Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Chemistry Of
The Savage Is Reduced To The Preparation Of Pigments, That Of Poisons,
And The Dulcification Of The Amylaceous Roots, Which The Aroides And
The Euphorbiaceous Plants Afford.
Most of the missionaries of the Upper and Lower Orinoco permit the
Indians of their Missions to paint their skins.
It is painful to add,
that some of them speculate on this barbarous practice of the natives.
In their huts, pompously called conventos,* (* In the Missions, the
priest's house bears the name of the convent.) I have often seen
stores of chica, which they sold as high as four francs the cake. To
form a just idea of the extravagance of the decoration of these naked
Indians, I must observe, that a man of large stature gains with
difficulty enough by the labour of a fortnight, to procure in exchange
the chica necessary to paint himself red. Thus as we say, in temperate
climates, of a poor man, "he has not enough to clothe himself," you
hear the Indians of the Orinoco say, "that man is so poor, that he has
not enough to paint half his body." The little trade in chica is
carried on chiefly with the tribes of the Lower Orinoco, whose country
does not produce the plant which furnishes this much-valued substance.
The Caribs and the Ottomacs paint only the head and the hair with
chica, but the Salives possess this pigment in sufficient abundance to
cover their whole bodies. When the missionaries send on their own
account small cargoes of cacao, tobacco, and chiquichiqui* (* Ropes
made with the petioles of a palm-tree with pinnate leaves.) from the
Rio Negro to Angostura, they always add some cakes of chica, as being
articles of merchandise in great request.
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