464 MIXED 



of an Indian woman and a white man. Now, having seen 

 thousands of mestizos, I can assert that this supposition is 

 altogether inaccurate. The individuals of the fair tribes, 

 whom we examined, have the features, the stature, and 

 the smooth, straight, black hair which characterises other 

 Indians. It would be impossible to take them for a mixed 

 race, like the descendants of natives and Europeans. Some 

 of these people are very little, others are of the ordinary 

 stature of the copper-coloured Indians. They are neither 

 feeble, nor sickly, nor are they albinos ; and they differ from 

 the copper-coloured races only by a much less tawny skin. 

 It would be useless, after these considerations, to insist on 

 the distance of the mountains of the Upper Orinoco from 

 the shores inhabited by the Dutch. I will not deny that 

 descendants of fugitive negroes may have been seen among 

 the Caribs, at the sources of the Essequibo ; but no white 

 man ever went from the eastern coast to the Bio Glehette 

 and the Ocamo, in the interior of GKiiana. It must also be 

 observed, although we may be struck with the singularity 

 of several fair tribes being found at one point to the east of 

 Esmeralda, it is no less certain, that tribes have been found 

 in other parts of America, distinguished from the neigh- 

 bouring tribes by the less tawny colour of their skin. Such 

 are the Arivirianos and Maquiritares of the Eio Yentuario 

 and the Padamo, the Paudacotos and Paravenas of the 

 Erevato, the Viras and Araguas of the Caura, the Mologagos 

 of Brazil, and the Gruayanas of the Uruguay.* 



* The Cumangotos, the Maypures, the Mapojos, and some hordes of 

 the Tamanacs, are also fair, bat in a less degree than the tribes I have 

 just named. We may add to this list (which the researches of Sommering, 

 Blumenbach, and Pritchard, on the varieties of the human species, have 

 rendered so interesting) the Ojes of the Cuchivero, the Boanes (now 

 almost destroyed) of the interior of Brazil, and in the north of America, 

 far from the north-west coast, the Man dans and the Akanas (Walkenaer, 

 Geogr., p. 645. Gili, vol. ii, p. 34. Vater, Amerikan. Sprachen, p. 81. 

 Southey, vol. i, p. 603.) The most tawny, we might almost say the 

 blackest of the American race, are the Otomacs and the Guamos. These 

 have perhaps given rise to the confused notions of American negroes, 

 spread through Europe in the early times of the conquest. (Herrera, Dec. 

 i, lib. 3, cap. 9, vol, i, p. 79. Garcia, Origen de los Americanos, p. 259.\ 

 Who are those Negros de Quareca, placed by Gomara, p. 277, in that 

 very isthmus of Panama, whence we received the first absurd tales cf an 

 albino American people ? In reading with attention the authors of the 



