String is made from the fibre of the caraguatai
plant, and snail shells are used to extract the fibre. This work is,
of course, done by the women, as is also the making of the clay pots
they use for cooking. The men only hunt.
All sleep on the ground, men, women, children and dogs,
promiscuously. The wigwams are nothing more than a few branches stuck
in the ground and tied at the top. The sides are left open. Very
often even this most primitive of dwellings is dispensed with, and
the degraded beings crawl under the shelter of the bushes. Furniture
of any kind they are, of course, wit-out, and their destitution is
only equalled by the African pigmy or the Australian black.
The Chaco is essentially a barren land, and the Indians' time seems
almost fully taken up in procuring food. The men, with bows and
arrows, hunt the deer, ostrich, fox, or wolf, while the women forage
for roots and wild fruit.
One tribe in the north of the Chaco are cannibals, and they
occasionally make war on their neighbors just to obtain food.
A good vegetable diet is the cabbage, which grows in the heart of
certain palms, and weighs three or four pounds. To secure this the
tree has perforce to be cut down. To the Indian without an axe this
is no light task. The palm, as is well known, differs from other
trees by its having the seat of life in the head, and not in the
roots; so when the cabbage is taken out the tree dies.
Anything, everything, is eaten for food, and a roasted serpent or
boiled fox is equally relished. During my stay among them I ceased to
ask of what the mess was composed; each dish was worse than the
former. Among the first dishes I had were mandioca root, a black
carrion bird, goat's meat, and fox's head. The puma, otter, ant-bear,
deer, armadillo, and ostrich are alike eaten, as is also the jaguar,
a ferocious beast of immense size. I brought away from those regions
some beautiful skins of this animal, the largest of which measures
nearly nine feet from nose to tail.
In the sluggish, almost salt, streams, fish are numerous, and these
are shot by the Indian with arrows, to which is attached a string of
gut. Lakes and rivers are also filled with hideous-looking alligators
of all sizes. These grow to the length of twelve or fifteen feet in
these warm waters, and the tail is considered quite a delicacy.
Besides these varied dishes, there is the electric eel; and, sunk in
a yard depth of mud, is the lollock, of such interest to
naturalists The lollock is a fish peculiar to the Chaco.
