300 
INDIAN APATHT. 
lues ; they may have prevented them from painting theii 
skin, from making incisions on their chins, noses and cheeks ; 
they may have destroyed among the great mass of the people 
superstitious ideas, mysteriously transmitted from father to 
son in certain families ; but it ’has been easier for them to 
proscribe customs and efface remembrances, than to substi- 
tute new ideas in the place of the old ones. 
The Indian of the Mission is secure of subsistence; and 
being released from continual struggles against hostile powers, 
from conflicts with the elements anu man, he leads a more 
monotonous life, less active, and less fitted to inspire energy 
of mind, than the habits of the wild or independent Indian. 
He possesses that mildness of character which belongs to 
the love of repose; not that which arises from sensibility 
and the emotions of the soul. The sphere of his ideas is 
not enlarged, where, having no intercourse with the whites, 
lie remains a stranger to those objects with which European 
civilization has enriched the New World. All his actions 
seem prompted by the wants of the moment. Taciturn, 
serious, and absorbed in himself, he assumes a sedate and 
mysterious air. When a person has resided but a short 
time in the Missions, and is but little familiarized with the 
aspect of the natives, he is led to mistake their indolence 
and the torpid state of their faculties, for the expression of 
melancholy, and a meditative turn of mind. 
I have dwelt on these features of the Indian character, 
.md oil the different mollifications which that character 
exhibits under the government of the missionaries, with the 
view of rendering more intelligible tho observations which 
form the subject of the present chapter. I shall begin 
by the nation of the Chaymas, of whom more than fifteen 
thousand inhabit the Missions above noticed. The Chayma 
nation, which Father Francisco of Pampcluna* began to 
reduce to subjection in the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, has the Oumanagotos on the west, the Guaraunos on 
the east, and the Canbbees on the south. Their territory 
occupies a space along the elevated mountains of the Co- 
collar and the Guacharo, the banks of the Guarapiche, of 
* The name of this monk, celebrated for Ills intrepidity, is still 
revered m. the province, lie sowed the first seeds of civilization among 
these mountains. He had long been captain of a ship; and before he 
lecame a monk, was known by the name of Tiburti' Redin. 
