The food quest--Indians omnivorous eaters--Tapir
and other animals used for food--Monkeys--The
peccary--Feathered game--Vermin--Eggs, carrion, and
intestines not eaten--Honey--Fish--Manioc--Preparation of
cassava--Peppers--The Indian hot-pot--Lack of salt--Indian
meals--Cooking--Fruits--Cow-tree milk.
Food is the dominant problem of an Indian’s existence. The food quest is
to him no indefinite sociological issue of future “food control,” but
an affair of every day. Living, it would seem, in the midst of plenty,
starvation is a frequent visitant in an Amazonian household. They are
an improvident folk, as I have already stated, and if food be plentiful
give no thought to make provision for the morrow, when there may be
none to be had.[165] “None” to the man of the forest has a different
significance, a more inclusive meaning, than it has to the white man, for
it comprehends everything that by the widest stretch of the imagination
can be considered possible for human consumption. And it is well for the
Indians that they are omnivorous, for the uncertainty of food supply is
the most certain factor of life in the Amazonian bush.[166]
To run through the details of the possible provision of meat: there is,
to start with, the tapir,[167] though the Witoto consider much tapir is
bad, especially for women. The print of its three toes, with a fourth
on the forefeet, is very seldom not to be found in the damp soil by
stream and river. The tapir is in fact plentiful throughout these
regions, though, thanks to its protective colouring, it may often not
be obtrusively present. The young tapir is flecked and dotted with pale
yellow spots on its brown coat, an exact imitation of sunlight on the
earth through foliage. Gradually these stripes and spots fade to dull
greys, only the fully grown animal is entirely without them, and of a
uniform dead slaty colour. Young tapir flesh makes an excellent dish,
and is like pork in taste, but it must be eaten very fresh, for the meat
will not keep sweet many hours on account of its richness. Therefore if a
tapir is killed in the water and sinks,[168] it must be eaten immediately
it comes to the surface, that is after some hours, during which the gases
have generated in the animal’s stomach, and so caused it to rise. But
tapir is always considered unhealthy if eaten too frequently, and at
certain seasons of the year is said to be quite uneatable, and if taken
gives rise to sickness. An old tapir is tough and heavy eating at the
best of times. Tapir flesh dried over a smoky fire is excellent eating,
though I have never seen the Indians smoke meat for keeping, even when
they found I did so myself. Another meat that has been compared with pork
is that of the paca.[169] It is rich and fat, but it is eatable, and not
so strong in flavour as the flesh of the capybara,[170] a larger animal,
found usually in the vicinity of water. In appearance the capybara is not
unlike a long-nosed, crop-eared rabbit, while its cousin the agouti,[171]
chestnut-coloured and rough-haired, has a rat-like face on a rabbit’s
body, though the flesh has nothing in common with the rabbit’s. Both the
paca and the agouti are plentiful in the forest. Of the two the latter is
more of a forest-dweller, and seeks the streams only to drink.
A small species of ant-bear is fairly common, but the large ant-eater is
not often found. The latter does exist in the Issa-Japura watersheds,
according to Indian accounts; and ant-bear is eaten by the Boro, but has
too strong and pungent a taste for the white palate. Armadilloes, when
obtainable, are baked in the ashes of the fire, as hedgehogs are roasted
in England.
Monkey flesh, though usually tough and invariably insipid, is by no
means despised, nor must a traveller in these regions be squeamish over
it, horribly suggestive as the body of a cooked monkey very certainly
is in appearance, for monkey meat most frequently will be the only
_plat_ on the dinner menu. It is the most ordinary food of the Indian,
though monkey is not the easiest game to collect. The wounded or dying
animal is very apt to clutch at the boughs in its agony, and the hand
will contract in death and the body remain pendant. Even if it drop it
will frequently stick in a forked branch out of reach; so that for one
monkey eaten probably several are slain. Monkeys of all sorts, however,
abound throughout the forest, and also marmosets, pretty little creatures
with something of the squirrel about them.[172] Though I never saw the
big-bellied monkey mentioned by Spruce,[173] I noticed a large number of
spider-monkeys, with tails so prehensile that they serve as additional
hands to convey fruit to their mouths. The supply of monkey flesh depends
in the first instance on what provender there may be in the neighbourhood
for those animals. Monkeys are wanderers, and when they have cleared
one part of the forest of fruit and nuts, they migrate to another. The
migration of game is a serious matter for the Indian, for all animals
here are subject to periodical movements as noted in the previous
chapter. It may result in the abandonment of a homestead when scarcity of
animal life in a district drives the human inhabitants away.
When it can be obtained a deer, or a sloth, furnishes a variety for the
cooking-pot; and then there is the peccary, so dreaded by the Indian.
The peccary,[174] the wild pig of the forest, lives in small herds,
and the reason proffered by the Indians for their fear of the animal is
that when one is wounded it sets up a loud cry, and the rest of the herd
promptly come to its aid and join in attacking the aggressor. This story
is universal among the tribes. The peccary has a deceptively harmless
appearance. They have not all tusks, and in no case are the tusks very
prominent; yet, so sharp are they, that the fearless and pugnacious
creature can inflict a severe wound. The shoulder and leg are the parts
prized for eating. I know of no temporary tabu connected with this
animal, though it has been said that at times the flesh is unfit for food
on account of a gland in the back.[175] This may, however, be the reason
why the body is rarely eaten.
Of birds, parrots are the most plentiful, and the toughest. For a hard,
tasteless, and unappetising meal commend me to the carcase of that noisy
bird. They require to be stewed for quite twenty-four hours, and that
over a slow fire, or else the flesh is impossible to eat. Their chief use
is in soup. Macaw, curassow, _piuri_ and _panje_, mocking-bird, toucan,
and egrets all go to the family pepper-pot of the successful hunter, with
the turkey of these parts, pigeons, partridges, herons, ducks, and geese;
in fact quite a good assortment of feathered fowl.
The frogs that make night hideous with their croaking provide the Indian
epicure with one of his most esteemed dishes, for both frogs and snakes
are considered delicacies, so that the traveller who pitied tribes
like the Botocudo, because insects and reptiles formed a large part of
their diet,[176] would simply be wasting his sympathy. Even the white
man does not disdain the delicate flesh of the iguana, ugly though that
green-bellied, black-ridge-backed reptile is. Turtles are caught and
eaten during the dry season when the rivers are low. The native method of
capturing them is to turn the unwieldly creature over on its back when
asleep on the sand-banks. This renders the turtles perfectly helpless,
though a snap from their powerful jaws will do serious damage.[177] The
eggs also are eaten by these tribes, although none of the Issa-Japura
tribes will touch birds’ eggs, for they look upon them as fœtal, and
therefore unclean.[178] Further it is beast-like, in their opinion, to
eat the liver, kidneys, and other intestines of animals, though these may
be made into soup or hot-pot. For the same reason the Indian does not
touch carrion.[179] But such niceness is outbalanced by tastes that in
our eyes would be equally or even more filthy, for the Indian will eat
vermin, and head lice are looked upon as quite a _bon bouche_. Hence a
scurf-comb is a most important present, and to comb your neighbour’s hair
and eat the “bag” an honour and a luxury.[180] They will also eat the
grubs of wasps and bees, in fact any larvæ--nothing comes amiss to them.
All the Indians--except the Menimehe, who, as mentioned, keep hives in
their houses,--collect wild honey from the hollow trees and other places
where the bees nest in the bush. Sometimes these insects make nests of
a considerable size, that look like lobster pots full of black pitch
hanging on the tree-trunks. The large cells are full of a thin honey that
is used by the natives to mix with various drinks. The Indians are very
fond of honey, and smoke the bees out to secure it. Bees are more common
than wasps in these parts, and fortunately are less dangerous.
Fish abound in all the rivers, though like the plants and animals they
are smaller in the upper reaches than in the lower Amazon valleys.
Robuchon gave the following as found in the Issa: Silurios of all kinds,
that is to say _platysomas_, _planiceps_, _platyrhynchos_, _leopardus_,
and the little _caudirus_ (_Serasalmys_), _Pygo_, _Cebras_, _Piraga_
(_D. costatus et carinatus_); also many kinds of needle fish and
shark-toothed fish. There is any quantity of skate in the Issa, though
its power to inflict a nasty wound does not recommend it to the naked
Indian fisherman. Some of the fish are very good eating; none better than
the _uaracu_, which is said to feed on laurel berries.[181]
It is when one turns to the vegetable world that one finds the staple
food of the Amazonian native. The manioc is to the Indian the chief
necessary of life. The sweet manioc,[182] although known to these
Issa-Japura tribes, is never planted, because it is not appreciated by
them. They prefer the poisonous species which, as its botanical name
_Manihot utilissima_ implies, can be put to a multiplicity of uses. To
eliminate the poison and render it fit for food, the manioc is subjected
to several processes. So far as I could observe, or learn by leading
questions, these are roughly as follows:
The women bring the brown tubers of the manioc in baskets from the
plantation. On their way up they stop by the river and cleanse the soil
from the roots, which are like a small beet in appearance, but white when
peeled. The manioc after it has been washed and soaked for a short time
is next scraped by means of a sharp wooden knife in order to peel off
the thin adhesive skin, similar in substance to that of a potato, but if
anything thinner. Sometimes the women instead of using a wooden knife
simply scrape the skin off with their teeth. The peeled roots are washed
in the river again, and taken up to the house. Each root is then cut
longitudinally into three or four sections, which are put in a bowl near
the fire and left to soak for twenty-four hours. When, at the end of this
time, the manioc is sufficiently softened, they place a piece or two of
rotten manioc in the bowl with the fresh stuff. The object of this is to
promote fermentation and thus to extract the poison from the fresh root.
The next process is to mash the manioc, and for this purpose it is
all--both fresh and rotten--removed from the pan and grated into a large
wooden trough, with the special implement that has black palm-spines
inserted in the soft wood for teeth. The grated pulp is removed from the
trough and put into a cylindrical palm-cane wringer, the cassava-squeezer
which is used by the Boro, the Andoke, the Resigero, the Okaina, and all
tribes to the north. The Witoto and other tribes on the south use a long
rectangular palm-fibre wringer, which is twisted to form a cylinder in
the same way as a puttee is wound round the leg. In this elastic cylinder
it is compressed till all the poisonous juice has been drained away, when
the remainder, a coarse kind of flour, is placed in an open pan and left
to get thoroughly dry. Afterwards it is rubbed between the hands to make
it finer.[183]
The next operation is to sift this flour through a basket sieve. Any
coarse stuff that does not rub through the sieve is thrown away. The fine
residue is baked in a clay platter, and should be turned over with the
hands once during the process. No water is added to the flour before it
is baked.
This flour is kneaded with water, put in a pan and cooked over the
fire. The result, the cassava bread, is leathery and tough, and when
one speaks of “bread” unleavened bread must be understood. It is never
allowed to brown, the outer crust is merely hardened, and as a result the
cassava cake has always a raw uncooked taste. But I found that if one
of these native cakes were cut in small pieces and fried in animal fat
till crisply toasted, it was quite good eating, better if anything than
ordinary bread.
The Boro leave the starch in the cassava flour, so their bread is more
sustaining than Witoto bread, as Witoto women remove the starch and use
it for other purposes.[184] Boro bread is also thicker, and when pulled
apart is of a stringy consistency.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIV.
BORO WOMEN MAKING CASSAVA]
Spruce mentions a manioc oven,[185] but this is quite unknown to me. All
the tribes I visited cooked their cassava on large earthenware plates
on an open fire. Nor could they prop their cooking utensils on stones,
for--as has been noted--stones there are none in these districts. The pot
is put simply on the three logs that compose the fire where their ends
meet. The hot embers in the centre give plenty of steady heat, and if
more be required the pot must be placed on a tripod of branches and the
embers fanned with a palm-leaf to a flame.
Among the Andoke manioc is peeled by the women with their teeth, and then
washed. The roots are pulped with a grater, and the starch is washed
out by adding water to them in a basket suspended on a tripod over a
calabash. The partially prepared manioc is left till required for use and
will keep in this state for a week at a time. When they wish to use it
the grated pulp is strained in a cassava-squeezer, then mixed with starch
and sifted through a sieve. The fine stuff is baked immediately, and the
water that was drained off in the wringer is boiled up at once to make a
sweet-tasting drink. The starch will keep for a month.
Among the Boro and Witoto the manioc water is boiled till it thickens,
and is then used as a sauce into which the cassava is dipped before it is
eaten. Another way of eating cassava is to dip it in soup. The Boro on
the Japura concoct a sauce of the consistency of paste by seasoning the
manioc water with peppers and fish.[186]
Though the tuber is the most valuable portion of the plant it is not the
only part used for food. The leaves may be eaten as a vegetable. They are
boiled till quite soft; pounded very fine with a pestle; fish, worms,
frogs, ants and peppers are added as seasoning, and this brew is eaten
with cassava bread and with meat. Another method of preparation is to
take the leaves and cook them in the water squeezed out of the roots in
the wringer. This sauce is boiled in an earthenware pot suspended from a
cross-beam, or placed like the earthenware pan on a triangle of sticks,
over a slow fire, until the leaves become a paste. This is carried in a
palm-leaf as an emergency ration by an Indian when going into the bush.
Cassava, then, is the Indian’s “staff of life.” Its complement is the
hot-pot, or pepper-pot, which is a “generous” soup supercharged with meat
that forms the staple, while the liver and so forth are added to enrich
the brew. It is a standing dish with the aborigines. Each family has a
big pot that simmers constantly over the special fires. Into this go
all things, and it is replenished daily from the proceeds of the kill.
Portions of animals that may not be eaten--blood, brains, intestines--can
be utilised in the stew; and everything is very highly qualified with
peppers, the chief stimulant in native diet.
Wallace has suggested that the excessive use of peppers is due to the
lack of salt.[187] This very serious need is not without considerable
influence on the Indian, and it is possible--as has been suggested--that
it is at the root of more than over-indulgence in pepper. Mineral salt is
not to be had,[188] except by barter, throughout the middle Issa-Japura
regions; and what little the tribes can obtain is chiefly secured by
burning certain plants with saline qualities.[189]
On account of its rarity salt is much sought after, and a present of salt
is always highly appreciated.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXV.
WITOTO CASSAVA-SQUEEZER
BORO MANIOC-GRATER WITH PALM-SPINE POINTS]
The Indian feeds at sunrise after he has had his drink of “tea” and his
first bath. This morning meal is an informal one of cold cassava cake,
and any meat that may have been left uneaten overnight, or a dip in the
hot-pot. He eats sparingly, and never takes much of a meal if a day’s
march or a hunt is in prospect. Nor does he carry food with him, unless
he be going on a journey. Coca, which of course is but a stimulant, is
sufficient sustenance in his opinion. Still, he will eat a little at any
time it may be possible, and there is usually no lack of fruit for the
taking in the bush.
The great meal of the day is towards sundown when the hunt is over, the
quarry killed and cooked.[190] Then all the men, squatting round their
private family fires in the big house, help themselves from their hot-pot
and eat to the limit of its contents. An Indian will not take a bite
at his food; he tears whatever he is eating into small pieces with his
fingers. Among the Issa-Japura tribes, as with the Tukana, men and women
do not eat together, and the children feed with the women. None of the
tribes have any special observances or purifications before or after
eating, so far as I am aware, nor are there any general restrictions,
except so far as carrion and the intestines are concerned. But even
these may at a pinch be made use of without prejudice, by resorting to
the simple expedient of blowing, or rubbing with a magic stone, the two
antidotes for all evils with the Indian. There are temporary food tabu
for women, and certain prohibitions for children. These will be dealt
with later.
The usual method of cooking is to rest the pot as described on the
fire-logs themselves. Sometimes the pot is placed, like the pan for
baking cassava, on lumps of clay, or on a triangle of sticks roughly
made for the occasion. The sticks must be long in comparison to the
height from the ground that is required, and are not tied, but merely so
adjusted that each supports and locks the others. Such a tripod makes a
firm seat, though never employed by the Indians for that purpose. I have
never seen pots hung. The pot is covered with a single leaf, and the soup
is stirred with any stick that comes to hand at the moment; there are no
special ones, nor are any fashioned for use as ladles. Meat is almost
invariably put in the hot-pot, but occasionally it is toasted over the
fire.
When the women have cooked the food the men help themselves from the pot;
they are not waited upon by their women. An Indian will help himself from
the hot-pot at any time the fancy may seize him, or, for that matter,
from any hot-pot, so long as the owner thereof is present. The tribal or
chief’s fire carries the tribal hot-pot, which is open to all, as all
contribute to it, at least all the unmarried warriors must do so. This is
the hot-pot which always remains, and the fire that never dies out. The
family hot-pot and fire is the concern of each individual family only.
Fruit is to be had in plenty, and throughout the year in this country of
endless summer. Not being a botanist, and aware that some of the most
tempting fruits held latent poison under an alluring exterior, I was
most chary of eating fruit unknown to me, and never touched any until
quite satisfied of its wholesomeness from its effects on the Indians;
nor, mindful of the fact that the Indian will, and apparently can, eat
anything, would I venture to eat many fruits the Indians partook of as a
matter of course. Sweet and ripened fruit is rarely eaten by them; they
prefer a bitter taste, and, as mentioned in connection with sugar-cane,
have no particular use for anything sweet. The Indian will gather fruit
and bring it to the house, though the usual custom is to pluck and eat it
in the bush. So far as I was concerned especially, it was brought in as a
present to denote good-will.
One fruit the Indians grow in the plantations resembles and tastes like
grapes.[191] It is very plentiful, particularly in the old plantations,
and the Indian will often return to one of these in order to obtain this
fruit. Another fruit, also found growing in old plantations, is the
colour of a lemon, and the size and shape of an orange. It is very good
eating, extremely sweet when ripe, with huge black pips, and the part
immediately under the skin is gummy, like rubber latex, and sticks to the
mouth.
A fruit we knew as the mauve berry is found at the top of trees. In size
it approximates to a red currant, and it grows in large bunches. The
colour is a light pinky mauve. It is intensely sweet, and according to
popular report has an intoxicating effect upon the eater. It certainly
appears to have very heady properties.
Various palms furnish palatable fruits. There is a small edible palm from
which the Indians strip the bark after they have cut it down, and remove
the cylinder of hardened sap which is of the same consistency as a hard
woody apple. It is heavy but rich-flavoured and good eating. Then there
is the cabbage palm, not to mention the pupunha.
Nuts and seeds abound. There is a large oval seed in a fleshy envelope
that birds feed on freely, and another fruit with a large stone is the
wild alligator pear. The stone of this is more than one-half the size of
the whole fruit. It is delicious in taste, and is looked upon by both
whites and natives as a great delicacy. In shape it resembles a pear, and
in colour it varies from green to yellow or russet.