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THE

METHODIST MAGAZINE

AND

Quarterly Review.

EDITED BY S. LUCKEY AND G. COLES.

VOL. XXI, No. 3.

man.

JULY, 1839. NEW SERIES-VOL. X, No. 3.

For the Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review.

SKETCHES OF SOUTH AMERICA.

BY REV. J. DEMPSTER, A. M., MISSIONARY AT BUENOS AYRES.

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THE Copper-colored race—which, in both Americas, amounts to not less than six millions-is a mysterious portion of the family of In seeking its origin the antiquary finds himself without even the dim light of fable, which sheds its faint and scattered beams on the infancy of most ancient nations that have long since been extinct. Nor is it less singular in the striking uniformity of its longsettled character. Though this race has existed in nearly two thousand tribes, which have been distinguished by hundreds of dissimilar languages, it has retained a surprising similarity in the great outlines of its physical and moral character. While its habits and manners are found to be modified to some extent by each particular tribe, there is an inflexibility, a steadfast perseverance, in what essentially characterizes the whole mass.

That the color of this people should vary so triflingly, though for centuries they have been spread from Hudson's Bay to the Straits of Magellan, is a problem not easy of solution. The strongest evidence has been urged, that the varying colors of the human race are directly referable to the powerful influence of climate. But these aborigines of the new world have existed through successive generations in every climate on the globe, and have retained almost the same complexion in the midst of the perpetual snows of the north, under the mild climate of the temperate zone, and under the glowing fervors of a vertical sun. Indeed, their color seems no longer subject to change by the influence of that element which painted them in their present hue. It is so connected with organic disposition, and has been transmitted unaltered through so many generations, that the same causes will doubtless continue to act in a uniform manner, and preclude all material change through ages to come.

The most observing travelers have likewise been struck with the almost perfect similarity of features found in the different families of these respective tribes. But this striking family-likeness is doubt. VOL. X.-July, 1839.

31

less referable to the combined action of two very different causeslocal situation and mental inactivity. The dissociating principles act so strongly on savages that the name of a river, a ridge of moun. tains, or a group of hills, forms an impassable limit to their friendly regards. Toward all beyond such narrow bounds the most implacable hatred is cherished, and the most bloody purposes are formed. The action of these principles has divided into hundreds of clans the ancient population of the American continent, and so effectually prevented intermarriages as that between many tribes they never occurred for centuries, but have been confined entirely within the narrow compass of each tribe respectively; and when these have been repeated through several successive ages, there becomes fixed a certain organic type, which may not improperly be entitled a "national equality of configuration."

So entirely similar are the features of different persons in the same tribe, that they can only be discriminated by the most attentive observation. An insulated state has been observed to produce a like effect, but to a more limited extent, among the Jews in Europe, and the various castes in India. But, in proportion as men are raised in the scale of intelligence, this tendency is counteracted. Hence it rises into effect most fully where mind is the least elicited. That the improvement of intellect acts as a powerful instrument to diversify the expression of the countenance, none can be ignorant who has the least acquaintance with the power of mind to imprint its operations on the face. And as the countenance reflects the emotions of the soul in proportion as they are frequent, variable, and enduring, and not in proportion to the violence in which transient bursts may break forth, the strong feelings occasionally awakened in the savage breast, by a thirst of blood, could not be such a mental exercise as to give variety to the physiognomy. These savages seem almost totally void of that sensibility which brings the mind in contact with the external world, and multiplies our joys or sorrows in proportion to the number and strength of surrounding incentives. Living, as most of these tribes do, under the happiest climate on the globe, where spontaneous nature provides for most of their wants, they feel but feebly the usual causes of mental anxiety, or incentives to vigorous exertion. Thousands of them wishing no covering but the paint which smears them, and no food but the fruit of their forests, remain so dead to that bright circle of exciting objects which act on civilized man as never to be roused from the everlasting slumbers in which they repose. Thus that interesting variety of expression found in improved society-where mind is summoned forth by the voice of thrilling events, where hope and fear, with their kindred emotions, are vividly and permanently excited-can never be expected among these indolent natives, who seem almost as void of emotion as the earth on which they lounge.

Another fact, originating in the social state of these tribes, has arrested the attention of most travelers who have visited them: I allude to the singular circumstance, that scarcely an instance of deformity has been found among these children of nature. This has been most groundlessly ascribed to a favorable influence which savage life exerts in producing corporeal beauty and vigor. But the strongest evidences exist that it is entirely referable to other

causes. These causes are two, which, though no way kindred, exert a combined influence in securing the event.

The first we shall mention is the fact, that a deformed female was never known to be married in these tribes; for we are assured that no amount of wealth or family friendship ever induces an Indian to make a wife of such a female. Hereditary deformity among such a people is therefore never likely to exist, though it is by no means an unusual occurrence in civilized society.

A concurring cause with that we have mentioned is found in the cruelty of parents toward their deformed offspring, and the imminent peril to which barbarous life exposes infancy. Were the affection for offspring in savage parents strong and vivid as in the bosom of civilized man, still their infirm infants would be unequal to the hardships of their condition; and when to these inevitable exposures are added the wanton neglect of those who instrumentally gave them existence, and their intentional neglect of their deformed and sickly infants, it can occasion no astonishment that such seldom survive to reach manhood. That savage life is incomparably worse than civilized life, as adapted to the increase and vigor of the species, every fact connected with the subject which history transmits unequivocally demonstrates.

In this hasty sketch of Indian character, we must, at least, bestow a passing notice on the manners and customs of this mysterious people. As in South America the temperature of every climate on the globe is found, from the unmelting frosts of the pole to the burning sun of the equator, some variety would be expected in the manners and customs of its ancient inhabitants. Spread out as these aborigines are, from the summits of the snowcapped Andes to the burning shores of the Amazon, it is impossible that all should have adopted the same modes of living. Those on the lofty table-lands of the Cordilleras, who never feel the relaxing influence of a tropical sun, are more active, manly, and enterprising. They are distinguished by a love of liberty, and an energy of character, to which those in the plains could never be roused by all those great changes which have passed with whirlwind speed over the revolutionary republics around them.

But this race, as a whole, appears remarkably adapted to the variety of its local situation. It is perfectly at home whether on the frosty ridges of the mountains, on the marshy shores of the Oronoco, on the woodless plains of the La Plata, or amid the spicy groves of the Amazon. It appears equally contented where it depends on the precarious supplies yielded by the game taken in the chase on the high lands, where it feeds on the spontaneous fruits of the fields and forests on the plains, where it is entirely supported by fish taken from their streams, which swarm with millions of the finny tribes, and where it lives for a quarter of the year on mere clay during the overflowing of the Oronoco.

Nor does the history of pathology furnish a more singular fact than those involved in this last-mentioned mode of Indian subsistence. The facts in the case are, that several large tribes on the Oronoco, and especially the Otomacs, who live chiefly on fish for three-fourths of the year, subsist almost exclusively on clay during the other three months; that they neither suffer decay in health or

strength during that period; that they swallow three-fourths of a pound of clay daily, and that the sensation of hunger is as effectually removed by it as by ordinary food!* They select a very fine clay, taken from an alluvial stratum of the most unctuous earth, form it into small balls, and slightly harden them by the fire. These are found stacked together in small pyramids in their huts, and are taken without any farther preparation than being partially moistened in water. Though it is a matter of historical record that clay is used for food in Java, Guiana, New Caledonia, and in the Archipelago, yet no instance is mentioned in any of these places in which clay has been made the exclusive diet of human beings. This instance in South America is believed to stand alone, in which men have for months in succession subsisted on clay alone; and this is a pathological problem, a solution of which the writer is not aware has ever been furnished.

But, on whatever aliment these tribes subsist, in whatever pursuit they are engaged, or wheresoever their residence is located, female degradation, that never absent attendant of pagan life, is found to exist. Polygamy among the Indians in South America is almost universal; and that endless and frightful train of evils, inseparable from this violation of the law of nature and of God, is felt in all its blighting power in the savage state. Here the vilest passions of nature, which have never been curbed by the least restraint, are fanned into the most desolating flame. The Indian hut, which is sufficiently wretched from the want of every convenience, is rendered a thousand times more miserable by the mutual jealousies and boiling rancor of the fiend-like inmates.

But, exclusive of this fruitful source of female wo, of domestic strife, and of social confusion, the sufferings of every Indian wife are so intense as to be more easily conceived than described. She is an abject slave, and her husband a most consummate tyrant. So awfully are these women impressed with the overwhelming calamities of married life, that, when they speak of that state, they clothe their thoughts in the most expressive terms which their language affords. Of this, we may take a specimen from the doleful song in which the matrons address themselves to the bride on the day of her wedding:-" Ah, my daughter," say they," what torments thou preparest for thyself! Hadst thou foreseen their terrible magnitude

* Humboldt observes, that some animals, like savage men, when pressed with hunger, swallow clay stones, and other hard substances. Instances of this may be found among wolves in the north-east of Europe, reindeer in higher Jatitudes, kids in Siberia, and crocodiles in Egypt and South America. In some of these have been found, on dissection, small blocks of wood, and large quantities of clay.; and in the crocodile pieces of iron, and large stones, more than three inches in diameter. That these indigestible substances may remove the sensation of hunger may readily be conceived, as that is removed when food is taken into the stomach long before the process of digestion commences, or before the chyme is converted into chyle. Whether this is effected by the impression exerted by the aliment on the coats of the stomach, or by the digestive apparatus being filled with substances which excite the mucus membranes to an abundant secretion of gastric juice, and so remove the uneasy sensation of hunger; or whether it is referable to some other undiscovered process, may never be determined. But the fact has been sustained by too many experiments to leave room for doubt.

thou wouldst never have married. Ah, couldst thou believe that, in a married state, thou canst not pass a single moment without weeping tears of blood, thou wouldst have shrunk with horror from a condition so frightful!"

The history of every Indian wife shows that these startling descriptions of her wo are sober realities, and not rhetorical figures. The day of her nuptials is the last of her existence in which she has not to lament her unhappy lot. If the soil is cultivated, it is only by her diligence. The fields only produce as her hand tills them. If the crops are protected, she guards them. If the harvests are gathered, it must be by her labor; and while she toils under the drenching rains and burning suns, her husband lounges in the shade, smokes his tobacco, or quaffs his chicha.

These unfeeling barbarians use their wives alike for slaves in the field, and for beasts of burden to carry their loads. Nothing is more common than for the women to be seen bending under a load of corn or game, each with her infant fastened to her burden, and her stupid husband passing listlessly before her, without the weight of a feather to encumber him. And then, after she has prepared a meal of that which her own labor had procured, she must stand by trembling with dread of her lord's frown, and not be permitted to taste a morsel until he has finished his meal, and then only to satisfy the cravings of nature by the fragments he has left! Indeed, if her constant privations, her exhausting toils, and her unpitied sufferings, be all considered, death must appear a welcome refuge from the storms of a life so crowded with calamities. No enlightened mind can contemplate a picture of female degradation in a pagan state without feeling, immeasurably beyond the power of all words to express, how much the gospel has done in elevating the social destiny of that sex. Indeed, were we to grant the most shocking extravagances of infidelity, and concede that death is annihilation, and eternity but a dream, still we should, at the greatest sacrifices, send these unpitied sufferers the gospel; for it is the decision of all history, both of civilized and barbarous ages, that nothing below the revealed oracles of God can elevate woman to that lofty position from which she is formed to send out so kindly an influence.

Among the tribes of whose character we are drawing this sketch all other parts of domestic discipline are the legitimate result of that part which we have noticed. Parents have not the least control over their sons after the latter acquire muscular power sufficient to cope with their fathers; and it is impossible to conceive the disrespect, and even animosity, they evince for the paternal instrument of their existence. This want of respect, and feeling of hatred for their father, are the natural fruit of the heart-sickening manner in which his domestic relations are sustained.

That brute force by which those of the softer sex, the mother and wife, are subjected to slavery; and that entire want in the father of care and affection for his offspring-which should be the dearest parts of himself-could not but awaken in his sons the worst passions of nature. Over his daughters the father exercises the most absolute control, and never gives them in marriage without receiving from their intended husbands a stipulated compensation.

The marriage ceremonies among these tribes are totally uncon

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