214 SEVERE RULE OF THE MISSION AEIE8. 



highly useful to us in the sequel, but who now refused to 

 accompany us. He was born in the Mission of Atures ; but 

 his father was a Maco, and his mother a native of the nation 

 of the Maypures. He had returned to the woods (al 

 monte), and having lived some years with the unsubdued 

 Indians, he had thus acquired the knowledge of several 

 languages, and the missionary employed him as an inter- 

 preter. We obtained with difficulty the pardon of this 

 young man. " Without these acts of severity," we were 

 told, ** you would want for everything. The Indians of the 

 ftaudales and the Upper Orinoco are a stronger and more 

 laborious race than the inhabitants of the Lower Orinoco. 

 They know that they are much sought after at Angostura. 

 If left to their own will, they would all go down the river to 

 sell their productions, and live in full liberty among the 

 whites. The Missions would be totally deserted." 



These reasons, I confess, appeared to me more specious 

 than sound. Man, in order to enjoy the advantages of a 

 social state, must no doubt sacrifice a part of his natural 

 rights, and his original independence ; but, if the sacrifice 

 imposed on him be not compensated by the benefits of civi- 

 lization, the savage, wise in his simplicity, retains the wish 

 of returning to the forests that gave him birth. It is because 

 the Indian of the woods is treated like a person in a state 

 of villanage in the greater part of the Missions, because he 

 enjoys not the fruit of his labours, that the Christian esta- 

 blishments on the Orinoco remain deserts. A government 

 founded on the ruins of the liberty of the natives extin- 

 guishes the intellectual faculties, or stops their progress. 



To say that the savage, like the child, can be governed 

 only by force, is merely to establish false analogies. The 

 Indians of the Orinoco have something infantine in the 

 expression of their joy, and the quick succession of their 

 emotions, but they are not great children ; they are as little 

 so as the poor labourers in the east of Europe, whom the 

 barbarism of our feudal institutions has held in the rudest 

 state. To consider the employment of force as the first ana 

 sole means of the civilization of the savage, is a principle as 

 far from being true in the education of nations as in the 

 education of youth. Whatever may be the state of weak- 

 ness or degradation in our species, no faculty is entirely 



