Transcaucasia

“ In Russian. Statistics of Transcaucasia derived from the family lists of 1886, pub. by order of the Civil Government of the Caucasus by the Transcaucasian Statistical Committee, Tiflis, 1893, 4o. See also the Caucasus Calendar, published yearly at Tiflis.
Note on Russian Census of 1897 giving populations of Transcaucasia, Petermann’s Mitth. xliii. pp. 132–34, Gotha, 1897.
See also under Political: British Parl. Papers, various estimates of the population of certain provinces of Asiatic Turkey.
Maloma (J. D.) In Russian. List of inhabited places in districts of Bayazid and Alashkert, Izvest. ”

“ North Caucasus is composed of the Governments of Kuban, Terek and Stavropol; while the Governments of Chernomorsk (a narrow strip of coast at the foot of the Caucasus range between Novorossiysk on the Black Sea and a point a little north of Pitsunda) , Kutais, Tiflis, Zakataly, Daghestan, Baku, Elizabetpol, Erivan and Kars are embraced under the title of Transcaucasia. Five of the Governments, namely Kuban, Terek, Daghestan, Zakataly and Kars, are still in the military stage of administration. The territories of North Caucasus lie quite outside the scope of the present work ”

“ Ripley calls the Caucasus "a grave of peoples, of languages, of customs and physical types."172 Its base, north and south, and the longitudinal groove through its center from east to west have been swept by various racial currents, which have cast up their flotsam into its valleys. The pueblos of our arid Southwest, essentially an area of asylum, are inhabited by Indians of four distinct stocks, and only one of them, the Moquis, show clearly kinship to another tribe outside this territory,173 so that they are survivals. ”

“ It is three miles from the city. The third causeway, Tlacopan, is quite as memorably historic. The Calle de Tacuba is the ancient causeway of Tlacopan. It was here that the Spaniards were defeated by the Aztecs, and, as is related by all historians, here also Pedro Alvarado made his famous leap, on the terrible night of July 1, 1520—the Noche Triste. It must have been indeed a night of sorrow for the conquerors. A pitiless rain poured down upon the invaders. Neither starlight nor moonlight lent their gentle radiance to a scene so terrible. ”

“ I shall now collect some authorities to confirm the opinion that there are a race of men in the world calld giants.
Don Pedro Molina governer of Chiloe and several other eye-witnesses have affirmd that in the country behind the Cordileer mountains, there is a nation of Indians calld Caucahues, of an uncommon size, being near four varas or Spanish yards high; which is ten foot English. These 302 are the people antient travelers speak of calld Patagonians, who live on the eastern side, about 50 degrees south latitude. ”

“ Whether these mysterious people, who are said to have laboured only at night and to have vanished when the sun rose, were the original Caucasians who, we have supposed, set out from the eastern coast of Asia, and who were about to be absorbed by the more virile emigrants from India, or whether they were, as some suggest, a few wandering Greeks or Phœnicians on the coast of Sumatra, we cannot pretend to decide. ”

“ There are not many of the ancient race of Tcha, and they live so secluded in their mountain fastness that nothing definite is known concerning them. When Chaka’s father was a young man he, with a band of followers, unconsciously invaded the territory of the Tcha and climbed the mountain near their sacred retreat. The atkayma and his men were promptly seized and carried into the hidden city, where all were destroyed except the Itzaex ruler. ”

“ You can travel for many a long league in the Rio Negro country—that is what we call the Orinoco in the Territorio de Amazonas, because the only town in that territory, San Fernando de Atabapo, is on an ink-black river—you can paddle for many a day, I say, and see on the banks only empty palm huts and overgrown clearings. Ask what they are, and you will be told, “Old caucho camps.” Ask where the caucheros are now, and the answer is, “Killed by Funes.” The few of us who are left alive in that country do not bother with the caucho. We go after the balata. ”

“ The tribes of the Caucasus may be comprehended, for the sake of simplicity, under two denominations: the Tcherkesses or Circassians, in the west, and the Tshetshens in the east. In loose newspaper statements, and in the garbled reports of the war which remote position, Russian jealousy, and the peculiarly inaccessible character of the Caucasians, suffer to reach us, even this broad distinction is frequently disregarded. ”

“ The nomads, who constitute the vast bulk of the population, have not yet taken kindly to commerce. The people of Merv, indeed, accompany the caravans which still ply between the oasis, Persia, and Khiva, but 3 per cent. only of the merchants and shopkeepers of Transcaspia are Turkomans.658
GENERAL KURAPATKINE
Until 1890 Transcaspia was a province of the Caucasus, but in that year it was constituted a government, and intrusted to the care of General Alexis Kurapatkine.
No living soldier has had a more brilliant career. ”

“ On his left side, near the heart, gaped three fearful wounds, which almost divided the chest in two parts, and his hair was bound into a mass by the curdled blood, while his head was cleft with a tomahawk. The Indians only take a scalp when it belongs to an enemy of their tribe. He was carried to the middle of the camp and covered with a buffalo robe. I asked Cachakia what would become of the other man and the girl? ”

“ And they knew that they were come to Caucasus, at the end of all the earth: Caucasus the highest of all mountains, the father of the rivers of the East. On his peak lies chained the Titan, while a vulture tears his heart; and at his feet are piled dark forests round the magic Colchian land.
And they rowed three days to the eastward, while Caucasus rose higher hour by hour, till they saw the dark stream of Phasis rushing headlong to the sea, and, shining above the tree tops, the golden roofs of King Aietes, the child of the Sun. ”

“ The most striking natural feature of this region is the great chain of the Caucasus, the most stupendous mountain mass of Western Eurasia. It strikes from north-west to south-east right across the country like a huge frowning wall, and in this respect resembles the Pyrenees, though its peaks are vastly higher and much of it is crowned with perpetual snow. So formidable and complete is this great natural barrier that no railway crosses it, and only two main roads have been constructed over its passes. ”

“ One of the most remarkable characteristics of the Caucasus is that, while it has acted as a barrier between the north and the south, stopping and turning aside the movements of population, it has also preserved within its sheltered recesses fragments of the different peoples who from time to time have passed by it, or who have been driven by conquest into it from the lower country. ”

“ But to go no further than the traditions of the Incas who once ruled over this region, it is related that after the first creation the entire human family, inhabiting the slopes of the Andes, were changed into crickets by a demon at enmity with man's first creator. Throughout the continent these ancient beliefs are at present either dead or dying out; and if the Kakué legend still maintains its hold on the vulgar here it is owing to the isolated position of the country, hemmed in by vast mountains and having no intercourse with neighbouring states. ”

“ Their traits and geographical location have gained for the Caucasians the credit of being the oldest as well as the purest type of the white race, which indeed has been often called the “Caucasian” race. ”

“ This tribe dwells in the vast sierras of Yucatan, near the Great Lake, and the Atkayma of the Itzaex has the same importance and power as the Inca of Peru or the Caciques of the Aztecs formerly enjoyed. Chaka is the eldest son of the ruling atkayma; by this time he may even have succeeded to the title of atkayma himself, the head of his people, for his father was an old man when the boy left him. The family of rulers is a sacred one, said to be descended from the sun, and every one of the atkayma’s fifty thousand subjects would die for him without hesitation. ”

“ The aboriginal peoples of the region thus described fall into a number of groups of exceptional interest to the ethnologist. In the Chaco, to the north, are to be found, to this day, tribes practically untouched by the influence of civilization—tribes in the state which for untold centuries must have been that of the peoples of central South America. Some of them show signs of having been under the influence of the cultured peoples of the Andean regions, preserving in their fabrics, for example, figured designs strikingly like those of Incaic Peru. ”

“ And besides the horror that attached to mountain scenes in general, we must remember that Caucasus was the very type of all that was most remote, barbarous, inhospitable. It was a place to which no civilised man could ever bear to go ”

“ Whereas the Caingwas may be described as inoffensive Indians, the inhabitants of the Chaco are savages, hostile to the white man, who only here and there, with their permission, has settled on the river bank. Generally a people of fine physique and iron constitution, free from disease of any kind, they are swept into eternity in an incredibly short space of time if civilized diseases are introduced. Even the milder ones, such as measles, decimate a whole tribe; and I have known communities swept away as autumn leaves in a strong breeze with the grippe. ”

“ Aduarte recounts the superstitious beliefs and observances current among the Cagayán Indians, notions which shape or modify nearly all of their social customs; they are, from his standpoint, slaves to the devil in all things. The Dominican missionaries, [18] now eight in number, plan and begin the spiritual conquest of Cagayán. For nearly a year they endure, on account of the hostility of the natives, great sufferings from hunger, exposure, and apparently vain efforts; but gradually they subdue the natives by their unwearied self-denial, patience, and love. ”

“ All this forcibly impels to the conviction that the Catamarcan culture was essentially Incasic, but that it had already passed to degeneration and destruction before the arrival of the whites, and that the nations these found in the picturesque valleys of Tucumán were not the builders but the destroyers of the ancient glory of the region. ”

“ The Omaguas and Cocamas, the most western of the Tupis, dwelling within the limits of Ecuador, had evidently profited by their contiguity to the civilization of Peru, as they are described by early travelers as familiar with gold, silver and copper, living in permanent villages connected by good roads, and cultivating large fields of cotton, maize and various food-plants. The art-forms which they produced and the prevalence of sun-worship, with rites similar to those of Peru, indicate the source of their more advanced culture. ”

“ People talk of Caucasia as if it were a nation. I cannot tell you how many tribes there are; but for the most part they hate one another, and they speak about seventy languages, and cannot write any one of their own. ”

“ Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Indians of the Gran Chaco, and Brazil. Among the Matacos or Mataguayos, an Indian tribe of the Gran Chaco, a girl at puberty has to remain in seclusion for some time. She lies covered up with branches or other things in a corner of the hut, seeing no one and speaking to no one, and during this time she may eat neither flesh nor fish. ”

“ On the side towards the West of this Sea the Caucasus runs along by it, which is of all mountain-ranges both the greatest in extent and the loftiest: and the Caucasus has many various races of men dwelling in it, living for the most part on the wild produce of the forests ”

“ I replied that though it was not the Aztec habit to march and fight at night, such things were common enough among white men as they had seen already, and that because the Spaniards knew it was not their habit, they would be the more likely to attempt escape under cover of the darkness, when they thought their enemies asleep. Therefore I counselled that sentries should be set at all the entrances to every causeway. To this Cuitlahua assented, and assigned the causeway of Tlacopan to Guatemoc and myself, making us the guardians of its safety. ”

“ All who have seen the ethnographical maps of the Caucasus must have been struck by the motley appearance which they present; fifty various tribes may in fact be counted in this isthmus, the area of which is less than that of Spain. I shall speak here only of [Pg 354] the Caucasians properly so called—that is to say, of the peoples who dwell only in the Caucasus, putting on one side all others (Iranians, Europeans, Turks, Mongols, Semites, etc.) who have overflowed into this country from the adjacent regions. ”

“ Turkeys which had stood tied by one leg all day, inviting people to come and eat them, were now ready, of which for a medio two men had a liberal allowance; and I remarked, what I had heard of, but had not seen before, that grains of cacao circulated among the Indians as money. Every merchant or vender of eatables, the most of whom were women, had on the table a pile of these grains, which they were constantly counting and exchanging with the Indians. ”

“ In October 1537 Las Casas himself set out for Sacapulas, and was soon to have proof given him of the influence of the missionary teaching. The cacique, who was known to the Spaniards by the name of Don Juan, had made arrangements for the marriage of his brother, the youth who had accompanied the traders to Guatemala, to the daughter of the Cacique of Coban, and had prepared great festivities wherewith to celebrate the wedding. On such occasions it was an old custom to perform certain ceremonies when visitors from Coban crossed the river which divided the two jurisdictions ”