THE CHIEF COCUT. 
333 
remarkable in a country in other respects so wild, have 
been described by Father Eorneri. 
The Marepizanas and the Manitivitanos. were the pre- 
ponderant nations on the banks of the Bio Negro. The 
former had for its chiefs, about the year 1750, two warriors 
called Imu and Cajamu. The king of the Manitivitanos 
was Cocuy, famous for bis cruelty. The chiefs of the 
GuaypunaVes and the Manitivitanos fought with small 
bodies of two or three hundred men; but in their pro- 
tracted struggles they destroyed the missions, in some of 
which the poor monks had only fifteen or twenty Spanish 
soldiers at their disposal. When the expedition of Itur- 
riaga and Solano arrived at the Orinoco, the missions had 
no longer to fear the incursions of the Caribs. Cuseru, 
the chief of the Guaypunaves, had fixed his dwelling behind 
the granitic mountains of Sipapo. He was the triend of 
tlie Jesuits ; but other nations of the Upper Orinoco and 
the Bio Negro, led by Imu, Cajamu, and Cocuy, penetrated 
from time to time to the north of the Great Cataracts 
They had other motives for fighting than that of hatred ; 
they hunted men, as was formerly the custom of the Caribs, 
and is still the practice in Africa. Sometimes they fur- 
nished slaves (poitos) to the Dutch (in their language, 
Taranaquiri — inhabitants of the sea) ; sometimes they sold 
them to the Portuguese (laranavi — sons of musicians).* 
In America, as in Africa, the cupidity of the Europeans 
bas produced the same evils, by exciting the natives to 
make war, in order to procure slaves. Everywhere the 
contact of nations, widely different from each other in the 
scale of civilization, leads’ to the abuse of physical strength, 
nnd of intellectual preponderance. The Phoenicians and 
Carthaginians formerly sought slaves in Europe. Europe 
now presses in her turn both on the countries whence she 
gathered the first germs of science, and on those w here she 
n°w almost involuntarily spreads them by carrying thither 
the produce of her industry. 
I have faithfully recorded what I could collect on the 
* The savage tribes designate every commercial nation of Europe by 
surnames, the origin of which appears altogether accidental. lhe 
Spaniards were called * clothed men/ Ponyherne or Uavemi, by way of 
“‘stinetion. 
