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Alexander Von Humboldt, (Trans. From German by Thomasina Ross), Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America during the years 1799-1804, Vol.1, Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden, 1852.
Keywords: Travel, Venezuela, convents, Feijóo, women, customd and clothing, physical characteristics, deformities, marriage, Túpac Amaru.
Publisher: Henry G. Bohn
Archive: John Rylands Library
Location Details: Three volumes, translated from German by Thomasina Ross.
Text: p.252 "I was lodged in the cell of the superior, which contained a pretty good collection of books. I found there, to my surprise, the Teatro Crítico of Feijoo, the Lettres Edifantes, and the Traité d’Electricité by abbé Nollet. It seemed as if the progress of knowledge advanced even in the forests of America."
p.305 Indian Dresses
When we met the natives [of Chaymas] out of the boundaries of the Mission, we saw them, especially in rainy weather, stripped of their clothes, and holding their shirts rolled up under their arms. They preferred letting the rain fall on their bodies. The elder (p.306) women hid themselves behind trees, and burst into loud fits of laughter when they saw us pass The missionaries complain that in general the young girls am not more alive to feelings of' decency than the men Ferdinand Columbus* relates that, in 1498, his father found the women in the island of Trinidad without any clothing; while the men wore the guayuco, which is rather a narrow bandage than an apron.
(* Life of the Adelantado: Churchill's Collection, 1723. This Life, written after the year 1637, from original notes in the handwriting of Christopher Columbus himself, is the most valuable record of the history of his discoveries. It exists only in the Italian and Spanish translations of Alphonso de Ulloa and Gonzales Barcia; for the original, carried to Venice in 1571 by the learned Fornari, has not been published, and is supposed to be lost. 'Napione della Patria di Colombo,' - 1804. ‘Cancellieri sopra Christ. Colombo,' 1809.)
At the same period, on the coast of Paria, young girls were distinguished from married women, either, as Cardinal Bembo states, by being quite unclothed, or, according to Gomara, by the colour of the guayuco. This bandage, which is still in use among the Chaymas, and all the naked nations of the Orinoco, it; only two or three inches broad, and is tied on both sides to a string which encircles the waist. Girls are often married at the age of twelve; and until they are nine years old, the missionaries allow them, to go to church unclothed, that is to say, without a tunic. Among the Chaymas, .as well as in all the Spanish Missions and the Indian villages, a pair of drawers a pair of shoes, or a hat, are objects of luxury unknown to the natives. An Indian ,servant, who had been with us during our journey to Caripe and. the Orinoco, and whom I brought to France, was, so much struck, on landing, when he saw the ground tilled by a peasant with his hat on, that he thought himself in a miserable country, whore even the nobles (los mismos caballeros) followed the plough. The Chayma women are not handsome, according to the ideas we annex to beauty; yet the young girls have a look of softness and melancholy, contrasting agreeably with the expression of the mouth, which is somewhat harsh and wild. They wear their hair plaited in two long tresses; they do nit paint their skin; and wear no other ornaments than necklaces and bracelets made of shells, birds' bones, and seeds. Both men and women are very muscular, but at the same time fleshy and plump. I saw no person who had any natural (p.307) deformity; and I may say the same of thousands of Caribs, Muyscas, and Mexican and Peruvian Indians, whom, we observed during the course of five years. Bodily deformities, and deviations from nature, are exceedingly rare among certain races of men, especially those who have the epidermis highly coloured; but I cannot believe that they depend solely on the progress of civilization, a luxurious life, or the corruption of morals. In Europe a deformed or very ugly girl marries, if she happen to have a fortune, and the children often inherit the deformity of the mother. In the savage state, which is a state of equality, no consideration can induce a man to unite himself to a deformed woman, or one who is very unhealthy. Such a woman, if she resist the accidents of a restless and troubled life, dies without children. 'We might be tempted to think, that savages all appear well-made and vigorons, because feeble children die young for want of care, and only the strongest survive; but these causes cannot operate among the Indians of the Missions, whose manners are like those of our peasants, or among the Mexicans of Cholula and Tlascala, who enjoy wealth, transmitted to them by ancestors more civilized than themselves. If, in ever state of cultivation, the copper coloured race manifests the same inflexibility, the same resistance to deviation from a primitive type, are we not forced to admit that this peculiarity belongs in great measure to hereditary organization, to that which constitutes the race P With copper coloured men, as with whites, luxury and effeminacy weaken the physical constitution, and heretofore deformities were more common at Cuzco and Tenochtitlan. Among the Mexicans of the present. day, who are all labourers, leading the most simple lives, Montezuma would not have found those dwarfs and humpbacks whom, Bernal Diaz saw waiting at his table when he dined.* (* Bernal Diaz, Hist. Verd. de la Nueva España, 1630.)
The custom of marrying very .young, according to the testimony of the monks, is no way detrimental to population. This precocious, nubility depends on the race, and not on the influence of a climate excessively warm. It is found on the north west coast of America, among the Esquimaux, and in Asia, among the Kamtschatdales, and the Koriaks, where girls of ten years old are often mothers. It may appear astonishing, that the time of gestation (p.308) the duration of pregnancy, never alters in a state of health , in any race, or in any climate.
[...]
The Chaymas lead a life of singular uniformity. They go to rest very regularly at seven in the evening, and rise long before daylight, at half past four in the morning. Every (p.309) Indian has a fire near his hammock. The women are so chilly, that I have seen them shiver at church when the centigrade thermometer was not below 18', The huts of the Indians are extremely clean. Their hammocks, their reed mats, their pots for holding cassava and fermented maize, their bows and arrows, everything is arranged in the greatest order. Men and women bathe every day; and being almost constantly unclothed, they are exempted from that uncleanliness, of which the garments are the principal cause among the lower class of people in cold countries. Besides a house in the village, they have generally, in their conucos, near some spring, or at the entrance of some solitary valley, a small hut covered with the leaves of the palm or plantain tree. Though they live less commodiously in the conuco, they love to retire thither as often an they can. The irresistible desire the Indians have to flee from society, and enter again on a nomade life, causes even young children sometimes to leave their parents, and wander four or five days in the forests, living on fruits, palm cabbage, and roots. When travelling in the Missions, it is not uncommon to find whole villages almost deserted, because the inhabitants are in their gardens, or in the forests (al monte). Among civilized nations, the passion for hunting arises perhaps in part from the same causes: the charm of solitude, the innate desire of independence, the deep impression made by Nature, whenever man finds himself in contact with her in solitude.
The condition of the women among the Chaymas, like that in all semi barbarous nations, is a state of privation and suffering. The hardest labour devolves on them. When we saw the Chaymas return in the evening from their gardens, the man carried nothing but the knife or hatchet (machete), with which he clears his way among the underwood; whilst the woman, bending under a great load of plantains, carried one child in her arms, and sometimes two other children placed upon the load. Notwithstanding this inequality of condition, the wives of the Indians of South America appear to be in general happier than those of the savages of the North. Between the Alleghany mountains and the Mississippi, wherever the natives do not live chiefly on the produce of the chase, the women cultivate maize, beans, and gourds; and the men take no share in the labours of the field. In (p. 310) the torrid zone, hunting tribes are not numerous, and in the Missions, the men work in the fields as well as the women.
Nothing can exceed the difficulty experienced by the Indians in learning Spanish, to which language they have an absolute averision. Whilst living separate from the whites, they have no ambition to be called educated Indians, or, to borrow the phrase employed in the Missions, 'latinized Indians' (Indios muy latines). Not only among the Chaymas, but in all the very remote Missions which I afterwards visited, I observed that the Indians experience vast difficulty in arranging and expressing the most simple ideas in Spanish, even when they perfectly understand the meaning of the words and the turn of the phrases. When a European questions them concerning objects which have surrounded them from their cradles, they seem to manifest.an imbecility exceeding that of infancy. The missionaries assert that this embarrassment is neither the effect of timidity nor of natural stupidity, but that it arises from the impediments they meet with in the structure of a language so different from their native tongue. In proportion as man is remote from cultivation, the greater is his mental inaptitude. It is not, therefore, surprising that the isolated Indians in the Missions should experience in the acquisition of the Spanish language, less facility than Indians who live among mestizoes, mulattoes, and whites, in the neighbourhood of towns. Nevertheless, I have often wondered at the volubility with which, at Caripe, the native alcalde, the governador, and the sergento mayor, will harangue for whole hours the Indians assembled before the church; regulating the labours of the week, reprimanding the idle, or threatening the disobedient. Those chiefs who are also of the Chayma race, and who transmit the orders of the missionary, speak all together in a loud voice, with marked emphasis, but almost without action. Their features remain motionless; but their look is imperious and severe.
p.400 TUPAC AMARU.
When Tupac Amaru, who believed himself to be the legitimate heir to the empire of the Incas made the con several provinces of Upper Peru, in 1781, at the head of forty thousand Indian mountaineers, all the whites were filled with alarm. The Hispano Americans felt, like the Spaniards born in Europe, that the contest was between the copper coloured race and the whites; between barbarism and civilization. Tupac Amaru, who himself was not destitute of intellectual cultivation, began with flattering the creoles and the European clergy; but soon, impelled by events, and by the spirit of vengeance that inspired his nephew, Andres Condorcanqui, he changed his plan. A rising for independence became a cruel war between the different castes; the whites were victorious, and excited by a feeling of common interest, from that period they kept watchful attention on the proportions existing in the different provinces between their numbers and those of the Indians. It was reserved for our times to see the whites direct this attention towards themselves; and examine from motives of distrust, the elements of which their own caste in composed. Every enterprise in favour of independence and liberty puts the national or American party in opposition to the men of the mother country. When I arrived at Caracas, the latter had just escaped from the danger with which they thought they were menaced by the insurrection projected by España. The consequences of that bold attempt were the more deplorable, because, instead of investigating the real causes of the popular discontent, it was thought that the mother country would be saved by employing vigorous measures. At present, the commotions which have arisen throughout the country, from the banks of the Rio de la Plata to New Mexico, an extent of fourteen hundred leagues, have divided men of a common origin.
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