South America | Page 6

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.
[Illustration: DIEGO DE ALMAGRO.
The fellow-conquistador and rival of Pizarro in the conquest of Peru,
and pioneer explorer of Chile.]
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