United States or Portugal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The man who sat was the chief of the Red Bones. In his first words to the visitors the old interpreter revealed that the name of the Red Bone ruler was Umanuh. And whatever the name may have signified in the language of the Red Bones, its Tupi definition fitted with disagreeable precision. For Umanuh was a living cadaver.
The words of the first stanza of the "Himene Tatou Arearea" and the refrain were: I teie nei mahana Te tere no oe e Hati Na te moana Ohipa paahiahia No te au Tei tupi i Moorea tamau a Tera te au Ei no te au Tamua a aue Ei reo no oe tau here I te pii raa mai Aue oe Tamarii Tahiti te aroha e A inu i te pia arote faarari Faararirari ta oe Tamarii Tahiti La, Li.
The beds of Tabatinga clay, which are here intermingled with scoria-looking conglomerate, are in some parts of the declivity prettily variegated in colour; the name of the town in the Tupi language, Ita-coatiara, takes its origin from this circumstance, signifying striped or painted rock.
The whole of this southern coast hence to near Santarem, a distance of 130 miles, is lowland and quite uninhabited. It is intersected by short arms or back waters of the Amazons, which are called in the Tupi language Paranamirims, or little rivers. By keeping to these, small canoes can travel a great part of the distance without being much exposed to the heavy seas of the main river.
Our crew was composed of ten Indians of the Cucama nation, whose native country is a portion of the borders of the upper river in the neighbourhood of Nauta, in Peru. The Cucamas speak the Tupi language, using, however, a harsher accent than is common amongst the semi-civilised Indians from Ega downwards.
The land is so level, that the short local rivers have no sources and downward currents like rivers as we generally understand them. They serve the purpose of draining the land, but instead of having a constant current one way, they have a regular ebb and flow with the tide. The natives call them, in the Tupi language, Igarapes, or canoe-paths.
The older men drew together for a serious discussion that ended in granting Oomah's request, and Tupi was selected to go back to the encampment on the sandbar to be an honored guest and to select a wife. After that came the leave taking; then the party started on its journey.
I shared the cabin- proper with Senores Estulano and Manoel, the latter a young half- caste, son-in-law to the owner of the vessel, under whose tuition I made good progress in learning the Tupi language during the voyage. Our men took it in turns, two at a time, to go out fishing for which purpose we carried a spare montaria.
"What can be the use of remembering the hundreds of names in the 'Tupi' dialect with which these islands are dressed out? It is enough to know them. The Americans are much more practical with their Mississippi islands; they number them " "As they number the avenues and streets of their towns," replied Manoel.
The purity of Tupi is kept up by frequent communication amongst the natives, from one end to the other of the main river; how complete and long-continued must be the isolation in which the small groups of savages have lived in other parts, to have caused so complete a segregation of dialects!
Word Of The Day