CHAPTER IX - INDIANS OF NEW ANDALUSIA

Summary

It is the custom of Humboldt, in his “Journey to the Equinoctial Regions,” to stand still after an excursion, reflect, and present to his readers the result of his inquiries on any subject that has fixed his attention. For example, on concluding the narrative of his visit to the Chayma missions, he gives a general account of the aborigines of New Andalusia, of which an abridgment is here offered.

The north-eastern part of Equinoctial America, Terra Firma, and the shores of the Orinoco, resemble, in the multiplicity of the tribes by which they are inhabited, the defiles of Caucasus, the mountains of Hindookho, and the northern extremity of Asia, beyond the Tungooses and the Tartars of the mouth of the Lena. The barbarism which prevails in these various regions is perhaps less owing to an original absence of civilisation than to the effects of a long debasement; and if every thing connected with the first population of a continent were known, we should probably find that savages are merely tribes banished from society and driven into the forests. At the commencement of the conquest of America, the natives were collected into large bodies only on the ridge of the Cordilleras and the coast opposite to Asia, while the vast savannahs, and the great plains covered by forests and intersected by rivers, presented wandering tribes, separated by differences of language and manners.