ery

CHAPTER XIII.

South America continued.-Discovery of Brazil. -Character of its inhabitants. Their treachand cannibalism.-Notice of the first emigrants-Missionaries.-Teaching the children to sing.-Effect of music on the natives.-Present state of the country-Personal appearance of the Indians.-Manner of living. Botucudoes.-Description of this tribe.-General description.-Horses, weapons,

ornaments.-Religion.-Remarks.

BRAZIL was discovered in 1500. The first Spaniard who ventured to cross the equinoctial was Vincent Pinzon. He landed at a point on the coast of Brazil, about twenty miles south of Pernambuco. A fleet was soon after sent out from Portugal, in which sailed that fortunate adventurer, Americus Vespucius, who has given his name to the New World.

The Indians of Brazil were real savages, perfidious, cruel, and cannibals, who scarcely appear to have had a noble or generous trait in their characters. The dreadful depravity of these tribes seems to have infused the spirit of the

furies into the female heart; and when the women of a nation are rendered ferocious, there is little if any chance that the nation will ever, by their own efforts, become civilized. The following account of the first interview between the Portuguese and the Brazilian Indians is sufficient to show the spirit of the latter.

When the ships arrived on the coast, in latitude 5 deg. S., there was a party of natives discovered on a hill near the shore. Two sailors volunteered to go ashore, and several days passed without their return. At length the Portuguese landed, sent a young man to meet the savages, and returned to their boats. The women came forward to meet him, apparently as negociators. They surrounded him and seemed examining him with curiosity and wonder. Presently there came down another woman from the hill, having a stake in her hand, with which she got behind him, and dealt him a blow that brought him to the ground. Immediately the others seized him by the feet, and dragged him

away, and then the Indian men, rushing to the shore, discharged their arrows at the boats.

The boats finally escaped, but the men had to witness the horrid sight of their poor comrade destroyed by the ruthless savages. The women cut the body in pieces, and held up the mutilated limbs in mockery; then, broiling them over a huge fire, which had been prepared, as it seemed, for that purpose, with loud rejoicings, they devoured them in presence of the Portuguese. The Indians also made signs that they had eaten the two sailors!*

It will not be pleasant or useful to give any more minute accounts of the practice of cannibalism. Suffice it to say, that the tribes inhabiting the southern part of South America, appear to have been in the grossest ignorance and most deplorable state of vice and misery to which human beings can be reduced. They were more like tigers and serpents than men ; for they used poisoned arrows, deadly as the "serpent's tooth," in battle; and they tore and devoured their enemies with the voracity of beasts

of prey.

The Europeans who first settled in Brazil, had to gain all their possessions by the sword; and few would go voluntarily to such a place; the Portuguese settlers were mostly convicts, banished for their crimes. As might be expected, this class of men, rendered desperate by their situation, and often hardened in crime, were not very merciful to the natives, who showed them no mercy. The bloody conflicts and atrocities on both sides were awful; yet we cannot feel the same sympathy for the cannibal Indian as for the gentle Peruvian, when his country is laid waste by the invader.

It was about fifty years from the time

* See Southey's History of Brazil.

of the first landing of the Portuguese, before a regular government was established, and a governor appointed by the king of Portugal. Then the Jesuits established themselves in Brazil, and began their labor of Christianizing the savages.

Several tribes had entered into alliance with the colonists, and these Indians were, by the governor, forbidden to eat human flesh. To conquer this propensity, was the great aim of the Jesuits; but finding they could not reclaim the old ones, they set themselves to instructing the children.

One gentle propensity these Brazilian savages showed, which seems hardly compatible with their cruel and vindictive characters-they were passionately fond of music-so fond, that one Jesuit thought he could succeed in Christianizing them by means of songs.

He taught the children to sing; and when he went on his preaching expeditions, he usually took a number of these little choristers, and when they drew near an inhabited place, one child carried the crucifix before them, and the others followed, singing the litany. The savages, like snakes, were won by the voice of the charmer, and received the Jesuit joyfully.

He set the catechism, creed and ordinary prayers to sol fa; and the pleasure of learning to sing was such a temptation, that the little savages frequently ran away from their parents to put themselves under the care of the Jesuits.

The Jesuits labored with the most devoted zeal to convert the natives. Their labors were of great effect; and gradually a change has been wrought, and the cannibal propensities, among those tribes that still remain independent, are no longer indulged.

Many missions, as they are called, that is, villages, where a priest resides, and instructs the Indians in agriculture

+

and the most essential arts of civilized life, as well as in their catholic duties, were established by the Jesuits, and are still continued. One very unfortunate circumstance has done much to alienate the independent tribes from their white neighbors. It was thought best to make slaves of the savages, in order to civilize them. Walsh thus describes the decree and its effect:

"The Indians were, as late as 1798, the occupants of the woods, and were generally found resident on the banks of the rivers and streams, which intersected the country. An elderly gentleman, who was secretary to the undertaking, informed me that it was necessary for the commissioners and workmen to go constantly armed, to be protected against their hostility. The Puvis lay on the river Parahiba, and others on the streams which fall into

it.

66

By a mistaken humanity, however, permission was afterwards given to the Brazilians, to convert their neighbors to Christianity; and for this laudable object, they were allowed to retain them in a state of bondage for ten years, and then dismiss them free, when instructed in the arts of civilized life, and the more important knowledge of Christianity. This permission, as was to be expected, produced the very opposite effects.

"A decree for the purpose was issued so late as the year 1808, by Don John, and it was one of the measures which he thought best to reclaim the aborigines, who had just before committed some ravages. He directed that the Indians who were conquered, should be distributed among the agriculturalists, who should support, clothe, civilize, and instruct them in the principles of our holy religion, but should be allowed to use the services of the same Indians for a certain number of years, in com

pensation for the expense of their instruction and management.

"This unfortunate permission at once destroyed all intercourse between the natives and the Brazilians. The Indians were everywhere hunted down for the sake of their salvation; wars were excited among the tribes, for the laudable purpose of bringing in each other captives, to be converted to Christianity; and the most sacred objects were prostituted to the base cupidity of man, by even this humane and limited permission of reducing his fellow-creatures to slavery.

"In the distant provinces, particularly on the banks of the Maranhão, it is still practised, and white men set out for the woods, to seek their fortunes; that is, to hunt Indians and return with slaves. The consequence was, that all who could escape, retired to the remotest forests; and there is not one to be now found in a state of nature, in all the wooded region.

"It frequently happened, as we passed along, that dark wreaths of what appeared like smoke, arose from among distant trees on the sides of the mountains, and they seemed to us to be decisive marks of Indian wigwams; but we found them to be nothing more than misty exhalations, which shot up in thin, circumscribed columns, exactly resembling smoke issuing from the aperture of a chimney.

"We met, however, one in the woods with a copper-colored face, high cheekbones, small dark eyes approaching each other, a vacant, stupid cast of countenance, and long, lank, black hair, hanging on his shoulders. He had on him some approximation to a Portuguese dress, and belonged to one of the aldêas formed in this region; but he had probably once wandered about these woods in a state of nature, where he was now

"We had passed along through Valença, one of these aldêas of the Indians of the valley of Parahiba, Christianized and taught the arts of civilized life. Another, called the Aldêa da Pedra, is situated on the river, nearer to its mouth, where the people still retain their erratic habits, though apparently conforming to

our usages.

66

They live in huts, thatched with palm leaves; and when not engaged in hunting and fishing, which is their chief and favorite employment, they gather ipecacuanha, and fell timber. They are docile and pacific, having no cruel propensities, but are disposed to be hospitable to strangers. Their family attachments are not very strong, either for their wives or children, as they readily dispose of both to a travel ler for a small compensation."*

One of the most ferocious tribes of Brazil was the Botucudoes,† thought to be the remains of a powerful and most cruel tribe, which the early settlers called Aymores. This tribe disfigured themselves by making a large hole in the under lip, and wearing therein a piece of white wood or some ornament. They also cut large holes in their ears, and stick feathers in the aperture for ornaments. They used to go entirely naked, and, brown as the beasts of the forest, were frightful objects to behold. .

"The Brazilian government deserves credit for the manner in which it has managed these Indians. They lived on the Rio Doce, and laid waste every settlement attempted in that beautiful and fertile region. In 1809, a party of Eu ropeans were sent up the river, and they found one hundred and fifty farms in ruins, whose proprietors had either per

*See Walsh's Notices of Brazil.

+ See Mrs. Graham's Journal of a Voyage to Brazil

cordingly ordered in all directions, to restrain their inroads and to punish their aggressions, and every encouragement was held out, to establish new settlements and civilize them.

"Every village consisting of twelve huts of Indians and ten of Whites, was to be considered a villa, with all its benefits and privileges, and sesmarios or grants of land were made to such as would become cultivators, giving all the privileges and advantages of original donotorios. New roads were then opened to form more easy communication, and considerable effect was produced on these intractable natives. The Puvis, a neighboring tribe, to the number of one thousand, were located in villages, called aldêas; and the arts and industry of civilized life made more progress among them in a few years from this period, than they had before done in so many centuries."*

In personal appearance, the Brazilian Indians were stout and well made; but the tribes differed considerably in height; some races being shorter than the average measure of the red men, or not more than five feet five inches; and other tribes, particularly the Botucudoes, were uncommonly tall. They all went naked, or nearly so, and were excessively filthy, so that their skins were a deeper shade of brown than the Indians of Mexico and Peru; and, compared with the clean and becomingly clothed Araucanian, these Brazilians seemed indeed savages.

Their huts-houses they could scarcely be called-were of the rudest kind. The stems of young trees and poles stuck in the ground, are bent at the top and tied together, and then a covering of cocoa or patioba leaves was laid on. These huts were very flat and low. Near

*See Walsh's Notices of Brazil.

each of them was a sort of grate, consisting of four prongs stuck in the ground, on which were laid four sticks, and these were crossed by others laid pretty close, for the purpose of roasting or broiling their game.

Their weapons were bows and ar

ica, that they have not made the natives of the country they have conquered, worse than they found them.

art of poisoning their arrows. This appeared to be almost the only art they had discovered. Nor had they any manufactures; for their uncouth ornaments evinced so little design or industry in their formation, that they are hardly worth naming. The women wore beads made of hard berries, or the teeth of animals, and sometimes bunches of feathers in their ears.

Both sexes occasionally painted their bodies black and their faces red. The men wore round their neck, attached to a strong cord, their most precious jewel, a knife. Before the settlement of Europeans this was made of bone, or stone. They had no canoes nor any notion of navigation; and some historians assert that they could not swim.

Their religious ideas were of the grossest kind. They believed in malignant demons, great and small, and were afraid to pass the night in the forest alone. They held the moon in high veneration, and thought her influence caused the thunder and lightning. They had a tradition of a general deluge; but they had no distinct idea or hope of a future state.

From this dreadful ignorance and degradation, many of the tribes, or the remnants of them rather, are now in some measure redeemed. The labors of missionaries, and the exertions of the government, are still directed to the improvement of the Indian subjects of the emperor of Brazil; and though they are still very ignorant and very indolant, it is greatly to the praise of the Portuguese inhabitants of South Amer

riences of Thomas Trotter.

CHAPTER XV.

Detention at Lipari.-Passage to Naples in a felucca.-Prospect of the Bay of Naples.Novel sensations on landing in the city.Strange appearances in the streets.-View of the city from the hill of St. Elmo.-Lively manners of the Neapolitans.

My readers left me at the island of Lipari, to which place I had been driven by a storm, while voyaging from Messina toward Naples. Our vessel was too much shattered by the gale to put to sea again, and I had the prospect of a long stay at this island, which was little agreeable to me. There was not much on the island that excited my curiosity; besides, I was in a hurry to get to Naples, where a thousand interesting and wonderful objects lay open to my observation. Very luckily for me, on the fourth day of my stay at the island, a felucca from Palermo touched there, and I was gratified by the information that she was bound from thence directly to Naples. I immediately struck a bargain for a passage in her.

The felucca was a vessel of about sixty tons, with two masts and lateen sails. We had a good wind, and on the morning of the second day, as I went on deck, I found we were close to the Italian shore, near the Bay of Naples. We steered between the island of Capri and the main land. Capri is a mountainous island, with steep, rocky shores, worn into arches and caverns by the surf. Little villages and country houses spot