After the bullfight a yearling is often turned into the ring for the amusement of the youthful male population of Quito
A group of the Indians that form so large a percentage of Quito’s population. The hats are light gray, the ponchos, skirts, and shawls each some crude, brilliant color
Many consider the Andean Indian a debased Mongolian type, a theory not without its basis in his features. In a curious old book of the National Library of Ecuador—the “History of the Kingdom of Quito,” written in 1789, the Jesuit Padre Velasco takes up the question of the origin of the Indian and settles it—at least to his own satisfaction. To begin with, the Church has declared the inhabitants of the New World “rational,” that is, descended from Adam and Eve. That point being disposed of, it follows that “the men and animals who were found in America must be descendants of those who emerged from Noah’s ark; for does not the Bible say that all the world was covered with water? Even granted, for the sake of argument,” continues the razor-minded padre, “that the mountains of South America protruded a bit above the surface of those waters, is it conceivable that man could live for months on the highest peaks, eating snow, drinking snow, and sleeping in snow? Could he even have stood up for nearly a year on those pyramids of snow and ice?” I give it up. Ask some polar explorer. What then remains of the argument of those who still cling to the authoctonomous heresy? Obviously there is no other recourse then to admit that the ancestors of the race found their way to America by the Behring Strait, or across the Pacific from the shores of Asia.
Whatever his origin, the Indian of the Andes is a distinct reality, distinct, indeed, to all the five senses, and he varies little throughout the length of the continent. In build he is stocky and short, very muscular, with the strength of a mule for carrying loads on his back, indefatigable on foot, but weak for other labor. His color is between a tarnished copper and a more or less intense bronze. His head is large; his neck thick and long, his eyes small, black, and penetrating, yet at times strangely suggesting those of a dead fish; his nose is bulky, and somewhat flattened and spread; his teeth are white, even, and always in splendid condition; his long hair, worn sometimes flying loose, sometimes in a single braid wound with red tape, is jet-black, without luster, abundant, perfectly straight, strong and coarse as that of a horse’s mane, without even a tendency to baldness. His lips are thick and heavy, the lower one somewhat hanging, giving him a suggestion of sulkiness. His forehead is low, his mouth large, and his prominent cheek-bones and large ears give his face an appearance of great width. He is broad-shouldered, with a chest like a barrel, but slender of leg and small of foot. He grows no beard, and has almost no hair on the body.
Men and women alike, except a rare male with a sole of home-tanned leather secured by thongs, are bare-legged at least halfway to the knees, their feet, like calloused hoofs, marked by stony trails and years of barnyard wallowing. The male wears a broad, round, light-gray hat of thick felt, a kind of pajama shirt or blouse of fancily colored calico, or lienzo, a very roomy pair of “panties” of thinnest white cotton that reach anywhere from his knees to halfway to his undomesticated feet. Besides these garments, he is never seen without his ruana, or poncho, which serves him as a cloak and carry-all by day, and as a bed and covering by night. This is always of some startling, crude color, deep red predominating, with such screaming combinations as magenta and purple, carmine and yellow, though when sufficiently soiled and sun-bleached, the old rose and velvety brown, the brick red or turquoise blue, take on all the soft richness of Oriental rugs. It is this commonly homespun garment, and the corresponding one of the women, that make Quito such a color-splashed city.
The woman, too, copies the dress of her ancestors to remote generations. She wears the same hat as the male—hat-pins are unknown to her, all down the Andes—a beltless waist of coarse cloth, either open, or thin and ragged; several strips of colored bayeta (a woolish shoddy) wrapped tightly around her draft-horse hips from waist to calves in guise of skirt, always slit open on one side, showing an inner petticoat—once white—though sometimes in striking solid colors, in marked contrast to the outer skirt; and a blanket, smaller, but as audible in hue as the poncho of the male, thrown round her shoulders like a shawl. She is fond of gaudy earrings of colored glass or similar rubbish, ranging in size from large to colossal; from one to a dozen strings of cheap red beads, often the bean of a wild plant indigenous to the region, hang around her neck; generally brass rings adorn every finger; and often many beads are wound round and round her bare arms. She is completely devoid of feminine charm. She needs none, for she is amply worth her keep as a beast of burden.
As far as I know, there is no law in Quito requiring an Indian woman not to be seen without a babe in arms, or, rather, in shawl; but if one exists, it is seldom violated. In an hour I have seen, by actual count, more than three hundred female aborigines pass my window in the calle Flores, and not a score of them but bore on her back a child of from two weeks to two years of age, to say nothing of several other bundles and her whirling spindle. When the infant is tiny, it is carried lengthwise at the bottom of the blanket-shawl knotted across the mother’s chest. When it is older, it is tossed or climbs astride her broad back, lying face down, with legs spread, while she throws her outer garment about it, ties the knot on her chest—or on her forehead if the child is heavy—and trots along at her work the day through, without the least apparent notice of the offspring. The babe falls asleep, or gazes with curious, yet rather dull, eyes at the world as it speeds by, peering over the mother’s shoulder like an engineer from his cab, eats such food or refuse as falls into its hands, or plays with the mother’s tape-wound braid. The Indian woman never carries her offspring in any other manner unless, in her rôle as a common carrier, she picks up a load too bulky or heavy to place the infant atop, such as a bedstead, a bureau, or two full-sized sacks of wheat—these are not exaggerations, but frequent cargoes—when she hangs the child in front, in the concave of her figure, like a baby kangaroo in the maternal pouch, knotting the supporting garment across her shoulders.
The youngest baby is already inconceivably dirty, yet almost always robustly healthy in appearance, though the infant mortality of the class is appalling. It is an unusual experience to hear an Indian baby cry. From its earliest years it seems to adopt that uncomplaining attitude toward life that is so marked a characteristic of the adults. Though she treats her offspring with no active unkindness—in all the years I spent in South America I have never seen an Indian mother strike a child—the aboriginal woman seems to endure it passively, like any other burden thrust upon her from which there is no escape, carrying it where it will be least troublesome, and never, at least openly, showing any caressing fondness for it. The child old enough to toddle about the streets often remains on the mother’s back, as if to hold the place for the next comer. It is a common experience to hear an Indian child ask in a perfectly fluent tongue for a serving at the maternal source of supply.