the Quiri-Quiripa, the Mapuya, the Guanero, the Guayquira, the Palenque, the Maquiritare, the Oje, the Mucuru, and others. 2. The Saliva, to which he assigned the dialects Ature, Piaroa and Quaqua. 3. The Maipure (Arawak), in its dialects Avane, Meepure, Cavere, Parene, Guipunave, and Chirupa. 4. The Otomaca, with one dialect, the Tarapita. 5. The Guama, with its dialect, the Quaquaro. 6. The Guayba, related to the Chiricoa. 7. The Jaruri (Yarura). 8. The Guaraunos. 9. The Aruaca. This classification can stand as only approximately accurate, but it serves as an excellent starting point. Beginning with the Carib stock, and basing my list on the works of Codazzi and more recent travelers, especially CrÉvaux, Coudreau and Chaffanjon, I offer the following as the tribes which may be definitely located as its members: CARIB SUB-STOCK IN THE ORINOCO REGION.
Even when Codazzi collected his material, more than half a century ago, the once powerful Tamanacas had entirely disappeared, and no tribe of the name existed in the region. The Maquiritares, however, still remain as one of the handsomest peoples on the Orinoco, and remarkable On the river Uaupes, an affluent of the Rio Negro M. Coudreau encountered various tribes, such as the Tarianos or Javis and the Nnehengatus, of whose tongues he obtained brief vocabularies. They indicate a distant influence of the Carib stock, especially the latter, but they seem mixed largely with elements from other sources. Gilii’s second group, the Salivas, offers difficulties. There appears to be none of them under that name at present on the Orinoco. Chaffanjon states that the Atures have become extinct. The Arawak stock, which Gilii calls the Maipure, had numerous branches in this region. They occupied much of the Orinoco in its middle and upper course, as well as the valleys of its affluents. Gumilla speaks of one of its members, the Caveres, as savage and inhuman warriors, but as the only nation which had been able to repulse the attacks of the down-river Caribs, who were accustomed to ascend the stream in fleets of eighty to a hundred canoes, destroying every village on its banks. The same authority mentions the Achaguas as possessing the most agreeable and cultured dialect, though he is in doubt whether it is strictly related to the Maipure. This nation, quite prominent in the older annals, still existed in the middle of this century to the number of five hundred on the Rio Muco. They were not civilized, and practiced the customs of polyandry and the destruction of female infants. From a variety of sources at my disposition I have prepared the following list of the ARAWAK SUB-STOCK IN THE ORINOCO REGION.
The Otomacos remain, as Gilii placed them, an independent stock, with their single dialect, the Tarapita. The Jesuits first encountered them in 1732, amid the forests south of the Orinoco, between the Paos and the Jaruros. In later years they are described as a low grade of savages, given to the eating of earth. They are also said to be monogamous, and the women among them enjoy an unusual degree of consideration, being permitted to take equal part in the public games. The tribes whom Gilii mentions as the Guamas and Quaquaros lived on the banks of the Rio Apure, and in his day had the reputation of “a numerous and valorous people.” Of their language I have no specimens. According to Felipe Perez, it is related to the Omagua, and hence should be included in the Tupi stock; but this writer is not always dependable. The Guaybas (Guahibos) and Chiricoas dwelt originally on the broad plains between the Casanare and Meta rivers; but a number of them were converted in the latter half of the seventeenth century and persuaded to come to the missions. They soon returned to their roving life. Cassani speaks of them as of mild and friendly disposition, but incorrigible vagabonds, “the gypsies of the Indies,” constantly migrating from place to place. Humboldt, in his discussion of the tribes of the Orinoco, refers to the Guahibos as white in color, and founds some speculations on this fact. Their hue is indeed light, at times what may fairly be called a dirty white; but in this respect we are assured The home of the Jaruris, Yaruras, or, as they called themselves, Japurin, was on and near the Orinoco, between the rivers Meta and Capanapaco. They depended on hunting and fishing, and were indolent and averse to agriculture. They had few arts, but were friendly in disposition, not given to drunkenness, and usually monogamous. At present they number scarcely a hundred individuals, badly formed, afflicted with contagious disease, and rapidly on the road to extinction. They have lost their trait of sobriety, and a man will readily offer his wife or daughter in exchange for a bottle of brandy. (Chaffanjon.) The Guaraunos, called by the English Warraus, continue to live in considerable numbers—some say about fifteen thousand—in and near the delta of the Orinoco. They are a thrifty, healthy people, building their houses ingeniously upon piles to protect them from the periodical overflows of the stream. This method of construction, however, was adopted only when they sought as refuge marshy and lonely spots to escape their enemies. Contrary to the statements of most travelers, those who know them best report them as preferring dry uplands, where they make clearings, plantations and houses with singular Humboldt placed their number at the beginning of the century at about six thousand, which is doubtless more correct than the later estimates. He adds that the Guayquiries, who inhabited the peninsula of Araya and the adjacent islands of Margarita, “admit the relationship of their language with that of the Guaraunos.” In appearance they are dark in hue, of muscular build, hair black, abundant and very fine, noses straight and well-shaped, skull brachycephalic, stature The Aruaca mentioned by Gilii were some tribes of the Arawaks who occasionally visited the southern bank of the Orinoco, and whose relations to the Maypures were not known to him. They are also mentioned by other authors. Having thus reviewed the linguistic stocks named by Gilii, I shall proceed to mention some which escaped his attention. One of the most interesting of these is the Betoi, or Betoya. This tongue derived its name from a tribe dwelling at the foot of the mountains of Bogota, between the rivers Apure and Tame, and are therefore included by some among the Indians of New Granada. From a number of authorities I find the following members are attributed to the BETOYA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
Of these, the Piojes and Correguages, of which we have vocabularies, do not show close resemblance to the Betoya, yet undoubtedly some; The Piojes derive their name from the particle of negation in their language, this being their usual reply to all inquiries by traders or travelers. They are divided into two bands, speaking the same dialect, one on the Napo and one on the Putumayo, neither knowing anything of the other. Some of their customs are peculiar. For instance, it is their rule that a widow shall take her son, a widower his daughter, to replace the deceased consort. The Tamas formerly lived on the river Aguarico (Coleti). Dr. CrÉvaux found them on the Caguo, a branch of the Yapura, and obtained from them a short vocabulary, but enough to mark them as members of the stock. The Betoya has impressed me as showing some distant affinity to the Choco stock, and it may be that ampler resources on both sides would lead to the establishment of an original identity. The following words from the very scanty number which I have for comparison are noteworthy:
The Choco do, river, seems related to the Betoya ocu-du, water. The Macaguages are industrious and agricultural. Both sexes dress alike in cotton tunics dyed in violet color, and suspend bright feathers and strings of beads in ears, nose and lips. A singular question has arisen as to the relationship of the Betoya and the Yarura languages. Their near connection was affirmed by the early missionaries. In fact, the history of the conversion of the Betoyas turns upon the identity of the two tongues. It was brought about in 1701 by a Yarura Indian, a convert to Christianity, who accidentally discovered that he was understood by the Betoyas. In spite of this detail, it is evident from an inspection of the vocabularies, that there is absolutely no relationship between the two idioms. I can only explain the contradiction as arising from some ambiguity or similarity of names. The two tribes lived together in the time of Gumilla, making up about three thousand souls. About the middle of this century some six hundred of the Betoyas dwelt on the head-waters of the river Manacacia. In the territory of St. Martin, above the falls of the Guaviare and along the Rio Guejar and the Meta, are several tribes asserted to speak related dialects, but of which I have little information. The principal one is that of the Churoyas, of whom Professor Nicolas Saenz has given an interesting sketch and a short vocabulary. CHUROYA LINGUISTIC STOCK.Whether the Cofanes here named are those of the Province of Quitu who murdered the Jesuit missionary, An examination of the vocabulary furnished by Saenz inclines me to think that the Churoya may be a mongrel dialect, or at least has borrowed freely from neighboring stocks. I subjoin the principal words from his short vocabulary, with some comparisons:
The Piaroas are mentioned by Gilii as a branch of the Salivas, but their language reveals no such connection. They are still found on both banks of the Orinoco above the confluence of the Vichada and near the mouth of the Mataveni. They are savage and superstitious, avoiding contact with the whites; they have had good reason to be extremely distrustful of the advances of their civilized neighbors. They are much given to nocturnal ceremonies, and entertain a great respect for the tapir, who is their reputed The Puinavis dwell on the Inirida, an affluent of the Guaviare. A tribe, the Guipunabis, is mentioned by Gilii as belonging to the Maipure (Arawak) stock; but it cannot be the same with the one under consideration, the language of which appears to be without affinities. Latham identified them with the Poignavis of the older writers, and on slight linguistic evidence, believed them connected with the Banivas. 8. The Upper Amazonian Basin.No portion of the linguistic field of South America offers greater confusion than that of the western Amazonian region. The statements are so conflicting, and the tribal changes apparently so rapid, that we are at a loss to bring modern observations into accord with older statements. Thus, I am entirely unable to accept the linguistic classification of Hervas, which certainly was based on the best information of his day. As a matter of comparison I give it. List of Languages in the Governments of Maynas and the MaraÑon (Hervas).
A slight examination of this classification suffices to reveal its general inaccuracy. The Zaparos are included in both the Encabellada and the Simigae The Zaparos constitute one of the most extended and numerous nations in the upper valley of the Amazon. They dwell near or adjacent to the Jivaros on the south, and as their name is variously spelled Zaparos, Xeberos and Jeberos, they have at times been confounded with them. They differ, however, not only in language, but in appearance and temperament. The Zaparos are lighter in color, smaller in stature, with oblique eyes, large mouths, and expanded nostrils. In 1632 they lived near the Omaguas, on the river Curary, and their number was estimated by the missionaries at 10,000. At present their main body The Zaparo language is agreeable to the ear, partaking of the phonetic character of the Brazilian idioms. The Italian traveler, Osculati, has furnished a very satisfactory account of it, both grammatical and lexicographical, I offer the following alphabetic list of the sub-tribes of the Zaparos, without attempting to define their ZAPARO LINGUISTIC STOCK.
On the mountain slope of the Cordillera, north of the Zaparos and east of the CaÑaris, are the Jivaros (Givaros, Xivaros), a wild, warlike tribe, never subjugated either by the Kechuas or the Spaniards. Their homes are about the head-waters of the rivers Pastaza, Santiago, and other affluents of the MaraÑon. They are rather tall, of light color, with thin lips, aquiline noses, straight eyes, prognathic jaws, hair black or with a reddish tinge. Some say their various bands number as many as four hundred, named from the streams on which they live. Most of them depend upon hunting and fishing, others pursue agriculture and breed pigs. Their weapons are the sarbacane, the lance, the bow and the shield. They have developed a system of sound-signalling or telegraphy by means of large wooden The principal event in their history was their revolt against the Spanish authorities in the year 1599. They destroyed many settlements and the entire city of LogroÑo, carrying the women into captivity. Many of them had already been converted to Christianity, and their rites are said still to preserve some reminiscences of such teachings. In recent years many of them have been civilized through the efforts of Italian missionaries. The language of this important nation, although early studied, has as yet no printed literature. I have found of it only the first five numerals, which do not seem to have connection with any other tongue. 1. Alza; 2. catuta; 3. kala; 4. ingatu; 5. aleyticlon. From a study of proper names and ethnographic traits, Dr. Hamy has expressed himself with great assurance that the Jivaros belong to the Guarani group of the Tupi stock; JIVARO LINGUISTIC STOCK.
The eastern neighbors of the Jivaros are the scattered bands of the Maynas, separated by Hervas into two stocks, the Maina and the Chayavita, but so far as I can learn, without sufficient reason. The language is or was spoken at the mission of the Conception The following bands are embraced in the MAINA LINGUISTIC STOCK. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| PANO. | PACAGUARA. | CANAWARY. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sun, | bari, | uari, | wari. |
| Fire, | chi, | chi-i, | chi-i. |
| Water, | uaca, | waka. |
Mr. Chandless also says, “The Conibos are of the same tribe as the Manitenerys of the river Purus,” which would bring these latter also into the Pano stock. The short vocabulary of their language which he supplies does not bear out this assertion. Mr. Richard Spruce considered that it proved them to be of the Carib stock;
| MANITENERY. | ARAWAK STOCK. | |
|---|---|---|
| Sun, | cashi, | catche. |
| Moon, | siri, | casiri. |
| Fire, | chi-chi, | chichi. |
| Water, | huni, | uni. |
From the above considerations I offer the following names as comprising the
PANO LINGUISTIC STOCK.
- Barbudos, on the MaraÑon.
- Callisecas, on upper Ucayali.
[457] - Canawarys, on Rio Purus.
Caripunas, near cataracts of Rio Madeira. - Cashibos, on Rio Pachitea and Aguaitia.
- Chamicuros, on west bank of the Rio Huallaga.
[458] - Cochivuinas, a sub-tribe of Mayorunas.
- Conibos, on upper Ucayali.
- Culinos, on Rio Juvary.
- Jaunavos, see Caripunas.
- Mayorunas, on Rio Tapichi and Rio Yavari.
- Maxorunas, near Rio Tapichi.
- Panos, on upper Ucayali.
- Pacaguaras, on Rio Beni.
- Remos, on Ucayali, from Abayan to Chanchaguaya.
- Sencis, right bank of Ucayali above Saraycu.
- Setibos (Setevos), on upper Ucayali.
[459] - Sipibos, on upper Ucayali.
Mr. Chandless
Many tribes with names differing from the above are recorded by the older writers as resident on these rivers, but owing to the absence of linguistic material, no identification is possible.
The close relationship of the Pammarys of the Purus and the Arauas of the Jurua is shown by the following comparison:
| PAMMARY. | ARAUA. | |
|---|---|---|
| Moon, | massicu, | massicu. |
| Fire, | si ju, | sihu. |
| Water, | paha, | paha. |
| Dog, | djuimahi, | jumayhi. |
So far as known, I would place the following tribes in the
ARAUA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
- Arauas (AraÓ), on the lower Jurua.
- Pamas, formerly on the Madeira.
- Pammarys, on the Rio Purus.
- Puru-purus, on the Rio Purus.
The jargon of the Yaguas, on the Amazon between Nauta and Pebas, seems to have borrowed from this stock; as:
| YAGUA. | PAMMARY. | |
|---|---|---|
| Sun, | ini, | saf-iny. |
| Water, | haha, | paha. |
The neighbors of the Arauas on the river Purus are the Hypurinas (better Jupurinas) of whose language
| PAMMARY. | JUPURINA. | |
|---|---|---|
| Sun, | safiny, | atocanti. |
| Moon, | massicu, | cassiri. |
| Fire, | siju, | chamina. |
| Water, | paha, | iborahai. |
| River, | wainy, | weni. |
| Dog, | djuimahi, | anguity. |
| Tortoise, | Ú-jurÚ, | chetuyu. |
| Tapir, | dama, | chama. |
The Hypurinas on the Rio Acre (or Aquiri) belong to the same tribe. They are said to be related to the Chacobos and the Piros of the Ucayali. They are without civilization. The women go naked, but the men wear long purple robes, and both sexes pierce the lips and nose. Some agriculture is carried on, but hunting and fishing are the main sources of the food supply.
The total number of natives on the Purus and its affluents was estimated by Colonel LabrÉ, in 1885, at 40,000, “speaking forty or more different languages;” but this last assertion we may take with large allowance. Probably not over four or five stocks are represented. The same explorer names nine tribes visited by him on the river Ituxy. They are the: 1, Caccharari; 2, Canamary; 3, Catauxi; 4, Guarayo; 5, Huatanary; 6, Hypurina; 7, Hyuma; 8, Pamana;
In this list, as elsewhere, the term Guarayos has no ethnic significance. It is a Tupi word applied in this Spanish form to various wild, uncivilized tribes.
9. The Bolivian Highlands: the Chiquitos, Yurucares, Mosetenas, Tacanas, Samucus, Canichanas and others.
On the Atlantic face of the Cordillera, in the easternmost portion of Bolivia, where the head-waters of the Madeira are known by the names of the Mamore, the Guapai and the Beni, there is an astonishing variety of linguistic stocks. It would seem that the broken remnants of many diverse nations had sought refuge in the deep vales and dense forests of this region.
We have already seen that the Caribs were represented here by the Palmellas, and the Arawaks by the Moxos and Baures. South of the Moxos was the extensive region of the Chiquitos, stretching between south latitude 16° and 18°, and from the upper affluents of the Paraguay river to the summit of the Cordillera. On the south it adjoined the Gran Chaco, and on the west the territory of the Kechuas. They were a medium-sized, mild-mannered people, mostly of little culture, depending on the chase for food, but willingly adopting the agricultural life recommended to them by the missionaries. They were divided into a vast number of small roving bands, the most important group of which were the Manacicas, whose homes were near Lake Xaray,
The Chiquito language is interesting for its scope and flexibility, being chiefly made up of generic particles capable of indefinite combination.
Of such tribes there were many, widely different in speech, manners and appearance from the Chiquitos. Some of them are particularly noteworthy for their un-Indian type. Thus, to the west of the Chiquitos, on the banks of the rivers Mamore and Chavari, were the Yurucares, the Tacanas and the Mosetenas, all
The traveler D’Orbigny suggested that this light color arose from their residence under the shade of dense forests in a hot and humid atmosphere. He observed that many of them had large patches of albinism on their persons.
The branches of these stocks may be classed as follows:
YURUCARI LINGUISTIC STOCK.
- Conis.
- Cuchis.
- EnetÉs.
- Mages.
- MansiÑos.
- Oromos.
- Solostos.
MOSETENA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
- Chimanis.
- Magdalenos.
- Maniquies.
- Muchanis.
- Tucupis.
The Toromonas occupy the tract between the Madre de Dios and the Madidi, from 12° to 13° south latitude. According to D’Orbigny they are, together with the Atenes, Cavinas, Tumupasas and Isuiamas, members of one stock, speaking dialects of the Tacana language. He was unable to procure a vocabulary of it, and only learned that it was exceedingly guttural and harsh.
According to recent authorities the Cavinas speak the same tongue as the Araunas on the Madre de Dios, which are separated from the Pacaguaras by the small river Genichiquia;
TACANA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
- Araunas.
- Atenes.
- Cavinas.
- Equaris.
- Isuiamas.
- Lecos.
- Macaranis.
- Maropas.
- Pukapakaris.
- Sapiboconas.
- Tacanas.
- Toromonas.
- Tumupasas.
- Tuyumiris.
The Araunas are savage, and according to Heath “cannibals beyond a doubt.” He describes them as “gaunt, ugly, and ill formed,” wearing the hair long and going naked.
The Tacana dialects present a number of verbal analogies to Kechua and Aymara; so many in fact that they testify to long inter-communion between the stocks, though I think not to a radical identity. I present a few:
| TACANA. | KECHUA. | |
|---|---|---|
| Man, | reanci, | runa. |
| Water, | jene, | una. |
| Hand, | ma, | maqui. |
| Foot, | quatri, | chaqui. |
| House, | etai, | uta (Aymara). |
| Stone, | tumu, | rumi. |
| Star, | emata, | matti. |
| Lightning, | ilapa, | illapa. |
| Year, | mara, | mara. |
| Three, | quimisha, | quimsa. |
| Four, | puschi, | pusi (Aymara). |
| Five, | pischica, | pichka. |
The numerals above “two” have clearly been borrowed from the Kechua-Aymara.
There are also a large number of verbal coincidences between the Tacana and the Pano groups, but not enough to allow us to suppose an original unity.
The Samucus (Zamucas) embraced a number of sub-tribes dwelling on the northern border of the Chaco, between 18° and 20° south latitude, and about the river Oxuquis. They did not resemble the Chaco stocks, as they were not vagrant hunters, but dwelt in fixed villages, and pursued an agricultural life.
SAMUCU LINGUISTIC STOCK.
- Careras.
- Cayporotades.
- Coroinos.
- Cuculados.
- Guaranocas.
- Ibirayas.
- Morotocos.
- Potureros.
- Satienos.
- Tapios.
- Ugaronos.
Among these the Morotocos are said to have offered the rare spectacle of a primitive gynocracy. The women ruled the tribe, and obliged the men to perform the drudgery of house-work. The latter were by no means weaklings, but tall and robust, and daring tiger-hunters. The married women refused to have more than two children, and did others come they were strangled.
On the river Mamore, between 13° and 14° of south latitude, were the numerous villages of the Canichanas or Canisianas. They were unusually dark in complexion and ugly of features; nor did this unprepossessing exterior belie their habits or temperament. They were morose, quarrelsome, tricky and brutal cannibals, preferring theft to agriculture, and prone to drunkenness; but ingenious and not deficient in warlike arts, constructing strong fortifications around their villages, from which they would sally forth to harass and plunder their peaceable neighbors. By a singular anomaly, this unpromising
Between 13° and 14° of south latitude, on the west bank of the Rio Mamore, were the Cayubabas or Cayuvavas, speaking a language without known affinities, though containing words from a number of contiguous tongues.
Brief notices will suffice of the various other tribes, many of them now extinct, who centered around the missions of the Chiquitos and Moxos early in this century.
The Apolistas took their name from the river Apolo, an affluent of the Beni, about south latitude 15°. They were contiguous to the Aymaras, and had some physical resemblance to them. From their position, I suspect they belong in the Tacana group.
The Chapacuras, or more properly Tapacuras, were on the Rio Blanco or Baures in the province of Moxos. They called themselves Huachis, and the Quitemocas are mentioned as one of their sub-tribes. Von Martius thinks they were connected with the Guaches of Paraguay, a mixed tribe allied to the Guaycuru stock of the Chaco. The resemblance is very slight.
The Covarecas were a small band at the mission of Santa Anna, about south latitude 17°. Their language was practically extinct in 1831.
The Curaves and the Curuminacas, the former on the Rio Tucubaca and the latter north of them near the Brazil line, were said to have independent languages; but both were extinct at the time of D’Orbigny’s visit in 1831. The same was true of the Corabecas and Curucanecas.
The Ites or Itenes were upon the river Iten, an affluent of the Mamore about 12° south latitude. They were sometimes improperly called Guarayos, a term which, like Guaycurus, Aucas, Yumbos and others, was frequently applied in a generic sense by the Spanish Americans to any native tribe who continued to live in a savage condition.
The Movimas (Mobimas) occupied the shores of the Rio Yacuma, and Rio Mamore about 14° south latitude. In character and appearance they were similar to the Moxos, but of finer physique, “seldom ever under six feet,” says Mr. Heath. They are now civilized,
The Otuquis, who in 1831 did not number over 150 persons, lived in the northeast part of the province of Chiquitos near the Brazilian line. Their language was nearly extinct at that time. The short vocabulary of it preserved by D’Orbigny does not disclose connections with other stocks, unless it be a distant affinity with the Tacana group. This may be illustrated by the following words:
| OTUQUI. | TACANA DIALECTS. | |
|---|---|---|
| Man, | vuani, | reanci. |
| Woman, | vuaneti, | anu. |
| Sun, | neri, | ireti. |
| Moon, | ari, | bari. |
| Water, | uru, | yuvi. |
| Head, | ikitao, | ekuya. |
It was the policy of the Jesuits in their missions in this district to gather the tribes from the forest and mountain into permanent settlements, and reduce as far as possible the number of languages and dialects, so as to facilitate instruction in religious teaching. Shortly after this Order was expelled from their missions (1767), an official report on their “reductions” was printed in Peru, giving a list of the tribes at each station, and the languages in use for instruction.
The province of Apolobamba is described as extending about eighty leagues northeast-southwest, east of the Cordillera, and west of the Rio Beni. The languages adopted in it were the Leca, spoken by the Lecos Indians at the mission of Aten, and the Maracani, at the mission of Tumupasa, on the Rio Beni. Forty-nine nations are named as belonging to the mission of the Chiquitos, each of whom is stated to have spoken a different language or dialect, though all were instructed in their religious duties in Chiquito. At the mission of Moxos twenty-nine tribes are named as in attendance, but it had not been found possible, such was the difference of their speech, to manage with less than nine languages, to wit, the Moxa, the Baure, the Mure, the Mobima, the Ocorona, the Cayubaba, the Itonama and the Maracani.
Of these tongues I have classed the Leca and Maracani as dialects of the Takana, not from comparison of vocabularies, for I have seen none of either, but from the locations of the tribes speaking them. The Moxa and Baure are dialects of the Arawak stock. The Mura is a branch of the Tupi, spoken by the powerful tribe of the Muras on the Medeira and Amazon, who distinctly recalled in tradition their ancestral
2. THE PAMPEAN REGION.
South of the dividing upland which separates the waters of the Amazon from those which find their way to the Rio de la Plata, the continent extends in broad level tracts, watered by numerous navigable streams and rich in game and fish. Its chief physical features are the wooded and rolling Chaco in the north, the treeless and grassy Pampas to the south, and the sterile rocky plains of Patagonia still further toward the region of cold. In the west the chain of the Cordilleras continues to lift its summits to an inaccessible height until they enter Patagonia, when they gradually diminish to a range of hills.
The tribes of all this territory, both east and west of the Andes, belong ethnographically together, and
1. The Gran Chaco and its Stocks. The Guaycurus, Lules, Matacos and Payaguas. The Charruas, Guatos, Calchaquis, etc.
The great streams of the Parana and Paraguay offer a natural boundary between the mountainous country of southern Brazil and the vast plains of the Pampas formation. In their upper course these rivers form extensive marshes, which in the wet season are transformed into lakes on which tangled masses of reeds and brushwood, knitted together by a lush growth of vines, swim in the lazy currents as floating islands. These were the homes of some wild tribes who there found a secure refuge, the principal of whom were the Caracaras, who came from the lower Parana, and were one of the southernmost offshoots of the Tupi family.
For five hundred miles west of the Parana and extending nearly as far from north to south, is a wide, rolling country, well watered, and usually covered with dense forests, called El Gran Chaco.
Abounding in fish and game and with a mild climate, the Chaco has always been densely peopled, and even to-day its native population is estimated at over twenty thousand. But the ethnology of these numerous tribes is most obscure. The Jesuit missionaries asserted that they found eight totally different languages on the Rio Vermejo alone,
As is generally the case with such statements, distant dialects of the same stock were doubtless mistaken for radically distinct tongues. From all the material which is accessible, I do not think that the Chaco tribes number more than five stocks, even including those who spoke idioms related to the Guarani or Tupi. The remainder are the Guaycuru, the Mataco, the Lule and the Payagua. This conclusion is identical with that reached by the Argentine writer, Don Luis J. Fontana, except that he considers the Chunipi independent, while I consider that it is a member of the Mataco stock.
One of the best known members of the Guaycuru stock was the tribe of the Abipones, whose manners and customs were rendered familiar in the last century through the genial work of the Styrian missionary, Martin Dobrizhoffer.
The Guaycurus proper were divided into three gentes (parcialidades) located with reference to the
The Abipones were almost entirely destroyed early in this century by the Tobas and Mbocobis,
The Guachis speak a rather remote dialect of the stock, but undoubtedly connected with the main stem. According to the analogy of many of their
The Malbalas, who were a sub-tribe of the Mbocobis, dwelling on the Rio Vermejo, are described as light in color, with symmetrical figures and of kindly and faithful disposition. Like most of the Chaco tribes, they were monogamous, and true to their wives.
The Terenos and the CadioÉos still survive on the upper Paraguay, and are in a comparatively civilized condition. The latter manufacture a pottery of unusually excellent quality.
On the authority of Father Lozano I include in this stock the Chichas-Orejones, the Churumatas, that branch of the Mataguayos called Mataguayos Churumatas (from the frequent repetition of the syllable chu in their dialect), the Mbocobis and Yapitalaguas, whose tongues were all closely related to the Toba;
The Lules are a nation which has been a puzzle for students of the ethnography of the Chaco. They were partly converted by the celebrated Jesuit missionary and eminent linguist, Father Alonso de Barcena, in 1690, who wrote a grammar of their language, which he called the Tonicote. The Jesuit historian of Paraguay, Del Techo, states that three languages were spoken among them, the Tonicote, the Kechua and the Cacana, which last is a Kechua term from caca, mountain, and in this connection means the dialect of the mountaineers. Barcena’s converts soon became discontented and fled to the forests, where they disappeared for thirty years or more. About 1730, a number of them reappeared near the Jesuit mission of the Chaco, and settled several towns on the rivers Valbuena and Salado. There their language was studied by the missionaries. A grammar of it was composed by Machoni,
The missionary Lozano to some extent clears up this difficulty. He states that the Lules or Tonicotes were divided into the greater and lesser Lules, and it is only the latter to which the name properly belonged. The former were divided into three bands, the Isistines, the Oristines, and the Toquistines.
The modern Vilelas live on the Rio Salado, between 25° and 26° south latitude. I find in it so many words of such character that I am inclined to take it as the modern representative of the Lule of Machoni, though corrupted by much borrowing. When we have a grammar of it, the obscurity will be cleared up.
| LULE. | VILELA. | |
|---|---|---|
| Tongue, | lequy, | lequip. |
| Tooth, | llu, | lupe. |
| Hand, | ys, | ysip. |
| House, | enÚ, | quanÉ. |
A comparison of the Vilela with the Chunipi, (Chumipy, Sinipi or Ciulipi,) proves that they are rather closely related, and that the Chunipi is not an independent tongue as has often been stated. In view of this, I include it in the Lule dialects.
The third important stock is that of the Matacos. It is still in extensive use on the Rio Vermejo, and we have a recent and genial description of these people and their language from the pen of the Italian traveler, Giovanni Pelleschi.
The term Mataguayos was applied to some of this stock as well as to some of the Guaycurus. The former included the Agoyas, the Inimacas or Imacos, and the Palomos, to whom the Jesuit Joseph Araoz went as missionary, and composed a grammar and dictionary of their dialect. He describes them as exceedingly barbarous and intractable.
According to the older writers the Payaguas lived on the river Paraguay, and spoke their tongue in two dialects, the Payagua and the Sarigue. Von Martius, however, denies there ever was such a distinct people. The word payagua, he remarks, was a generic term for “enemies,” and was applied indiscriminately to roving hordes of Guaycurus, Mbayas, etc.
The Payaguas, however, are mentioned distinctly by the early missionaries as a nation with peculiar language and habits. They differed from their neighbors as being aquatic, not equestrian. They were singularly skilful boatmen and had a mythology apart from the other tribes, “worshipping the devil under the figure of a great bird.”
The statement of Von Martius that the nation has entirely disappeared is incorrect, as quite recently a vocabulary of it has been obtained by Don Luis de Fontana, which shows it to be distinct both from the Guaycuru and any other known stock.
LINGUISTIC STOCKS OF THE GRAN CHACO.
Guaycuru Stock:
Lule Stock:
- Chunipis, on Rio Vermejo.
- Juris, on Rio Salado.
- Lules, near Rio Vermejo.
- Mataras, on Rio Pilcomayo.
- Oristines, on Rio Pilcomayo.
- Sinipis, see Chunipis.
- Tonocotes, on Rio Pilcomayo.
- Toquistines, on Rio Pilcomayo.
- Vilelas, north of the Rio Vermejo.
- Ysistines, on the Pilcomayo.
Mataco Stock:
- Agoyas, on Rio Vermejo.
- Atalalas, on Rio Vermejo.
- Enimagas or Imacos, on east bank of Pilcomayo.
- Matacos, on Rio Verde.
- Mataguayos, north of Rio Vermejo.
- Ocoles, south of Rio Vermejo.
- Palomos, on Rio Vermejo.
- Taunies, on Rio Vermejo.
- Teutas, on Rio Vermejo.
- Vejosos, on Rio Vermejo.
- Xolotes, on Rio Vermejo.
- Yoes, on Rio Vermejo.
Payagua Stock:
- Agaces, on Rio Paraguay.
- Payaguas, near Santa FÉ.
- Sarigues, on middle Paraguay.
Among the independent Chaco stocks, D’Orbigny classes the Lenguas, who in 1828 lived, about 300 in number, near Corrientes.
The Charruas were a barbarous nation living in the extensive plains which stretch from the banks of the Parana to the sea coast. They were savage and courageous, without fixed homes, and skilled in the use of the bola. One of their customs was to cut off a joint of a finger on the death of a relative, and there were few of the adults that were not thus maimed.
The members of this family as recorded by the early writers, especially Hervas, are as follows:
CHARRUA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
- Bohanes, on the Paraguay near the Rio Negro (extinct).
- Chanes, adjacent to the Bohanes.
- Charruas, on the coast east of the Rio Uruguay.
- Guenoas, east of the Uruguay.
- Martidanes, east of the Uruguay.
- Minuanes, between the Uruguay and Parana.
- Yaros, on east bank of Uruguay (extinct).
Dr. Paul Ehrenreich describes them as they are to-day, splendid riders and daring soldiers, but faithless
The Guatos or Vuatos were accolents of the upper Paraguay and Araguay, and had fixed settlements near Albuquerque. Travelers report them as an unusually handsome people. They are well-built, light in hue, with Roman noses and regular features, and the men with a well-developed beard on lip and chin. This appearance does not belie their intelligence, which is above the average. Polygamy prevails to an uncommon extent. Von Martius thought that they were of a northeastern origin, connected perhaps with the Malalis of Bahia, who are a Tapuya people.
| GUATO. | TAPUYA. | |
|---|---|---|
| Water, | maguen, | magnan. |
| Head, | doken, | dicran. |
| Hand, | ida, | danicra. |
| Foot, | apoo, | po, ipaa. |
| Tooth, | maqua, | aiqua. |
| Tongue, | chagi, | dageuto. |
A recent writer does not give so favorable an opinion of this people. He found them living about the junction of the Rio San Lorenzo with the Rio Paraguay, and in a depraved condition. Girls who were
On the western border of the Chaco, in the provinces of Tucuman and Catamarca, resided the Calchaquis, a tribe interesting as the only one in the South Atlantic Group who constructed walls of cut stone. At least, such are found in their country, as for instance, one about thirty miles from Andalgala, where there is a well-constructed dry wall about ten feet high, enclosing a space nearly a mile in diameter, evidently once a walled city. Stone built tombs are also frequent, from which the rifler is rewarded with mummies, ornaments of impure gold, and small idols of copper. But I doubt if the Calchaquis developed any such ripe arts as these. History tells us that they voluntarily accepted the rule of the Incas about the middle of the fifteenth century, and that their land became part of the Collasuyu or southern district of the empire. All these remains have a distinct impress of Kechua art, and we may be sure that their inspiration was throughout Peruvian.
The earliest missionaries depict the Calchaquis with curious usages and with a certain barbaric splendor. A widow became the wife of her husband’s brother, as of old in Israel. So long as she was a virgin, a girl could dress in the gaudiest colors, but once prostrato pudore, as the monk delicately puts it,
We have no specimen of the language of the Calchaquis, although a grammar of it was written by the Jesuit, Alonso de Barcena, and perhaps published. It is called the KatamareÑo or Cacana tongue, terms derived from the Kechua. The proper names, however, which have been preserved in it indicate that it was different from the Kechua.
From the few specimens of skulls which have been examined, the Calchaquis appear allied to the Aucanian stock,
The following tribes are mentioned by old writers as members of the
CATAMAREÑA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
- Acalianes.
- Cacas or Cacanas.
- Calchaquis.
- Catamarcas.
- Diagitas or Drachitas.
- Quilmes.
- Tamanos.
The learned Barcena also prepared a grammar of the Natixana or Mogana language, spoken by the Naticas, whom we find mentioned by later authorities as neighbors of the Calchaquis in the government of Santa FÉ.
2. The Pampeans and Araucanians.
South of the Gran Chaco, say from south latitude 35°, begins the true Pampas formation. This, according to the geologist Burmeister, is not a marine deposit, but the result of fluvial overflows and dust storms. It is diluvial and quaternary, and overlies the Patagonian formation, which is marine and early Pleistocene. The pampas are in parts wide grassy plains, like the prairies of the upper Mississippi valley; in parts they are salt deserts, in parts more or less wooded. With little variety, this scenery reaches from the Chaco to the Rio Negro, S. lat. 40°. Nearly the whole of this territory was occupied by one linguistic stock. It is the same which is found in Chili, where its most prominent members are the Araucanians.
Which was the course of migration, whether from the Pacific coast to the Pampean plains or the reverse, is not positively decided, but I am inclined to believe it was the latter. The ancestors of the Araucanians would not willingly have crossed the barren wastes
The Pampeans are principally nomadic hordes wandering from pasture to pasture with their horses, cattle and sheep. Their transitory encampments, called tolderias, are pitched by the side of some pond or stream. There their low tents made of dried horse skins are grouped confusedly, one to each family. Their food is chiefly horse flesh and mutton, often eaten raw. They raise no vegetables, and dislike agriculture. They carry on, however, many small industries, tan and dye leather, which they work up into boots and horse furniture, and forge with skill iron heads for their long lances, and knives for the
These roving hordes have no particular names. They are referred to as the northern, eastern or western peoples by the Aucanian terms having these significations, Puelches, Moluches, Huiliches. Besides these, there are the Ranqueles on the Rio Quinto, directly west of Buenos Ayres, who are said to have immigrated from Chili,
Those living on the eastern slopes of the Andes, about the city of Mendoza, and in the ancient province of Cuyo, are described as taller and stronger than the Araucanians of Chili, and as claiming descent from the Pampean tribes.
Few of the Pampean tribes have been induced to accept civilization or Christianity. They still believe in their good spirit, Chachoa, and in one of evil or misfortune, Gualicho; they continue to obey their priests or medicine men; and the resting places of the dead are regarded with superstitious awe. Marriage among them, while it has the appearance of violence, is really carried out with the consent of the girl and her parents, for a sum agreed upon.
The Molu-Che or Manzaneros are said to be the best of the Pampeans. They are sedentary and have extensive orchards of apples and flocks of sheep to the north of the Rio Limay. They have well-cut features, fresh light complexion, black fine hair, and their women are considered really handsome.
The Araucanians of Chili, known as singularly bold warriors who defied successfully the Incas, and gave the Spaniards the greatest trouble, occupy the Pacific coast from south latitude 25° to about 43°, and number about 20,000. In physical appearance they resemble the Pampeans, and present marked differences from both the Kechuas of Peru and the Tapuyas of Brazil, having high, brachycephalic skulls,
The Araucanians did not at any time rise in culture above the level of the Iroquois and Algonquins in the northern continent. It is true that in the tombs in their country we discover fine specimens of pottery, some good work in bronze, gold, copper and silver, and beautiful specimens of polished stone implements.
AUCANIAN LINGUISTIC STOCK.
- Araucanos, in northern and central Chili.
- Aucanos or Aucas, in the central Pampas.
- Chauques, in the Archipelago of Chiloe.
- Chonos,(?) on Pacific, south of Chiloe.
- Cuncos, in Chili, south of Rio Valdivia.
- Divie-ches, on Rio Colorado.
- Guarpes, near Mendoza.
- Huiliches(southern people), tribes to the south.
Moluches (western people or warriors), on Pacific coast. - Pehuenches (pine-forest people), east of Cordillera, north of Rio Colorado.
- Picunches (northern people), north of Pehuenches.
- Puelches (eastern people), on both banks of Rio Negro.
- Querandies, near site of Buenos Ayres.
- Ranqueles, between Rio Quarto and Rio Quinto.
The Pacific coast of Patagonia, gashed by ancient glaciers into deep fiords and rocky islands, harbors various tribes whose affinities are uncertain. The most curious of them would seem to be the Chonos or Chunos, or Cuncones. They lived south of the archipelago of Chiloe, and are described as having red hair, a light olive complexion, and of mild and friendly manners. They raised a breed of dogs (perhaps guanacos), and wove their clothing from its coarse long hair.
This account comes to us from as far back as 1619, when the first missionaries visited them,
The language of the Chonos is said to be quite different from that of the Araucanians. PÖppig believed it to be a distant dialect of the same stock. Some recent travelers assert that they are now extinct, but Dr. C. Martin informs us that the original inhabitants of the Chonos Islands, who were the “Huaihuenes” Indians, were transported in 1765 to the island of ChaulaÑec, where their posterity still survive.
3. The Patagonians and Fuegians.
The Patagonians call themselves Chonek or Tzoneca, or Inaken (men, people), and by their Pampean neighbors are referred to as Tehuel-Che, southerners. They do not, however, belong to the Aucanian stock, nor do they resemble the Pampeans physically. They are celebrated for their stature, many of them reaching from six to six feet four inches in height, and built in proportion.
Their language differs wholly from the Araucanian, though it has borrowed many words from it. An interesting fact illustrating its stability in spite of their roving life has been brought out by Ramon Lista. He has compared its present form with the vocabulary of it given by Pigafetta in his voyage in 1520, and shows that in the intervening generations it has undergone scarcely any change.
Von Martius believed that a connection between the Patagonian and the Tapuya stocks could be shown, and gives a tabular comparison of the two.
About the beginning of the last century the tribes known as Poyas (Pey-yuy) and Reyes (Rey-yuy) were collected at a Mission established on Lake Nahuelhuapi, about south latitude 42°. Hervas reports them as speaking a language radically different from the Araucanian, and probably they should be classed with the Tzonecas.
On the inhospitable shores of Tierra del Fuego there dwell three nations of diverse stock, but on about the same plane of culture. One of these is the Yahgans or Yapoos, on the Beagle canal; the second is the Onas or Aonik, to the north and east of these; and the third the Alikulufs, to the north and west.
Of these the Yahgans are the best known, through the efforts of the English missionaries who have reduced their language to writing. It is a polysyllabic, agglutinative tongue, with both pre- and suffixes, and is extremely rich in expressions for the ordinary needs of their life. The verb has four numbers, a singular, dual, trial and plural. It does not seem in any way related to the Aucanian stock.
The tongue of the Onas, who are known as the Yakanna-Cunni, is apparently connected with the Tsoneca or Patagonian, which people they also resemble in stature and physical traits.
The Fuegians are generally quoted as a people on the lowest round of the ladder of culture; and so they are painted by many observers. They have no government, they can count only to three, ordinary family affection is not observable, and even mothers manifest a lack of love for their offspring. Their shelters are wretched, and they go almost naked in a climate which is both cold and damp.
On the other hand, they display singular ingenuity in their utensils for hunting and fishing; they use the sling, the club, the bow, the bola and the lance; the women weave reed baskets so firmly that they will hold water, and their bark canoes are light and seaworthy.
In hunting they have the service of a native dog which they have trained, and whose welfare they look after with sedulous attention. Though devoid of idols and external rites of worship, they manifest in many ways a sense of religion. Thus the relations of the sexes are surrounded with ceremonies of fasting and bathing, to neglect which would entail misfortunes, and the name of the dead is not pronounced out of superstitious awe. The songs and legends of the Yahgans show some imaginative power. Many of them relate to the marvelous achievements of the national hero, Umoara, who appears to be a wholly mythical individual. Their strongest passion would seem to be for personal adornment, and for this purpose shells, vegetable beads, bright pebbles and variegated feathers, are called into requisition.
These traits are not those of an enfeebled intellect, and an examination of their physical powers supports a favorable opinion of their capacities. Some of them are unusually tall and strong, especially those on the east coast. Their skulls are mesocephalic and prognathic, and their brains, which have been examined most carefully by a German anatomist, show not a single point of inferiority to the average European brain.
From examinations which have been carried on in the numerous shell-heaps which line the shores, there is no evidence that any other people ever occupied the islands. Skulls and relics are such as those of the present inhabitants.
The classification of the smaller tribes under the above stocks is not yet complete. So far as I can make it out, it is as follows:
ALIKULUF LINGUISTIC STOCK.
- Alikulufs, on the western end of the Beagle Channel.
- Karaikas, south of the Alikulufs.
ONA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
- Aoniks or Onas, on Magellan Strait, both shores.
- Huemuls, near Skyring and Otway Bays.
- Irees, see Pescherees.
- Oensmen, see Aoniks.
- Pescherees, on central portions of the Strait.
- Yacanas, see Aoniks.
YAHGAN LINGUISTIC STOCK.
- Kennekas, see Takanikas.
- Takanikas, on both shores of the Beagle Channel.
- Yahgans, see Yapoos.
- Yapoos, on the central Beagle Channel.
The opinion has been advanced by Dr. Deniker of Paris,
