MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 



4G3 



Between the Alleghany moun- 

 tains and the Mississippi, wherever 

 the natives do not live in great 

 part on the produce of the chace, 

 the women cultivate the maize, 

 beans, and gourds ; and the men 

 take no share in the labours of 

 the field. Under the torrid zone, 

 tlie hunting nations are extremely 

 scarce, and, in the Missions, the 

 men work ia the fields like the 

 women. 



Nothing can exceed the diffi- 

 culty with which the Indians 

 learn Spanish. They have an 

 absolute aversion to it, while, 

 living separate from the whites, 

 they have not the ambition to be 

 called polished Indians, or, as it is 

 termed in the Missions, latinized 

 Indians, Indios muy latinos. But 

 what struck me most, not only 

 among the Chaynias, but in all 

 the very distant Missions, which 

 1 afterwards visited, is the extreme 

 difficultj', which the Indians have 

 to arrange and express the most 

 simple ideas in Spanish, even 

 when they perfectly understand 

 the meaning of the words, and 

 the turn of the phrases. When a 

 white questions them concerning 

 objects which surround them from 

 their cradle, they seem to discover 

 an imbecility, which exceeds that 

 of infancy. The missionaries as- 

 sert, that this embarrassment is 

 not the effect of timidity; that in 

 the Indians who daily visit the 

 missionary's house, and who 

 regulate the public works, it does 

 not arise from natural stupidity, 

 but from the obstacles they find 

 in the structure of a language 

 80 different from their native 

 tongues. The more remote man 

 is from cultivation, the greater 

 his stiffness and moral inflexibility. 



We must not then be surprised, 

 to find obstacles among the iso- 

 lated Indians in the Missions, 

 which are unknown to those, who 

 inhabit the same parish with the 

 mestizoes, the mulattoes, and the 

 whites, in the neighbourhood of 

 towns. I have often been surprised 

 at the volubility, with which, at 

 Caripe, the alcalde, the govcr- 

 nador, and the sargento mai/or, 

 harangue for whole hours the 

 Indians assembled before the 

 church; regulating the labours 

 of the week, reprimanding the 

 idle, threatening the disobedient. 

 Those chiefs, who are equally of 

 the Chayma race, and who trans- 

 mit the orders of the missionary, 

 speak all at the same time, with 

 a loud voice, with marked em- 

 phasis, but almost without action. 

 Their features remain motionless ; 

 but their look is imperious and 

 severe. 



These same men, who displayed 

 quickness of intellect, and who 

 were tolerably well acquainted 

 with the Spanish, could no longer 

 connect their ideas, when, accom- 

 panying us in our excursions 

 around the convent, we put 

 questions to them through the 

 intervention of the monks. They 

 were made to affirm or deny, 

 whatever the monks pleased : 

 and indolence, attended with that 

 wily politeness, to which the least 

 cultivated Indian is no stranger, 

 induced them sometimes to give 

 to their answers the turn, that 

 seemed to be suggested by our 

 questions. Travellers cannot be 

 enough on their guard against 

 this officious assent, when they 

 wish to support their opinions by 

 the testimony of the natives. To 

 put an Indian Alcalde to the 



proof, 



