South America. W. H. Koebel
in many respects a people possessed of the true colonizing instincts. Their able and liberal Government was of a kind which could not fail to be appreciated by the tribes which they had conquered. Indeed, the various sections of these subjugated Indians appear to have become an integral part of the Inca Empire in a remarkably short time.
In their conquest the rulers appear to have strained every point to effect this end. Thus they were not averse from time to time to receive into their temples new and strange gods which their freshly made subjects had been in the habit of worshipping. These were received among the deities of older standing, and were wont to be acknowledged, and so, after a short while, were considered as foreign no longer.
A nation of which far less has been heard, but which in many respects resembled the Incas, was that of the Chibchas. The Chibchas inhabited the country which had for its centre the valley of the Magdalena River. The country of this tribe, as a matter of fact, is now part of the Republic of Colombia; thus the Chibchas were situated well to the north of the Inca Empire. The religion of these people closely resembled that of the more southern Children of the Sun. Like these others, they worshipped the masculine Sun and the female Moon, and a certain number of deities in addition.
The Chibchas have left some ruins of temples behind them, although these are not of the same magnitude as the Inca edifices. They were an agricultural people, and, in addition, were skilled in weaving and in the manufacture of pottery; they were, moreover, supposed to have been clever workers in gold. The costume of the race showed very similar tastes to those of their more southern brethren. The men of rank wore white or dyed cotton tunics, and the women mantles fastened by means of golden clasps. The warlike splendour of the men was characteristically picturesque, their chief decorations being breast-plates of gold and magnificent plumes for the head. They, too, employed as weapons darts, bows and arrows, clubs, lances, and slings. The fate of the Chibchas was, of course, the same as that of the Incas. Their bodies decked with their brilliant feathers and pomp sank into the mire of despond, never again to attain to their former state.
This very brief study of the Incas and Chibchas concludes the civilized elements of the Aboriginal South American. To the east of the Andes were a number of tribes, all of which were, to a greater or lesser degree, still in a state of sheer savagery. Near the eastern frontier of the Inca Empire resided such peoples as the Chiriguanos, Chunchos, Abipones, Chiquitos, Mojos, Guarayos, Tacanas; while to the north were similar tribes, such as the Ipurines, Jamamaries, Huitotos, Omaguas. These appear to have absorbed some crude and vague forms of the Inca religion, and were addicted to the worship of the Sun, but more frequently of the Moon.
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. Many of these remain to the present day, and sixteen are still accounted for in the comparatively insignificant district of the Guianas alone.
It is, indeed, only feasible to deal with the main characteristics of these various peoples—mostly forest-dwellers. Naturally enough, the tribesmen were hunters and fishers. The majority were given to paint their bodies and to pierce their ears, noses, and lower lips, in order to insert reeds, feathers, and similar savage ornaments. In the more tropical forest regions the blowpipe constituted one of the most formidable weapons. Bows and arrows were in general use, the points of these latter being of bone or hardened wood. The barbs of the spears were similarly contrived, many of these weapons being beautifully decorated in the more northern territories. The greater part of these tribes still remain in the forest districts of the Continent.
In Chile and in the River Plate Provinces an entirely different type of Indian prevailed; great warriors these, for the most part, who roamed the plains of the River Plate Provinces, or, like the Araucanians, lived a turbulent and fierce existence among the forests and mountains of the far south to the west of the Andes Chain.
It was these Southern Indians who disputed the soil with the Spaniards with the courage and ferocity that frequently spilled the Castillian blood in torrents on the mountains or plains. To the end, indeed, they remained unconquered, and death was almost invariably preferred to submission to the hated white invaders of their land.
Even here prevailed the socialism which so strongly characterized the races of the centre and north of the Continent. Despotism was unknown, and even the chieftain, in the proper sense of the word, had no existence. In times of war an elder was chosen, it is true, but with the laying down of the weapons he became again one of the people, and was lost in their ranks. Such crude organization as existed was left to the hands of a Council of Elders. There is no doubt that witch-doctors attained to a certain degree of power, but even this was utterly insignificant as compared with that which was wont to be enjoyed by the savage priests of Central Africa.
Taken as a whole, the Indians of Southern America represented some of the most simple children who ever lived in the lap of Nature. Unsophisticated, credulous, and strangely wanting in reasoning powers and organized self-defence, they fell ready victims to the onslaughts of the Spaniards, who burst with such dramatic unexpectedness on their north-eastern shores.
CHAPTER II
COLUMBUS
Columbus was admittedly a visionary. It was to the benefit of his fellow Europeans and to the detriment of the South American tribes that to his dreams he joined the practical side of his nature. Certainly the value of imagination in a human being has never been more strikingly proved than by the triumph of Columbus.
The enthusiasm of the great Genoese was of the kind which has tided men over obstacles and difficulties and troubles throughout the ages. He was undoubtedly of the nervous and highly-wrought temperament common to one of his genius. He loved the dramatic. There are few who have not heard the story of the egg with the crushed end which stood upright. But there are innumerable other instances of the demonstrative powers of Columbus. For instance, when asked to describe the Island of Madeira, he troubled not to utter a word in reply, but snatched up a piece of writing-paper and, crumpling it by a single motion of his hand, held it aloft as a triumphant exhibition of the island's peaks and valleys.
Fortunately for the adventurers of his period, his belief in his mission was unshakable. It was, of course, a mere matter of chance that Columbus should have found himself in the service of the Spaniards when he set out upon his voyage which was to culminate in the discovery of the New World. He himself had been far more concerned with the Portuguese than with their eastern neighbours. Indeed, until the discovery of America, the Spaniards, fully occupied with the expulsion of the Moors from within their frontiers in Europe, could give but little attention to the science of navigation.
The Portuguese, on the other hand, had for a considerable period been specializing in seamanship. From his castle at Faro, on the southernmost shores of Portugal, where Prince Henry the Navigator had founded his maritime school, that royal scientist had watched with pride the captains whom he had trained as they sailed their vessels over the gold and blue horizon of the Far South, and had exultantly drunk in on their return the tales of new shores and of oceans ploughed for the first time; of spices, riches men, and beasts, all new and strange, and, all appealing strongly to the imagination of the learned Prince, who only restrained himself with difficulty from plunging into the unknown.
It was with men such as these of Prince Henry's with whom the