There is scant difference in appearance between the two sexes, and none whatever in their labor, except that, if there is only one load, the woman carries it, and the baby in addition. In both the half-breed and Indian classes the women are more uncleanly than the men. Like the latter, they work at all the coarser unskilled tasks, shoveling earth, mixing and carrying mortar, cobbling streets; while in the matters of loads there is nothing under two hundred pounds in weight which, once on their backs, they cannot jog along under at a kind of limping gait that seems tireless. Almost any day the furniture and entire possessions of some moving household is displayed to public gaze as it jogs through town on the backs of an Indian family. The chief water-supply of Quito is a constant string of Indians from the fountain opposite the government palace, with huge, red earthen jars sitting on their hips and supported by a thong across the forehead. It is a commonplace to meet an Indian carrying the gaudy image of some saint larger than himself. Cheap coffins of half-rotten boards, painted sky-blue or pink and decorated with strips of gilded paper, frequently mince past, secured by the brilliant poncho of the carrier, knotted across his chest. I had occasion one day to transport a typewriter a few blocks. The Indian prepared to sling it on his back with a rope. When I objected to this method, I found that the fellow not only could not carry it in his hands, but that he could not lift it to his head. When I placed it there, however, he ambled away as if he had nothing on his mind but his hat.
Frequently an entire family takes a large job, such as carrying a building from one end of town to another, adobe brick by brick. Such a one passed my window for weeks. All day long they dog-trotted back and forth in single file along the line of smooth-worn flagstones in the middle of the street, their bare feet making absolutely no sound, never a word or a sign of complaint finding outward expression. The man and woman each bore the same number of mud bricks piled on their backs, and the latter always carried the baby in her pouch, though they made a hundred trips a day. Why the infant could not have been left at one end or the other of the journey it was hard to guess. Two children, one a little fellow of five with one brick on his back, his brother of seven or eight with two, toiled all day long between father and mother, as if they were being systematically trained for the only life before them.
The Andean Indian is even less like the tall and haughty redskin of our country in manner than in appearance. Compared with him, the Mexican Indian is self-assertive, bold, and ferocious. Silent and abstracted, he takes no apparent heed of what goes on about him. Of phlegmatic temperament, a truly wooden equanimity of temper, melancholy, taciturn, and reserved, he is noted above all for a distrust that is perhaps natural, but is more likely the result of centuries of privations since the coming of the Spaniards. He has a blind submission to authority, great attachment to the house in which he lives, and is so cowardly that he lets himself be dominated by the most despicable members of other races. A complete outsider in government and public affairs, he is treated by the rest of the population like a domestic animal. The merchant of Quito who requires a carrier to deliver some bundle does not wait for one to offer himself. He steps into the street and snatches the first Indian who passes, though he be on his way to a dying parent, or preparing his child’s funeral; and the Indian performs the task as uncomplainingly as some mechanical device, and returns to wait perhaps an hour or two for the few cents the merchant chooses to give him. Only when he is drunk does the aboriginal’s manner change. Then he is garrulous and mildly disorderly. But even on a Saturday afternoon, when the highways are lined with Indians of both sexes reeling homeward, the gringo passes unnoticed, in marked contrast with the gantlet of insolence, if not, indeed, of actual danger, which he must run under like circumstances in the highlands of Mexico.
The newcomer’s sympathy for the Indian of Quito gradually evaporates with the discovery that he is utterly devoid of ambition, as completely indifferent to his own betterment as any four-footed animal. Pad out this fact with all its details and ramifications, discarding entirely the American’s ingrown tendency to imbue every human being with a striving character, and the hopelessness of the Indian’s condition will be more clearly realized. The Government of Ecuador gives scant attention to the education of the aboriginals; even if it provided schools and forced attendance, there would still remain the problem of arousing in these people any interest in, or effort for, self-improvement.
A simple episode will go far toward visualizing the temperament of the Indian of Quito, and perhaps make a bit clearer the ease with which Pizarro and his handful of tramps overthrew the Empire of the Incas. I had gone out for a stroll one afternoon along the road to Guallabamba. Some three miles from town a light rain turned me back. There were no houses near, but numbers of Indians were going and coming. A short distance ahead was a group engaged in noisy contention. Suddenly a handsome, muscular young Indian broke away and ran toward me, his long, black hair streaming out behind him. At his heels, cursing, came three cholos, in the dark hats, more sober blankets and trousers of their caste, with shorn hair and straggling suggestions of mustaches. I was not armed—one does not trouble to carry weapons about Quito—and in my bespattered road garb I had certainly no appearance of protective authority. When he reached me, however, the frightened Indian, instead of running on, turned as sharply as about a corner, and pattered along close at my heels, breathing quickly. I continued my stroll, while the drunken half-breeds, far more muscular than I, hovered about ten steps in the rear, crying:
“Ah, coward! You run to the señor for protection!”
Yet not a step nearer did they approach during the furlong or more that the procession lasted. Then, as we passed the entrance to an hacienda, the Indian suddenly sprinted away up its avenue of eucalyptus-trees faster than the cholos could follow. When they overtook me again, one protested in plaintive tones:
“Ah, señor, ese sinvergüenza de Indio did not deserve your protection.”
Then they fell behind, while I, who had been an entirely passive actor in all the scene, strolled on into the city. It would be hard to imagine a similar incident in Mexico.
This Indian’s older daughter knocked at my door one day to say that, as it was “Don Panchito’s” birthday, the celebration in the sala next my own room would probably keep me awake all night anyway, and had I not better join the party. By eight the beating of the piano had begun. When I appeared, “Don Panchito” took me on a tour of the guests, seated in solemn quadrangle around the four walls of the room, the sexes segregated. The South American has a custom which might well be imported into our own land, to the relief of frequent embarrassment. As he was introduced, each man rose, bowed profoundly, and announced his own name in clear-cut tones,—“Enrique Burgos de Perez y Silva, servidor de usted.” The women remained seated, but made their names similarly known. A professional pianist, a patched, dishevelled, and hungry-looking young man of some Indian blood, had already begun a very nearly continuous performance at fast time, with barely two-minute intervals between the half-hour dances. In a corner sat motionless all the evening two professional chaperons—for “Don Panchito” was a widow—sour-faced, sleepy-looking old women of none too immaculate habits, wrapped in black mantos from which only nose and eyes protruded.