One tribe in the north of the Chaco are cannibals, and they occasionally make war on their neighbors just to obtain food.
A good vegetable diet is the cabbage, which grows in the heart of certain palms, and weighs three or four pounds. To secure this the tree has perforce to be cut down. To the Indian without an axe this is no light task. The palm, as is well known, differs from other trees by its having the seat of life in the head, and not in the roots; so when the cabbage is taken out the tree dies.
Anything, everything, is eaten for food, and a roasted serpent or boiled fox is equally relished. During my stay among them I ceased to ask of what the mess was composed; each dish was worse than the former. Among the first dishes I had were mandioca root, a black carrion bird, goat's meat, and fox's head. The puma, otter, ant-bear, deer, armadillo, and ostrich are alike eaten, as is also the jaguar, a ferocious beast of immense size. I brought away from those regions some beautiful skins of this animal, the largest of which measures nearly nine feet from nose to tail.
In the sluggish, almost salt, streams, fish are numerous, and these are shot by the Indian with arrows, to which is attached a string of gut. Lakes and rivers are also filled with hideous-looking alligators of all sizes. These grow to the length of twelve or fifteen feet in these warm waters, and the tail is considered quite a delicacy. Besides these varied dishes, there is the electric eel; and, sunk in a yard depth of mud, is the lollock, of such interest to naturalists The lollock is a fish peculiar to the Chaco. Though growing to the length of three and four feet, it has only rudimentary eyes, and is, in consequence, quite blind; it is also unable to swim. The savage prods in the mud with a long notched lance, sometimes for hours, until he sticks the appetizing fish.
The steamy waters are so covered with aquatic plants that in some places I have been able to walk across a living bridge. Once, when out hunting, I came upon a beautiful forest glade, covered with a carpet of green. Thinking it a likely place for deer, I entered, when lo, I sank in a ftid lake of slime. Throwing my gun on to the bank, I had quite a difficulty to regain dry land.
In my journeyings here and there I employed one or another of the braves to accompany me. All they could eat and some little present was the pay. No sooner was the gift in their hand, however, after supper, than they would put it back in mine and say, "Give me some more food?" I was at first accompanied by Yantiwau (The Wolf Rider). Armed with a bow and arrows, he was a good hunter for me, and a faithful servant, but his custom of spitting on my knife and spoon to clean them I did not like. When my supplies were getting low, and I went to the river for a wash, he would say: "There's no kiltanithliacack (soap)—only clupup (sand)." Yantiwau was interested in pictures; he would gaze with wondering eyes at photos, or views of other lands, but he looked at them the wrong side up, as they all invariably do. While possessed of a profound respect for me in some ways, he thought me very lacking in common knowledge. While I was unable to procure game, through not seeing any, he could call the bird to him in a "ducky, ducky, come and be killed" kind of way; and my tongue was parched when he would scent water. This was sometimes very easy to smell, however, for it was almost impossible to drink out of a waterhole without holding the nose and straining the liquid through my closed teeth. Chaco water at best is very brackish, and on drying off the ground a white coat of salt is left.
My Indian's first and last thought was of his stomach. While capable of passing two or three days without eating, and feeling no pangs of hunger, yet, when food was to hand, he gorged himself, and could put away an incredible amount. Truly, his make-up was a constant wonder to me. Riding through the "hungry belt" I would be famishing, but to my question: "Are you hungry?" he would answer, "No." After a toilsome journey, and no supper at the end: "Would you like to eat?" "No." But let an ostrich or a deer come in sight, and he could not live another minute without food! Another proof to Yantiwau of my incapacity was the fact that when my matches were all used I could not light the fire. He, by rubbing a blunt-pointed hard stick in a groove of soft wood, could cause such a friction that the dust would speedily ignite, and set fire to the dry twigs which he was so clever in collecting. Although such a simple process to the Indian, I never met a white man who could use the firesticks with effect.
Sitting by the camp-fire in the stillness of evening, my guide would draw attention to a shooting star. "Look! That is a bad witch doctor," he would say. "Did you notice he went to the west? Well, the Toothlis live there. He has gone for vengeance!"
The wide palm plains are almost uninhabited; I have journeyed eighty miles without sighting human being or wigwam. In the rainy season the trees stand out of a sea-like expanse of steaming water, and one may wade through this for twenty miles without finding a dry place for bivouac. Ant hills, ten and fifteen feet high, with dome-shaped roofs, dot the wild waste like pigmy houses, and sometimes they are the only dry land found to rest on. The horses flounder through the mire, or sink up to the belly in slime, while clouds of flies make the life of man and beast a living death. Keys rust in the pocket, and boots mildew in a day. At other seasons, as I know by painful experience, the hard-baked ground is cracked up into fissures, and not a drop of water is to be found in a three days' journey. The miserable savages either sit in utter dejection on logs of wood or tree roots, viewing the watery expanse, or roam the country in search of yingmin (water).
Whereas the Caingwas may be described as inoffensive Indians, the inhabitants of the Chaco are savages, hostile to the white man, who only here and there, with their permission, has settled on the river bank. Generally a people of fine physique and iron constitution, free from disease of any kind, they are swept into eternity in an incredibly short space of time if civilized diseases are introduced. Even the milder ones, such as measles, decimate a whole tribe; and I have known communities swept away as autumn leaves in a strong breeze with the grippe. I was informed that the hospital authorities at Asuncion gave them the cast-off fever clothing of their patients during an epidemic to sweep them off the face of the earth!