IN THE FORESTS OF GUIANA
The Caribbean Islands—The Waraoons of the Orinoco—Kingsley's At Last—The tribes of Guiana—Rivers and itabbos—In the high woods—Swamps and forest bridges—Alligator and anaconda—The spotted jaguar—Humming-birds and fireflies, marabuntas and mosquitoes—The house in the palm tree—Legends and sorcerers—Cannibal mounds—A spiritual romance.
FOUR hundred years ago, when the beautiful West Indian Islands were first discovered by the white men, they were inhabited by various native races of which the most powerful were the Caribs, a fierce and cannibal people. The original home of the Caribs, according to all their own traditions, was on the mainland of South America, in the dense forests which stretch along the lower reaches of the great river Orinoco. From the wide mouths of that river they had issued from time to time in their war-canoes and swept like a storm cloud on the nearer islands of the West Indian Archipelago, killing and devouring the gentle and peaceful Arawaks and Waraoons who were in possession before them. In Robinson Crusoe we have the most vivid description in English literature of those cruel Caribs of long ago. For though Alexander Selkirk served as the prototype of Defoe's immortal story, and Juan Fernandez in the South Pacific was the island in which that Scottish buccaneer was marooned for several years, it is really one of the West Indian Islands, perhaps Tobago, that Defoe takes as the stage of Crusoe's exploits and experiences. The incident of the footprint on the sand, as well as the decidedly tropical vegetation of the island, is undoubtedly adopted from West Indian sources. And the cannibal scenes which are described with so much realism are probably derived from the writings of the early voyagers, who told of the inhuman habits of that savage Indian race which gave its name to the fair waters of the Caribbean Sea.
From the Caribbean Islands the old Indian races, both the conquering and the conquered, have now almost entirely disappeared. To find a pure-blooded representative of those primitive people whom Columbus and the other early discoverers found there at the close of the fifteenth century, we have to go to the forests of the South American mainland, to which the broken relics of the aboriginal West Indian peoples—Caribs, Arawaks, Waraoons, and the rest—were long since driven by the tyranny of the Spaniard. Within the recollection of the present writer, Waraoons of the Orinoco used still to come paddling once a year across the blue Gulf of Paria on a visit to the old home of their fathers in Trinidad—the nearest of all the West Indies to the South American Continent. He can remember, as a boy, going down with his father to the wharf at San Fernando to see these Waraoons arriving-statuesque, sad-looking savages, absolutely naked, who brought with them for barter articles of their own manufacture-hammocks of great strength such as they swung to the trees in their forest homes, baskets ornamented with stained porcupine quills skillfully woven into the framework, mats similarly embellished with " jumbie-beads " and other wild seeds, red, black, or brown.
In his At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies, Kingsley gives a beautiful description of the annual visit of the Waraoons to Trinidad, although he had not the opportunity of seeing this curious sight for himself:—
“Once a year, till of late-I know not whether the sight may be seen still-a strange phantom used to appear at San Fernando. Canoes of Indians came mysteriously across the Gulf of Paria from the vast swamps of the Orinoco; and the naked folk landed and went up through the town, after the Naparima ladies (so runs the tale) had sent down to the shore garments for the women, which were worn only through the streets, and laid by again as soon as they entered the forest. Silent, modest, dejected, the gentle savages used to vanish into the woods by paths made by their kinsfolk centuries ago—paths which run, wherever possible, along the vantage-ground of the topmost chines and ridges of the hills. The smoke of their fires rose out of lonely glens as they collected the fruit of trees known only to themselves. In a few weeks their wild harvest was over, and they came back through San Fernando; made, almost in silence, their little purchases in the town, and paddled away across the Gulf towards the unknown wildernesses from whence they came.”
In the forests of Guiana the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel has long carried on a most interesting work among the Caribs, Arawaks, Waraoons, and other Indian tribes which still represent those island aborigines around whom gathers so much of the romance and tragedy of early West Indian history. None of the Society's agents has been more diligent or successful than the Rev. Mr. Brett, whose Mission Work in Guiana is a standard book on the subject of the Indian races of Venezuela and British Guiana. We shall follow Mr. Brett as he tells us something of his canoe voyages on the rivers and itabbos of the Essequibo district, of his tramps through the tropical forests and swamps, of dangers from pumas and jaguars by land and alligators and camudis by water, of the ways and thoughts of the Indian folk, and the power of religious truth to deliver them from the tyranny of immemorial superstitions and make them good Christians as well as law-abiding British subjects.
It is more than sixty years since Mr. Brett began his labors among the Indians of Guiana, and his task was beset in those early days by many serious difficulties. One was the wild character of the people, and their hostility, the hostility especially of their sorcerers, to the teachers of a new religion. Mr. Youd, a predecessor of Mr. Brett's, had received a gift of poisoned food from one of those sorcerers, with the result that he and his whole family were poisoned. His wife and children all died, and though lie himself lingered on for a few years, it was in shattered health; while he too eventually succumbed to the fatal influences in his blood.
Another difficulty was caused by language, for in penetrating into the country the traveler, as he leaves the coast and plunges into the forest, passes rapidly from one tribe to another, all speaking different tongues. Nearest to the sea are the Waraoons and the Arawaks, farther inland are the Caribs, beyond these are the migratory Acawoios, who do not live in villages, but wander through the woods with their deadly blow-pipes, by means of which they bring down from the highest trees the birds, monkeys, and other animals that they use for food. Mr. Brett found it necessary to learn four Indian languages, none of which had ever before been reduced to a written form. And not only did he master them for himself, but prepared grammars and vocabularies which made the task of his successors infinitely easier, and also translated into all of them large parts of the New Testament.
Not the least of the difficulties was that of travelling in such a country. It involved laborious and often dangerous canoe voyages, and weary tramps through dense forests which at certain seasons were converted into dismal swamps. But Mr. Brett had the true enthusiasm and pluck of the pioneer missionary, and seems to have considered the hardships that fell to his lot as all "in the day's work.”
Guiana is a land of many rivers, and this makes canoeing the chief method of travelling, especially as the forests themselves become inundated after the rains, and it is then possible to cross from river to river by means of passages called itabbos. In this way, for example, an Indian crew can paddle across country from the Essequibo to the mouth of the Orinoco, a distance of two or three hundred miles.
It is not all plain sailing, however, in a voyage of this kind. Every few minutes the Indians have to use their cutlasses to lop away the network of interlacing branches and creepers which the prodigal growth of the tropics weaves so quickly from side to side of the narrow waterway. Sometimes again the passage is blocked by a great fallen tree, and then the missionary must lie down in the bottom of the canoe while his boatmen try to thrust it underneath the barrier. This has to be done as quietly and swiftly as possible, for fear of disturbing any venomous snake which may have taken up its abode in a hollow of the decaying trunk.
But canoeing was not always feasible, and then would begin the tramp through the forests—those mysterious and awesome "high woods of the tropics" of which Kingsley writes with such enthusiasm. To the inexperienced traveler in this wilderness of rank vegetation majestically confused there sometimes comes the fear of being lost, for he feels his own helplessness as to direction, and knows that but for the instinct of his Indian guides he would soon go utterly astray. He is bewildered, too, by the multiplicity of strange sounds. Parrots are screeching, monkeys are chattering, cigales are piping on a high note which suggests a shrill steam-whistle, insects innumerable are chirping and whirring; while at times, perhaps, there comes a noise like a muffled crash of thunder, which tells that some ancient giant of the woods has fallen at last.
The forests of Guiana are full of swamps, and when Mr. Brett came to these there was nothing for it but to take off his shoes and socks, sling them round his neck, and wade on through mud and slime. Repeated soakings often made his feet swell so badly that it was hardly possible to pinch them into shoes again, and he found it easier simply to go barefooted like an Indian. But this also had its disadvantages, for alternate wading through marshes and walking with bare feet over the burning sandy soil brought on painful blains which, unless great care was taken, would pass into ulcers. Sometimes the swamps were so deep that they could not be waded, and the only means of crossing was by trees cut down and thrown across. These primitive forest bridges, which are also used for crossing the smaller streams and ravines, are often of considerable length. Mr. Brett tells of one which he measured, the trunk of a mora tree, which was 108 feet long from the place where the trunk was cut to the point at which the lowest branches began to spring. The Indians are quite expert at walking on these slippery pathways, but to a European with his boots on they present a formidable task. Mr. Brett's Indian companions were sometimes quite anxious about him, and on one occasion exhorted him to "hold on with his feet," forgetting that toes encased, as his were, in a good thick sole are of no use for prehensile purposes.
Apart from the malarial fevers to which in those low-lying tropical regions a European is constantly liable, the chief dangers encountered by Mr. Brett in his journeys into the interior came from the wild animals which swarm in Guiana, both on land and water. There are alligators of various sorts which, as amphibious creatures, are dangerous on both elements. Mr. Brett tells of one which made its nest in his own churchyard, and rushed savagely one evening at an assembly of mourners gathered round a grave, just after he had finished reading the burial service, scattering them in all directions. But not less dreaded than the alligator is the great anaconda, or camudi, as the Indians call it, a species of water-boa which swims like an eel, and grows to the length of thirty feet. In the water the camudi is more than a match for the alligator itself, and has been known even to attack persons who were inside a canoe. One Sunday morning an exciting fight took place in mid-stream between a camudi and an alligator, exactly in front of a chapel on the bank of the river Pomeroon in which Mr. Brett was conducting divine service. At the news of the fight his congregation deserted him to a man, and even he could not resist the temptation to follow them as speedily as possible to the scene of action. The battle went on desperately for a long time, but at last the camudi succeeded in getting that deadly grip with its tail which gives it full purchase for its gigantic strength, and then it drew its coils tighter and tighter round the body of its formidable antagonist until the life of the alligator seemed to be completely squeezed out. At this point one of the onlookers, who had a gun and was a good marksman, fired and killed the camudi, which sank to the bottom. The alligator drifted ashore by and by, with its ribs crushed in, and in a dying condition, when it too was dispatched.
Besides the labaria, a very deadly snake which lurks among bushes or in the holes of old trees, the traveler through the forests has always to be on his guard against the puma and the jaguar. The puma is a formidable beast, but the great spotted jaguar is the tiger of South America, and is not much inferior in size or ferocity to the tiger of the Indian jungle. It is very destructive of goats, sheep, and cattle; and Mr. Brett tells us that he has often seen its footmarks in the morning on the moist ground all round a house-showing how it had been prowling about through the night in search of prey. The jaguar does not hesitate on occasions to attack men, and within Mr. Brett's own knowledge several persons lost their lives in this way, being both killed and devoured. Its habit of concealing itself in a tree and making its deadly spring from that coign of vantage upon any animal that passes underneath renders great caution necessary in going along the forest ways. It has a wholesome dread of the rifle, however, and the march of civilization is driving it farther and farther into the recesses of the woods.
But there are smaller creatures of the tropics for which civilization and the rifle have no terrors. There are myriads of butterflies, of course, which flutter past on wings of crimson and gold; darting humming-birds, with ruby or emerald breasts gleaming in the sunlight; fireflies which come out at dusk, and flit to and fro with their soft twinkling lights in the warm night air that is heavy with the breath of flowers. If the tiny creatures of the tropic woods were all like these, the traveler might fancy himself in a kind of Earthly Paradise. But what of the marabuntas—which Trinidad boys used to call "marrowbones," from some idea that the stings of these fierce wasps, which are fond of building their clay nests in the corners of the white man's verandah, would penetrate to that region of the juvenile anatomy? What of scorpions, centipedes, tarantulas, blood-sucking bats, betes rouges, chigoes or "jiggers," and biting ants, whether black, white, or red? Worst of all, what of the ubiquitous, irrepressible, unconquerable mosquito, which sometimes almost drives its victims mad, and whose victories over man, its mortal foe, deserve to be sung in the notes of its own musical humming and written with the blood of its helpless victims in some epic of the jungle? Mr. Brett does not exaggerate in the least when he reckons insect and other small annoyances among the most serious trials of missionary life in the inland districts of British Guiana. What sensitive white-skinned people have suffered from mosquitoes alone may be judged from this. At the season when the mosquitoes were at their worst, Mr. Brett's Indian crew, after a long and hard day's pull up the river, would sometimes paddle through the night for many a weary mile to the river's mouth and out to the open sea, in the hope of escaping for two or three hours from the stings of these excruciating pests.
Of the Indian tribes described by Mr. Brett, the Waraoons are in some respects the most interesting, precisely because they are the most primitive. When Sir Walter Raleigh was passing through the channels of the Orinoco delta in search of his imaginary El Dorado, he and his men were astonished to see fires burning high up in the air under the leafy crowns of palm trees. These were the hearth fires of the Orinoco Waraoons, who become tree-dwellers for several months of the year when their country is turned into a vast sheet of muddy water. Building a platform far up the stem of a palm tree, under the shelter of its overarching fronds, they plaster a part of this platform with clay to serve as a hearth, and sit smoking contentedly in their airy habitations, except at such times as they feel disposed to slip down into a canoe so as to visit a friend in a neighboring tree or go out fishing with a view to supper.
The Waraoons of Guiana are not tree-dwellers, for the floods on their rivers are not so severe as to make this necessary. But they are just as simple and unsophisticated as their brethren of the Orinoco. Except when Europeans come into their neighborhood and set up a standard and a rule of social decency, both men and women go absolutely naked. They are gentle and unwarlike, even as their forefathers were three or four centuries ago when the Caribs swept down upon them and drove them into the swamps. While skilful in their own arts of canoe hollowing and hammock weaving, they are extremely easy-going in their way of life, and combine a good-natured disposition with a vein of humor which is somewhat rare among the Indian peoples. Like all other Indians, they have a genuine belief in the Great Spirit, and they have many legends of their own about Him and His dealings with men. The account they give of their origin is striking—though with a touch of the grotesque humor which characterizes them. The Waraoons, they say, originally dwelt in a country above the sky. The arrow of a bold hunter, falling by chance through a hole, revealed to this hunter the existence of the lower world. Making a rope of cotton, he descended by it to the earth, and when he climbed up again brought such a glowing report of the game that swarmed in earthly forests that the whole race was tempted to come sliding down the cotton rope out of the Paradise above. The last to make the attempt was a woman, and she, being fat, stuck in the hole and could neither squeeze herself through nor yet struggle back again. There she remains to this day; and that is the reason why the human race cannot even peep through the hole in the sky into the world above. A curious version, we may think, of the story of Paradise Lost, and an equally curious version of woman's responsibility for the absolute closing of the gates of Eden.
Among all the Indian tribes of Guiana piai, men, or sorcerers, are the priests of religion. The piai man corresponds to the "medicine man" of the North American Indians and the "obeah man" of Africa. No one dares to oppose him in anything, for he is an expert in poisons, and his enemies have a way of dying suddenly. In sickness, the most implicit confidence is placed in his powers, which to some extent are medicinal no doubt, for he generally has a real acquaintance with the healing virtues of the plants of the forest, but to a much greater degree are supposed to be supernatural. His special function is to drive away the evil spirit that has taken possession of the sick man. This he does by rattling a hollow calabash containing some fragments of rock crystal—an instrument of magical efficacy and the peculiar symbol of the piai man's office, by chanting a round of monotonous incantations, and by fumigating the patient plentifully with tobacco smoke, the incense of this "Indian weed" being firmly believed to exert a potent if mysterious influence.
It was naturally from these piai men that the strongest resistance came to the introduction of Christianity among the Indians of Guiana. One of them, as has been mentioned already, poisoned an English missionary and his family; and Mr. Brett himself was frequently warned that the sorcerers were going to piai him also. Instead of this a strange thing happened. Saccibarra ("Beautiful Hair"), the chief of the Arawaks and their leading sorcerer, became disgusted with the tricks and hypocrisies of his profession, broke his marakka or magical calabash rattle, and came to Mr. Brett's hut, asking to be taught about "the Great Our Father, Who dwelleth in heaven." By and by he was baptized, receiving, instead of his heathen name, the Christian name of Cornelius. Cornelius the Arawak was a man of great intelligence, and it was with the aid of this converted Indian and his family that Mr. Brett was able to carry through his first efforts at translation. Still better things ensued, for five other sorcerers followed the example of Cornelius, gave up their marakkas to Mr. Brett in token that they had renounced the practice of magic, and became faithful and useful members of the Christian Church. Evangelists arose among the Indians themselves. Chapels sprang up here and there in the depths of the forest—two of them, as was accidentally discovered at a later stage, having been built on ancient cannibal mounds. Struck by the appearance of these mounds, Mr. Brett was led to undertake a little excavation; and his researches speedily proved that the very spots where the House of God now stood and Christ's Gospel was preached from Sunday to Sunday had once been the kitchen middens of large cannibal villages. There, heaped together, were the skulls and other bones of human beings slaughtered long ago, these skulls and bones being invariably cracked and split in a way which showed that the hungry cannibals in their horrible feasts had eaten the very brains and marrow of their victims.
We speak of the romance of missions; and even from the most external point of view they are often full of the romance that belongs to all heroism and adventure. But to those who look deeper the spiritual romance is the most wonderful—the transformation of character and life, the turning of a savage into a Christian. In the Pomeroon district of Guiana, the center of Mr. Brett's labors, more than five thousand persons have been brought into the Church through baptism. As for the moral and spiritual effect of his patient and heroic exertions, we may cite the testimony of the Pomeroon civil magistrate, who at first did not encourage Christian work among the Indians:—
“A more disorderly people than the Arawaks," he wrote, "could not be found in any part of Guiana. Murders and violent cases of assault were of frequent occurrence. Now the case is reversed. No outrages of any description ever happen. They attend regularly divine service, their children are educated, they themselves dress neatly, are lawfully married, and as a body there are no people in point of general good conduct to surpass them. This change, which has caused peace and contentment to prevail, was brought about solely by missionary labor.”
The chief authority for this chapter is Mr. Brett's Mission Work in Guiana (London, S. P. C. K.). Reference has also been made, however, for some points to Ten Years of Mission Life in British Guiana, by the Rev. W. T. Veness (S. P. C. K.), and Protestant Missions in South America, by Canon F. P. L. Josa and others (New York, Student Volunteer Movement).