The American Race: A Linguistic Classification and Ethnographic Description of the Native Tribes of North and South AmericaBrinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
History
The American Race: A Linguistic Classification and Ethnographic Description of the Native Tribes of North and South America
Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
Indians; Indians -- Languages
Of these tongues I have classed the Leca and Maracani as dialects of the
Takana, not from comparison of vocabularies, for I have seen none of
either, but from the locations of the tribes speaking them. The Moxa and
Baure are dialects of the Arawak stock. The Mura is a branch of the Tupi,
spoken by the powerful tribe of the Muras on the Medeira and Amazon, who
distinctly recalled in tradition their ancestral home in the west.[483]
The Chiquito, the Mobima, the Caniciana (Canichana), the Cayubaba, the
Itonama and the Ocorona remain so far irreducible stocks. Vocabularies
of the first five have been preserved, but nothing of the Ocorona. It
is probably identical with the Rocorona, in which Professor Teza has
published some texts.[484] I have not been able to identify it with
any other tongue. Hervas unites both with the Herisebocona as a single
stock.[485]
2. THE PAMPEAN REGION.
South of the dividing upland which separates the waters of the Amazon
from those which find their way to the Rio de la Plata, the continent
extends in broad level tracts, watered by numerous navigable streams and
rich in game and fish. Its chief physical features are the wooded and
rolling Chaco in the north, the treeless and grassy Pampas to the south,
and the sterile rocky plains of Patagonia still further toward the region
of cold. In the west the chain of the Cordilleras continues to lift its
summits to an inaccessible height until they enter Patagonia, when they
gradually diminish to a range of hills.
The tribes of all this territory, both east and west of the Andes,
belong ethnographically together, and not with the Peruvian stocks. What
affinities they present to others to the north are with those of the
Amazonian regions.
_1. The Gran Chaco and its Stocks. The Guaycurus, Lules, Matacos and
Payaguas. The Charruas, Guatos, Calchaquis, etc._
The great streams of the Parana and Paraguay offer a natural boundary
between the mountainous country of southern Brazil and the vast plains of
the Pampas formation. In their upper course these rivers form extensive
marshes, which in the wet season are transformed into lakes on which
tangled masses of reeds and brushwood, knitted together by a lush growth
of vines, swim in the lazy currents as floating islands. These were the
homes of some wild tribes who there found a secure refuge, the principal
of whom were the Caracaras, who came from the lower Parana, and were one
of the southernmost offshoots of the Tupi family.[486]
For five hundred miles west of the Parana and extending nearly as far
from north to south, is a wide, rolling country, well watered, and
usually covered with dense forests, called El Gran Chaco.[487] Three
noble rivers, the Pilcomayo, the Vermejo and the Salado, intersect it in
almost parallel courses from northwest to southeast.
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