CLASSES OF INDIANS. 
295 
to which they arc attracted, by the fisheries, and some dwell 
in little farms on the plains or savannahs. The Missions of 
the Aragonese Capuchins which wo visited, alone contain 
fifteen thousand Indians, almost all of the Chayma race. 
The villages, however, are less populous there than in the 
province of Barcelona. Their average population is only 
between five or six hundred Indians ; while more to the 
west, in the Missions of the Franciscans of Piritu, we find 
Indian villages containing two or thi’ee thousand inhabitants. 
In computing at sixty thousand the number of natives in the 
provinces of Cumana and Barcelona, I include only those who 
inhabit the mainland, and not the Uuayquerias of the island 
of Margarets, and the great mass of the Gtuaraimos, who have 
preserved their independence in the islands formed by the 
Delta of the Orinoco. The number of these is generally 
reckoned at six or eight thousand; but this estimate ap- 
pears to me to be exaggerated. Except a few families of 
Guaraunos who roam occasionally in the marshy grounds, 
called Los Morichules, and between the Cano de Mannmo 
and the Bio Guarapiehe, consequently, on the continent 
itself, there have not been for these thirty years, any Indian 
savages in New Andalusia. 
I use with regret the word savage, because it implies a 
difference of cultivation between the reduced Indian, living 
in the Missions, and the free or independent Indian ; a 
difference which is often belied by fact. In the forests of 
South America there are tribes of natives, peacefully united 
in villages, and who render obedience to chiefs.* They cul- 
tivate the plantain-tree, cassava, and cotton, on a tolerably 
extensive tract of ground, and they employ the cotton for 
weaving hammocks. These peoplo are scarcely more bar- 
barous than the naked Indians of the Missions, who have 
been taught to make the sign of the cross. It is a common 
error in Europe, to look on all natives not reduced to a state 
of subjection, as wanderers and hunters. Agriculture was 
practised on the American continent long before the arrival 
of Europeans. It is still practised between the Orinoco and 
the river Amazon, in lands cleared amidst the forests, places 
to which the missionaries have never penetrated. It would 
he to imbibe false ideas respecting the actual condition of the 
nations of South America, to consider as synonymous the 
* These chiefs bear tne designations of Pccannati, Apoto, or Sibierne. 
