Page:The American Indian.djvu/289

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AMAZON AREA
237

pair is by far the most widely distributed, occupying the whole of the Antilles, the greater part of Venezuela, Guiana, and northern Brazil. It is truly curious how the numerous small stocks of the continent cluster around the very headwaters of the Orinoco and Amazon, as if some of the powerful peoples of the interior had invaded the area from without, sweeping up the rivers and driving all before them.

At first glance, the four main stocks seem to be promiscuously scattered over the area, but if we refer to a relief map we may note that their distribution is coincident with elevation. The Arawak are a lowland people, while the Carib hold to the higher lands, almost without exception. On the other hand, the Tapuya stick close to the high tablelands of Brazil, while the Tupi skirt the coast and up into the lower Amazon. Therefore, we can with a fair degree of confidence lay down the geographical lines along which the expansion of these stocks took place, though as to the directions of movement we cannot be sure. Since the Arawak are most widely distributed over the Antilles and hold to very low lands on the continent where they travel by rivers, on general grounds it would seem likely that their center of dispersion was among the Islands. The Carib, on the other hand, are most intensely distributed as an inland people, from which it has been inferred that such of them as took to the sea borrowed this trait from their Arawak neighbors.

Good studies of the Amazon tribes are rare, but it so happens that the few best are so distributed as to give us the probable range of traits throughout. For the Japura River, or the northeastern section of the area, we have Whiffen's 33 account of the Witto and Boro, whose culture, together with that of their immediate neighbors, may be characterized as follows: live by hunting, fishing, and agriculture; raise manioc, tobacco, and coca, and to a much less extent maize, yams, pumpkins, peppers, sugar-cane, etc.; fields cleared by fire and dug up by digging-stick, no hoe; no tame animals, even dogs rare; all animal life eaten, the monkey being the most nearly staple; honey prized, some tame bees; cassava bread and the "pepper pot," the chief support; manioc squeezed by