ourselves with the disinherited races—the Indian, the negro, and the 'people of color.'[1] It is in the rancho that we are best able to observe them. The term rancho is applied to the hut of branches that shelters the Indian in the forest; it is likewise applied to the more substantially built but equally open structure where caravans of men of color and negroes stop with their animals, when transporting merchandise from the coast into the interior. In a word, it is the asylum of the wandering or slave population who form the subject of our first investigation.
CHAPTER FIRST.
THE INDIAN RACES.
The Indian of the eastern coast is wholly intractable to civilization. Like the jaguar, he retreats as the axe of the white man penetrates the forests. The creoles, who are unfortunately too much interested in the question to be implicitly believed, attribute this antipathy to every species of progress to an inherent want of capacity, natural, as they affirm, to all American races. It would be more just, perhaps, to seek its cause in the fixed hatred which the native has cherished against his conquerors ever since their appearance upon the coast.
HANS STADE.
The story of Hans Stade, the Dutch-man, is a striking example of this. A prisoner of the Botocudos, who were only awaiting the time when he should be fat enough for the spit, he was unable to convince his terrible guardians that he did not belong to the race of their persecutors.
'I have already eaten five white men,' said the chief who came to feel of him one day, and all five pretended, like yourself, that they were not Portuguese.'
Having exhausted all his arguments, it at last struck the prisoner to invoke the color of his hair, which was of a fiery red, as was that, he said, of all his countrymen. This idea saved him. The Botocudos, recollecting that the prisoners they had roasted were dark, restored him to liberty.
THE SWORD AND THE CROSS.
This savage hatred, cherished by the red men against the dark-haired whites, is easily explained if we recall the unceremonious manner in which the Spaniards and Portuguese took possession of their forests. Columbus seized San Salvador in the name of the double crown of Castile and Aragon, landing with the sword and creating a fort. Cabral, on arriving in Brazil, instead of building a fort, erected side by side upon the seashore a cross and a gallows. On the news of his discovery, all the adventurers of Portugal flocked to these shores, which had been described to them as so fertile and charming. Having come in search of a rapid fortune, they could not reconcile themselves to clearing the ground with their own hands, whatever might be its wealth. Slaves then were necessary. The land of the negro was beyond the sea, across an ocean yet unknown. The Indians were upon the spot, unsuspecting, daily bringing provisions and never doubting the gratitude of the whites. The latter did not hesitate. They tracked the natives like wild beasts, and even surpassed in atrocity their rivals of Castile. In vain the Popes, who in those days prided themselves upon marching at the head of humanity, at different times declared the Indian a son of Adam, and therefore worthy to enjoy all the rights pertaining to the human family. The pursuit of slaves continued in spite of pontifical bulls, and the Indian was compelled to recede before European invasion. This retreat, however, was valiantly disputed. Brazil had not, like Mexico and Peru, a timid population, who were put to fight by a discharge of artillery; but a race of lusty warriors who defended their soil with a ferocity that astonished the Portuguese themselves, who were at that time the first
- ↑ Mulattoes and other mixed races.
