Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena

by J. A. Zahm

Of the Waraus, the Indians who inhabit the delta, the missionary, Padre Gumilla, writes that when their islands are periodically inundated by the rise of the Orinoco, they erect their huts on piles—not on trees, as Raleigh states—above the water. Furthermore, he tells us that these huts are made of the moriche palm, which grows abundantly in these islands, and are covered with the leaves of it. From the fibres of the leaf, they make their hammocks and their cords for fishing and for bowstrings.

Around the pulpy shoot that ascends from the trunks is a web-like integument that serves them for the slight covering they wear. On the productions of this tree, also, they entirely subsist. The pulpy shoot is eaten as cabbage, and the tree bears a fruit like the date, but somewhat larger. When the inundation ceases, the tree is cut down, and being perforated, a palatable juice exudes, from which they make a drink. The interior substance of it is then taken out and thrown into vessels of water and well washed and the ligneous fibres being removed, a white sediment is deposited, which, dried in the sun, is made into a very wholesome bread.[26]

Accepting the foregoing statements as true, Humboldt philosophizes as follows: “It is curious to observe in the lowest degree of civilization the existence of a whole tribe depending on a single species of palm tree, similar to those insects which feed on one and the same flower, or on one and the same part of a plant.”[27]

Yet, notwithstanding all that has been written about the Indians of the Orinoco delta living on the tops of trees, and depending on only the moriche palm for food and raiment, it is certain that they do not do so now, and it is almost equally certain that they have never done so in the past. Truth to tell, these stories seem to repose on little better foundation than those so long circulated and credited regarding Lake Parime, and the great city of Manoa—the home of El Dorado.

Raleigh had no time or opportunity to explore the delta, and there is reason to believe that in this, as in other matters, he gave free reign to his fancy to satisfy his reader’s desire for the marvelous. Gumilla, apparently, got his information regarding these particular subjects at secondhand. He spent many years on the middle Orinoco and some of its affluents, but there is no evidence that he was ever in a position to verify the stories so long current regarding the manner of living of the inhabitants of the delta.

The fact is, no one, so far as known, ever made any attempt to explore the interior of the delta until more than two centuries after Raleigh’s time and until nearly a half century after Humboldt’s visit to the valley of the Orinoco. As a consequence, all that had been reported by earlier writers was exaggeration and guesswork, if not pure invention.

Sir Robert Schomburgk, who, as Her Majesty’s commissioner to survey the boundaries of British Guiana, explored the delta in 1841—and some months of his sojourn there was during the rainy season—states explicitly, that not in a single instance did he find Indians dwelling on trees. “We can well suppose that the numerous fires which were made in each hut, and the reflection of which was the stronger in consequence of the stream of vapor around the summit of trees in those moist regions, illuminated at night the adjacent trees; but the fire itself was scarcely ever made on the top of a tree. The inundation rises at the delta seldom higher than three or four feet above the banks of the rivers;”—not twenty or thirty feet, as Raleigh asserts—“and if the immediate neighborhood of the sea and the level nature of the land be considered, this is an enormous rise.”[28]

Herr Appun, who visited the delta some years subsequently to Schomburgk’s sojourn there, declares, “I have lived more than a year and a half among the Waraus of the Orinoco delta, and those of the east coast of South America, from Cape Sabinetta to Cape Nassau, at the mouth of the Pomeroon river in British Guiana, both during the dry and the rainy season, and never have I beheld any of the aerial dwellings that have been described.”[29]

The one, however, who has most thoroughly explored the interior of the delta is Sr. Andres E. Level, who spent several years among the Waraus, or Guaraunos, as they are called by the Spaniards. His investigations have completely exploded the false notions so long entertained regarding the delta and its inhabitants. The land is not all an impassable swamp. Much of it is so elevated above the river that it is never reached by the high floods of the Orinoco.

Its soil is even more fertile than that of the Nile valley and produces every tropical fruit and tree in the greatest profusion. Game is abundant, and the Indians have extensive rancherias—plantations—which supply them grain, fruits and vegetables of all kinds. In the rivers near by they have the greatest variety of fish, besides turtle that would be the delight of the epicure.