Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

CHAP, xx INDIANS OF ECUADOR 257
are a sad and sullen people. The features, especially
of the women, seem haggard with care and sullen
misery. Yet, despite their sordid surroundings,
the Ouitonians appear to possess the sentiment of
form and colour in the highest degree. Notwith-
standing the rigid formulas and conventionalities
to which the priests have enslaved them, many of
the Mestizoes and even of the full -blood Indians
succeed in executing really remarkable religious
paintings as well as sculptures of Christs and
Madonnas, works greatly admired in Peru and
other South American countries, to which they are
regularly exported. But the natives have lost one
artistic industry inlaid work in costly woods. It
has been noticed also that neither his extreme
nor the dull existence to which he is con-
poverty
demned has prevented the Ecuadorean from
distinguishing himself by the elegant cut and harmoniously-blended
colours of his native costumes."
We seem to have here the surviving remnants
of a people with high capabilities, who have been
so crushed down by centuries of slavery and repression,
combined with the struggle against the forces
of nature in some of their most terrible aspects,
as to have become degraded both physically and
mentally, while still exhibiting
unmistakable traces
of the higher civilisation and more sympathetic
government they enjoyed under the Incas.
VOL. II