READINESS OF SPEECH. 87 



1*8, Indians of peace, and friends of the Castilians. The 

 ethnographic document called El Auto de Figueroa, is 01; 

 of the most curious records of the barbarism of the first 

 conquist 'adores. Without any attention to the analogy of 

 languages, every nation that could be accused of having 

 devoured a prisoner after a battle, was arbitrarily declared of 

 Carib race. The inhabitants of Uriapari (on the peninsula of 

 Paria) were named Caribs ; the Urinacos (settled on the 

 banks of the Lower Orinoco, or Urinucu), Guatiaos. All 

 the tribes designated by Figueroa as Caribs were condemned 

 to slavery ; and might at will be sold, or exterminated by 

 war. In these sanguinary struggles, the Carib women, after 

 the death of their husbands, defended themselves with such 

 desperation, that, Anghiera says they were taken for tribes 

 of Amazons. But amidst the cruelties exercised on the 

 Caribs, it is consolatory to find, that there existed some 

 courageous men, who raised the voice of humanity and jus- 

 tice. Some of the monks embraced an opinion different 

 from that which they had at first adopted. In an age when 

 there could be no hope of founding public liberty on civil 

 institutions, an attempt was at least made to defend indi- 

 vidual liberty. " That is a most holy law (ley sanctissima)," 

 says Gomara, in 1551, " by which our emperor has pro- 

 hibited the reducing of the Indians to slavery. It is just, 

 that men, who are all born free, should not become the 

 slaves of one another." 



During our abode in the Carib missions, we observed 

 with surprise the facility with which young Indians of 

 eighteen years of age, when appointed to the post of algua- 

 zil, would harangue the municipality for whole hours in 

 succession. Their tone of voice, their gravity of deportment, 

 the gestures which accompanied their speech, all denoted an 

 intelligent people capable of a high degree of civilization. A 

 Franciscan monk, who knew enough of the Carib language 

 to preach in it occasionally, pointed out to us that the lorg 

 and harmonious periods which occur in the discourses of the 

 Indians, arc never confused or obscure. Particular in- 

 flexions of the verb indicate beforehand the nature of the 

 object, whether it be animate or inanimate, singular or plural. 



not insist on the etymology of this word, because the languages of the 

 Lucayei Islands differed from those of Hayti. 



