SOUTH AMERICAISr INDIAN CULTURES — KRIEGER 405 



In the year 1793 a large number (approximately 5,000) of " black " 

 Caribs were taken by the English from St. Vincent in tlie Lesser 

 Antilles to liuatan, Honduras, Their descendants, strongly mixed 

 with Negro strains, today occupy settlements along the Honduran 

 coast from Stann Creek to Carib Town, Nicaragua. Thoroughly 

 negroid in appearance their language is Carib and their culture 

 remains South American, 



The treatment suffered by Amazonian Indians of Brazil in con- 

 nection with the rubber industry has decimated them. Concentration 

 of Indians in missions like those of early California days is still 

 practiced on the Putumayo of Colombia ; also in Argentina, as in 

 California, we speak of the Mission Indians. This encomienda 

 system led to the extinction of entire tribes in Paraguay and Bolivia, 

 where the present war in the Gran Chaco may lead to the extermina- 

 tion of still other Indian population groups. 



Spinden estimates the present native Indian population of several 

 of the South American countries as follows : 



Colombia and Venezuela 3, 000, 000 



Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia 6,000,000 



Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Guiauas 4, 000, 000 



Argentina and Chile 200.000 



13, 200, 000 

 SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITIONS AND ETHNOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS 



In 1851 Lts. William Lewis Herndon and Lardner Gibbon, United 

 States Navy, were sent by the Navy Department to secure informa- 

 tion as to the feasibility of introducing steam navigation on the 

 waters of the Amazon with a view to promoting commerce. It was 

 decided to divide the party, Herndon taking the headwaters and 

 main trunk of the Amazon and Gibbon the Bolivian tributaries and 

 following down the Madeira to the Amazon. The account of their 

 journej^s was published in 1853 as a public document of the Thirty- 

 second Congress, second edition, under the title " Exploration of the 

 Valley of the Amazon Made Under the Direction of the Navy De- 

 partment by William Lewis Herndon and Lardner Gibbon, Lieuten- 

 ants of the United States Navy." The ethnological specimens col- 

 lected are now in the United States National Museum but are not 

 specihcally identified as to locality. 



Herndon describes interestingly the manufacture of rubber shoes. 

 He also describes in detail the making of figures of animals of rubber 

 by repeated dippings of a core, the decorative pattern being put on 

 with a heated wire. These collections made nearly a century 

 ago, before the value of objects of material culture was much appre- 



