596 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [ELH, ANN, 33 
together with a careful and minute examination of their contents; 
but until funds and leisure are forthcoming to prosecute the work 
in a thoroughly scientific and systematic manner it is far better to 
leave these interesting records of the past alone in their solitary 
glory. At any rate, this is the opinion that has prompted my own 
line of conduct in connection with them. 
774. The practice of enslaving one another had existed among the 
Indians from the earliest times, but after the conquest the trade was 
naturally encouraged and abetted by the Europeans, the religious, 
military, and civil authorities all lending their countenance and fur- 
nishing assistance in the work of lust and shame. 
In 1509, Nicuesa, touching at Santa Cruz, one of the Caribbee 
Islands, had succeeded in capturing a hundred of the natives whom he 
had borne off in his ships to be sold as slaves at Hispaniola (Haiti). 
This was deemed justifiable in those days, even by the most scrupulous 
divines, from the belief that the Carib were all anthropophagi (WI, 
640). The Portuguese, on the Amazons, had a custom of setting up 
the standard of the cross, a habit which they introduced throughout 
all places where idols were worshiped. “I know not,” says Father 
d’Acuna, “ whether they do it from a true principle of zeal, as the 
action itself seems to signify, for there is a great deal of reason to 
doubt that they set up the sacred sign of the cross only for a specious 
pretext to make slaves of the poor Indians. . . . [The Portuguese] in 
return for all their hospitality only leave them the sign of the cross, 
which they set up in the most eminent place of their habitations, 
commanding them to keep this holy sign with so great care that it 
may never be defaced; and after this, when this cross happens to be 
thrown down by the injuries of the weather, or to be worn out, or, it 
may be, to be maliciously broken in pieces by some of those idolatrous 
Indians who bear no respect to it, the Portuguese never fail to con- 
demn them all as guilty of the profanation of the cross, and as such, 
declare both them and all their children and children’s children 
perpetual slaves” (AC, 94). Slaves were also obtained for the Portu- 
guese from the upper Rio Negro and Orinoco, about the middle of 
the eighteenth century. An Indian chief of the name of Javita, 
celebrated for his courage and spirit of enterprise, was the ally of 
these people. He pushed his hostile incursions from the Rio Ya- 
pura, or Caqueta, one of the great tributary streams of the Amazon, 
by the Rivers Uaupes and Nie as far as the black waters of the Temi 
and the Tuamini [branches of the Orinoco], a distance of more than 
a hundred leagues. He was furnished with letters patent, which au- 
thorized him “to bring the Indians from the forest, for the conquest 
of souls.” He availed himself amply of this permission, but his in- 
cursions had an object which was not altogether spiritual, that of 
making slaves to sell to Portuguese (AVH, 11, 353). Slavery with 
