There are no ceremonies attending the death and burial of a Lecco. During the last illness the neighbors may drop in on a visit of sympathy, and cañassa will be handed around. When death occurs, one member of the family, the husband, son, or son-in-law, wraps the body in a piece of tucuyo, and carries it on his shoulder to a secluded place in the jungle, and there buries it. The slight mound above the grave is its only mark, and that disappears after the lapse of a season or two. Apparently there is no idea of spirits haunting these places, for the Leccos pass them without hesitation after nightfall—something that the Cholos do not care or are afraid to do.
The Lecco families are small. Two or, at the most, three babies are the rule, and it is not at all uncommon to find a childless family. Cañassa and the frequent drunken fiestas that are their only relaxation seem to be the means by which they are accomplishing the suicide of their race. Girl babies are preferred to boys; for when a daughter marries, her husband will eventually have to support her parents. But with a son it is recognized that his duty is to his wife and her people. The women are faithful to their men, if their men care for them and guard them; but if the men become careless or apparently indifferent, the women regard it as a tacit relinquishing of the rights of fidelity, and establish such casual relations as suit them.
With rare exceptions the men are, in effect, in a state of slavery. The debt system prevails, and they are easy victims. The trader spreads his gaudy stock of trade stuffs before the Lecco, and the Lecco buys recklessly whatever attracts him at the moment. The trader gives him full swing at first, and the Lecco gets himself heavily in debt. And that debt is allowed to the exact extent of each particular Lecco’s value as a balsero or rubber-picker. A well-to-do balsero has a debt of two thousand bolivians; poorer ones less. And the Leccos are valued as slaves in the terms of the debt. The Lecco never gets free from his debt.
Of his race the Lecco has no knowledge. He has no written language—not even primitive hieroglyphs or crude pictures. He is even without a primitive instrument for making music. To all questions about themselves, as to where their fathers lived before them, or as to where their families came from even before that, or to the flattering questions as to the time when the Leccos “were a great people,” they have but one date to give. That is the “time of the Great Quina,” when the bark of the quinine was worth a dollar and ten cents a pound, gold, on the river. This is their only date, and it was about sixty or seventy years ago.
They rigidly retain their own dialect, which they call the Riki-Riki, although they have acquired a Spanish patois in their dealing with the traders on the river. The Riki-Riki is strongly labial, though with many guttural sounds, and, like most barbaric tongues, is impossible to reproduce with our alphabet. The counting reduplicates systematically and on the basis of five, instead of ten as in our system.
CHAPTER XIV
DRIFTING DOWN THE RIO MAPIRI
That night we made camp on a sand bar in one of the more open reaches of water and close to the river’s edge. With their short machetes the Leccos cut some canes, unlashed our tentage from the platforms, and rigged a rough shelter. In the balmy air of the sunset there was no indication that it was needed, but during this season a tropical rain comes up with the suddenness of a breeze, and pitching a tent in a driving downpour in the darkness of perdition is no light pleasure. For themselves, the Leccos simply threw a matting of woven palm-leaves on the sand and their camp was made. The bank was lined with a fringe of driftwood, and Spanish cedar and mahogany made admirable fuel, and gave one at the same time a sense of wanton, extravagant luxury that the humbler cooking fires of our North never obtain. Presently little fires crackled into life along the playa while gathering around each were groups of Leccos in their loose, flapping, square shirts, or else stripped to the waist in the hot evening air, intent on the small pots of boiling rice, platanos, and chalona. Quickly the velvet darkness of the tropics fell, and the high lights flickered on naked skins; slowly the moon rose above the purple hills of the background, transforming the muddy surface of the swirling river into a shimmer of molten silver.
The smooth, sandy playa softened in the mellow light, while, in the foreground, the campfires threw in strong relief the easy play of naked muscles in the shifting groups of savage figures; beyond were other figures silhouetted against the night or merged with the bulk of the callapos, gently swaying at the river’s edge, to the low roar of the current. The subdued chatter of the Leccos, the crackling of the driftwood flames, the occasional cry of some morose tropical bird of the night, and once in a while the far-off, snarling howl of a jaguar in the hills beyond blended like the carefully studied tones of some painting, and the peace that passeth the understanding of cities descended.
The very pleasing moon also added to the enthusiasm of the sand fleas and sand-hoppers; diabolical out of all proportion to their physical capacity and by the aid of the fourth dimension triumphing over my netting, they made of sleep a periodic and exhausting labor.
I looked out and envied the impervious Leccos; half naked to the night they sprawled on their patches of palm matting and only awakened in response to an itching thirst and then prowled round to locate the extra ration. Somewhere back in the hills were the savages, the Chunchos and the Yungus, but they rarely come down to this river. It is too populous, according to their standards, and precautions against them are rarely needed. Farther on, when we got into the Rio Kaka and the Rio Beni, some care was essential; and it was necessary to camp on the largest sand bars and close to the water’s edge, where the camp could not be rushed in a sudden dash from the jungle.