SUPERSTITIONS IN REGARD TO COCA.
The employment of Coca as a masticatory goes back to the time of the
first Incas, being used in their religious rites as an offering to the
sun; the sacrificing priest never consulted the oracles without holding
some Coca leaves in his mouth, and throwing some into the fire which
consumed the victims. It was reserved for this use, and for that of the
monarch and those who for services rendered had become worthy of the
honour of partaking of it with their sovereign.
Von Tschudi[6] says:—“By the Peruvian Indians the Coca plant is
regarded as something sacred and mysterious, and it sustained an
important part in the religion of the Incas. In all ceremonies, whether
religious or warlike, it was introduced for producing smoke at the
great offerings, or as the sacrifice itself.”
[Footnote 6: Travels in Peru, 1838 to 1842, p. 454. London: 1847.]
“During divine worship the priests chewed Coca leaves, and unless
they were supplied with them, it was believed that the favour of the
gods could not be propitiated. It was also deemed necessary that the
supplicator for divine grace should approach the priests with an
_acullico_ (or quid) in his mouth. It was believed that any business
undertaken without the benediction of Coca leaves could not prosper,
and to the shrub itself worship was rendered. During an interval of
more than three hundred years Christianity has not been able to subdue
this deep-rooted idolatry, for everywhere we find traces of belief
in the mysterious powers of this plant. The excavators in the mines
of Cerro de Pasco throw chewed Coca on hard veins of metal, in the
belief that it softens the ore and renders it more easy to work. The
origin of this custom is easily explained, when it is recollected
that in the time of the Incas it was believed that the _Coyas_—the
deities of metals—rendered the mountains impenetrable if they were not
propitiated by the odour of Coca. The Indians, even at the present
time, put Coca leaves into the mouths of dead persons, to secure to
them a favourable reception on their entrance into another world;
and when a Peruvian Indian on a journey falls in with a mummy, he,
with timid reverence, presents to it some Coca leaves as his pious
offering.”
The reliance, Pöppig says, on its extraordinary virtues among the
Peruvian Indians is so strong that, in the Huanuco Province, they
believe that if a dying man can taste a leaf placed on the tongue, it
is a sure sign of his future happiness.[7]
[Footnote 7: Quoted in Markham’s Travels in Peru and India. London,
1862.]
After the Spanish conquest the cultivation of Coca much increased for
a time, as described by Pedro de Cieza and Garcilasso de la Vega, the
Inca historian (who spells its name as Cuca); the latter and Acosta
exalted its virtues, yet some fanatics proposed to proscribe its
use, and root up the plants, because it had been used in the ancient
superstitions, and its cultivation took the Indians away from their
other work. The reverence rendered by the natives to it induced the
Spaniards to believe that it possessed some demoniacal influence.
“The second Council of Lima, consisting of bishops from all parts
of South America,” therefore “condemned the use of Coca in 1567.
It was described ‘as a worthless object, fitted for the misuse and
superstition of the Indians;’ and a royal decree of October 18, 1569,
expressly declares that the notion entertained by the natives is an
illusion of the devil.” In addition, numerous complaints were made to
the home government, who espoused the cause of the Indians, the latter
having been driven from the high Andes and employed by forced labour in
its cultivation in the Cocals, situated on moist, warm slopes. This was
a change of climate which proved fatal to their health. The Peruvian
mine owners were the first to discover the importance of _chacchar_, or
Coca-chewing, in assisting the Indians to go through their excessive
labour, and they, together with the plantation owners, became the most
earnest defenders of Coca. The consequence was that in defiance of
royal and ecclesiastical ordinances (like tobacco after King James’s
“Counterblast”) its use rather increased than diminished. One of the
warmest advocates of the plant was the Jesuit Don Antonio Julian,
who, in a work entitled “Perla de America,” laments that Coca is not
introduced into Europe instead of tea and coffee. “It is,” he observes,
“melancholy to reflect that the poor of Europe cannot obtain this
preservative against hunger and thirst; that our working people are not
supported by this strengthening plant in their long-continued labours.”
Under Don Francisco de Toledo, Viceroy of Peru, the cultivation
continued, conditionally on voluntary and well-paid labourers only
being employed in the Cocals. At this period of its prosperity, which
is much exceeded at the present day, in the mines of Cerro de Potosi
alone, Dr. Weddell, the quinologist, says it was consumed to the extent
of one million kilogrammes (2,204,860 lbs. Eng.) annually. But after
this the culture of Coca greatly decreased, as, owing to the hardships
endured by the Indians tending its growth and to other occupations,
their race suffered a great depopulation.