AT FOURTEEN AN INDIAN GIRL MUST BE ABLE TO COOK CASSAVA
A PRIMITIVE SUGAR CANE PRESS
The woman bounces up and down on her end of the pole until every bit of the juice is out. This juice is saved, as the poison can be used by the men. Or the juice may be allowed to evaporate and what remains of that, instead of being poison, is good seasoning for food!
The pulp is spread in the sun to dry. When dry it is sifted through a basket sieve and becomes rather coarse flour. To this water is added, the dough is kneaded with the fists much as our women knead wheat flour and water into dough. This dough is flattened out into cakes three feet in diameter and half an inch thick and baked on a flat slab, a sheet of iron if it be possible to get it, or on anything handy. The bread is now ready to eat. It is firm, fairly hard, rather crisp and has but little flavor. To me it tasted like refined sawdust. But it is extremely nourishing.
It takes half an hour to cook these cassava cakes and, kept dry, they will last a great while. That is why the women baked a number of them to take with them upon the impending journey. It was comforting to have this much certain about the uncertain journey which we were now to take.
While the Indian women busied themselves making cassava cakes for the journey back to our camp I studied all of the weapons of the men in the village, for they interested me. There were but two guns in the village, owned by the chief and another very “wealthy” native. These were the muzzle-loading “lead” guns.
What interested me most of all was the blowpipe. It is really a wonderful weapon. It is a wonder to me that we boys back home did not make similar weapons. I am sure that with a little skill we could have picked off rabbits, squirrels and game birds, although, of course, we would have had to become good woodsmen. Of all the weapons to be faced, I believe the blowpipe as made and used by these Indians is the most deadly. I would rather face almost anything else.
These pipes are from eight to twelve feet long. They are made of two strong reeds, a hollow-stemmed variety that grows in the jungle. They take the midribs of a great palm leaf, dry them, split them up, char one end in the fire to make it hard, and with this force out the little partitions that appear at the joints in all reeds, as in bamboo. Then a smaller reed is found that will just slide inside the larger one. They now have a double reed which makes an extremely long yet strong tube. The hole is made through the inner reed in the same manner, and these palm midribs and fine sand are worked inside the inner tube until it is quite as smooth as a rifle bore.