Coca has been known from time immemorial in South America. At the time when Pizarro landed on the Peruvian coast, the leaf of Coca was held in great esteem among the natives; it was considered to be a divine plant, a living representation of the Deity, a fetish of wonderful and supernatural qualities, and the fields where it grew were reverenced as sanctuaries. Not everybody was allowed to make use of it; its use was the privilege of the nobles and of the priests, and among the greatest rewards that the sovereign could give his subjects, the privilege of chewing Coca leaves was most highly esteemed.
However strange such a superstition may appear, it is indisputable, and all authors that have published the account of the conquest of the Indies corroborate it. It will suffice for us to quote the testimony of Joseph Acosta, who says in every letter, of his natural and moral history of the Indies, of the East as well as of the West, published in 1653:
"The Indians esteem it highly, and during the reign of the Incas, the common people were not allowed to use Coca without the permission of the Governor."
NATIVES OF COLOMBIA CHEWING COCA.
The disappearance of the empire of the Incas, far from diminishing the importance of Coca, on the contrary gave a very much greater scope to its popularity. The natives profited by their freedom from the restrictions imposed by the native rulers in regard to the consumption of Coca, and soon the use of this leaf became so common that it has been compared by every one interested in the question to the use of tobacco by us; and, as it has justly been added, without its objections. There is no more likelihood of seeing a smoker embark without his tobacco than an Indian begin work or undertake a journey unless his chuspa (pouch) is full of Coca leaves. Three or four times a day he sits down, takes some leaves, puts them one by one into his mouth and rolls them into an aculio (quid), adding a little llipta (lime), which he takes from his ever-present poporo. The poporo is a little gourd, bored at the mouth on the upper part, in which the Indian keeps his llipta. This llipta is a white powder composed of ashes of vegetables and of calcined shells pulverized, with which the consumers of Coca have been accustomed, from the most remote times, to season their quid. It is, really, an alkaline substance intended to isolate the different principles of the leaf and to make the action of the Coca more prompt.
Among those inhabitants of South America, with whom the use of Coca did not extend to the lower classes until after the reign of the Incas, and who reserved for themselves, as we have seen, the right of chewing the Coca leaves, the consumption of Coca by children is strictly prohibited. They do not indulge in this luxury except in secret, and it appears to them all the sweeter because it is forbidden. But nearly always their breath, charged with the tell-tale odor of Coca, betrays them on approaching their parents, and the latter make them pay for the pleasure which they have stolen, and to which they are not entitled until they are of age, with very severe punishment. Only when they have grown up will they be allowed to chew Coca and to carry the poporo, which they do not relinquish even in the grave.
On coming of age the young Indian is consigned to an old woman, who keeps him a few hours in her hut to initiate him in the mysteries of man's estate.
After this ceremony she gives him the chuspa (Coca pouch), invests him with the poporo and consecrates him a coquero. One should see with what pride the young Indian leaves the threshold of the sacred cabin, which he entered as a child scarcely a few hours before and from which he departs a man, that is to say, carrying the chuspa and the poporo, and able to chew with impunity, before the old people, this precious leaf which had been forbidden him until then.