ABOEIGINES OF SOUTH AMERICAo 41 



peoples, these Arawaks have mostly been worsted, and many of them have been 

 scattered over the Guiana coastlands, while the bulk of the race has been 

 pressed westwards to the foot of the great mountains. Here they are associated 

 with the Antis, who have given their name to the Cordillera of the " Andes," 

 and who formerly occupied parts of the Andean plateaux, as well as the 

 eastern valleys, where the southern Amazonian affluents have their source. 



The Miranhas and related tribes are limited to the region comprised between 

 the left bank of the Amazons and its two tributaries, the Iça and Rio Isegro. 

 On the opposite side of the great river, the Panos group is dominant on the 

 Ucayali and Madeira, and the Carayas on the Xingu and Araguaya, affluents. 



In the extreme east the Botocudos of the Brazilian coastlands are a branch 

 of the Ges race, whose numerous tribes follow from north to south, from the 

 banks of the Tocantins to those of the Parana. But of all the Brazilian families 

 the most important, for the number of its tribes and the extent of territory 

 occupied by them, is that of the Tupi or Guarani, who have given their language 

 to most of the natives of the interior, and who have approached nearest to the 

 whites in general culture. Conterminous with them on the upper Paraguay 

 dwell the Guaycurus, and in the liio de Janeiro district a few remnants of the 

 Goytacas or Puri, while the Charruas of the La Plata region are now represented 

 only by half-breeds. But the Indians of the Patagonian family still possess 

 several full-blood groups, and Tierra del Fuego has also its distinct ethnical 

 family, driven from the mainland to this insular extremity of the continent. 



Instead of classifying the South Amei'ican Indians by their linguistic 

 affinities, D'Orbigny and others have attempted to group them according to 

 their physical characteristics. They might also be classified according to certain 

 usages, such as tattooing, circumcision, filing the teeth, artificial deformation of 

 the skull, and especially cannibalism. But in the vicinity of the white settle- 

 ments the study of the aborigines becomes more and more difficult, owing to the 

 rapid changes going on in their social and political state, as well as in their habits 

 of life. 



Certain tribes have disappeared either hj actual extinction or by absorption 

 in others, while many can no longer be recognised, owing to displacements 

 accompanied by change of names. But great migrations have not been numerous 

 during the four centuries that have elapsed since the discovery. The natives 

 have scarcely shifted their camping-grounds, except in those districts where the 

 advent of the Europeans was for them the signal of inevitable doom. Never- 

 theless, all those who have failed to enter the Latinised social system of South 

 America by the process of miscegenation, present a uniform spectacle of decadence, 

 which has to be described in almost identical terms in dealing especially with those 

 regions where their forefathers were dominant. 



The Half-Breeds. — Miscegenation. 

 Nowhere has the work of fusion between the various ethnical elements of 

 the Old and New "World made such progress as in the Andean regions. The 



