Panama and the canal in picture and prose .. . saw the Indians PANAMANIAN FATHER AND CHILD PECULIARITIES OF THE DARIEN INDIANS 319 in the days of their earliest experiencewith the sort of civihzation thatPedrarias and Pizarro brought totheir villages, they do not bear moreconvincing evidence of the savageryof the invaders, than is afforded bythe sullen aloofness with which theDarien Indians of today regardwhite men of any race. More thanthe third and fourth generation havepassed away but the sins of theSpaniards are still recalled amonga people who have no written recordswhatsoever, and the me
Panama and the canal in picture and prose .. . saw the Indians PANAMANIAN FATHER AND CHILD PECULIARITIES OF THE DARIEN INDIANS 319 in the days of their earliest experiencewith the sort of civihzation thatPedrarias and Pizarro brought totheir villages, they do not bear moreconvincing evidence of the savageryof the invaders, than is afforded bythe sullen aloofness with which theDarien Indians of today regardwhite men of any race. More thanthe third and fourth generation havepassed away but the sins of theSpaniards are still recalled amonga people who have no written recordswhatsoever, and the memory ortradition causes them to withholdtheir friendship from the remotestdescendants of the historic seems to have been nowritten language, nor even any systemof hieroglyphics among the tribes ofPanama, a fact that places them farbelow our North American Indiansin the scale of mental the other hand in weaving andin fashioning articles for domesticuse they were in advance of theNorth American aborigines. Their. Photo bv H. PUHer Courtesy National Geographic Magazine CHOCO INDIAN IN EVERY-DAYDRESS squaw-man who figures so largelyin our own southwestern Indiancountry is unknown there. Un-questionably during the feverishdays of the Spaniards, hunt forgold the tribes were frightfullythinned out, and even today sectionsof the country which writers of Bal-boas time describe as thickly popu-lated are desert and much land is still held by itsaboriginal owners, and unless theoperation of the Canal shall turnAmerican settlement that way willcontinue so to be held. The Pana-manian has not the energy to dis-lodge the Indians nor to till their landsif he should possess them. Many studies of the Panama In-dians as a body, or of isolated tribes,have been made by explorers or sci-entists, and mainly by French or Span-ish students. The SmithsonianInstitution catalogues forty-sevenpublications dealing with the sub-ject. But there is an immense mineo
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Keywords: ., bookauthorabbotwil, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1913
