Through Five Republics on Horseback, Being an Account of Many Wanderings in South America

by George Whitfield Ray

I was permitted to occupy a palm hut without a roof, but I slept under a tiger's skin, and that kept off dew and rain. They reserved the right to come and go in it as they pleased. The women, with naked babies astride their hips, the usual way of carrying them, were particularly annoying. A little girl, however, perhaps ten years old, named Supupnik (Sawdust), made friends with me, and that friendship lasted during all my stay with them. Her face was always grotesquely painted, but she was a sweet child.

These Indians are of normal stature, and are always erect and stately, perhaps because all burdens are borne by straps on the forehead. The expression of the savage is peculiar, for he pulls out all the hair on his face, even the eyelashes and eyebrows, and seems to think the omission of that act would be a terrible breach of cleanliness. These same individuals will, however, frequently be seen with their whole body so coated with dirt that it could easily be scraped off with a knife in cakes, as the housewife would scrape a burnt loaf! The first use to which the women put the little round tin looking-glasses, which I used for barter, was to admire their pretty (?) faces; but the men, with a sober look, would search for the detested hair on lip or chin. That I was so lost to decency as to suffer a moustache to cover my lip was to them a constant puzzle and wonder, for in every other respect the universal opinion was that I was a civilized kind of "thing." I write thing advisedly, for the white man is to them an inferior creation—not a person.

In place of a beard or moustache, the inhabitant of the Chaco prefers to paint his face, and sometimes he makes quite an artistic design.

These wild inhabitants of Central South America generally wear a skin around the loins, or a string of ostrich feathers. Some tribes, as, for example, the Chamacocos, dispense with either. The height of fashion is to wear strings of tigers' teeth, deer's hoofs, birds' bills, etc., around the neck. Strings of feathers or wool are twisted around ankles and wrists, while the thickly matted hair is adorned with plumes, standing upright.

The men insert round pieces of wood in the lobe of the ear. Boys of tender age have a sharp thorn pushed through the ear, where more civilized nations wear earrings. This hole is gradually enlarged until manhood, when a round piece, two inches in diameter and one and a half inches thick, can be worn, not depending from the ear, but in the gristle of it. The cartilage is thus so distended that only a narrow rim remains around the ornament, and this may often be seen broken out. Sometimes three or four rattles from the tail of the rattlesnake also hang from the ear on to the shoulder.

These tribes of the Chaco were all vassals of the Inca at the advent of the Spaniards. They had been by them reclaimed from savagery, and taught many useful arts, one or two of which, such as the making of blankets and string, they still retain. The Inca used the ear ornaments of solid gold, but made in the form of a wheel. The nearest approach to this old custom is when the wooden ear-plug is painted thus, as are some in the author's possession.

I was fortunate in gaining the favor of the tribe living near the river, and because of certain favors conferred upon them, was adopted into the family. My face was painted, my head adorned with ostrich plumes, and I was given the name of Wanampangapthling ithma (Big Cactus Red Mouth). Because of this formal initiation, I was privileged to travel where I chose, but to the native Paraguayan or Argentine the Chaco is a forbidden land. The Indian describes himself as a man; monkeys are little men; I was a thing; but the Paraguayans are Christians, and that is the lowest degree of all. The priests they see on the other side of the river are Yankilwana (neither man nor woman); and a Yankilwana, in his distinctive garb, could never tread this Indian soil. So abhorrent to them is the name of Christian, that the missionaries have been compelled to use another word to describe their converts, and they are called "Followers of Jesus." All the members of some large expeditions have been massacred just because they were Christians. Surely this is convincing corroboration of my remarks regarding the state of Roman Catholicism in those dark lands.

A few miserable-looking, diminutive sheep are kept by some tribes, and the blankets referred to are made from the wool, which is torn off the sheep with a sharp shell, or, if near the coast, with a knife. The blankets are woven by hand across two straight branches of tree, and they are sometimes colored in various shades. A bulbous root they know of dyes brown, the cochineal insect red, and the bark of a tree yellow. String is made from the fibre of the caraguataî plant, and snail shells are used to extract the fibre. This work is, of course, done by the women, as is also the making of the clay pots they use for cooking. The men only hunt.

All sleep on the ground, men, women, children and dogs, promiscuously. The wigwams are nothing more than a few branches stuck in the ground and tied at the top. The sides are left open. Very often even this most primitive of dwellings is dispensed with, and the degraded beings crawl under the shelter of the bushes. Furniture of any kind they are, of course, wit-out, and their destitution is only equalled by the African pigmy or the Australian black.

The Chaco is essentially a barren land, and the Indians' time seems almost fully taken up in procuring food. The men, with bows and arrows, hunt the deer, ostrich, fox, or wolf, while the women forage for roots and wild fruit.