The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations

The fate of these Indians is something terrible to contemplate. At the discovery there were probably 150,000 on Cuba, Haiti, and the Bahamas.[37 - I put the figures very low. Peter Martyr, whose estimates are the lowest of any writer, says there were more than 200,000 natives on Haiti alone. (De Rebus Oceanicis, p. 295.)] Those on the latter were carried as slaves to Haiti to work in the mines, and all of the Lucayos exterminated in three or four years (1508-1512).[38 - More than 40,000 were brought to Haiti to enjoy the benefits of Christian instruction, says Herrera, with what might pass as a ghastly sarcasm. (Historia General de las Indias, Dec. I, lib. VIII. cap. 3).] The sufferings of the Haitians have been told in a graphic manner by Las Casas in an oft-quoted work.[39 - Brevissima Relacion de la Destruccion de las Indias Occidentales par los Castellanos, Sevilla, 1552.] His statements have frequently been condemned as grossly exaggerated, but the official documents of the early history of Cuba prove but too conclusively that the worthy missionary reports correctly what terrible cruelties the Spaniards committed. Cuba was conquered in 1514, and was then quite densely populated. Fourteen years afterwards we find the Governor, Gonzalo de Guzman, complaining that while troops of hunters were formerly traversing the island constantly, asking no other pay than the right of keeping as slaves the natives whom they captured, he now has to pay patrolmen, as the Indians are so scarce.[40 - Ramon de de la Sagra, Historia de la Isla de Cuba, Tom. II, p. 381.] The next year (1529) the treasurer, Lope de Hurtado, writes that the Indians are in such despair that they are hanging themselves twenty and thirty at a time.[41 - Ibid, p. 394.] In 1530 the king is petitioned to relinquish his royalty on the produce of the mines, because nearly all the Indians on the island are dead.[42 - Ibid, p. 396.] And in 1532 the licentiate, Vadillo, estimates the total number of Indians on the island, including the large percentage brought from the mainland by the slavers, at only 4,500.[43 - Ibid, p. 414.]

As a specimen of what the treatment of the Indians was, we have an accusation in 1522 against Vasco Porcallo, afterwards one of the companions of Hernando de Soto. He captured several Indians, cut off their genitals, and forced them to eat them, cramming them down their throats when they could not swallow. When asked for his defence, Porcallo replied that he did it to prevent his own Indians from committing suicide, as he had already lost two-thirds of his slaves in that way. The defence was apparently deemed valid, for he was released![44 - Ibid, p. 385. These references to De la Sagra’s work are all to the original documents in his Appendix.]

The myths and traditions of the Haitians have fortunately been preserved, though not in so perfect a form as might be wished. When Bartholomew Columbus left Rome for the Indies, he took with him a lay brother of the order of the Hermits of St. Jerome, Ramon Pane by name, a Catalan by birth, a worthy but credulous and ignorant man.[45 - Las Casas knew Pane personally, and gives his name correctly (not Roman, as all the printed authorities have it). He described him as “hombre simple y de buena intencion;” “fuese Catalan de nacion y no habla del todo bien nuestra lengua Castellana.” Ramon came to Haiti four or five years before Las Casas, and the latter speaks of him in a disparaging tone. “Este Fray Ramon escudrino lo que pudó, segun lo que alcanzo de las lenguas que fueron tres, las que habia en esta ysia: pero no supo sino la una de una chica provincia, que arriba dejimos llamarse Macaria de abajo, y aquella no perfectamente. (Historia Apologetica, MSS. cap. 120, see also cap. 162). This statement is not quite true, as according to Las Casas’ own admission Pane dwelt two years in the province of Guarinoex, where the lengua universal was spoken, and there collected these traditions.] On reaching Haiti brother Pane was first sent among the natives of the small province called Macorix de abajo, which had a language peculiar to itself, but he was subsequently transferred to the province of Guarinoex on the southeastern part of the island where the lengua universal prevailed. He remained there two years, and at the request of Columbus collected and wrote down the legends and beliefs of the natives.

He is not a model authority. In the first place, being a Catalan he did not write Spanish correctly; he was very imperfectly acquainted with the native tongue; he wrote hastily, and had not enough paper to write in full; he is not sure that he commences their legends at the right end. Moreover his manuscript is lost, and the only means we have of knowing anything about it is by a very incorrectly printed Italian version, printed in 1571, and two early synopses, one in Latin in the Decades of Peter Martyr, the other in Italian, by Messer Zuane de Strozi of Ferrara, which has been quite recently published for the first time.[46 - Pane’s account was first published in the Historie del Frenando Colombo, Venetia, 1571, from which it has recently been translated and published with notes by Brasseur de Bourbourg, Paris, 1864. The version of Zuane de Strozi is in the Appendix to Harrisse’s Bibliotheca Primordia Americana, p. 474.] By comparing these we can arrive at the meaning of Brother Pane with considerable accuracy.

His work contains fragments of two distinct cycles of legends, the one describing the history of the gods, the other the history of the human race.

Earliest of creatures was the woman, Atabéira or Ataves, who also bore the other names Mamóna, Guacarapíta, Iiélla, and Guimazóa. Her son was the supreme ruler of all things, and chiefest of divinities. His names were Yocaúna, Guamaónocon, and Yocahu-vaguaniao-vocoti. He had a brother called Guaca, and a son Iaiael. The latter rebelled against his father, and was exiled for four mouths and then killed. The legend goes on to relate that his bones were placed in a calabash and hung up in his father’s house. Here they changed into fishes, and the calabash filled with water. One day four brothers passed that way, who had all been born at one time, and whose mother, Itaba tahuana, had died in bringing them into the world. Seeing the calabash filled with fish the oldest of the four, Caracaracol, the Scabby, lifted it down, and all commenced to eat. While thus occupied, Yocaúna suddenly made his appearance, which so terrified the brothers that they dropped the gourd and broke it into pieces. From it ran all the waters of the world, and formed the oceans, lakes, and rivers as they now are.

At this time there were men but no women, and the men did not dare to venture into the sunlight. Once, as they were out in the rain, they perceived four creatures, swift as eagles and slippery as eels. The men called to their aid Caracaracol and his brothers, who caught these creatures and transformed them into women. In time, these became the mothers of mankind.

The earliest natives of Haiti came under the leadership of the hero-god, Vaguoniona, a name applied by Las Casas to Yocahu, from an island to the south called in the legend Matininó, which all the authors identify, I know not why, with Martinique. They landed first on the banks of the river Bahoboni in the western part of Haiti, and there erected the first house, called Camotéia. This was ever after preserved and regarded with respectful veneration.

Such, in brief, were their national myths. Conspicuously marked in them we note the sacred number four, the four brothers typifying the cardinal points, whose mother, the Dawn, dies in giving them birth, just as in the Algonkin myths. These brothers aid the men in their struggles for life, and bring to them the four women, the rain-bringing winds. Here, too, the first of existences is the woman, whose son is at once highest of divinities and the guide and instructor of their nation. These peculiarities I have elsewhere shown to be general throughout the religions of America.[47 - The myths of the New World, (New York, 1868).]

The myth of the thunder storm also appears among them in its triplicate nature so common to the American mind. God of the storm was Guabancex, whose statue was made of stones. When angry he sent before him as messenger, Guatauva, to gather the winds, and accompanied by Coatrischie, who collected the rain-clouds in the valleys of the mountains, he swept down upon the plain, surrounded by the awful paraphernalia of the thunder storm.[48 - See the work last quoted, p. 156, for a number of similar myths of the trinity of the storm.]

Let us place side by side with these ancient myths the national legend of the Arawacks.[49 - I take these as they are related in Bretts, Indian Tribes of Guiana, Part ii, chap. x.] They tell of a supreme spiritual being Yauwahu or Yauhahu. Pain and sickness are the invisible shafts he shoots at men, yauhahu simaira the arrows of Yauhahu, and he it is whom the priests invoke in their incantations. Once upon a time, men lived without any means to propitiate this unseen divinity; they knew not how to ward off his anger or conciliate him. At that time the Arawacks did not live in Guiana, but in an island to the north. One day a man named Arawanili walked by the waters grieving over the ignorance and suffering of his nation. Suddenly the spirit of the waters, the woman Orehu, rose from the waves and addressed him. She taught him the mysteries of semeci, the sorcery which pleases and controls Yauhahu, and presented him with the maraka, the holy calabash containing white pebbles which they rattle during their exorcisms, and the sound of which summons the beings of the unseen world. Arawanili faithfully instructed his people in all that Orehu had said, and thus rescued them from their wretchedness. When after a life of wisdom and good deeds the hour of his departure came, he “did not die, but went up.”

Orehu accompanied the Arawacks when they moved to the main, and still dwells in a treeless, desolate spot, on the banks of the Pomeroon. The negroes of the colony have learned of her, and call her in their broken English, the “watra-mamma,” the water-mother.

The proper names which occur in these myths, date back to the earliest existence of the Arawacks as an independent tribe, and are not readily analyzed by the language as it now exists. The Haitian Yocauna seems indeed identical with the modern Yauhahu. Atabes or Atabéira is probably from itabo, lake, lagoon, and era, water, (the latter only in composition, as hurruru, mountain, era, water, mountain-water, a spring, a source), and in some of her actions corresponds with Orehu. Caracaracol is translated by Brother Pane, as “the Scabby” or the one having ulcers, and in this respect the myth presents a curious analogy with many others in America. In modern Arawack karrikala is a form, in the third person singular, from karrin, to be sick, to be pregnant. Arawanili, which one might be tempted to suppose gave the name Arawack to the tribe, did not all writers derive this differently, may be a form of awawa, father. In the old language, the termination el, is said to have meant son.

Of the two remaining languages said to have been spoken in the small provinces of Macorix de arriba and Macorix de abajo, in Hayti, we have no certain knowledge.[50 - The most trustworthy author is Las Casas. As his works are still in manuscript, I give his words. “Tres lenguas habia en esta ysla distintas que la una a la otra no se entendia. La una era de la gente que llamabamos Macorix de abajo y la otra de los vecinos del Macorix de arriba. La otra lengua fue la universal de toda la tierra, y esta era mas elegante y mas copiosa de vocablos, y mas dulce al sonido. En esto la de Xaragua en todo llevaba ventaja, y era mui mas prima.” (Historia Apologetica, cap. 197). “Es aqui de saber que un gran pedajo de esta costa (that of the northern part of Haiti), bien mas de veinte y cinco o treinta leguas y quince buenas y aun veinte de ancho hasta las sierras que haren desta parte del norte la gran Vega inclusive, era poblado de una gente que se llamaron Mazoriges, y otras Ciguayos, y tenian diversas lenguas de la universal de todas las islas.” (Historia General, lib. I, cap. 77). “Llamaban Ciguayos porque trayan todos los cabellos mui luengos como en Nueva Castilla las mujeres,” (id. cap. 77). The cacique of the Ciguayos was named Mayomanex or Mayobanex, (id. lib. I, cap. 120). They went almost naked, and had no arms, “eran Gallinas almenos para con los uños, como no tuviesen armas,” (id. cap. 120.)] Las Casas gives one word from the former. It is bazca, no, not. I cannot identify it. There is reason, however, to suppose one of them was the Tupi or “lengua geral,” of Brazil. Pane gives at least two words which are pure Tupi, and not Arawack. They are the names of two hideous idols supposed to be inimical to men. The one was Bugi, in Tupi, ugly, the other Aiba, in Tupi, bad. It is noteworthy, also, that Pigafetta, who accompanied Magellan on his voyage around the world, gives a number of words, ostensibly in the language of the natives of Rio Janeiro, where the Tupi was spoken, which are identical with those of Haiti, as cacich, chief, boi, house, hamac, bed, canoe, boat. But Pigafetta acknowledges that he obtained these words not from the natives themselves, but from the pilot Juan Carvalhos, who had been for years sailing over the West Indian seas, and had no doubt learned these words in the Antilles.[51 - Pigafetta, Reise um die Welt, so. 21, 26, 247, (Gotha, 1802; a translation of the Italian original in the library at Milan).]

The remaining idiom may be supposed to have been Carib, although we have actually no evidence that the Caribs had gained a permanent foothold on any of the Great Antilles at the period of the discovery, some careless assertions of the old authors to the contrary, notwithstanding.

The investigation which I here close, shows that man in his migrations on the Western Continent followed the lead of organic nature around him. For it is well known that the flora and fauna of the Antilles are South American in character, and also, that the geological structure of the archipelago connects it with the southern mainland. So also its earliest known human inhabitants were descended from an ancestry whose homes were in the far south, and who by slow degrees moved from river to river, island to island, until they came within a few miles of the northern continent.

notes

1

Since reading this article before the Society, Prof. S. S. Haldeman has shown me a copy of a work with the title: “Die Geschichte von der Marterwoche, Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt unsers Herrn und Heilandes Jesu Christi. Uebersetzt in die Aruwackische Sprache und erklärend umschrieben. Philadelphia: Gedruckt bey Carl List, 1799,” 8vo. pages 213, then one blank leaf, then 40 pages of “Anmerkungen.” There is also a second title, in Arawack, and neither title page is included in the pagination. The Arawack title begins: “Wadaijahun Wüüssada-goanti, Wappussida-goanti baddia Jesus Christus,” etc. The remarks at the end are chiefly grammatical and critical, and contain many valuable hints to the student of the language. I have no doubt this book is the Life of Christ mentioned in the text. The name of the translator or editor is nowhere mentioned, but I have no doubt Mr. Schultz wrote the “Anmerkungen,” and read the proof, as not only are his grammatical signs and orthography adopted throughout, but also we know from other sources that he was in Philadelphia at that time.

2

Brett, The Indian Tribes of Guiana, p. 117 (London, 1868).

3

Etudes Philologiques sur quelquee Langues Sauvages de l’Amerique, p. 87 (Montreal, 1866).

4

Beiträge zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika’s zumal Brasiliens, B. I., p. 705 (Leipzig, 1867).

5

De Laet. Novus Orbis, lib. xvii., cap. vi.

6

Martius, Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika’s, B. I., S. 687.

7

Antonio Julian, La Perla de la America, la Provincia de Santa Marta, p. 149.

8

Ethnographie, etc., B. I., S. 714.

9

The Myths of the New World; a Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America, p. 32 (New York, 1868).

10

The Discoverie of Guiana, p 4 (Hackluyt, Soc., London, 1842).

11

Relation de l’Origine, etc., des Caraibes, p. 39 (Paris, 1674).

12

“Havia mas policia entre ellos [los Lucayos,] i mucha diversidad de Lenguas.” Hist. de las Indias, cap. 41.

13

Las Casas, in the Historia General de las Indias Occid, lib. III, cap. 27, criticizes him severely.

14

Columbus says of the Bahamas and Cuba: “toda la lengua es una y todos amigos” (Navarrete, Viages, Tomo I, p. 46.) The natives of Guanahani conversed with those of Haiti “porque todos tenian una lengua,” (ibid, p. 86.) In the Bay of Samana a different dialect but the same language was found (p. 135).

15

Gomara says the language of Cuba is “algo diversa,” from that of Espanola. (Hist. de las Indias, cap. 41.) Oviedo says that though the natives of the two islands differ in many words, yet they readily understand each other. (Hist. de las Indias, lib. XVII. cap. 4.)

16

The American Nations, chap. VII, (Philadelphia, 1836.)

17