United States or Cambodia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
An early traveller in those head-waters wrotes of these: "Some of the smaller tribes were but a little removed from the wild brutes of their own jungles. The lowest in the scale, perhaps, were the Guatos, who dwell to the north of the Rio Apa. This tribe consisted of less than one hundred persons, and they were as unapproachable as wild beasts.
The Guatos' chief business in life seemed to consist in sitting on fibre mats spread on the ground, and driving away the bloodthirsty mosquitos from their bare backs. For this they use a fan of their own manufacture, made from wild cotton, which there seems to abound. Writing of mosquitos, let me say these Indian specimens were a terror to us all. What numbers we killed!
Those dark forms in the long grass seemed, to my somewhat trained eyes, naked Indians, and as we drew nearer to them so it proved, and the man was thankful he had withheld his fire. After steaming for some distance up the river several dug-outs, filled with Guatos Indians, paddled alongside us.
It is a most humiliating fact that just in proportion as the paleface advances into lands hitherto given up to the Indian so those races sink. This degeneration showed itself strikingly among the Guatos in their inordinate desire for cachaca, or "firewater."
The chief's wife, however, at a word from him, received me kindly, and after accepting a brass necklace with evident pleasure, showed herself very affable. Poor lost Guatos! Their dejected countenances, miserable grass huts, alive with vermin, and their extreme poverty, were most touching.
Ten or twenty birds lay in the same nest, and you might find in them, at the one time, eggs just laid, birds recently hatched, and others ready to fly. Sitting and rearing go on concurrently. I procured a tame pair of this lovely breed of paroquets from the Guatos.
So far as I could ascertain, the Romish Church has never touched the Guatos, and, notwithstanding all I have said about them, I unhesitatingly affirm that it is better so. Geo. The tribes who have come under priestly care are decidedly inferior in morals, industry, and order to the tribes who refuse to have anything to do with the whites.
Word Of The Day