4G4 
MIXED HACTEH 
of an Indian woman and a white man. Now, haying seen 
thousands of mestizos. I can assert that this supposition is 
altogether inaccurate. The individuals of the lair tribes, 
whom we examined, have the features, the stature, and 
the smooth, straight, black hair which characterises other 
Indians. It would he impossible to take them for a mixed 
race, like the descendants of natives and Europeans. Some 
of these people are very little, others are of the ordinary 
stature of tho copper-coloured Indians. They are neither 
feeble, nor sickly, nor are they albinos ; and they differ from 
the copper-coloured races only by a much less tawny skin. 
It would be useless, after these considerations, to insist on 
the distance of the mountains of the Upper Orinoco from 
the shores inhabited by the Dutch. I will not deny that 
descendants of fugitive negroes may have been seen among 
the Caribs, at the sources of the Essequibo ; but no white 
man ever went from the eastern coast to the Rio Gehette 
and the Ocamo, in the interior of Guiana. It must also be 
observed, although we may be struck with the singularity 
of several fair tribes being found at one point to the east of 
Esmeralda, it is no less certain, that tribes have been found 
in other parts of America, distinguished from the neigh- 
bouring tribes by the less tawny colour of their skin. Such 
are the Arivirianos and Maquiritares of the Rio Ventuario 
and the Padamo, the Paudacotos and Paravenas of the 
Erevato,the Yiras and Araguas of the Caura,the Mologagos 
of Brazil, and the Guayanas of the Uruguay.* 
* The Cumangotos, the Maypures, the Mapojos, and some hordes of 
the Tamanacs, are also fair, bat in a less degree than the tribes I have 
just named. We may add to this list (which the researches of Sommering. 
Blumenbach, and Pritchard, on the varieties of the human species, have 
rendered so interesting) the Ojes of the Cuchivero, the Boanes (now 
almost destroyed) of the interior of Brazil, and in the north of America, 
far from the north-west coast, the Mandans and the Akanas (Walkenaer, 
Geogr., p. 645. Gili, vol. ii, p. 34. Vater, Amerikan. Sprachen, p. 81- 
Southey, vol. i, p. 603.) The most tawny, we might almost say the 
blackest of the American race, are the Otomacs and the Guamos. These 
have perhaps given rise to the confused notions of American negroes, 
spread through Europe in the early times of the conquest. (Herrera, Dec*. 
i, lib. 3, cap. 9, vol, i, p. 79. Garcia, Origen de los Americanos, p. 259-i 
Who are those Negros de Quoreca y placed by Gomara, p. 277, in that 
very isthmus of Panama, whence we received the first absurd tales of an 
albino American people ' In reading with attention the authors of the 
