and almost all early travellers, for he says: `Nos Toupinambaoults
rec,oivent fort humainement les estrangers amis qui les vont visiter.'*
Lery, however, seemed to think that, in spite of their pacific inclination,
it was not prudent to put too much power in their hands, for he remarks:
`Au reste parcequ'ils chargeyent, et remplisseyent leurs mousquets
jusques au bout . . . nous leurs baillions moitie/ (i.e., la poudre)
de charbon broye/.' This may have been a wise precaution,
but he omits to state if the `charbon broye' was `bailli' at the same price
as good powder. According to Azara, who takes his facts partly
from the contemporary writers -- Schmidel, Alvar Nunez,
Ruy Diaz de Guzman, and Barco de la Centenera -- the Guaranis were divided
into numerous tribes, as Imbeguas, Caracaras, Tembues, Colistines,
and many others. These tribes, though apparently of a common origin,
never united, but each lived separately under its own chief.
Their towns were generally either close to or in the middle of forests,
or at the edge of rivers where there is wood. They all cultivated pumpkins,
beans, maize, mani (ground nuts), sweet potatoes, and mandioca;
but they lived largely by the chase, and ate much wild honey.
Diaz in his `Argentina' (lib. i., chap. i.) makes them cannibals.
Azara believes this to have been untrue, as no traditions of cannibalism
were current amongst the Guaranis in his time, i.e., in 1789-1801.
Liberal as Azara was, and careful observer of what he saw himself,
I am disposed to believe the testimony of so many eye-witnesses
of the customs of the primitive Guaranis, though none of them
had the advantage enjoyed by Azara of living three hundred years
after the conquest. It may be, of course, that the powers of observation
were not so well developed in mankind in the beginning of the sixteenth
as at the end of the eighteenth century, but this point I leave to those
whose business it is to prove that the human mind is in a progressive state.
However, Father Montoya, in his `Conquista Espiritual del Paraguay',