The Amazon and Madeira rivers; sketches and descriptions from the notebook of an explorer, - Softcover

Michigan Historical Reprint Series

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1425519644 ISBN 13: 9781425519643

Publisher: Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library, 2005

Synopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1875. Not illustrated. ... CHAPTER VI. THE WILD INDIAN TRIBES OF THE MADEIRA VALLEY. The Muras.--The Araras.--The Mundrucus.--The Perentintins.--The Caripunas.-- Our First Meeting with the Latter. -- Their Maloeca. -- Their Way of Burying the Dead.--Former Attacks on the Madeira, Javary, and Puriis.--The Unknown Waylayers at the Mouth of the Mamore.--Future of these Indians.--Their Languages and Religious Views.--Their Pajes.--An Old Settlement. HERE is a proverbial saying diffused over the whole Amazon "lazy like a Mura who sleeps on three cords;" that is, who does not even take the trouble of making a proper hammock; and indeed the saying is right. The Muras are the laziest of all the lazy Indians of these parts. They are despicable alike to white and coloured men; and notwithstanding their well-known skill in hunting, fishing, diving and "similar free arts," any other Indian or mestizo would think it the gravest insult to be taken for one of these pariahs. Once they were a powerful tribe; but bloody feuds with the Mundrucus, at the end of the last century, reduced them to the poor condition we now see them in, leading an unsettled, gipsy life on the Amazon and the lower course of its tributaries; on any of which their light pirogues, sometimes in flotillas of twenty and thirty, may be seen gliding swiftly along. Owing to the accession of runaway slaves, they exhibit somewhat of the mulatto type; and their degeneracy has been so complete as almost to have extinguished their original character; which, said to have been a warlike and courageous one, now fitfully breaks out in daring robberies and treacherous murders. In less than a hundred and fifty years even their last remnants will probably have vanished entirely, not much to the detriment of the country, which...

Edition details

• Publisher: Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1425519644
• ISBN 13: 9781425519643
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232