In the Wilds of South America

by Leo E. Miller

After a tramp of half a mile through weedy fields of maize and yuccas, we reached the mission-buildings—a few dozen low grass huts clustering around an open square. At one end rose two structures of large size which served as the church and general meeting-place. Near the centre of the clearing a stately cross had been erected, hewn from the heart of a giant ceiba.

The priest was delighted to see us and spared no effort to make us comfortable. We were soon installed in a room of one of the buildings which served as a boys’ dormitory, and a short time later started out to inspect our surroundings.

At first the Indians were reticent and would peer at us from a distance. This was true particularly of the children, but as the days wore on we made friends with them, and from both the people themselves and the priest we learned a great deal about their history and habits.

The name Yuracaré, according to D’Orbigny, was given to them by the Quechuas, and means “white man”; this is most inappropriate, as they are of a decided brown color, although perhaps averaging lighter than the Quechuas. They were first discovered by Viedma in 1768.

At the present time, at least, the Yuracarés are a people of the hot, humid lowlands. Those who have not been captured and brought to the missions, or who escaped the unenviable fate of having been taken from their forest home by private “slaving expeditions,” live along the smaller branches of the streams, which eventually find their way into the Mamoré; this includes particularly the Chaparé, Chimoré, the Ichilo, and the Isiboro.

There were about four hundred Indians residing at the mission. Although attempts have been made intermittently to civilize these people for more than a hundred years, there were long intervals when the work had to be abandoned, and the families naturally returned to their homes in the wilderness. Nearly all of the present aggregation had been brought together during the last few years. Newcomers are added to their number frequently. The priest, learning of other families far up some unmapped quebrada or streamlet, takes a few of the men who have learned to place confidence in him and whom he trusts, and starts forth on long canoe voyages in search of them. They approach the hidden dwelling suddenly, surround it, and persuade the occupants to accompany them immediately, giving them only an hour or two in which to collect their few belongings. Occasionally the Indians whom they seek learn of the approach of the emissaries and hide before their arrival; then the priest returns to the mission, his long trip having been made to no purpose. When, should the expedition prove to be successful, the families have departed to the waiting canoes, their huts are burned and the plantations destroyed. Knowing that neither home nor food have been left behind, they are not so apt to run away from their new quarters and go back to their old dwelling-places. I heard of no instance where they resisted this deportation.

The Yuracarés are a tall, well-built people of a rather docile disposition; however, the older generation never wholly becomes reconciled to the new mode of life, and remains at the mission only for reasons which I will explain later.

In their wild state they live in small family parties, obtaining their subsistence from the forest, which abounds in game, and from their fields of yuccas. Their native costume, a long, shirt-like garment called tipoy, is made from the fibrous bark of a tree; at the mission this has largely been replaced by cotton clothes. Each family has been provided with a separate hut of adequate size, where the parents and very small children live. The boys and girls over five or six years of age are under the constant supervision of the priest, and attend his classes; at night they sleep in separate locked dormitories, which prevents their returning to their homes, and also keeps the parents from running away, as they will not leave without their children.

Padre Fulgencio also explained that this kept them from observing and copying the customs of their elders. He recognizes the impossibility of reclaiming the forest-reared savage, and devotes practically all his efforts to the younger generation.

The Indians marry at an early age, the boys at sixteen and the girls at fourteen. In their wild state each family rears four or five children; at the mission never more than two, and frequently none at all. Should the first-born be a girl, she is permitted slowly to starve to death. The priest has inflicted severe punishment upon them in his efforts to break this custom, but so far all his work has been in vain.