108 AMAZONIA AND LA PLATA. 



Inhabitants of Amazonia. 



Amongst the few traces of the former inhabitants of Amazonia is a necro- 

 polis discovered near Manaos, evidently of great antiquity, contoiiiing hundreds 

 of large mortuary jars of elegant design, but of unknown origin. To a more 

 recent period would appear to belong the shell-mounds occurring near Para, in 

 Marajo Island and in the Santarem district. The numerous fragments of human 

 industry found in these mounds seem to have been deposited by the present 

 riverine populations ; some of the skulls differ in no respect from those of the 

 Tapuyos. Like those of the Mississippi basin, some of the mounds affect the 

 form of caymans or other huge animals, probably the otem of the tribe. Certain 

 jade objects, " worth their weight in gold," are supposed by most observers to 

 have come from the region of the Upper Rio Branco ; one, representing a jaguar 

 devouring a turtle, recalls the style of similar Muysca sculptures. Inscribed 

 rocks have been discovered in many parts of the Rio Negro, Tapajoz, and Madeira 

 valleys. 



Of the 150 tribes recorded by Orellana on his memorable voyage down the 

 Amazons all have disappeared, and such has been tbe destruction of human life 

 that the white man would seem to have visited these regions only to create a 

 solitude. Very few full-blood Indians now survive on the banks of the Amazons, 

 and those formerly grouped in communities under the Jesuits are now merged in 

 a homogeneous population speaking the lingoa geral which had been taught them 

 with the catechism, but which is itself now being gradually replaced by the 

 Portuguese of tbe Brazilian traders. 



The Tapuyos, Arawaks, and Caribs. 



These Indians take the general name of Tapuyos, which appears to have 

 formerly belonged to a Tupinamba tribe that migrated from East Brazil to 

 Amazonia in the sixteenth century. They pi'obably belong for the most part to 

 the Tupi family, whose various dialects resembled that which the Jesuits reduced 

 to written form and made the " general language " of Brazil. A purer form of 

 this idiom appears to be the Gu irani of Paraguay, where is probably to be sought 

 the origin of these Amazonian Tupis. Since the publication of the first Tupi 

 grammar by Anchieta in 1595, this dialect has been sedulously cultivated, and 

 now possesses quite a literature, in which the Brazilians themselves take a certain 

 patriotic pride. 



It is scarcely any longer possible to recognise the original elements amid tbe 

 endless interminglings that have taken place between the red, white, and black 

 races. The term tnameluco, at first restricted to the children of white fathers 

 and Indian mothers, is now commonly applied to all half-breeds. A very marked 

 type is that of the cafuzo, the offspring of a black father and Indian mother, 

 noted especially for liis enormous head of bristly black hair, lank but not woolly. 

 In general, the mixed Amazonian populations may be said to have gained in 

 physical beauty and natural grace, as well as in intelligence. 



Besides the Tapuyo half-castes, good boatmen, but indolent, and of little use 



