The Putumayo, the Devil's Paradise / Travels in the Peruvian Amazon Region and an Account of the Atrocities Committed upon the Indians Therein

by W. E. Hardenburg

The garb of the women is still more primitive, for they are clothed only in their beauty and four bracelets, two of which they wear on their wrists and the other two on their ankles. I should state, however, that the Indians employed by Ordoñez and Martínez and Serrano wore European clothes. The unfortunate slaves in the service of the Peruvian Amazon Company—except the enormous number of involuntary concubines, &c.—are, however, clothed precisely as described above.

As those Huitotos enslaved by the “civilising company” are so constantly employed in the extraction of rubber, the only food they get—omitting the extremely meagre and irregular supplies furnished by the Company, which are not worthy of consideration—is the small quantity of yucas and plantains that their women have time to cultivate and a few products of the forest, such as certain large worms they extract from the bark of different trees, the tender tops of the chonta-palm, a few wild fruits, &c. The result is that many die of starvation. Serrano and the other Colombians, however, gave their Indians time to supply their food, and consequently the latter did not suffer from hunger as their unfortunate brothers do at present.

The only beverage of the Huitotos is the cahuana, a preparation of yuca and the pulp of a forest fruit known as the aguaje. It is of a dirty, brownish colour, and has an unpleasant, bitter taste, disagreeable in the extreme.

A custom very general, not only among the Huitotos but also among many of the “whites,” is the use of the coca. The leaves are picked from the tree and, after being well toasted, are pulverised and mixed with the ashes of the burnt leaves of another plant—I could not ascertain its name—in order to take away the bitter taste observed when the coca is used alone. The drug is then ready for use, and, inserted into the mouth, is rolled up under the cheek, where they sometimes keep it for half a day at a time. The juice is swallowed.

It is well known that coca is a powerful stimulant, and the Huitotos when out in the forest collecting rubber find it very useful, especially as they often have to carry the rubber they gather several leagues on their backs with practically no food at all to sustain them. They claim that it takes the place of food on these marches, and it really does seem to enable them to perform wonderful feats of endurance. While at La Unión, Duarte gave me several doses of the coca, which at first affected me with a slight nausea; I soon became accustomed to it, however, and found it very useful on different occasions.

Sometimes the Huitotos hold one of their rare dances, which is an occasion of much festivity. It should be observed, however, that those poor wretches in the service of the “civilising company” are now so enslaved and oppressed that they have no time nor spirit to indulge in these amusements, which formerly, when they were free and independent, were, so Serrano informed us, carried out as follows:—

Preparatory to beginning the dances the Huitotos used to paint themselves all over in various colours, some of the designs representing branches of trees, animals, and geometrical figures, while both men and women adorned themselves with their beautiful feather ornaments of many different colours and various necklaces of monkey and danta teeth. Around their bodies and legs they attached long strings of rattling shells, called cascabeles.

Then they began dancing with cadencious uniformity, marking time with their right feet, and at the same time singing in chorus their ancient songs, the peculiar and ear-splitting intonation of which was accompanied by blows upon the manguaré, the beating of drums, and the shrill whistle of their flutes. They generally imbibed during these dances a goodly quantity of cahuana, and the chupe del tabaco was always an important feature. The few who possessed clothes generally wore them on these occasions, painting those parts of the body not covered by them. These dances used to go on from one house to another for several days in succession, and the manguaré was hardly ever silent during this time.

The Huitotos often paint themselves on other occasions, one of the most common colouring matters being the huitoc or jagua, which also has the excellent property of being offensive to gnats and mosquitoes to such an extent that they will have nothing to do with persons painted with it.