Venezuela

The aboriginal inhabitants of Venezuela preserve their habits and racial customs unchanged only in two regions of the republic, namely, along the north-west frontier and in the vast forests of Guayana. Elsewhere, a few families remain in the less accessible and more barren regions, but the “Indians” have been in general absorbed by intermarriage into the Spanish-speaking Venezuela nation, slowly emerging from the mixture of races which have at various times occupied the territory.

A powerful tribe occupy the mountains and forests along the Colombian frontier, and these are generally known as the Goajiros. Some of their villages are on the shores of Lake Maracaibo, as at Sinamaica, and are of the pile-dwelling type which first gave rise to the name of the country; most of the tribe, however, live as an independent nation within recognised boundaries.

Both men and women may be seen in Maracaibo on market days, clothed then in the white or blue garments which all keep for contact with civilisation. In their own villages they wear a less elaborate costume. The men are well built, light and agile, with keen and intelligent faces, but the women have the amorphous figures and dull, heavy faces which come of centuries of slavery and drudgery for their menkind. Apparently they are ethnologically a branch of the great Carib group of which we shall have more to say later. As might be surmised from the fact of their independence, the Goajiros are vigorous and warlike, and incidentally excellent horsemen.

Their territory extends from Rio Hacha, in Colombia, down into the Goajira peninsula, and across the Venezuelan border to within eight or ten miles of Sinamaica. The boundary is guarded by military pickets, and most of their trading is done on the frontier, merchants travelling to this point from all sides.

They live in small villages made up of round thatched houses, which at a distance look like so many ant-hills; the floor inside is strewn with grass, and on this the women and children work and sleep; the men spend much of their time in hammocks slung from the rafters. They are more fond of fighting than of working, but in civilised regions they are peaceable, and make excellent boatmen, while from their secluded homes they go out hunting and fishing, and are famous for the horses and mules which they breed. Their fields are tended by the womenfolk or by the slaves taken from neighbouring tribes in battle, and are of exceptionally large size, sown with yuca or manioc, potatoes and maize; they have banana plantations, but apparently have never cultivated cocoa or coffee.

In their homes the less wealthy members of the tribe wear the guayuco, or small apron, of different patterns, common to all the Venezuelan Indians, but some have good cloth clothing, trousers and jacket, with embroidered white shawls or blankets for the men and long mantles or knee-high tunics for the women. Nearly all the men carry firearms of modern patterns.

Each village has its cacique or headman, but they acknowledge the suzerainty of a temporal chief or king living in Tunja, and a supreme spiritual prince or pope in Iraca. Like the ancient Incas, who possibly influenced them and helped to make them what they are, they worship the sun, but little is known of their modes of worship or religious festivals.

If one of the tribe dies at home his body is buried in his cattle-pen, or where he may have been most frequently found in his lifetime, his clothing and weapons being interred with him for use in the happy hunting grounds to which he is shortly to depart. Their belief is, however, that for about twenty-four hours after death the spirit remains near its dwelling, and therefore they keep up a kind of lyke-wake all day, not to mourn for the departed but to wish him good hunting and to speed him on his way to the next world. At sunset his spirit departs, no more to return.

Along with their sun-worship is a belief in a good and evil principle in Nature, residing in the spirits of the wood, streams, rain, thunder, and so forth. Probably this represents the original animism of the nation before their contact with the Incas. From this animism arises the custom of exorcising evil spirits from the bodies of the sick. The sufferer is shielded by a curtain from the rest of the hut, and the medicine-man, clothed in a long white mantle or blanket, first massages the patient till both perspire freely, then flagellates himself till the blood flows, and finally, casting a powder into the fire, which sends up clouds of blue smoke, dances himself into convulsions, until from sheer exhaustion he sinks to the ground, covered with the white mantle; the fire is allowed to die down, and the sick man and his doctor are left alone in the darkness and silence.

As we have said, these Goajiros appear to be a family of the Carib group, but while they remain where they were at the time of the conquest, their relations eastward have been driven southwards or absorbed by the white races, just as they themselves at an earlier date drove back the aborigines, who now, with them, people the forests of Guayana.

The Caribs probably spoke more than one dialect when they first invaded the mainland from the islands of the Caribbean, but now the number of the tribes and languages considered by Señor Tavera-Acosta to belong to the group is about thirty, including the following: Caribe, Tamanaco, Otomak, Maquiritare or Uayungomo (also spelt Guayungomo and Waiomgomo. In every case for names beginning with U there is the alternative spelling with the unsounded Spanish G, and B and V are interchangeable), Maco or Macapure, Cuacua or Mapoyo, Taparita, Uiquire or Uiquiare, Pauare, Pareca, Uayamara, Cadupinapo, Curasicana, Yabarana, Arecuna, Macusi, Uaica, and others of minor importance.

The members of these tribes were those who, like the Goajiros, fought most stoutly for their independence when they saw it menaced by the conquistadores. These patriots, superior in many respects, as we have seen, to their foes, were characterised by the European invaders as cannibals, vicious and degraded, and the Jesuits later, in their holy zeal for souls (conquista espiritual) were no less harsh in their judgments on those who naturally resented the separation of parents from children and husband from wife and the general atrocities of the self-styled Christians who thus endeavoured to forcibly convert them.

In reality they were then, what they still are where unspoilt by “civilisation,” a fine race physically, brave and intelligent, possessing, no doubt, the vices of savagery, but also its virtues. The charges of cannibalism brought by the European exploiters of the New World (who had the vices of civilisation and barbarism combined, without the virtues of either) were either entirely baseless, or due to the ignorance which mistook the limbs of monkeys, which the Indians were always accustomed to eat, for those of men. As we have seen (Chapter IV.), the only substantiated cases of cannibalism occurred among the conquistadores themselves.

As an instance of the unintentional perversion of facts, it is interesting to recall the sixteenth and seventeenth century fables of the headless men of the Caura, the Ewaipanomo. The banks of the Caura are, in point of fact, inhabited by the Uayungomo branch of the Caribs, a name sufficiently like to be possibly the same. Whether that be so or no, a perusal of Raleigh’s and other original accounts gives the impression that some member of one of the shorter aboriginal tribes told the white men, by signs, that in the direction of the Caura were men whose shoulders were above their heads (i.e., the heads of the speakers). I put this forward as a plausible hypothesis for the origin of the fable, which may not commend itself to all, but may be compared with that advanced by various writers to explain the legend of the Amazon communities of this region.

The story of manless villages and tribes was told (and doubtless is still told) to nearly all travellers in Guayana and Brazil, and it has been suggested that the statements are founded upon actual attempts at emancipation on the part of small groups of women intelligent enough to realise the light esteem in which they were held in the social organisation of the Indians, and their worthiness of better treatment. These banded themselves together in free villages in remote parts of the forest, were seen at times by, or perhaps fought with, members of the normal tribes, and so gave rise to a legend of a nation of warlike independent women living somewhere, but no man knew where.

To return to the Caribs, we find these peoples at the present day inhabiting the forests along the banks of the Caroni, Parana, and Caura almost entirely, and particular regions on the Upper Orinoco and its tributaries, notably the Ventuari. They are still among the best formed and most intelligent natives of Venezuela, and retain in their native haunts the many industries by which they long ago learned to support themselves upon the produce of the forest lands.

These industries include cultivation of corn and manioc, the manufacture of fibres from the moriche-palm for cloth, of simple earthenware, often decorated with hieroglyphics in colour, of pigments for this and for painting their bodies in wartime. Their arrows are often poisoned with curare, the concentrated and congealed sap of the mavacure creeper, sometimes also with the extracted juice of the poisonous manioc. From the pith of the moriche-palm they obtain a kind of sago-meal, and this, with maize flour, bitter and sweet manioc or cassava-bread, and fish-paste or meat from their hunting expeditions, forms their staple diet. Their canoes are of bark or dug out of the solid trunk with the aid of stone or flint hatchets or fire. For hunting and war they had in early times good bows and arrows, spears of hard, heavy wood, shields of plaited creepers covered with hides of manati, tapir, or jaguar. Nor were they without musical (?) instruments, of which the maracas or rattles of small dried calabashes are used all over Venezuela in the country districts to-day.

Their religious beliefs appear to be, generally speaking, those of the Goajiros without the sun-worship, and birth, marriage, and death customs are much alike amongst all the tribes, whether Carib or no. The only difference here is that, in place of the usual marriage by consent without any religious ceremony, at the time of their conquest of the mainland, they adopted in part a marriage by capture, which has otherwise never been their custom.

The principal tribes of the aborigines of Guayana are thus enumerated, with their distribution and general characteristics, by Tavera Acosta, the spelling of the names being changed in some cases.

(1) The Warraus or Guaraunos (see note, p. 122) of the Delta; dull, unintelligent, and dirty.

(2) Arawaks, south of the Delta; intelligent, gentle, and exceptionally cleanly.

(3) Banibas, a branch of the Quichua nation living on the Guainia or Rio Negro and Atabapo; intelligent, gentle, and of a sedentary mode of life, excellent boatmen and hammock-makers.

(4) Guahibos or Uajibas, on the Vichada; dirty.

(5) Barias, on the Baria, Casiquiare, and Rio Negro; good workers and boatmen.

(6) Yaviteras, at Yavita; like the Barias.

(7) Piaroas, including the Maipures and Atures; living on the Sipapo, Cataniapo and Mataveni; timid and agricultural.

(8) Puinabi or Guaipunavi, on the Inirida; intelligent, but fierce.

(9) Caruzana or Marapizanos; on the Guainia, and neighbouring rivers, cultivators of manioc.

(10) Wareca or Guareca, at San Miguel and Baltazar; intelligent and industrious.

(11) Piapocos and Salibas, on the Guaviare, &c.; agricultural.

(12) Guaharibos, round the head-waters of the Orinoco; savage.

(13, 14, and 15) Guaicas, Pasimonabis, and Mandawaks, on the Casiquiare, &c.; agricultural.

(16) Yaruros.

Of these the Piaroas, Guarecas, Piapocos and Salibas, Pasimonabis, and Mandawaks are becoming extinct or are leaving Venezuela for neighbouring countries. It may be noted that many place-names, such as Guárico, Achaguas, Apure, Mucuchíes, are those of extinct tribes or of branches of those given above.

Tavera-Acosta finds the languages spoken by these people divisible into three main groups, but some appear to have an admixture of Parian or Carib words. It is interesting to note his statement that the common Chinese root chi abounds in all the dialects of Guayana, and the system of counting is Mongolian. In addition, he states that the languages show some Malayan affinities.

The most numerous tribes appear to be the Warraus or Guaraunos, the Banibas (a branch of the ancient Quichua stock of the Rio Negro), and the Arawaks; these last, however, are chiefly to be found in British Guiana.

The Warraus occupy the Delta of the Orinoco, and extend into the lowlands of British Guiana, having everywhere retained their racial characters to an unusual extent. Their language appears to be akin to the Carib group on the one hand and the Arawak on the other, while the people themselves have at times been considered as an offshoot of the Carib nation.

They are dark copper in colour, well set up, and strong, though not as a rule tall, and with low foreheads, long and fine black hair, and the usual high cheek-bones and wide nostrils of the South American “Indians.” Where they have not come into contact with civilisation they are particularly shy and reticent, but they soon lose this character, and some are said to show considerable aptitude as workmen.

Living as they do mainly in the Delta, their houses are of necessity near water and are raised from the ground as a protection against floods, being sometimes, it is said, even placed on platforms in trees. The roof is supported in the middle by two vertical posts and a ridge pole, and is composed of palm-leaves, supported at the corners by stakes. The sides of this simple hut consist of light palm-leaf curtains, and the floor is of palm-planks. The hammocks are slung on the ridge pole, and the bows and arrows of the occupants fixed in the roof, while their household furniture, consisting of home-made earthenware pots, calabashes of various sizes, &c., lie promiscuously about the floor. Some of the Warraus are nomadic and live in canoes, but the majority are grouped in villages of these huts, with captains responsible to the Venezuelan local government authorities.

The staple diet of these people is manioc and sago, with chicha (a mixture of manioc meal and water). For clothing they dispense with everything in their homes, except the buja or guayuco, a tiny apron of palm-fibre or ordinary cloth, held in position by a belt of palm-fibre or hair. That worn by women is triangular, and often ornamented with feathers or pearls. Among the whites the men always wear a long strip of blue cloth, one end of which passes round the waist, the other over the shoulder, hanging down in front; the women have a kind of long-sleeveless gown. For ornament they wear necklaces of pearls, or more frequently of red, blue, and white beads, and tight bracelets and bangles of hair or curagua (palm-fibre); some pierce ears, nose, and lower lips for the insertion of pieces of reed, feathers, or berries on fête days. The characteristic dull red paint on their bodies is intended to act as a preventive against mosquitoes, and it is made by boiling the powdered bark and wood of a creeper in turtle or alligator fat. All hair is removed from the body by the simple but painful process of pulling each one out with a split reed.

Marriage, as is usual among savage races, takes place at a very early age, the husband being often only fourteen, the wife ten or twelve years of age. Polygamy is common, but not universal; where a chief or rich man has several wives the first, or the earliest to become a mother, takes charge of the establishment during the absence of the owner on his hunting or fishing expeditions. The girls are sometimes betrothed at the age of five or six years, living in the house of the future husband from that time on.

At birth the mother is left in a separate house alone, where all food that she may need is placed for her, though she remains unvisited by any of her companions throughout the day; meanwhile the father remains in his hammock for several days, apparently owing to a belief that some evil may befall the child; there he receives the congratulations of the villagers, who bring him presents of the best game caught on their expeditions. This male child-bed or couvade is common to many of the Indian tribes.

The dead are mourned with elaborate ceremony—shouting, weeping, and slow, monotonous music; the nearest relatives of the defunct cut their hair. The body is placed in leaves and tied up in the hammock used by the owner during life, and then placed in a hollow tree-trunk or in his canoe. This rude coffin is then generally placed on a small support, consisting of bamboo trestles, and so left in the deserted house of the dead man.

The beliefs of the Warraus have been somewhat modified by contact with foreigners, and perhaps on this account they speak, according to Plassard, of one Supreme Being, the Gébu, superior to all the lesser spirits of plenty, famine, fire, and all phenomena of Nature. Earthquakes are looked upon as good signs, indicating the presence of a healthy, invigorating spirit in the earth; a belief not so strange when it is remembered that in the alluvial plains where the Warraus live earthquakes have seldom been sufficiently violent to do harm.

The religious rites of the communities are presided over by the Wicidatu, like the piache, a mixture of priest and medicine-man. Their worship includes invocations against disease and famine, and prayers for good hunting. To Gébu and the lesser spirits they offer the first-fruits of their harvest, vegetable and animal alike, at the one great festival of the year, for which elaborate preparations are made. All the previous day is spent in preparing provisions, and at dawn on the feast day, their bodies decorated with lines in blue and red, they surround the house of the wicidatu. The priest shortly comes forth, a crown of feathers on his head, and holding a pair of maracas. Shaking these, he leads the crowd to the rancho, or hut, set apart for the offerings, and there, sitting on the trunk of a tree, smokes and chants (accompanying himself with the maracas) to Gébu, in whose name he presently takes the offerings. After this he holds a maraca in the air at the length of his arm, shaking it, and after a time bringing it down to his mouth. Then, in a disguised voice, supposed to be that of Gébu, he asks why he is called; in reply the wicidatu salutes and offers the first-fruits, which are accepted. This acceptance is the signal for a general chant of the assembly recounting their petitions, which Gébu, speaking as before through the priest, promises to consider. Finally, the priest alone sings a song of farewell, and Gébu returns to his heaven. The ceremonies over, the wicidatu takes the best of the food and drink, and the remainder provides refreshment during the dancing and revels which occupy the rest of the day.

In addition to conducting this public worship the wicidatu acts as doctor in times of sickness, making use of certain simples and invocations to the spirits of the disease. Religious ceremonies are performed round the hut by night, and the medicine-man enters with a cigar of tobacco and herbs and blows the smoke on to the abdomen and chest of the patient. After the fumigation he is left alone for some time, until the wicidatu returns, dances and prostrates himself round the hut, performs the fumigation once more, and finally retires, leaving the sick man to recover or die, according to the manner in which the spirit has been affected by the supplications.

Not only are the Banibas probably the most numerous of the many tribes of the hinterland of Guayana, but they are considered by Tavera-Acosta to be the most advanced of them all. A description, therefore, of their principal customs may be taken as a sufficient indication of the tendency of the beliefs and practices of other aborigines of the interior.

The Banibas are found chiefly along the Guainia and the Atabapo Rivers, their villages extending into Brazil and Colombia. They are said to be intelligent and peaceable, of a sedentary mode of life, excellent boatmen and hammock-makers. Tavera-Acosta, adopting the view that they are a branch of the ancient Quichua nation, gives d’Orbigny’s description of the latter thus: “The head is oblong, nose long, slightly aquiline, eyes horizontal, profile almost European, though the cheek-bones are higher. They are serious, somewhat melancholy, industrious, with an intelligent expression, but reserved. Neither red nor copper in colour, but bronze. The foot is small, but instep rather high.”

Their villages are composed of round conical huts, built of poles covered with palm-leaves, each hut containing twenty or thirty of the same family. All the work is done by the young men and women, the elders living a life of absolute idleness; the men hunt and collect the rubber and other produce of the forest, travelling about in canoes; the women attend to the household duties, fish, and sow the small fields with maize and manioc. The hammocks made by the Banibas are especially noted, some being beautifully interwoven with feathers; the best have been known to fetch as much as £40.

Their staple foods are maize flour, manioc meal, and the cakes of arepa or cassava made therefrom; the meal they preserve by treating it with a preparation of bitter yuca, known as murujui; fish, smoked and dried tapir meat, and small game vary their diet, and in default of other beverages they drink yucuta, the chicha of the Warraus.

Their religious beliefs and customs have been considerably affected by the presence in the region of Jesuits and other missionaries from an early period in the Spanish occupation; hence Roman scapularies and pagan fetiches are found side by side, and their form of worship, as well as their faith, is a similar mixture of pagan and heathen dogmas.

Their customs as regards birth, sickness, and death are sufficiently similar to the rest of the aborigines to render description unnecessary, but the marriage ceremony is bound up with the celebration of the pubescence of the girls, which is extraordinarily barbarous in view of the high standard of their morals and general character.

When a maiden of the tribe attains the age of puberty her mother communicates the fact to the elders of the village, and her daughter is shut up alone in a hut, where she is expected to lie in a hammock, eating and drinking only a little manioc and water. Notice being given, the eligible youths of the community apply to her father for the girl, who is promised to him who shall bring as a present the best piece of curare, the finest hammock, or certain kinds of fish or game. The bridegroom having been thus selected, the girl’s seclusion is over. She is led forth, with eyes bandaged and head covered with a kind of bonnet, to a stake in the centre of the village, where the elders tie up and beat the unfortunate damsel with whips of cord or fish-skin, sometimes studded with sharp stones; the proceedings are accompanied by the blowing of conches. The two senior elders then advance inside the revolving circle and command the supposed demon in the girl to leave her and enter the stake to which she is tied, and presently, at a given signal, the flagellation ceases. The girl, often fainting from pain and weakness, is released and taken away to a distance; her wounds are washed and soothing herbs applied, while the youngest elder present is dispatched to advise the bridegroom that his future wife has been freed from the demon and is to be found in such and such a place. Then he goes from house to house shouting, “Come and burn the demon which would have taken possession of such and such a girl!”

Meanwhile the bridegroom has found the bride and taken her to his father’s house, and the rest of the population is collected round the stake, which is surrounded with faggots; the women, wearing fringed belts and holding one another by the waist, dance round in a ring execrating the demon; the men shout and sing and drink strong liquors prepared previously by the girl’s parents. The bridegroom, having left the bride with his mother, approaches with a torch to fire the pile, and apostrophises the demon, telling him that the girl he wished to harm is now his wife, paid for with curare (or whatever the present may have been), and finally, in token of their vengeance, he lights the faggots to the sound of a fearful din from the conches, tambourines, and maracas. All the people dance up to the fire and back again, the men lined up on one side, the women on the other, finally circling round till everything is consumed. In this way the safety of the bride from evil influences is secured, and she is recognised henceforth as the wife of her purchaser.

Sir Everard im Thurn described the Arawaks, of whom there are many families, as one of the most advanced groups in British Guiana, whence they extend into Venezuela. They build the cleanest and best houses, sometimes square and sometimes round, especially on the savannahs. Their standard of morality is high, and their religious belief, where untouched by those of the colonists, is a pure animism. He notes, however, that they use one general term very frequently in apostrophising a heavy rain, severe thunderstorm, or other unpleasant display of the powers of the air, without any definite idea of one being. This term, Oenicidu, he suggests, represents an approach to recognition of a single force behind all the phenomena of Nature, which might grow into a belief in a Supreme Spirit. Those who wish to know the folklore of these and neighbouring peoples should turn to Sir Everard’s book on the Indians of Guiana.

We have already seen that, while the early Romish missionaries in the north of Venezuela did much good in civilising and settling the Indians there, who have since become amalgamated with the Castilian element, in Guiana the atrocities perpetrated by the Jesuits far outweighed any good effect produced by the lessons of industry inculcated in the mission settlements. It is not surprising, therefore, in view of the early opposition of some of even the better ecclesiastics to the republic, that foreign priests and monks of all denominations were prohibited from entering the republic. There has been absolute freedom for all beliefs within the country since 1854, however, and the State contributes to the support of the Catholic churches throughout the land, while reserving the right to make all ecclesiastical appointments and to admit or reject papal bulls as it sees fit.

These remarks are made here in partial explanation of the absence of any recent attempts on the part of any branch of the Christian Church to convert or civilise the natives of Guayana. There is little inducement for the 409 priests who serve the 547 churches of the country to penetrate the unattractive regions of Guayana, and no Protestant missionaries have been found willing to sacrifice their nationality in order to take up the work. Yet these Indians are fine material for a sincere apostle to work upon, and were they given an incentive to use their time well, the talents of the best among them might soon lessen the distance between that visionary prosperous future of Guayana and the present day, when both land and inhabitants are standing still amid the progress of the world.