Throughout the continent there is not a single
authentic instance of a pastoral tribe, not one of an animal raised for
its milk,[21-1] nor for the transportation of persons, and very few for
their flesh. It was essentially a hunting race. The most civilized
nations looked to the chase for their chief supply of meat, and the
courts of Cuzco and Mexico enacted stringent game and forest laws, and
at certain periods the whole population turned out for a general crusade
against the denizens of the forest. In the most densely settled
districts the conquerors found vast stretches of primitive woods.
If we consider the life of a hunter, pitting his skill and strength
against the marvellous instincts and quick perceptions of the brute,
training his senses to preternatural acuteness, but blunting his more
tender feelings, his sole aim to shed blood and take life, dependent on
luck for his food, exposed to deprivations, storms, and long
wanderings, his chief diet flesh, we may more readily comprehend that
conspicuous disregard of human suffering, those sanguinary rites, that
vindictive spirit, that inappeasable restlessness, which we so often
find in the chronicles of ancient America.
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