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.313 If this is correct, they had doubtless been transported there by either the Incas or the Spanish authorities. They are uniformly spoken of as low in culture, shy of strangers and dull in intelligence. Acosta pretends that they were so brutish that they did not claim to be men.314 Garcilasso de la Vega calls them rude and stupid.315 Alcedo, writing in the latter half of the eighteenth century, states that those on the islands had, against their will, been removed to the mainland, where they dwelt in gloomy caves and in holes in the ground covered with reeds, and depended on fishing for a subsistence.
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.316 On it Hervas based the opinion that the Puquina was an independent stock. The editors of the “Mithridates” seemed to incline to the belief that it was related to the Aymara, and this opinion was fully adopted by Clement L. Markham, who pronounced it “a very rude dialect of the Lupaca,”317 in which he was followed by the learned Von Tschudi.318
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 Society for 1890. They are sufficient to show that while this language borrowed many terms, especially those referring to religion and culture, from the neighboring Kechua and Aymara dialects, these were but additions to a primitive stock fundamentally different from either of them.
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 classed by writers in the sixteenth century as one of the lenguas generales of Peru. Not only does Ore refer to it by this term, but in one of the official Relaciones Geograficas written in 1582, it is mentioned as “one of the three general languages of this kingdom.”319 This would seem to indicate that at that period it had a wider extension than we can now trace.
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.320
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.321 Here they settled and in later years constructed the enormous palace known as the Gran Chimu, whose massive brick walls, spacious terraces, vast galleries and fronts decorated with bas-reliefs and rich frescoes, are still the wonder and admiration of travelers.322
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,323 but the fact that the Chimus were even before that date famed for their expertness in the working of metals and the fashioning of jewels and vases in silver and gold,324 proves that they did not owe their culture to the instruction of the Quichuas.
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;325 of the Estenes, Bastian has printed quite a full vocabulary which is nearly identical with the Yunca of Carrera;326 Mr. Spruce obtained in 1863 a vocabulary of forty words from the Sechuras, proving them to belong to this stock;327 but the dialects of the Colanes and Catacoas are said by the same authority to be now extinct. According to the information obtained by the Abbé Hervas, the “Colorados of Angamarca” also spoke a Yunca dialect,328 but I have been unable to identify this particular tribe of “painted” Indians.
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
Catacoas, on the upper Rio Piura.
Chancos, on the coast south of the Mochicas.
Chimus, near Truxillo.
Chinchas, see Mochicas.
Colanes, on Rio Chiura, north of Payta.
Etenes, in the valleys south of Lambayeque.
Mochicas, at Mochi, near Truxillo.
Morropes, north of Lambayeque.
Sechuras, on Rio Piura.
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 Kechuas and the Aymaras. Vocabularies of it have been preserved by various travelers, and the outlines of its grammar have been recently published by San-Roman.329 From two of its numerals and some other indications Dr. Darapsky has connected it with the Aymara, which is also spoken in that vicinity.330 The relationship, however, cannot be considered established, and the latest researches tend to sharpen the contrast between the Cunza, as it is sometimes called, and the Aymara.
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 writers331 (Garcilasso, etc). This, however, is open to doubt. Von Tschudi hazarded the opinion that the Atacameños were a remnant of the Calchaquis of Tucuman, who had sought refuge from the Spaniards in this remote oasis on the coast.332 I can find no positive support for this view, as we have no specimens of the language of the Calchaquis.
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.333 They are, however, solidly built and vigorous. The color is dark, the nose straight and the eyes horizontal.
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.334
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,335 clothed throughout with lush tropical vegetation and seamed by innumerable streams, offering natural and facile paths of intercommunication. It is not surprising, therefore, that we find linguistic stocks extended most widely over this vast area, each counting numerous members. Of them the most widely disseminated were the Tupi, the Tapuya, the Carib and the Arawak families, and to these I shall first give attention.
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 seaboard, from the mouth of the La Plata to the Amazon and far up the stream of the latter. According to their traditions, which are supported by a comparison of their dialects, the Tupis wandered up the coast from the south. Their earlier home was between the Parana river and the Atlantic. There they called themselves Carai, the astute, a term they afterwards applied to the Spaniards, but later were given the name Guaranis, meaning warriors, by which they are generally known. They must have been very numerous, as a careful estimate made in 1612 computed those then living in the modern states of Corrientes and Uruguay at 365,000; a census which could not have been much exaggerated, as about a century later the Jesuits claimed to have over three hundred thousand Christianized and living in their “reductions;”336 even to-day ninety per cent. of the population of Uruguay have Guarani blood in their veins.
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,337 extending as far south as the Pilcomayo river. On the upper waters of the Parana were the Tapes, a nation so called from the name of their principal village. It is another form of Tupi, and means “town.” They received the early missionaries willingly, and are complimented by these as being the most docile and intelligent of any of the nations of South America.338
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.339
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.340
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.341 They are a superior stamp of men, tall, of athletic figures, light in color, their naked bodies artistically tattooed. Their women are skilled in weaving cotton hammocks, and the men pursue some agriculture, and manufacture handsome feather ornaments.
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.342 Others are related to the language of the Moxos, and in the last century certain of their tribes lived in the immediate vicinity of these, and were brought into the “reductions” of the Moxos Indians by the Jesuit missionaries.343 The tendency of their migrations has been down the Madeira.
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.344 Vocabularies have been obtained by Castelnau and Natterer, which indicate only a remote resemblance. According to their own tradition, they migrated from near the Moxos in the Bolivian highlands.
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.345
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.346 The peculiar “mitred” skulls of the Omaguas are an artificial deformity prized by them as a beauty.
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.347 The art of the potter was also well developed, and the vases from the Amazon, called igasauas, rank both in symmetry, decoration and fine workmanship among the most creditable specimens of American ceramics.
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
Ababas, in Bolivia.
Amazonas, on lower Amazon.
Anambes, on Rio Tocantins.
Apiacas, near Rio Arinos and upper Tapajoz.
Araguagus, on lower Paru. Bororos, near Rio Paraguay.
Camaguras, in province Matogrosso.
Cambevas, see Omaguas.
Cambocas, mouth of Rio Tocantin.
Caracatas, on upper Uruguay and Parana.
Cayovas, on Rio Tapajoz.
Chaneses, in Bolivia.
Chiriguanos, in Bolivia.
Chogurus, on Rio Pajehu.
Cocamas, near Rio Nauta (upper Amazon) and Rio Ucayali.
Cocamillas, near the Cocamas.
Cuchiuaras, on Rio Tocantins.
Guaranis, in Uruguay.
Guarayos, in Bolivia.
Guayanas, in Uruguay.
Gujajaras, on Rio Maranhao.
Jacundas, on Rio Tocantins.
Jamudas, in province Pará.
Maues, on the Amazon.
Mbeguas, on Rio Parana.
Manitsauas, on upper Schingu.
Mitandues, near Rio Tapajoz.
Mundurucus, on Rio Tapajoz.
Muras, on Rio Madeira.
Omaguas, on lower Iça.
Oyampis, on upper Oyapok.
Pacajas, on lower Amazon.
Parentintims, in province Amazonas.
Paris, see Mundurucus.
Piturunas, on Rio Curitiba.
Sirionos, on Rio Paray, Bolivia.
Tamoyos, near San Vincente, Brazil (extinct).
Tapaunas, on Rio Tocantins.
Tapirapes, in province Goyaz.
Tapes, on Rio Uruguay.
Turas, on lower Rio Madeira.
Uyapas, on Rio Arinos.
Yurunas, on Rio Schingu, from 4° to 8°.
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, along the Atlantic and its bays. These are supposed to indicate an antiquity of 2,000 years;348 but the Tapuyas can lay claim to a title to their land far older than that. The skulls and human bones which were discovered by Dr. Lund in the caves of Lagoa Santa in immediate juxtaposition to those of animals now extinct, came from a region occupied by the Tapuyas, and are in all respects parallel to those of the tribe to-day. This would assign them a residence on the spot far back in the present geologic period.
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.349 They are not ugly, and the expression of the face, especially in the young, is often attractive. Those of them, however, who distend the lower lip with the large labret or botoque (from which the Botocudos derive their name), cannot be other than hideous to European eyes.
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.350 Their marriages are monogamous, though rarely permanent, and they are not devoid of family affection.351 Though lacking definite religious ideas, they are careful to bury the dead, and have a belief that the spirit of the departed survives and wanders about at night, for which reason they are loth to move in the dark. The soul of a chief may take the form of a jaguar. During a thunder storm they shake a burning brand and shoot arrows toward the sky, to appease by imitation the powers of the storm; and they are much given to semi-religious dances, in which their motions are to the sound of a native flute, which is played with the nose.352
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,353 whose studies on this stock have been peculiarly valuable.
TAPUYA LINGUISTIC STOCK
Apina-gês, north of Rio Tocantins.
Aponegi-crens, in south of province Maranhao.
Acroas, near Rio Tocantins.
Aimores, see Botocudos.
Botocudos, in Sierra dos Aimures.
Carahos, on Rio Tocantins.
Camacans, near Rio Pardo.
Cayapos, north of Rio Pardo.
Chavantes, near Rio Maranhao.
Cherentes, near Rio Tocantins.
Chicriabas, near Rio de San Francisco.
Coretus, on Rio Yupura.
Cotoxos, near Rio Doce.
Cumanachos, in province Goyaz.
Crens, see Botocudos.
Gês, in province Goyaz.
Goyotacas, in province Goyaz (see below).
Malalalis, near Rio Doce.
Malalis, in province Goyaz.
Masacaras, in province Goyaz.
Pancas, on Rio das Pancas.
Potés (Poton), on upper Mucuri.
Puris, near Rio Paraiba.
Suyas, on upper Schingu.
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.354
GOYOTACA SUB-STOCK
Capochos, in the sierra between Minas Geraes and Porto Seguro.
Coropos, on the Rio da Pomba.
Cumanachos, adjacent to the Capochos.
Machacalis, on and near Rio Mucury.
Macunis, between Minas Geraes and Porto Seguro.
Monoxos, adjacent to the Macunis.
Panhames, on head-waters of Rio Mucury.
Patachos, on head-waters of Rio de Porto Seguro.
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
Cobeus, on Rio Uaupes.
Dace, on Rio Uaupes.
Jupua, on upper Yupura.
Jauna, on Rio Uaupes.
Tucano, on Rio Uaupes.
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 chosen as the totem of a gens.
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.355 The following comparison between it and the Tapuya dialects will show the affinity:
