COSMOGONY OF THE PASSES 397 



mocks, manufacture pillow-lace, and so forth. They have 

 been generally treated with kindness, especially by the 

 educated families in the settlements. It is pleasant to 

 have to record that I never heard of a deed of violence 

 perpetrated, on the one side or the other, in the dealings 

 between European settlers and this noble tribe of savages. 



Very little is known of the original customs of the 

 Passes. The mode of life of our host Pedro-uassu did not 

 differ much from that of the civilized Mamelucos ; but he 

 and his people showed a greater industry, and were more 

 open, cheerful, and generous in their dealings than many 

 half-castes. The authority of Pedro, like that of the 

 Tushauas generally, was exercised in a mild manner. 

 These chieftains appear able to command the services of 

 their subjects, since they furnish men to the Brazilian 

 authorities when requested ; but none of them, even those 

 of the most advanced tribes, appear to make use of this 

 authority for the accumulation of property ; the service 

 being enacted chiefly in time of war. Had the ambition 

 of the chiefs of some of these industrious tribes been turned 

 to the acquisition of wealth, probably we should have seen 

 indigenous civilized nations in the heart of South America 

 similar to those found on the Andes of Peru and Mexico. 

 It is very probable that the Passes adopted from the first 

 to some extent the manners of the whites. Ribeiro, a 

 Portuguese official who travelled in these regions in 

 1774-5, and wrote an account of his journey, relates that 

 they buried their dead in large earthenware vessels (a 

 custom still observed amongst other tribes on the Upper 

 Amazons), and that, as to their marriages, the young men 

 earned their brides by valiant deeds in war. He also 

 states that they possessed a cosmogony, in which the 

 belief that the sun was a fixed body with the earth re- 

 volving around it, was a prominent feature. He says, 

 moreover, that they beUeved in a Creator of all things ; a 

 future state of rewards and punishments, and so forth. 

 These notions are so far in advance of the ideas of all other 

 tribes of Indians, and so little likely to have been con- 

 ceived and perfected by a people having no written 

 language or leisured class, that we must suppose them 

 to have been derived by the docile Passes from some 

 early missionary or traveller. I never found that the 

 Passes had more curiosity or activity of intellect than other 

 Indians. No trace of a belief in a future state exists 



