So the poor shepherd is fined a sol and admonished that his lands will be given to some one else if he does not respond more promptly to his patron’s call for work. He leaves behind him a promise and the rank mixed smell of coca and much unwashed woolen clothing.
It is not alone at the work that they grumble. There is malaria in the lower valleys. Some of them return to their lofty mountain homes prostrated with the unaccustomed heat and alternately shaking with chills and burning with fever. Without aid they may die or become so weakened that tuberculosis carries them off. Only their rugged strength enables the greater number to return in good health.
A plantation may be as large as a principality and draw its laborers from places fifty miles away. Some of the more distant Indians need not come to work in the canefields. Part of their flock is taken in place of work. Or they raise horses and mules and bring in a certain number each year to turn over to the patron. Hacienda Huadquiña ([Fig. 46]) takes in all the land from the snow-covered summits of the Cordillera Vilcapampa to the canefields of the Urubamba. Within the broad domain are half the climates and occupations characteristic of Peru. It is difficult to see how a thousand Indians can be held to even a mixed allegiance. It seems impossible that word can be got to them. However the native “telegraph” is even more perfect than that among the forest Indians. From one to the other runs the news that they are needed in the canefields. On the trail to and from a mountain village, in their ramblings from one high pasture to another, within the dark walls of their stone and mud huts when they gather for a feast or to exchange drinks of brandy and chicha—the word is passed that has come up from the valleys.
For every hundred faena Indians there are five or six regular laborers on the plantations, so with the short term passed by the faena Indians their number is generally half that of the total laborers at work at any one time. They live in huts provided for them by the planter, and in the houses of their friends among the regular laborers. Here there are almost nightly carousals. The regular laborer comes from the city or the valley town. The faena laborer is a small hill farmer or shepherd. They have much to exchange in the way of clothing, food, and news. I have frequently had their conversations interpreted for me. They ask about the flocks and the children, who passed along the trails, what accidents befell the people.
“Last year,” droned one to another over their chicha, “last year we lost three lambs in a hailstorm up in the high fields near the snow. It was very cold. My foot cracked open and, though I have bound it with wet coca leaves every night, it will not cure,” and he displays his heel, the skin of which is like horn for hardness and covered with a crust of dirt whose layers are a record of the weather and of the pools he has waded for years.
Their wanderings are the main basis of conversation. They know the mountains better than the condors do. We hired a small boy of twelve at Puquiura. He was to build our fires, carry water, and help drive the mules. He crossed the Cordillera Vilcapampa on foot with us. He scrambled down into the Apurimac canyon and up the ten thousand feet of ascent on the other side, twisted the tails of the mules, and shouted more vigorously then the arrieros. He was engaged to go with us to Pasaje, where his father would return with him in a month. But he climbed to Huascatay with us and said he wanted to see Abancay. When an Indian whom we pressed into service dropped the instruments on the trail and fled into the brush the boy packed them like a man. The soldier carried a tripod on his back. The boy, not to be outdone, insisted on carrying the plane table, and to his delight we called him a soldier too. He went with us to Huancarama. When I paid him he smiled at the large silver soles that I put into his hand; and when I doubled the amount for his willingness to work his joy was unbounded. Forthwith he set out, this time on muleback, on the return journey. The last I saw of him he was holding his precious soles in a handkerchief and kicking his beast with his bare heels, as light-hearted as a cavalier. Often I find myself wondering whether he returned safely with his money. I should very much like to see him again, for with him I associate cheerfulness in difficult places and many a pleasant camp-fire.
CHAPTER VII
THE GEOGRAPHIC BASIS OF REVOLUTIONS AND OF HUMAN CHARACTER IN THE PERUVIAN ANDES
HUMAN character as a spontaneous development has always been a great factor in shaping historical events, but it is a striking fact that in the world of our day its influence is exerted chiefly in the lowest and highest types of humanity. The savage with his fetishes, his taboos, and his inherent childlikeness and suspicion needs only whim or a slight religious pretext to change his conduct. Likewise the really educated and the thoughtful act from motives often wholly unrelated to economic conditions or results. But the masses are deeply influenced by whatever affects their material welfare. A purely idealistic impulse may influence a people, but in time its effects are always displayed against an economic background.
There is a way whereby we may test this theory. In most places in the world we have history in the making, and through field studies we can get an intimate view of it. It is peculiarly the province of geography to study the present distribution and character of men in relation to their surroundings and these are the facts of mankind that must forever be the chief data of economic history. It is not vain repetition to say that this means, first of all, the study of the character of men in the fullest sense. It means, in the second place, that a large part of the character must be really understood. Whenever this is done there is found a geographic basis of human character that is capable of the clearest demonstration. It is in the geographic environment that the material motives of humanity have struck their deepest roots.
These conclusions might be illustrated from a hundred places in the field of study covered in this book. Almost every chapter of Part I contains facts of this character. I wish, however, to discuss the subject specifically and for that purpose now turn to the conditions of life in the remoter mountain valleys and to one or two aspects of the revolutions that occur now and then in Peru. The last one terminated only a few months before our arrival and it was a comparatively easy matter to study both causes and effects.