INDIAN TRIBES OF SOUTH AMERICA.

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Tupi pass for the leading language of Brazil; so long, at least, as Brazil was known imperfectly, or along the sea-coast only.

It was soon, however, noticed that, as a general rule, the Tupi of Brazil was spoken to only an inconsiderable distance inland, i. e., until one got to the province of San Paolo, going southwards. In Goyaz, in the hill-ranges of Pernambuco, Bahia, Porto Seguro, &c., came forms of speech which those who spoke the Tupi separated from their own,-forms of speech of the barbarians (so to say) of the interior, as opposed to the more civilized mariners of the coast. The Botocudo, the Canarin, the Coroado, the Coropo, the Machacari, the Camacan, the Penhami, the Kiriri, the Sabuja, the Gran, the Timbyra, and a vast list of other Brazilian Indians besides, were different from and other than the Tupi. But this distinction between the coastmen and the inlanders ceases as we go southwards.

In Entre Rios, Corrientes, and Paraguay, the Tupi tongue was spoken inland; but not under the name of Tupi. In Entre Rios, Paraguay, &c., the designation was Guarani. This gave us a Tupi-Guarani class of languages, in which it was not very incorrect to say that the Tupi were the Guarani of Brazil, and the Guarani the Tupi of Paraguay. The chief difference was a verbal and nominal one.

But this was not all. On the watershed between the rivers La Plata and Amazons, on the frontier of the Aymara country, and in the Peruvian province of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, three other tribes spoke a language more or less Guarani, viz., the Chiriguanos, the Sirionos, and the Guarayos.

Again, on the rivers Napo and Putumayo, and other feeders of the upper Amazons, the Omaguas, Cocamas, and Cocamillas were Guarani. And

Lastly, all along the main stream of the Amazons we find populations akin to the Tupi, Guarani, or Omagua, whichever name we chose to apply.

Now this Omagua, Guarani, Tupi, or Tupi-Guarani distribution is eminently fluviatile, i. e. it follows the lines of the great rivers. Hence the best provisional view that we can take, as to the diffusion of so important a stock, may be to consider the Siriono and Guarayo districts as the original localities. These are common to two river-systems; so that, starting from these, the Omagua and Cocama branch may have reached the Amazons, whilst the Guarani reached the Parana and Uruguay rivers. Still the view is only provisional.

Next to the Peruvian Quichuas and Aymaras, the Guaranis give us some of the most civilized tribes of South America. On the other hand the Mundrucu, of the middle Amazons, can be shown by their language to be Guarani; the Mundrucu serving as the very type and standard of savage wildness. When a Mundrucu has slain an enemy, he cuts off his head, extracts the brain through the occipital foramen, washes the blood away, fills the skull with cotton, and then converts the whole into a kind of mummy, by drying it before the fire. The eyes he gouges out, and he fills up the orbits with colouring matter. Thus prepared, the head is placed outside his hut. On festive occasions it is placed at the top of a spear. Such is the history of the head of an enemy. Those, however, of friends and relations are preserved, and kept-though with certain differences of detail. Thus, on certain days dedicated to the obsequies and memory of the dead, the widow of the deceased takes his skull, seats herself before the cabin, and indulges either in melancholy lamentation, or in fierce encomium-the assembled friends meanwhile dancing round her.

The Chileno-Patagonians.-The name is more expressive than convenient. It indicates, however, by its very composition, the magnitude of the group to which it

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THE CHILENOS, THE PAMPAS, AND THE PATAGONIANS. applies. When we get into Chili, we arrive beyond the limits of the Quichuas and Aymaras, and a new family makes its appearance, extending over Chili, over the whole of the country south of the River Platte,' over the islands of the Chiloe Archipelago and Tierra del Fuego. Its divisions comprise (a) the Chileno (or Araucanian) Indians; (b) the Pampa Indians; (c) the Patagonians; (d) the Fuegians.

The range of differences, in respect to physical form, is wide in this group; the range of differences, in respect to the geographical conditions under which they are found, being also wide; e. g., there are the Andes of Chili, the level plains of the Pampas, and the insular character of the parts about Cape Horn; not to mention the fact of South America extending further in the direction of the Antarctic Circle than any other part of the world.

The minor divisions, the analogies of the Dioscurian and Oregon groups in Asia and North America, are numerous. Thus

In contact with different parts of the great Carib arca on the drainage of the Orinoco and Rio Negro, we have the Maypuri, the Saliva, the Achagua, the Taruma, the Ottomaca divisions-all falling into subdivisions. On the Uapes only, a feeder of the Rio Negro from the west, Mr. Wallace, the best guide in these parts, enumerates the following tribes :-Queianás, Tarianas, Ananás, Cobéu, Piraiurú, Pisá, Carapaná, Tapüra, Uaracú, Cohidias, Tucundéra, Jacami, Miriti, Omáuas.*

"Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro," p. 481.

THE CARIB VARIETIES ON THE ORINOCO.

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There is nothing here (it may be said) but names. Be it so. The number of them shows the extent to which the populations of South America are broken up into small sections. Multiply the above given list by the number of rivers in that continent, and, large as would be the result in the way of divisions and subdivisions, it would not be an incredible one.

The famous burial cavern of the Ataruipe, near the cataract of the Atures, on the Orinoco, belongs to a Saliva tribe, now extinct, or amalgamated with some other. It was visited, and has been described, by Humboldt. The cavern itself was natural. The number of prepared bodies amounted to nearly six hundred, well preserved, regularly arranged, each in a sort of basket, made of the petioles of the palm-tree, and called by the natives mapires, in form like bags, and of the size of the body they contained. Some were no more than ten inches, others as much as three feet, long; some held infants, some adults. The bodies, more or less bent, were so carefully placed inside them that no rib, none of the smaller bones, seemed wanting. The first step in the process of preparation was to scrape off the flesh from the bones with sharp stones; the second to prepare the bones themselves. There were three ways of doing this. One was simply to dry and whiten them by exposure to the sun and air; another was to stain them with annotto, or the bixa orellana; a third to varnish them with odoriferous resins. Besides these bags or baskets, earthen vases, half-baked, were found in the cavern, containing bones, greenish-gray in colour, oval in form, and as much as three feet in height and five in length. The handles were made in the shape of crocodiles or serpents, the edges bordered with meanders, labyrinths, and real grecques, in straight lines, variously combined.

On another frontier of the great Carib area, in British Guiana, we find, as tribes hitherto unplaced, the Wapisianas, the Tarumas, and the Waraw; the latter having always commanded the attention of ethnologists. His occupancy is the Delta of the Orinoco-a swamp; as is a considerable portion of the sea-coast to the south of it. If it were not for the straightness of his hair, the Waraw (writes Sir Robert Schomburgk) might be taken for a Negro. Doubtless he is dark-skinned; but I do not imagine that he has the Negro lip. His skin is dark, and dirt gives intensity to its natural darkness; for the Waraw is uncleanly even for an Indian. His language is certainly unintelligible to all his neighbours; neither has it been placed in the great Carib class, wide and capacious as that class is. Nevertheless it is far from being wholly isolate. It has miscellaneous affinities, and plenty of them. But the most notable characteristic of the Waraw is his industrial activity as a boat-builder. This furnishes nearly the whole of Demerara with canoes. They are made either of the Cedrela odorata, or of a tree called Bisi, and are sometimes fifty feet long and six feet broad.

When a suitable tree has been found, the Waraw builds a hut in its neighbourhood, which he occupies as long as the boat is being built. The floor of the hut must be some feet above the level of the ground; and this is effected by selecting a spot where the ita-palm grows in thick clusters. This is docked to the requisite height-the root and a part of the trunk being left standing. The trunk of the maneca-tree is then cut into planks, and made into a floor. Clay is laid on the floor, and a fire kept burning on the clay. The Manicaria saccharifera supplies the thatch. Meanwhile the boatbuilding goes on. By thus elevating the floor of his dwelling, the Waraw escapes the floods of the rainy season, which raise the water of the numerous mouths of the Orinoco several feet above their banks: Sir R. Schomburgk says three or four, others from twenty-five to thirty. It is different in different localities. Raleigh came in contact

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VARIETIES OF PERU, CHACO, CHARRUAS, &c.

with the Waraws, whom he describes under the name of Tivitivas, adding that they fall into two divisions-the Ciawani and the Araweete; that "they are a goodly people, and very valiant;" that "in summer they have houses on the ground as in other places. In winter they dwell upon the trees, where they build very artificial towns and houses; for between May and September the river of Orinoco riseth thirty foot upright, and then these islands are overflowen twenty foot high above the level of the ground, saving some few raised grounds in the middle of them; and for this cause they are enforced to live in this manner."

The undoubted peculiarities of the Waraws have been exaggerated; and they have been described as men who live in trees-as arboreal varieties of the human specics— even as arboreal species of the genus homo.

In contact with the Guarani come numerous tribes along the Amazons-numerous tribes between the Guarani and Carib frontiers—numerous tribes of the interior (¿. e. the non-Guarani parts) of Brazil. Of the number of these, the following list gives a notion. It is one (and an imperfect one) of the Brazilian tribes which are not Guarani, Botocudos, Canarins, Goitacas, Machacari, Patachos, Camacans, Malalis, Cacriabas, Kiriris, Sabuyas, Cumanachos, Cachinesis, Araris, Chumetos, Pittas, Tactayas, Cames, Timbiras, Baccahirys, &c., &c. Most of these fall into divisions—many into divisions and sub-divisions.

Between the northern frontier of the Quichuas and the Isthmus of Darien come the tribes of New Grenada; little known, and, to a great degree, extinct. These, like those of Brazil, are counted by the dozen or the score.

Then there are the parts on the eastern, or Bolivian, side of the Andes.

To Peru belong-the Yuracares, the Mocetenes, the Tacanas, the Apolistas, the Maropas, with divisions and additions.

To Bolivia belong

a. In the Mission of Moros-the Muchojéonès, the Moxos, the Baurès, the Itonama, the Canichana, the Movima, the Cayuvava, the Itenes, the Pacaguara.

b. In the Mission of the Chiquitos-the Chiquitos, the Saraveca, the Otukès, the Covareca, the Curuminaca, the Curavè, the Tapii, the Curucaneca, the Corabeca, the Paioconeca.

In the district called Chaco, on the rivers Pilco-Mayo and Vermejo, feeders of the River Platte, we have the greatest amount of independent tribes, chiefly referable to a class called Abiponian. To this belong, with others, the Abiponians Proper, the Mbocobi and Toba, the Lenguas, the Payaguas, the Matagayos, the Guacurus, perhaps the Charruas, known, at present, only in fragments; whole sections of it being either extinct or incorporated. The original divisions, however, were as follow :

1. The Charruas Proper; 2. the Chayos; 3. the Chanás; 4. the Guenoas; 5. the Martedanes; 6. the Niboanes; 7. the Yaros; 8. the Minoanes; 9. the Caaiguas; 10. the Bagaez; 11. the Tapes. Of these the Chanás and Niboanes inhabited, at the arrival of the Spaniards, the islands of the Uruguay, at the junction of the Rio Negro. The Guenoas and Martedanes connected themselves with the Portuguese of the Colonia del Sacramiento, and were at enmity with the Yaros and Minoanes. The Chayos are the first that disappear from history, probably from having become amalgamated with the Yaros.

The Charruas Proper, from the time of Solis to the year 1831, have lived the life of a nation of warriors, with their hand against every man, and every man's hand against

them. Uninterrupted as was their hostility to the Spaniards, it was equally so against the other aborigines; so much so, that in no case do we find a common alliance against

the common enemy to have existed ;-on the contrary, the war against the Mamalucos, the Tupi, and the Arachanes, were wars of extermination. And so was the war against the Spaniards; except that the Spaniards were the exterminators. In 1831 the President of Uraguay, Rivera, destroyed the Charruas root and branch; so that at the present moment a few enslaved individuals are the only remains of that once terrible nation.

From eighty to one hundred families lived under the direction of a Tubicchó, or semi-hereditary chief, and when danger threatened the Tubicchós met and chose amongst themselves a leader. Whoever is chosen commands the obedience of the rest -the election is half council, half feast. Chicha is drunk; wounds are exhibited; exploits are recounted; the most worthy is selected from his peers. After this fires are lighted as beacons, and the warriors of tribes meet from all parts. When they can make the attack, they do it by night, and at the full moon.

I believe that this savage semi-heroic character of the Charruas is a fair sample of the wilder and more unsubdued Indians of Chili, Patagonia, and the Gran Chaco; also, that it is equally true of the Araucanians as described by Ercilla, and the Pampa Indians of Sir E. Head. And what is this but a repetition of the same features which we see in the corresponding parts of North America? Here, when we have got beyond the tropics, we find the Algonkin, Sioux, and Iroquois warriors, conterminous with,