464
MIXED
RACES.
o f an Indian w o m a n and a w h i t e m a n . N o w , having seen thousands o f mestizos, I can assert that this supposition is altogether inaccurate. T h e individuals o f the fair tribes, w h o m w e examined, have the features, the stature, and t h e s m o o t h , straight, black hair which characterises other Indians It would he impossible to take them for a m i x e d race, like the descendants o f natives and Europeans. Some o f these p e o p l e are very little, others are o f t h e ordinary stature of the copper-coloured Indians. They are neither feeble, nor sickly, nor are they a l b i n o s ; and they differ from the c o p p e r - c o l o u r e d races o n l y b y a m u c h less tawny skin. It w o u l d be useless, after these considerations, to insist on the distance o f the mountains o f the U p p e r O r i n o c o from t h e shores inhabited by the Dutch. I will not deny that descendants o f fugitive negroes may have been seen a m o n g t h e Caribs, at t h e sources o f the E s s e q u i b o ; b u t n o white man ever w e n t from t h e eastern coast to the Rio G e h e t t e and the O c a m o , in t h e interior o f G u i a n a , i t must also b e o b s e r v e d , although w e may b e struck with the singularity o f several fair tribes b e i n g found at o n e p o i n t to the east o f Esmeralda, it is no less certain, that tribes have been found in other parts o f America, distinguished f r o m the neighb o u r i n g tribes by the less tawny c o l o u r o f their skin. Such are the Arivirianos and Maquiritares o f the Rio Ventuario and the Padamo, the Paudacotos and Paravenas o f the Erevato. the Viras and Araguas o f the Caura, the M o l o g a g o s o f Brazil, and the G u a y a n a s o f the U r u g u a y . * • The Cumangotos, the Maypures, the Mapojos, and some hordes of the Tamanacs, are also fair, but in a less degree than the tribes I have just named. We may add to this list (which the researches of SÜmmering. Blumenbach, and Pritchard, on the varieties of the human species, have rendered so interesting) the Ojes of the Cuchivero, the Boanes (now almost destroyed, of the interior of Brazil, and in the north of America, far from the north-west coast, the Mandans and the Akanas (Walkenaer, Geogr., p. 6 4 . Gili, vol. ii, p. 3 4 . Vater, Amerikan. Sprachen, p. 81 Southey, vol. i, p. 603.) The most tawny, we might almost say the blackest of the American race, are the Otomacs and the Guamos. These have perhaps given rise to the confused notions of American negroes, spread through European the early times of the conquest. (Herrera, Dec. i, lib.3 cap. 9. vol, i, p. 79. Garcia, Origin de los Americanos p. 259 W h o are those Negros de Quareca, placed by Gomara, p. 277, in that very isthmus of Panama, whence we received the first absurd tales of an albino American people ? In reading with attention the authors of the