THE CHIEF t-OCTTT. 333 



remarkable in a country in other respects so wild, have 

 been described by Father Forneri. 



The Marepizanas and the Manitivitanos were the pre- 

 ponderant nations on the banks of the Rio Negro. The 

 former had for its chiefs, about the year 1750, two warriors 

 called Imu and Cajamu. The king of the Manitivitanos 

 was Cocuy, famous for his cruelty. The chiefs of the 

 Guaypunaves and the Manitivitanos fought with small 

 bodies of two or three hundred men; but in their pro- 

 tracted struggles they destroyed the missions, in some of 

 which the poor monks had only fifteen or twenty Spanish 

 soldiers at their disposal, When the expedition of Itur- 

 riaga and Solano arrived at the Orinoco, the missions had 

 no longer to fear the incursions of the Caribs. Cuseru, 

 the chief of the Guavpunaves, had fixed his dwelling behind 

 the granitic mountains of Sipapo. He was the friend of 

 the Jesuits ; but other nations of the Upper Orinoco and 

 the Eio Negro, led by Imu, Cajamu, and Cocuy, penetrated 

 from time to time to the north of the Great Cataracts 

 They had other motives for fighting than that of hatred ; 

 they hunted men, as was formerly the custom of the Caribs, 

 and is still the practice in Africa. Sometimes they fur- 

 nished slaves (poitos) to the Dutch (in their language, 

 Paranaquiri inhabitants of the sea) ; sometimes they sold 

 them to the Portuguese (laranavi sons of musicians).* 

 In America, as in Africa, the cupidity of the Europeaos 

 has produced the same evils, by exciting the natives to 

 make war, in order to procure slaves. Everywhere the 

 contact of nations, widely different from each other in the 

 scale of civilization, leads to the abuse of physical strength, 

 and of intellectual preponderance. The Phoenicians and 

 Carthaginians formerly sought slaves in Europe. Europe 

 now presses in her turn both on the countries whence she 

 gathered the first germs of science, and on those where she 

 now almost involuntarily spreads them by carrying thither 

 the produce of her industry. 



I have faithfully recorded what I could collect on the 



* The savage tribes designate every commercial nation of Europe by 

 surnames, the origin of which appears altogether accidental. The 

 Spaniards were called ' clothed men,' Font/heme or Uavemi, by way ol 

 distinction. 



