522 



THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



from an Indian and a monkey." Orton sums up their general characteristics as fol- 

 lows : " Skin of a brown color, with a yellowish tinge, often nearly of the tint of 

 mahogany ; thick, straight, black hair ; black, horizontal eyes ; low forehead, some- 

 what compensated by its breadth ; beardless ; of middle hight, but thick -set ; broad, 

 muscular chest ; small hands and feet ; incurious, unambitious, impassive, undemon- 

 Btrativo ; with a dull imagination and little superstition ; with no definite idea of a 

 Supreme Being, few tribes having a nime for God, though one for the Demon ; with 

 no belief in a future state ; and, excepting civility, with virtues all negative. Yet a 

 little while," he says, *' and the race will become as extinct as the Dodo. He has not 

 the supple organization of the European, enabling him to accommodate himself to 

 diverse conditions." And yet in the very same paragraph he says : " The South 

 American Indian seems to have a natural aptitude for the arts of civilized life not 

 found in the red man of our continent." He makes brief mention of thirty or more 

 of the tribes. Some are described as cannibals. Others are mentioned in quite dif- 

 ferent terms. Thus the Mauhes are an agricultural tribe, well-formed, and of a 

 mild disposition." The Uaupes "have permanent abodes in the shape of a parallel- 

 ogram, with a semicircle at each end of a size to contain several families. One of 

 them was 115 feet long by 75 broad, and about 30 feet high. The walls are bullet- 

 proof." The Passes and Juris are *' peaceable and industrious, and have always been 

 friendly to the whites." The Tuciinas are " an extensive tribe, leading a settled agri- 

 cultural life, each horde having a chief and a ' medicine-man,' or priest of their super- 

 stitions." The Cuccimas are "shrewd hard-working canoe-men, notorious for the 

 singular desire for acquiring property." And so on. 



Mr. Orton's personal acquaintance with the Indians was rather limited ; yet his brief 

 notices of them give a favorable idea of their character. For a month and a half par- 

 ties of them served him as peons and boatmen. The first party, consisting of twenty, 

 undertook to carry his luggage a distance of thirteen days' journey through the dense 

 forest. " Not a transportation company in the United States," he says, "ever kept its 

 engagement more faithfully than did these twenty peons, and this too though we paid 

 them in advance, according to the custom of the country." His canoe-men "were 

 always in good humor, and during the whole voyage of a month we did not see the 

 slightest approach to a quarrel. At no time did we have the least fear of treachery or 

 violence. When it rained they invariably took off their ponchos ; but in all our in- 

 tercourse with these wild men we never noticed the slightest breach of modesty. They 

 strictly maintained a decent arrangement of such apparel as they possessed." 



The almost incidental notices given by Agassiz in his " Journey in Brazil " certainly 

 place the Indians of the Amazon in a light far more favorable both for character and 

 intelligence than that in which they are usually represented. That the men are disin- 

 clined to labor is true ; but this they share with men all over the globe. " The women 

 are said, on the contrary, to be very industrious ; and those whom we have had an 

 opportunity of seeing justify this reputation. The wife of Laudigciri is always busy 

 at some household work or other, — grating mandioca, drying farinha, packing tobacco, 

 cooking, or sweeping. Her children are active and obedient, the older ones making 

 themselves useful in bringing water, washing mandioca, or in taking care of the 

 younger ones. She can hardly be called pretty, but she has a pleasant smile and a 

 remarkably sweet voice, with a kind of childlike intonation which is very winning." 



