Surely This Is
Convincing Corroboration Of My Remarks Regarding The State Of Roman
Catholicism In Those Dark Lands.
A few miserable-looking, diminutive sheep are kept by some tribes,
and the blankets referred to are made from the wool, which is torn
off the sheep with a sharp shell, or, if near the coast, with a
knife.
The blankets are woven by hand across two straight branches of
tree, and they are sometimes colored in various shades. A bulbous
root they know of dyes brown, the cochineal insect red, and the bark
of a tree yellow. 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. Though
growing to the length of three and four feet, it has only rudimentary
eyes, and is, in consequence, quite blind; it is also unable to swim.
The savage prods in the mud with a long notched lance, sometimes for
hours, until he sticks the appetizing fish.
The steamy waters are so covered with aquatic plants that in some
places I have been able to walk across a living bridge. Once, when
out hunting, I came upon a beautiful forest glade, covered with a
carpet of green. Thinking it a likely place for deer, I entered, when
lo, I sank in a fotid lake of slime. Throwing my gun on to the bank,
I had quite a difficulty to regain dry land.
In my journeyings here and there I employed one or another of the
braves to accompany me. All they could eat and some little present
was the pay. No sooner was the gift in their hand, however, after
supper, than they would put it back in mine and say, "Give me some
more food?" I was at first accompanied by Yantiwau (The Wolf Rider).
Armed with a bow and arrows, he was a good hunter for me, and a
faithful servant, but his custom of spitting on my knife and spoon to
clean them I did not like. When my supplies were getting low, and I
went to the river for a wash, he would say: "There's no
kiltanithliacack (soap) - only clupup (sand)." Yantiwau was
interested in pictures; he would gaze with wondering eyes at photos,
or views of other lands, but he looked at them the wrong side up,
as they all invariably do. While possessed of a profound respect for
me in some ways, he thought me very lacking in common knowledge.
While I was unable to procure game, through not seeing any, he could
call the bird to him in a "ducky, ducky, come and be killed" kind of
way; and my tongue was parched when he would scent water. This was
sometimes very easy to smell, however, for it was almost impossible
to drink out of a waterhole without holding the nose and straining
the liquid through my closed teeth. Chaco water at best is very
brackish, and on drying off the ground a white coat of salt is left.
My Indian's first and last thought was of his stomach. While capable
of passing two or three days without eating, and feeling no pangs of
hunger, yet, when food was to hand, he gorged himself, and could put
away an incredible amount. Truly, his make-up was a constant wonder
to me. Riding through the "hungry belt" I would be famishing, but to
my question:
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