Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/745

Rh INDIAN BACKS.] AMERICA 703 the rank of thoroughly civilised nations. The Jesuits were able to introduce settled habits and a slight know ledge of religion and the arts among the Indians only by means of the personal ascendancy they acquired over them. It was a few superior minds gaining the respect and confidence of a horde of savages, then employing the influence they acquired to lead them as children ; giving them such portions of instruction as taught them to trust implicitly in their guides, working alternately on their fears, their pride, their kind affections, but never fully revealing to them the springs of the machinery by which they were governed. The incurable indolence of the savages rendered it necessary to prescribe the labour as task-work, and to carry it on under the constant in spection of the missionaries. The plan of cultivating the ground in common, and of storing the produce in maga zines, out of which the wants of each family were supplied, was resorted to as a check upon their improvident habits. In short, the eye and the hand of the missionaries were everywhere ; and the social system was held together en tirely by their knowledge and address. When these were withdrawn, the fabric soon fell into ruins, and the Indians relapsed into their idolatry and savage habits. )ther races To complete our general view of the aboriginal races, a f Indians. f cw particulars remain to be mentioned. Many of the tribes who inhabit the Pampas of South America make use of horses. Dobrizhoffer enumerates eight equestrian tribes in the province of Chaco, on the west side of the river Paraguay, who are generally distinguished by tall and vigorous forms, and a bold and active character. The Abipones and Mbayas are the most celebrated of these. The woods of Brazil are too dense for eques trians; but horses are used by a few hordes in the great plain of the Mississippi and in the north of Mexico. The American tribes in general either kill their prisoners or adopt them ; but a few retain them as slaves, and compel them to work. The Guaycurus of Brazil are an example. The food of different tribes is extremely va rious. Maize, beans, pumpkins, and mandioc are raised in small quantities by some; natural fruits, berries, bulbous roots, and bananas are gathered by others. Those who dwell on the sides of rivers live greatly on fish ; in the plains, buffaloes, horses, and sheep are killed. In the forests of Brazil, monkeys, pigs, armadillos, pacas, agoutis, and tapirs are the favourite food ; but birds, turtles, deer, and the coati are also taken ; and in an emergency the Indians do not scruple to feed on serpents, toads, and lizards, the larvae of insects, and other disgusting sub stances. Salt is used where it can be easily obtained, and some season their food with capsicum. Some roast their meat, others boil it ; and not only several savage tribes, but even the civilised Peruvians, ate their flesh raw. The Ottomaques, a tribe near the Orinoco, eat a species of unctuous clay ; this strange diet, which no doubt owed its introduction to the stern monitor famine, is not extremely rare in Brazil, and Captain Franklin found the same food in use among an Indian tribe near the Frozen Ocean. The clay is stated by that traveller to have a milky and not disagreeable taste. A great proportion of the tribes in Brazil and the basin of the Orinoco, and some in other parts of America, indulge in the horrid banquet of human flesh. Shame, in our sense of the term, is nearly a stranger to the breasts of these sa vages. In the warm regions of Brazil men and women go entirely naked, except in the neighbourhood of the Portuguese settlements, where some wear a band of cloth round the loins. In such situations, where the want of shelter is little felt, their dwellings are often nothing more than a sort of arbour formed by interlacing the open space between two or three trees with twigs, and cover ing it with leaves so as to form a screen on the windward side, while it is left entirely open on the other. The manufacture of bows and arrows, war-clubs, baskets, mats (which, swung from a tree, serve them both as seats and hammocks), and in some cases a coarse pottery, comprises the sum of their practical skill in the arts. It has long been the practice of bands of Portuguese, con sisting chiefly of outlaws and vagabonds, to make maraud ing expeditions among the Indians living near the great rivers, and to carry them off and sell them clandestinely for slaves. This infamous trade is carried on in despite of the orders of the government, which has issued many decrees for the protection of the Indians, and, besides employing missionaries to convert them, enjoined the governors of provinces to furnish them with hoes and other agricultural implements. Wherever the negroes are introduced in great numbers, as in the Capitanias of Santo Paulo and Rio Janeiro, and in the whole of the West India islands, the aborigines rapidly disappear, the former being more intelligent, more tractable in their habits, and more active and industrious. The negroes are indeed a superior race to the Indians ; and the existence of one or two hundred blacks, as slaves, among some thousands of the Cherokees, does not detract from the accuracy of this opinion. Missions for the conversion of the Indians have been supported for more than two centuries by the governments of Spain and Portugal. They are thinly spread over those parts of Mexico, La Plata, Peru, Brazil, and Co lombia, which are still occupied by the savages; but there are extensive districts in all these provinces in which they have never been established, owing to the fierce character of the tribes, or the remote and inaccessible nature of the country. A mission consists in general of one or two friars or priests, who settle among the savages, learn their language, and, besides teaching them the elements of Christianity, always endeavour to instruct them in the more simple and useful arts, and to train them to settled habits. We believe that many of these establishments have been abandoned, owing to the failure of the funds with which they were supported; and that the success of the others has been extremely trifling. The late revolutions in those countries, by liberating the Indians from their ancient state of tutelage under the whites, have in many cases broken up the little settlements which the mission aries had formed. This has been the result even in Brazil, where the political changes have been least felt. Owing to the fanaticism of the Spaniards a large propor tion of the manuscripts of the natives were destroyed, so that now we are unable to acquire so full and accurate a history of the more civilised nations as we might otherwise have done. The literature which still exists, together with the numerous remains of cities, temples, roads, bridges, and other works of art, testify to the general truth of the his torical narratives. However obscure they may now be, or Traditi however difficult the reconciliation of statements, it seems history clear they have been founded on facts. As in the case of Central other histories, there is much error and tradition, mingled with truth, which renders their correct interpretation diffi cult. Amongst some of the nations we know that historians were appointed by the government, and that such historians were severely punished if they ventured to tamper with the truth wilfully. The best connected account of these his tories, so far as concerns the nations of Central America, ia that given by the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg. 1 If we credit the native accounts, the earliest traces of civilisation originated in Yucatan and the neighbouring districts, a region which is amongst the most fertile in the New World. 1 Ilistoire ties Nations civilisf.es du Mexique et de VAmerique centrale, durant les siecles anterieurs d Chrisiophe C olumb. 4 tomes. Svo, 1857-59.