412 ENMITY OF THE INDIAN TBJBES 



defenceless family is surprised in the night ; or an enemy, 

 who is met with by chance in the woods, is killed by a 

 poisoned arrow. The body is cut to pieces, and carried as a 

 trophy to the hut. It is ciyilization only, that has made 

 man feel the unity of the human race ; which has revealed 

 to him, as we may say, the ties of consanguinity, by which 

 he is linked to beings to whose language and manners he is 

 a stranger. Savages know only their own family ; and a 

 tribe appears to them but a more numerous assemblage of 

 relations. When those who inhabit the missions see In- 

 dians of the forest, who are unknown to them, arrive, they 

 make use of an expression, which has struck us by its simple 

 candour ; " they are, no doubt, my relations : I understand 

 them when they speak to me." But these very savages 

 detest all who are not of their family, or their tribe ; and 

 hunt the Indians of a neighbouring tribe, who live at war 

 with their own, as we hunt game. They know the duties of 

 family ties and of relationship, but not those of humanity, 

 which require the feeling of a common tie with beings 

 framed like ourselves. No emotion of pity prompts them 

 to spare the wives or children of a hostile race ; and the 

 latter are devoured in preference, at the repast given at the 

 conclusion of a battle or warlike incursion. 



The hatred which savages for the most part feel for men 

 who speak another idiom, and appear to them to be 

 of an inferior race, is sometimes rekindled in the missions, 

 after having long slumbered. A short time before our 

 arrival at Esmeralda, an Indian, born in the forest* behind 

 the Duida, travelled alone with another Indian, who, after 

 having been made prisoner by the Spaniards on the banks 

 of the Ventuario, lived peaceably in the village, or, as it is 

 expressed here, "within the sound of the bell," (debaxo de 

 la campafia.) The latter could only walk slowly, because he 

 was suffering from one of those fevers to which the natives 

 are subject, when they arrive in the missions, and abruptly 

 change their diet. Wearied by his delay, his fellow-traveller 



En el monte. The Indians born in the missions are distinguished 

 from those born in the woods. The word monte signifies more frequently, 

 in the colonies, a forest (bosque) than a mountain, and this circumstance 

 has led to great errors in our maps, on which chains of mountains (sierras) 

 we figured, where there are only thick forests, (monte espeso.) 



