The food quest—Indians omnivorous eaters—Tapir and other animals used for food—Monkeys—The peccary—Feathered game—Vermin—Eggs, carrion, and intestines not eaten—Honey—Fish—Manioc—Preparation of cassava—Peppers—The Indian hot-pot—Lack of salt—Indian meals—Cooking—Fruits—Cow-tree milk.
Food is the dominant problem of an Indian’s existence. The food quest is to him no indefinite sociological issue of future “food control,” but an affair of every day. Living, it would seem, in the midst of plenty, starvation is a frequent visitant in an Amazonian household. They are an improvident folk, as I have already stated, and if food be plentiful give no thought to make provision for the morrow, when there may be none to be had.[165] “None” to the man of the forest has a different significance, a more inclusive meaning, than it has to the white man, for it comprehends everything that by the widest stretch of the imagination can be considered possible for human consumption. And it is well for the Indians that they are omnivorous, for the uncertainty of food supply is the most certain factor of life in the Amazonian bush.[166]
To run through the details of the possible provision of meat: there is, to start with, the tapir,[167] though the Witoto consider much tapir is bad, especially for women. The print of its three toes, with a fourth on the forefeet, is very seldom not to be found in the damp soil by stream and river. The tapir is in fact plentiful throughout these regions, though, thanks to its protective colouring, it may often not be obtrusively present. The young tapir is flecked and dotted with pale yellow spots on its brown coat, an exact imitation of sunlight on the earth through foliage. Gradually these stripes and spots fade to dull greys, only the fully grown animal is entirely without them, and of a uniform dead slaty colour. Young tapir flesh makes an excellent dish, and is like pork in taste, but it must be eaten very fresh, for the meat will not keep sweet many hours on account of its richness. Therefore if a tapir is killed in the water and sinks,[168] it must be eaten immediately it comes to the surface, that is after some hours, during which the gases have generated in the animal’s stomach, and so caused it to rise. But tapir is always considered unhealthy if eaten too frequently, and at certain seasons of the year is said to be quite uneatable, and if taken gives rise to sickness. An old tapir is tough and heavy eating at the best of times. Tapir flesh dried over a smoky fire is excellent eating, though I have never seen the Indians smoke meat for keeping, even when they found I did so myself. Another meat that has been compared with pork is that of the paca.[169] It is rich and fat, but it is eatable, and not so strong in flavour as the flesh of the capybara,[170] a larger animal, found usually in the vicinity of water. In appearance the capybara is not unlike a long-nosed, crop-eared rabbit, while its cousin the agouti,[171] chestnut-coloured and rough-haired, has a rat-like face on a rabbit’s body, though the flesh has nothing in common with the rabbit’s. Both the paca and the agouti are plentiful in the forest. Of the two the latter is more of a forest-dweller, and seeks the streams only to drink.
A small species of ant-bear is fairly common, but the large ant-eater is not often found. The latter does exist in the Issa-Japura watersheds, according to Indian accounts; and ant-bear is eaten by the Boro, but has too strong and pungent a taste for the white palate. Armadilloes, when obtainable, are baked in the ashes of the fire, as hedgehogs are roasted in England.
Monkey flesh, though usually tough and invariably insipid, is by no means despised, nor must a traveller in these regions be squeamish over it, horribly suggestive as the body of a cooked monkey very certainly is in appearance, for monkey meat most frequently will be the only plat on the dinner menu. It is the most ordinary food of the Indian, though monkey is not the easiest game to collect. The wounded or dying animal is very apt to clutch at the boughs in its agony, and the hand will contract in death and the body remain pendant. Even if it drop it will frequently stick in a forked branch out of reach; so that for one monkey eaten probably several are slain. Monkeys of all sorts, however, abound throughout the forest, and also marmosets, pretty little creatures with something of the squirrel about them.[172] Though I never saw the big-bellied monkey mentioned by Spruce,[173] I noticed a large number of spider-monkeys, with tails so prehensile that they serve as additional hands to convey fruit to their mouths. The supply of monkey flesh depends in the first instance on what provender there may be in the neighbourhood for those animals. Monkeys are wanderers, and when they have cleared one part of the forest of fruit and nuts, they migrate to another. The migration of game is a serious matter for the Indian, for all animals here are subject to periodical movements as noted in the previous chapter. It may result in the abandonment of a homestead when scarcity of animal life in a district drives the human inhabitants away.
When it can be obtained a deer, or a sloth, furnishes a variety for the cooking-pot; and then there is the peccary, so dreaded by the Indian. The peccary,[174] the wild pig of the forest, lives in small herds, and the reason proffered by the Indians for their fear of the animal is that when one is wounded it sets up a loud cry, and the rest of the herd promptly come to its aid and join in attacking the aggressor. This story is universal among the tribes. The peccary has a deceptively harmless appearance. They have not all tusks, and in no case are the tusks very prominent; yet, so sharp are they, that the fearless and pugnacious creature can inflict a severe wound. The shoulder and leg are the parts prized for eating. I know of no temporary tabu connected with this animal, though it has been said that at times the flesh is unfit for food on account of a gland in the back.[175] This may, however, be the reason why the body is rarely eaten.
Of birds, parrots are the most plentiful, and the toughest. For a hard, tasteless, and unappetising meal commend me to the carcase of that noisy bird. They require to be stewed for quite twenty-four hours, and that over a slow fire, or else the flesh is impossible to eat. Their chief use is in soup. Macaw, curassow, piuri and panje, mocking-bird, toucan, and egrets all go to the family pepper-pot of the successful hunter, with the turkey of these parts, pigeons, partridges, herons, ducks, and geese; in fact quite a good assortment of feathered fowl.
The frogs that make night hideous with their croaking provide the Indian epicure with one of his most esteemed dishes, for both frogs and snakes are considered delicacies, so that the traveller who pitied tribes like the Botocudo, because insects and reptiles formed a large part of their diet,[176] would simply be wasting his sympathy. Even the white man does not disdain the delicate flesh of the iguana, ugly though that green-bellied, black-ridge-backed reptile is. Turtles are caught and eaten during the dry season when the rivers are low. The native method of capturing them is to turn the unwieldly creature over on its back when asleep on the sand-banks. This renders the turtles perfectly helpless, though a snap from their powerful jaws will do serious damage.[177] The eggs also are eaten by these tribes, although none of the Issa-Japura tribes will touch birds’ eggs, for they look upon them as fœtal, and therefore unclean.[178] Further it is beast-like, in their opinion, to eat the liver, kidneys, and other intestines of animals, though these may be made into soup or hot-pot. For the same reason the Indian does not touch carrion.[179] But such niceness is outbalanced by tastes that in our eyes would be equally or even more filthy, for the Indian will eat vermin, and head lice are looked upon as quite a bon bouche. Hence a scurf-comb is a most important present, and to comb your neighbour’s hair and eat the “bag” an honour and a luxury.[180] They will also eat the grubs of wasps and bees, in fact any larvæ—nothing comes amiss to them.
All the Indians—except the Menimehe, who, as mentioned, keep hives in their houses,—collect wild honey from the hollow trees and other places where the bees nest in the bush. Sometimes these insects make nests of a considerable size, that look like lobster pots full of black pitch hanging on the tree-trunks. The large cells are full of a thin honey that is used by the natives to mix with various drinks. The Indians are very fond of honey, and smoke the bees out to secure it. Bees are more common than wasps in these parts, and fortunately are less dangerous.
Fish abound in all the rivers, though like the plants and animals they are smaller in the upper reaches than in the lower Amazon valleys. Robuchon gave the following as found in the Issa: Silurios of all kinds, that is to say platysomas, planiceps, platyrhynchos, leopardus, and the little caudirus (Serasalmys), Pygo, Cebras, Piraga (D. costatus et carinatus); also many kinds of needle fish and shark-toothed fish. There is any quantity of skate in the Issa, though its power to inflict a nasty wound does not recommend it to the naked Indian fisherman. Some of the fish are very good eating; none better than the uaracu, which is said to feed on laurel berries.[181]