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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In Sennaar, According To Burckhardt, It
Is Equally Esteemed, And Sold In The Markets.
The little village of Uruana is more difficult to govern than most of
the other missions.
The Ottomacs are a restless, turbulent people,
with unbridled passions. They are not only fond to excess of the
fermented liquors prepared from cassava and maize, and of palm-wine,
but they throw themselves into a peculiar state of intoxication, we
might say of madness, by the use of the powder of niopo. They gather
the long pods of a mimosacea which we have made known by the name of
Acacia niopo,* cut them into pieces, moisten them, and cause them to
ferment. (* It is an acacia with very delicate leaves, and not an
Inga. We brought home another species of mimosacea (the chiga of the
Ottomacs and the sepa of the Maypures) that yields seeds, the flour of
which is eaten at Uruana like cassava. From this flour the chiga bread
is prepared, which is so common at Cunariche, and on the banks of the
Lower Orinoco. The chiga is a species of Inga, and I know of no other
mimosacea that can supply the place of the cerealia.) When the
softened seeds begin to grow black, they are kneaded like a paste;
mixed with some flour of cassava and lime procured from the shell of a
helix, and the whole mass is exposed to a very brisk fire, on a
gridiron made of hard wood. The hardened paste takes the form of small
cakes. When it is to be used, it is reduced to a fine powder, and
placed on a dish five or six inches wide. The Ottomac holds this dish,
which has a handle, in his right hand, while he inhales the niopo by
the nose, through the forked bone of a bird, the two extremities of
which are applied to the nostrils. This bone, without which the
Ottomac believes that he could not take this kind of snuff, is seven
inches long: it appeared to me to be the leg-bone of a large sort of
plover. The niopo is so stimulating that the smallest portions of it
produce violent sneezing in those who are not accustomed to its use.
Father Gumilla says this diabolical powder of the Ottomacs, furnished
by an arborescent tobacco-plant, intoxicates them through the nostrils
(emboracha por las narices), deprives them of reason for some hours,
and renders them furious in battle. However varied may be the family
of the leguminous plants in the chemical and medical properties of
their seeds, juices, and roots, we cannot believe, from what we know
hitherto of the group of mimosaceae, that it is principally the pod of
the Acacia niopo which imparts the stimulant power to the snuff of the
Ottomacs. This power is owing, no doubt, to the freshly calcined lime.
We have shown above that the mountaineers of the Andes of Popayan, and
the Guajiros, who wander between the lake of Maracaybo and the Rio la
Hacha, are also fond of swallowing lime as a stimulant, to augment the
secretion of the saliva and the gastric juice.
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