Guaraní people

“ The Guarani alone cover more land than all the other tribes between the Amazons, the Andes, and the La Plata put together: but it is not certain that their area is continuous. In the Bolivian province of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, and in contact with the Indians of the Missions and the Chaco, we find the Chiriguanos and Guarayos—and these are Guarani. Then as far north as the equator, and as far as the river Napo on the Peruvian frontier, we find the flat-head Omaguas, the fluviatile mariners (so to say) of the Amazons; and these are Guarani as well. ”

“ It is remarkable that the Guarani language, among the peasantry, has almost superseded that of their Spanish invaders.
The natives, with their Indian blood, have inherited small hands and feet, and coarse black hair. The women when young, with their long tresses of jetty blackness, are often pretty ”

“ Young children of both sexes run about in a perfectly nude state, even in the town, and in the country this is practically a universal custom. The Paraguayans are all rather short, but strongly knit and wiry. They betray little evidence of Spanish blood, and although there must be in the towns many whose origin is Indo-Spanish, the Indo predominates. The language spoken by the masses is the Guarani, an Indian dialect which is common over a large district in the heart of the continent. ”

“ There is no doubt that to the new-comers the country in the neighbourhood of Asuncion, with its pleasant valleys, rolling country, and forest-covered hills, must have come in the shape of a relief after the apparently interminable passage of the plains. It was the spot at which the pioneer would naturally halt, and endeavour to found his settlement.
The Guaraní Indians extended but a cold welcome to the daring adventurers. Their temperament was by nature far less warlike than that of the savage and intrepid natives in the regions of the coast. ”

“ Besides this substance, which is stated to exist in it in the form of tannate, guarana yields on analysis the glucoside saponin, with tannin, starch, gum, three volatile oils, and an acrid green fixed oil (Fournier, Journ. de Pharm. vol. xxxix., 1861, p. 291) .
GUARANIS, a tribe and stock of South American Indians, having their home in Paraguay, Uruguay and on the Brazilian coast. The Guaranis had developed some civilization before the arrival of the Spaniards, and being a peaceable people quickly submitted. They form to-day the chief element in the populations of Paraguay and Uruguay. ”

“ The governor received them affably, and, besides paying the value of the provisions into the hands of the chiefs, he graciously gave them many shirts and other things, with which they remained satisfied. This is a people and tribe called Guaranís; they are cultivators, sowing maize twice in the year, and also cassava. They rear fowls as in our Spain, and geese; keep many parrots in their houses, and occupy much land, and the whole are of one language. They eat human flesh, as well that of their Indian enemies as of Christians; they also eat one another. ”

“ Even at the present hour, the Guaraon would not be secure, were he to stray too far from his sheltering marshes,—for, sad though it be to say so, the poor Indian, when beyond the protection of his tribe, is in many parts of South America still treated as a slave. In the delta he feels secure. No slave-hunter,—no enemy can follow him there. Even the foeman of his own race cannot compete with him in crossing the wide flats of spongy quagmire,—over which, from long habit, he is enabled to glide with the lightness and fleetness of a bird. ”

“ On the east of the Continent, ranging from the territory which is now known as Misiones in Argentina, and Southern Paraguay to the north-east of the Continent, were various branches of the great Guarani family, a nation that some consider should be more correctly known as Tupis, and whose northernmost section are known as Caribs. It is impossible to attempt to give an account of the very great number of the tribes which went to make up this powerful and great nation. ”

“ There are scarcely any pure Whites. The Guarani Indians of this region were not highly civilized like the Mayas and Incas, and therefore took on a Spanish culture instead of retaining one of their own. It would have been extremely interesting to see what an Indian republic could amount to in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Unfortunately the course of experiment was obstructed by one of the most sanguinary wars in history (1864-69) in which Paraguay carried on a contest with Brazil and Argentina until the greater part of its male population was destroyed. ”

“ The extreme difficulty of introducing any kind of literature into South America under the Spanish régime, cannot be better illustrated than by the history of the first Paraguayan book, now extant in a single copy in the library of Señor Trelles, a citizen of the Argentine Republic. First of all, about 1693, Father Jose Serrano translates Father Nieremberg's [131] treatise "on the difference between things temporal and things eternal," into Guarani, the vernacular of the Paraguay Indians. ”

“ All this country, through which the governor was marching with his people making his discoveries, is filled with large fields abundantly watered by rivers, rivulets, and springs, well shaded by trees and cultivated. It is the most fertile land in the world, adapted for cultivation and colonization. Many parts of it are conveniently situated for sugar refineries; and the country is full of game. The inhabitants are of the nation of the Guaranís, who eat human flesh, and are all agriculturists and rear geese and fowls. ”

“ They were probably the same race as the Quichuas, who inhabited the western shores, and a large portion of the Andes, under the rule of the Incas. The two languages are still spoken in various parts of the country. The Guaranis were superior in civilisation to numerous other intervening and more isolated tribes, who had sunk by degrees into greater barbarism. Like the Quichuas, they were agriculturalists—cultivating mandioca, maize, calabashes, and potatoes. They fed on honey and wild fruit; and hunted birds, monkeys, and other animals, and caught fish with their bows and arrows. ”

“ Their southern relatives, the Guaranis of Paraguay, also spoke of the four brothers and gave two of their names as Tupi and Guarani, respectively parents of the tribes called after them (Guevara, Hist. del Paraguay, lib. i. cap. ii., in Waitz) . The fourfold division of the Muyscas of Bogota was traced back to four chieftains created by their hero god Nemqueteba (A. von Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 246) . ”

“ The population has greatly diminished;—perhaps in the whole province there are not now more than 15,000 or 20,000 souls, a large proportion of which is of Guarani origin, the descendants of emigrants from the Jesuit missions in Paraguay, who abandoned them after the expulsion of their pastors in 1768. ”

“ The Southern Guaranis, or natives of Paraguay, include at the same time the tribes who have submitted to the sway of the missions, in the establishments which the Jesuits have formed in the country, and others who still roam in freedom throughout the forests of that province. Besides the Guaranis, properly so called who are all Christians, and inhabit thirty-two rather extensive villages situated on the borders of the Parana, the Paraguay, and the Uruguay rivers, there exists a certain number of wild hordes belonging to the same race, who remain hidden in the depths of the woods. ”

“ The wrecks of the camp lie thickly on every side—bones of men, broken weapons, ammunition and the débris of gun-carriages, baggage-carts and boxes. This region is the heart of the country occupied by the Cangua Indians, a peaceable tribe who speak the Guarani language, without the admixture of Spanish words which prevails in the language as spoken in the more civilized parts of Paraguay. They rarely leave their forest homes except to seek a market for their wax, which they exchange for tobacco and other commodities. ”

“ The soil about Corrientes is sandy: trees thrive, but there is more brushwood than timber. The inhabitants, having hitherto had but little intercourse with the rest of the world, are naturally ignorant respecting Europe and its usages. Many of them know but little Spanish, using the Indian dialect, the ‘Guarani,’ which prevails more or less throughout all this part of the interior of South America, including Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil. ”

“ Agazes, Guatatas, Naperús, Mayas, and many others, whom we have hitherto always vanquished, and no people has ever conquered us, and we never thought we should be conquered by anyone. Now we have found others more valiant than ourselves, and we have come to place ourselves in their power and be their slaves. You are the chief of the Spaniards, command us and we will obey your orders. The Guaranís know full well that they are not strong enough to make war on us; we fear them not. They would never have dared to interfere with us without the aid of the Spaniards. ”

“ Azara is one of the few who deny that the country was inhabited by a multitude of various nations, as many writers have asserted, and nevertheless enumerates and describes no less than thirty-two nations and more than fifty tribes. I maintain there was only one nation, the Guaraní; and in the province of La Plata, described by Alvar Nuñez and by Schmidt, the Guaranís were divided into twenty-one tribes, who differed only in their habits, or their arms, or in the nature of the country inhabited by them. ”

“ Indeed, in estimating the benefits derived by the company of the Jesuits from this fount of labour, a very gifted modern Argentine writer estimates the eighteenth-century Guaraní population of the Paraguayan missions at some 150,000, adding that, so healthy was the climate [228] of their country that almost the entire force of this community was available, invalids being almost unknown. In this he unconsciously pays a notable tribute to the methods employed in the 'Reductions'—by which name these mission towns were also known. ”

“ The life of the coloured folk, who so largely predominate among the population, offers many problems, whose solutions will doubtless work themselves out. The people of Guiana are possibly more varied than those of any other community in the world, with representations of every race—the European and Indo-European, the African negro, the Chinese, folk from Java and Annam, together with its own native races, and the white American, with many mixed breeds. ”

“ The monks and the clergy repeated this warning, and the governor concluded by distributing presents among them, such as shirts, stuffs, caps, and other things they delighted in.
These Guaranís speak a language common to all the tribes of this province. They eat the flesh of their enemies whom they take captive in war, bringing them to their settlements and making great merriment and rejoicing with them, dancing and singing till the captive grows fat. They give him their wives and daughters, in order that he may have every pleasure. It is these wives who take the trouble to- 130 - fatten him. ”

“ Honduras suffers partly from its tropical situation but still more from the mixture of races, and the large amount of Negro blood in the population of the lowlands. By contrast with Guatemala the Indian element is here unimportant, and the people are Negroes and half-breeds, or a little of each. With its 600,000 population largely of mongrel origin, the Republic has been a backward member of the Central American group throughout most of its history. British Honduras is an unimportant area with much the same characteristics. ”

“ BRAZILIAN TRIBES NOT GUARANI.
Explanatory of the words not Guarani, it is necessary to state that in Brazil begins a distribution of nations and tribes which, tested by the evidence of language, present the same phænomenon which is exhibited by the Algonkins of North America, i.e. a single area of language covering a vast space, in contrast with numerous areas covering a small one; a phænomenon which will be repeated when we [Pg 430] reach Guiana and Essequibo. To clear, therefore, the ground, the non-Guarini Brazilians will be disposed of first.
THE BOTOCUDOS.
Synonym.—Aimorés, Guaymarés. ”

“ It is not my purpose to discuss the polemical relations of those who inhabit the banks of the Orinoco; but to give you some account of a very singular people who dwell near its mouth,—upon the numerous caños, already mentioned as constituting its delta. These are the “Guaraons,”—a tribe of Indians,—usually considered as a branch of the Great Carib family, but forming a community among themselves of seven or eight thousand souls; and differing so much from most other savages in their habits and mode of life, as fairly to entitle them to the appellation of an “Odd People.” ”

“ In another connexion d'Orbigny says: "The Guarani, from the Rio de la Plata to the Antilles and from the coasts of Brazil to the Bolivian Andes, revere, without fearing him, a beneficent being, their first father, Tamoi, or the Ancient of the Skies, who once dwelt among them, taught them agriculture, and afterwards disappeared toward the East, from whence he still protects them." Doubtless, this is too broad a generalization, and d'Orbigny's own reports contain numerous references to tribes who fear the evil rather than adore the good in nature. ”

“ Meanwhile, the general level of the autochthonous race is being raised; it is acquiring riches and self-respect, and must sooner or later get the country back into its hands. The Guaranis of Paraguay, whose race is widely diffused over the south, cannot be very inferior to the Aztecs. ”