Guaraní

“ 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. ”

“ It is remarkable that the Guarani language, among the peasantry, has almost superseded that of their Spanish invaders.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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Guarani peoples who are found to-day in Paraguay are distributed over a large area, extending from the main waters of the Amazon and Madeira rivers through the heart of the continent. Amidst the forests and in the dense chaco of the Paraguay and Parana rivers many still wander in a primitive condition, whilst others but little higher in the scale of civilisation who have come under the influence of the Jesuit missionaries, occupy villages and towns scattered throughout the country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We had abundant opportunities to observe the rural populace in the vicinity of Trinidad. They are of a rather unambitious type, and seemed contented only when taking their noonday nap or siesta, or while drinking maté. The general language of Paraguay is Guaraní, although Spanish is used by the upper classes.
“Yerba maté” is the modern name for the caá guazú of the Guaraní. It is applied to the dried leaves of a species of South American holly (Ilex) growing abundantly in parts of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. The tree is very bushy and beautiful, and remains green the year around ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Boots and shoes are worn only by the upper classes. Goitre and leprosy are the only endemic diseases; but the natives, being underfed, are prone to diarrhoea and dyspepsia. The common language of the country is Guarani, although in a few districts Tupi is spoken. The country people as a rule understand a little Spanish, if living near any trading centre. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Paraguay is one of the few South American countries which has iron but as yet it is not exploited, although in the period of the Five Years' War it furnished material from which the cannon were manufactured in Asuncion. The language of the country is Guarani, phonetic, expressive and rich in vowels. Foreigners learn it easily and it is the vernacular of all excepting those people dealing with strangers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The former, ai, means self or the same; and the latter, hu, is the verb to find, or, to be present. [393] “To love,” in Guarani, therefore, would mean, “to find oneself in another,” or, less metaphysically, “to discover in another a likeness to one’s self.” This again is precisely the primary signification of the Latin amare; and if the sentiment impressed in that way the barbarous 430ancient Aryans, there is no reason why it would not have struck the Guaranis in the same manner.
In the Tupi or Lingua Geral the word for love is evidently but a dialectic variation of that in Guarani. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Jesuits took advantage of the interval between hostilities to endeavour to procure a revocation of the{227} clause in the Treaty respecting the cession of the “Reductions.” But their hopes for a favourable change in the Spanish councils were doomed to disappointment. Their enemies were now numerous and powerful; and amongst the calumnies revived or invented against them was one to the effect that they desired to set up a Guaraní kingdom, under a king of their own, named Nicolas, such being the name of a Guaraní chief. ”

“ The tribes of the Guaranis, or Waraus, who once inhabited the eastern side of the continent, from the La Plata to the Orinoco, still exist, sunk still lower in barbarism even than formerly. So little do they care for clothing, that even the females wear only a small piece of the bark of a tree, or the net-like covering of the young leaf of the cocoa-nut or cabbage-palm; while their appearance is squalid in the extreme. ”

“ That very day the two- 206 - Spaniards started, and their names were Hector de Acuña and Antonio Correa, interpreters of the Guaraní language, with ten Indian Sacosies, and two Guaranís. The governor ordered them to tell the chief of the Xarayes that they were envoys sent to speak with him, and contract friendship with him and his people; that he begged him to come and see him, as he wished for a personal interview. The Spaniards were moreover desired to obtain information of the tribes and settlements in the interior, and of the route leading thither. ”

“ The limits of the Omaguas are preeminently uncertain: so that it is possible that in the foregoing notice I may, in carrying them so far as the neighbourhood of Quito, have gone too far west. On the other hand, good authorities have even extended their geographical area further north, and their ethnological affinities to the Achagua. That they are really connected with the Guarani is a well substantiated doctrine; at least such is the evidence of the languages, although Vater objected to it. ”

“ From the first advent of the former a mixed race gradually sprung up. The Spaniards brought with them few if any women, and if a certain proportion of Spanish ladies arrived later they were not in sufficient numbers to affect the general rule, which was that the Spanish settlers were allied to Guaraní wives. ”

“ This latter is the real speech of the country. Spanish is spoken only in the cities, and even there the people use among themselves the remnants of the aboriginal tongue. Teachers in large villages 603often cannot speak Castilian; the few Paraguayan countrymen who know it are “afraid” to use it for fear their fellows will ridicule them for trying to show off. There has been more than one movement on foot to make Guarani the official, as well as the actual, language of the country.
The money of Paraguay has fallen to low estate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus was formed the modern mixed Paraguayan race. In a very short time, therefore, by means of the ties of relationship, a strong sympathy grew up between the Spaniards and the Guaranís or those of Guaraní blood, and a recognition of this fact formed the basis of the plan of government founded by the great Irala. The lot of the natives of Paraguay, as compared with the natives of the other Spanish dominions in the New World, was far from being a hard one. There were no mines to work. The Spaniards came there to settle, rather than to amass fortunes with which to return to Europe. ”

“ The small coast tribe or nation of the Guaranis, (called in British Guiana the Warraws or Guaranos, and by the Caribs U-ara-u) , inhabit not only the marshy Delta and [179] river network of the Orinoco, and particularly the banks of the Manamo Grande and the Caño Macareo, but also extend, with little variation in their modes of life, along the sea coast between the mouths of the Essequibo and the Boca de Navios of the Orinoco. ”

“ Twenty men had to be constantly in advance, cutting and clearing a road; and it took many days to pass through these forests, which were so thick that the sky could not be seen overhead. And on the said nineteenth day of the said month they arrived at a certain settlement of Guaranís, who with their chief, their wives and children, showing great pleasure, came forth to meet the Spaniards, two leagues from their settlement, bearing many commodities, such as fowls, geese, honey, potatoes and other fruits, maize, and flour of the pine tree, of which they make great quantity. ”

“ 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. ”