Across the Andes

by Charles Johnson Post

The likeness of these people to the Malays is still further accented by their costume. They wear rather tight breeches of white tucuyo, a coarse muslin, that taper to the ankle, and above it a short shirt of gaudy red, yellow, or blue, or even sometimes white, though the red is popularly regarded as the most aristocratic. The shirt is cut square with the armholes in the two upper corners. The hole for the head is emblazoned by a border of crude design cut from varied-colored calicos and sewed on. In the course of many days’ association with them, I discovered that the little chipa, or bag of native-woven wild cotton, which every Lecco carries with him on any of his river expeditions, is filled with clean clothing. The muddy water of the Rio Mapiri and the Rio Kaka—which the Mapiri becomes farther down—soils everything it touches, and so the Leccos, who are as much in the water as out of it, regularly changed their garments daily, only making an exception when some extra-hard passages would have made it a useless extravagance.

In my contact with the South American Indians, whether among the high plains of the Andes or among the forests drained by the tributaries of the Amazon, I received rather the impression of inert, passive races; of peoples who were patiently hoping for the return of the legendary days of their fathers, yet who, dimly, in some way felt that the hope was vain. It might poetically be interpreted as a vague consciousness of their doom of ultimate extinction. The Lecco is probably doomed to extinction as well, but he is by no means a despondent specimen. On the contrary, no more cheery, indeed hilarious, outfit can be imagined than that with which we embarked on our callapos at Mapiri. Candor compels me to own that this exuberance of spirits was probably largely alcoholic, for it is one of the few rights to which he clings tenaciously—that of being allowed to keep drunk while making a voyage on the river. For the Lecco will not work to any good purpose if kept sober; they feel that they have been defrauded and cheated of an inalienable right, and at the first convenient opportunity they will avenge the injury by running the callapo on a rock in a rapid, while they themselves will swim through it like otters and make the shore below safe and unrepentant. Unlike all other savages, who become treacherous and turbulent under the influence of liquor, the Lecco becomes even more genial and jovial when in his cups. He is pre-eminently a man of peace.

From the moment that we shoved out into the stream everything was a huge joke. If one slipped on the submerged logs of the callapo and floundered overboard, the rest hailed it with yells of delight, and they dug their heavy paddles into the water and tried to pull the callapo beyond his reach. The victim would dive and come up in some unexpected place, where the effect of the black pompadour and the beady eyes suddenly popping above the opaque depths of an eddy, followed by a damp, sheepish grin, was irresistibly funny.

They are perfectly at home in the water, and will swim any rapid and the dangerous whirlpools that are constantly forming below them, without hesitation—places that it would be fatal for a white man to attempt. There is a story of a Lecco who went through the most dangerous of the rapids with his wife and baby and a mule—the mule and baby inclosed in a framework of palm amidships on the balsa, and the wife helping with a paddle at the stern. They made the passage safely, but it was the survival of the mule that excited their admiration.

Their huts are one-roomed affairs with the floor of beaten clay, upon which, at night, are laid woven grass mats that serve as beds. The walls are of charo—a kind of poor relative of the bamboo—lashed to a slender framework of the same material by split strips of the mora, the typical hut of the tropical frontier. Stout posts sunk at the corners give the strength to support the roof. The huts are about ten by fifteen feet. The steep-pitched roof is thatched with split palm-leaves that render it water-proof even in the heavy tropical thunder-storms. A high broad shelf at one end serves as a second story and a place of storage. In some there is a low shelf of charo along one side that serves as the family bed, though these latter are only in the houses of the more ambitious Leccos. All cooking is done at one end over an open fire, the smoke escaping as best it may through the interstices between the layers of charo. A single door is the only opening.

Near by is the little platano or plantain patch, and a few yuccas. A few scrawny chickens use the house as their headquarters, and are reserved for fiestas. A pot or two, purchased from the traders complete the household equipment. Invariably they boil their food, even to the platanos that are so much better roasted. This is in striking contrast to the barbaros of the farther interior, who are without the knowledge of boiling food; they either eat it raw or roast it slightly.

The Lecco women are also as distinctly Malaysian in appearance as the men. They have fine figures and retain the free gracefulness of carriage of the nude savage, and, up to the time they are sixteen, if not absolutely pretty in feature, are distinctly pleasing. One, however, that I saw in the rubber barraca of Caimalebra, living with a Bolivian refugee murderer, was an absolute beauty by any standards of comparison. They were living happily, and on one trip I enjoyed their hospitality for five days. The single garment of the women is an exaggeration of the Lecco shirt, reaching nearly to the ankles. It is pleasing in its effect, and sets off the graceful beauty of their figures in a way that recalls the simple fashions of the Hawaiian and Polynesian peoples. The women of other tribes are apt to adopt slatternly skirts after their introduction to the frontier civilization.

The girls are fully developed at fourteen, and they usually mate a year or so later with a Lecco boy of about their own age. The boy at that time is a full-fledged balsero and able to hold his own in the struggle with the river—their only test of arrival at man’s estate.

Sometimes a mission priest comes down the river, and then, if the family has prospered, there will be a grand fiesta and a marriage will be performed according to the rites of the Church. This will cost forty bolivians—about eighteen dollars—for the priest’s fee, and considerably more for the drunken orgy that follows. To have been married according to the ceremonies of the Church is a great distinction, and also a rare one.

Of any form or ceremonial that the Leccos may have had at one time, there is not a trace left. All vestiges of their own original superstitions have long disappeared. Nominally they are Catholics, and are claimed as such by the padrés, but in reality they are without religion or belief. The rites of baptism and marriage seem to appeal to them, but apparently more on the ground of the superior dignity that is lent to the following fiesta. Baptism is performed by any trader who happens to be passing on the river, and to their complete satisfaction, while his crew is impressed as godfathers. I was invited to perform it once, but declined, to their evident disappointment.