422 CONDAMINE's TRAVELS 



indifferent to every impulfe of glory, honor, or gratitude ; wholly engroffed and deter- 

 mined by the objedl of the moment, without concern for the future ; deftitute of fore- 

 fight and reflection ; and giving themfelves up, when nothing prevents them, to a 

 childifh joy, which they manifeft by leaping, and loud burfls of laughter, with no 

 apparent objed ; they pafs their lives without thought, and fee old age advance, yet 

 unremoved from childhood, and preferving all its faults. 



Were this the pifture merely of the Indians of fome provinces of Peru, who may 

 be regarded as flaves, the w^t of civilization might be afcribed to the degeneracy 

 incident on their fervile ftate; for the degradation to which flavery is capable of 

 reducing man, is fufficiently exemplified in the prefent condition of the Greek nation : 

 But the Americans of the country of the miflions, and the favages free from all con- 

 troul of Europeans, fhewing themfelves equally limited, not to fay ftupid, with the 

 others, the reafoning mind cannot but feel humiliation, contemplating how little man, 

 in a ftate of nature, and deftitute of inftrudion and fociety, is removed in condition 

 from beafts. 



All the languages of South- America with which I am acquainted, are very poor ; 

 many poflefs energy, and are fufceptible of elegance, efpecially the antient language 

 of Peru ; but they are univerfally barren of terms for the expreflion of abftracl or uni- 

 verfal ideas, an evident proof of the flight progrefs of intelledl among thefe people. 

 Time, duration, fpace, entity, fubftance, matter, corporeity ; thefe are words which, 

 with many others, have no equivalent in their languages. Not only metaphyfical 

 terms, but alfo moral attributes, require long periphrafes to be expreflfed, though with 

 them, in but an imperfeft manner. They have no words that correfpond exadly 

 with virtue, juftice, hberty, gratitude ingratitude ; a fa£l with which it feems difficult 

 to reconcile what Garcilafo relates of the policy, induftry, arts, government and ge- 

 nius of the antient Peruvians. Unlefs the love he bore his country induced him to 

 exaggerate, we muft needs allow that thefe people have greatly degenerated from their 

 anceftors. As for the other nations of South- America, they are not known to have 

 ever emerged from their priftine barbarifm. 



I have formed a vocabulary of the moft common words in different American lan- 

 guages. A comparifon of thefe words vidth thofe of fimilar import in other languages 

 of the interior, may not only be ferviceable towards proving the different tranfmigrations 

 of thefe people from one to the other extremity of this vaft continent : but where it can 

 be effeded alfo with the different languages of Africa, Europe, aud the Eaft-Indies, 

 may furnifti, poflibly, the only means of afcertaining the origin of the Americans. A 

 well-proved conformity of language would without doubt folve the queftion. The 

 word abba, baba, or papa, and that of mama, which with flight inflexions feem to 

 have been adopted from the antient tongues of the eaftern world by a majority of the 

 nations of Europe, are common to a great number of the American nations, however 

 different the reft of their language. And though we fliould allow thefe words to be 

 thofe which would preferably be received in every country by parents, from their being 

 the firft articulations of infancy, as the reprefentatives of the relation of father and 

 mother, it yet follows to enquire wherefore, in all the languages of America in 

 which thefe words occur, the application of them fliould be uniformly the fame, 

 without their meaning being reverfed ; for example, how comes it in the Omagua 

 language, fpoken in the centre of the American continent, and in which the terms 

 papa and mama are ufed, that papa fliould never fignify mother, nor mama father, 

 but the contrary, as in the languages of Europe and the eaft. It is far from impro- 

 bable, that among the natives of America other terms might be found, the well con- 

 firmed 



