Spruce mentions a manioc oven,[185] but this is quite unknown to me. All the tribes I visited cooked their cassava on large earthenware plates on an open fire. Nor could they prop their cooking utensils on stones, for—as has been noted—stones there are none in these districts. The pot is put simply on the three logs that compose the fire where their ends meet. The hot embers in the centre give plenty of steady heat, and if more be required the pot must be placed on a tripod of branches and the embers fanned with a palm-leaf to a flame.
Among the Andoke manioc is peeled by the women with their teeth, and then washed. The roots are pulped with a grater, and the starch is washed out by adding water to them in a basket suspended on a tripod over a calabash. The partially prepared manioc is left till required for use and will keep in this state for a week at a time. When they wish to use it the grated pulp is strained in a cassava-squeezer, then mixed with starch and sifted through a sieve. The fine stuff is baked immediately, and the water that was drained off in the wringer is boiled up at once to make a sweet-tasting drink. The starch will keep for a month.
Among the Boro and Witoto the manioc water is boiled till it thickens, and is then used as a sauce into which the cassava is dipped before it is eaten. Another way of eating cassava is to dip it in soup. The Boro on the Japura concoct a sauce of the consistency of paste by seasoning the manioc water with peppers and fish.[186]
Though the tuber is the most valuable portion of the plant it is not the only part used for food. The leaves may be eaten as a vegetable. They are boiled till quite soft; pounded very fine with a pestle; fish, worms, frogs, ants and peppers are added as seasoning, and this brew is eaten with cassava bread and with meat. Another method of preparation is to take the leaves and cook them in the water squeezed out of the roots in the wringer. This sauce is boiled in an earthenware pot suspended from a cross-beam, or placed like the earthenware pan on a triangle of sticks, over a slow fire, until the leaves become a paste. This is carried in a palm-leaf as an emergency ration by an Indian when going into the bush.
Cassava, then, is the Indian’s “staff of life.” Its complement is the hot-pot, or pepper-pot, which is a “generous” soup supercharged with meat that forms the staple, while the liver and so forth are added to enrich the brew. It is a standing dish with the aborigines. Each family has a big pot that simmers constantly over the special fires. Into this go all things, and it is replenished daily from the proceeds of the kill. Portions of animals that may not be eaten—blood, brains, intestines—can be utilised in the stew; and everything is very highly qualified with peppers, the chief stimulant in native diet.
Wallace has suggested that the excessive use of peppers is due to the lack of salt.[187] This very serious need is not without considerable influence on the Indian, and it is possible—as has been suggested—that it is at the root of more than over-indulgence in pepper. Mineral salt is not to be had,[188] except by barter, throughout the middle Issa-Japura regions; and what little the tribes can obtain is chiefly secured by burning certain plants with saline qualities.[189]
On account of its rarity salt is much sought after, and a present of salt is always highly appreciated.
PLATE XXXV.
WITOTO CASSAVA-SQUEEZER