Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.2 — Chapter 2.24, Part 8

The little village of Uruana is more difficult to govern than most of the other missions.

The Ottomacs are a restless, turbulent people, with unbridled passions.

They are not only fond to excess of the fermented liquors prepared from cassava and maize, and of palm-wine, but they throw themselves into a peculiar state of intoxication, we might say of madness, by the use of the powder of niopo.

They gather the long pods of a mimosacea which we have made known by the name of Acacia niopo,* cut them into pieces, moisten them, and cause them to ferment.

(* It is an acacia with very delicate leaves, and not an Inga.

We brought home another species of mimosacea (the chiga of the Ottomacs and the sepa of the Maypures) that yields seeds, the flour of which is eaten at Uruana like cassava.

From this flour the chiga bread is prepared, which is so common at Cunariche, and on the banks of the Lower Orinoco.

The chiga is a species of Inga, and I know of no other mimosacea that can supply the place of the cerealia.

) When the softened seeds begin to grow black, they are kneaded like a paste;

mixed with some flour of cassava and lime procured from the shell of a helix, and the whole mass is exposed to a very brisk fire, on a gridiron made of hard wood.

The hardened paste takes the form of small cakes.

When it is to be used, it is reduced to a fine powder, and placed on a dish five or six inches wide.

The Ottomac holds this dish, which has a handle, in his right hand, while he inhales the niopo by the nose, through the forked bone of a bird, the two extremities of which are applied to the nostrils.

This bone, without which the Ottomac believes that he could not take this kind of snuff, is seven inches long: it appeared to me to be the leg-bone of a large sort of plover.

The niopo is so stimulating that the smallest portions of it produce violent sneezing in those who are not accustomed to its use.

Father Gumilla says this diabolical powder of the Ottomacs, furnished by an arborescent tobacco-plant, intoxicates them through the nostrils (emboracha por las narices), deprives them of reason for some hours, and renders them furious in battle.

However varied may be the family of the leguminous plants in the chemical and medical properties of their seeds, juices, and roots, we cannot believe, from what we know hitherto of the group of mimosaceae, that it is principally the pod of the Acacia niopo which imparts the stimulant power to the snuff of the Ottomacs.

This power is owing, no doubt, to the freshly calcined lime.

We have shown above that the mountaineers of the Andes of Popayan, and the Guajiros, who wander between the lake of Maracaybo and the Rio la Hacha, are also fond of swallowing lime as a stimulant, to augment the secretion of the saliva and the gastric juice.

A custom analogous to the use of the niopo just described was observed by La Condamine among the natives of the Upper Maranon.

The Omaguas, whose name is rendered celebrated by the expeditions attempted in search of El Dorado, have like the Ottomacs a dish, and the hollow bone of a bird, by which they convey to their nostrils their powder of curupa.

The seed that yields this powder is no doubt also a mimosacea;

for the Ottomacs, according to Father Gili, designate even now, at the distance of one hundred and sixty leagues from the Amazon, the Acacia niopo by the name of curupa.

Since the geographical researches which I have recently made on the scene of the exploits of Philip von Huten, and the real situation of the province of Papamene, or of the Omaguas, the probability of an ancient communication between the Ottomacs of the Orinoco and the Omaguas of the Maranon has become more interesting and more probable.

The former came from the Meta, perhaps from the country between the Meta and the Guaviare; the latter assert that they descended in great numbers to the Maranon by the Rio Jupura, coming from the eastern declivity of the Andes of New Grenada.

Now, it is precisely between the Guayavero (which joins the Guaviare) and the Caqueta (which takes lower down the name of Japura) that the country of the Omagua appears to be situate, of which the adventurers of Coro and Tocuyo in vain attempted the conquest.

There is no doubt a striking contrast between the present barbarism of the Ottomacs and the ancient civilization of the Omaguas; but all parts of the latter nation were not perhaps alike advanced in civilization, and the example of tribes fallen into complete barbarism are unhappily but too common in the history of our species.

Another point of resemblance may be remarked between the Ottomacs and the Omaguas.

Both of these nations are celebrated among all the tribes of the Orinoco and the Amazon for their employment of caoutchouc in the manufacture of various articles of utility.

The real herbaceous tobacco* (for the missionaries have the habit of calling the niopo or curupa tree-tobacco) has been cultivated from time immemorial by all the native people of the Orinoco; and at the period of the conquest the habit of smoking was found to be alike spread over both North and South America.

(* The word tobacco (tabacco), like the words savannah, maize, cacique, maguey (agave), and manati, belongs to the ancient language of Haiti, or St. Domingo.

It did not properly denote the herb but the tube through which the smoke was inhaled.

It seems surprising that a vegetable production so universally spread should have different names among neighbouring people.

The pete-ma of the Omaguas is, no doubt, the pety of the Guaranos; but the analogy between the Cabre and Algonkin (or Lenni-Lenape) words which denote tobacco may be merely accidental.

The following are the synonyms in thirteen languages.

North America.

Aztec or Mexican; yetl: Algonkin; sema: Huron; oyngoua.

South America.

Peruvian or Quichua; sayri: Chiquito; pais.

Guarany;

pety: Vilela; tusup: Mbaja (west of the Paraguay), nalodagadi: Moxo (between the Rio Ucayale and the Rio Madeira); sabare.

Omagua; petema.

Tamanac; cavas.

Maypure; jema.

Cabre; scema.

) The Tamanacs and the Maypures of Guiana wrap maize-leaves round their cigars, as the Mexicans did at the time of the arrival of Cortes.

The Spaniards have substituted paper for the leaves of maize in imitation of them.

The poor Indians of the forests of the Orinoco know as well as did the great nobles at the court of Montezuma that the smoke of tobacco is an excellent narcotic; and they use it not only to procure their afternoon nap, but also to put themselves into that state of quiescence, which they call dreaming with the eyes open, or day-dreaming.

The use of tobacco appears to me to be now very rare in the missions; and in New Spain, to the great regret of the revenue-officers, the natives, who are almost all descended from the lowest class of the Aztec people, do not smoke at all.

Father Gili affirms that the practice of chewing tobacco is unknown to the Indians of the Lower Orinoco.

I rather doubt the truth of this assertion, having been told that the Sercucumas of the Erevato and the Caura, neighbours of the whitish Taparitos, swallow tobacco chopped small, and impregnated with some other very stimulant juices, to prepare themselves for battle.

Of the four species of nicotiana cultivated in Europe* (* Nicotiana tabacum, N. rustica, N. paniculata, and N. glutinosa.

) we found only two growing wild; but the Nicotiana loxensis, and the Nicotiana andicola, which I found on the back of the Andes, at the height of eighteen hundred and fifty toises (almost the height of the Peak of Teneriffe), are very similar to the N. tabacum and N. rustica.

The whole genus, however, is almost exclusively American, and the greater number of the species appeared to me to belong to the mountainous and temperate region of the tropics.

It was neither from Virginia, nor from South America, but from the Mexican province of Yucatan, that Europe received the first tobacco seeds, about the year 1559. * (* The Spaniards became acquainted with tobacco in the West India Islands at the end of the 15th century.

I

have already mentioned that the cultivation of this narcotic plant preceded the cultivation of the potato in Europe more than 120 or 140 years.

When Raleigh brought tobacco from Virginia to England in 1586, whole fields of it were already cultivated in Portugal.

It was also previously known in France, where it was brought into fashion by Catherine de Medicis, from whom it received the name of herbe a la reine, the queen's herb.

) The celebrated Raleigh contributed most to introduce the custom of smoking among the nations of the north.

As early as the end of the sixteenth century bitter complaints were made in England of this imitation of the manners of a savage people.

It was feared that, by the practice of smoking tobacco, Englishmen would degenerate into a barbarous state.

* (* This remarkable passage of Camden is as follows, Annal.

Elizabet.

page 143 1585; "ex illo sane tempore [tabacum] usu cepit esse creberrimo in Anglia et magno pretio dum quamplurimi graveolentem illius fumum per tubulum testaceum hauriunt et mox e naribus efflant; adeo ut Auglornm corporum in barbarorum naturam degenerasse videantur, quum iidem ac barbari delectentur."

We may see from this passage that they emitted the smoke through the nose; but at the court of Montezuma the pipe was held in one hand, while the nostrils were stopped with the other, in order that the smoke might be more easily swallowed.

Life of Raleigh volume 1 page 82. ) When the Ottomacs of Uruana, by the use of niopo (their arborescent tobacco), and of fermented liquors, have thrown themselves into a state of intoxication, which lasts several days, they kill one another without ostensibly fighting.

The most vindictive among them poison the nail of their thumb with curare; and, according to the testimony of the missionary, the mere impression of this poisoned nail may become a mortal wound if the curare be very active and immediately mingle with the mass of the blood.

When the Indians, after a quarrel at night, commit a murder, they throw the dead body into the river, fearing that some indications of the violence committed on the deceased may be observed.

"Every time," said Father Bueno, "that I see the women fetch water from a part of the shore to which they are not accustomed to go, I suspect that a murder has been committed in my mission."

We found in the Indian huts at Uruana the vegetable substance called touchwood of ants,* (* Yesca de hormigas.

) with which we had become acquainted at the Great Cataracts, and which is employed to stop bleeding.

This substance, which might less improperly be called ants' nests, is in much request in a region whose inhabitants are of so turbulent a character.

A new species of ant, of a fine emerald-green (Formica spinicollis), collects for its habitation a cotton-down, of a yellowish-brown colour, and very soft to the touch, from the leaves of a melastomacea.

I have no doubt that the yesca or touchwood of ants of the Upper Orinoco (the animal is found, we were assured, only south of Atures) will one day become an article of trade.

This substance is very superior to the ants' nests of Cayenne, which are employed in the hospitals of Europe, but can rarely be procured.

On the 7th of June we took leave with regret of Father Ramon Bueno.

Of the ten missionaries whom we had found in different parts of the vast extent of Guiana, he alone appeared to me to be earnestly attentive to all that regarded the natives.

He hoped to return in a short time to Madrid, where he intended to publish the result of his researches on the figures and characters that cover the rocks of Uruana.

In the countries we had just passed through, between the Meta, the Arauca, and the Apure, there were found, at the time of the first expeditions to the Orinoco, in 1535, those mute dogs, called by the natives maios, and auries.

This fact is curious in many points of view.

We cannot doubt that the dog, whatever Father Gili may assert, is indigenous in South America.

The different Indian languages furnish words to designate this animal, which are scarcely derived from any European tongue.

To this day the word auri, mentioned three hundred years ago by Alonzo de Herrera, is found in the Maypure.

The dogs we saw at the Orinoco may perhaps have descended from those that the Spaniards carried to the coast of Caracas; but it is not less certain that there existed a race of dogs before the conquest, in Peru, in New Granada, and in Guiana, resembling our shepherds' dogs.

The allco of the natives of Peru, and in general all the dogs that we found in the wildest countries of South America, bark frequently.

The first historians, however, all speak of mute dogs (perros mudos).

They still exist in Canada; and, what appears to me worthy of attention, it was this dumb variety that was eaten in preference in Mexico,* and at the Orinoco.

(* See on the Mexican techichi and on the numerous difficulties that occur in the history of mute dogs and dogs destitute of hair the Views of Nature Bohn's edition page 85. ) A very well informed traveller, M. Giesecke, who resided six years in Greenland, assured me that the dogs of the Esquimaux, which pass their lives in the open air and bury themselves in winter beneath the snow, do not bark, but howl like wolves.

* (* They sit down in a circle, one of them begins to howl alone and the others follow in the same tone.

The groups of alouate monkeys howl in the same manner, and among them the Indians distinguish the leader of the band.

It was the practice at Mexico to castrate the mute dogs in order to fatten them.

This operation must have contributed to alter the organ of the voice.

) The practice of eating the flesh of dogs is now entirely unknown on the banks of the Orinoco; but as it is a Tartar custom spread through all the eastern part of Asia, it appears to me highly interesting for the history of nations to have ascertained that it existed heretofore in the hot regions of Guiana and on the table-lands of Mexico.

I must observe, also, that on the confines of the province of Durango, at the northern extremity of New Spain, the Comanches have preserved the habit of loading the backs of the great dogs that accompany them in their migrations with their tents of buffalo-leather.

It is well known that employing dogs as beasts of burthen and of draught is equally common near the Slave Lake and in Siberia.

I dwell on these features of conformity in the manners of nations, which become of some weight when they are not solitary, and are connected with the analogies furnished by the structure of languages, the division of time, and religious creeds and institutions.

We passed the night at the island of Cucuruparu, called also Playa de la Tortuga, because the Indians of Uruana go thither to collect the turtles' eggs.

It is one of the best determined points of latitude along the banks of the Orinoco.

I was there fortunate enough to observe the passage of three stars over the meridian.

To the east of the island is the mouth of the Cano de la Tortuga, which descends from the mountains of Cerbatana, continually wrapped in electric clouds.

On the southern bank of the Cano, between the tributary streams Parapara and Oche, lies the almost ruined mission of San Miguel de la Tortuga.

The Indians assured us that the environs of this little mission abound in otters with a very fine fur, called by the Portuguese water-dogs (perritos de agua); and what is still more remarkable, in lizards (lagartos) with only two feet.

The whole of this country, which is very accessible between the Rio Cuchivero and the strait of Baraguan, is worthy of being visited by a well-informed zoologist.

The lagarto destitute of hinder extremities is perhaps a species of Siren, different from the Siren lacertina of Carolina.

If it were a saurian, a real Bimanis (Chirotes, Cuvier), the natives would not have compared it to a lizard.

Besides the arrau turtles, of which I have in a former place given a detailed account, an innumerable quantity of land tortoises also, called morocoi, are found on the banks of the Orinoco, between Uruana and Encaramada.

During the great heats of summer, in the time of drought, these animals remain without taking food, hidden beneath stones, or in the holes they have dug.

They issue from their shelter and begin to eat, only when the humidity of the first rains penetrates into the earth.

The terekay, or tajelu turtle which lives in fresh water, has the same habits.

I have already spoken of the summer-sleep of some animals of the tropics.

As the natives know the holes in which the tortoises sleep amidst the dried lands, they get out a great number at once, by digging fifteen or eighteen inches deep.

Father Gili says that this operation, which he had seen, is not without danger, because serpents often bury themselves in summer with the terekays.

From the island of Cucuruparu, to the capital of Guiana, commonly called Angostura, we were but nine days on the water.

The distance is somewhat less than ninety-five leagues.

We seldom slept on shore but the torment of the mosquitos diminished in proportion as we advanced.

We landed on the 8th of June at a farm (Hato de San Rafael del Capuchino) opposite the mouth of the Rio Apure.

I obtained some good observations of latitude and longitude.

* (* I had found, on the 4th of April, for the Boca del Rio Apure (on the western bank of the Orinoco), the latitude 7 degrees 36 minutes 30 seconds, the longitude 59 degrees 7 minutes 30 seconds; on the 8th of June I found, for the Hato del Capuchino (on the eastern bank of the Orinoco), the latitude 7 degrees 37 minutes 45 seconds, the longitude 69 degrees 5 minutes 30 seconds.

) Having two months before taken horary angles on the bank opposite Capuchino, these observations were important for determining the rate of my chronometer, and connecting the situations on the Orinoco with those on the shore of Venezuela.

The situation of this farm, being at the point where the Orinoco changes its course (which had previously been from south to north), and runs from west to east, is extremely picturesque.

Granite rocks rise like islets amidst vast meadows.

From their tops we discerned towards the north the Llanos of Calabozo bounding the horizon.

We had been so long accustomed to the aspect of forests, that this view made a powerful impression on us.

The steppes after sunset assume a tint of greenish gray.

The visual ray being intercepted only by the rotundity of the earth, the stars seemed to rise as from the bosom of the ocean, and the most experienced mariner would have fancied himself placed on a projecting cape of a rocky coast.

Our host was a Frenchman who lived amidst his numerous herds.

Though he had forgotten his native language, he seemed pleased to learn that we came from his country, which he had left forty years before; and he wished to retain us for some days at his farm.

The small towns of Caycara and Cabruta were only a few miles distant from the farm; but during part of the year our host was in complete solitude.

The Capuchino becomes an island by the inundations of the Apure and the Orinoco, and the communication with the neighbouring farms can be kept up only by means of a boat.

The horned cattle then seek the higher grounds which extend on the south toward the chain of the mountains of Encaramada.

This granitic chain is intersected by valleys which contain magnetic sands (granulary oxidulated iron), owing no doubt to the decomposition of some amphibolic or chloritic strata.

On the morning of the 9th of June we met a great number of boats laden with merchandize sailing up the Orinoco, in order to enter the Apure.

This is a commercial road much frequented between Angostura and the port of Torunos in the province of Varinas.

Our fellow-traveller, Don Nicolas Soto, brother-in-law of the governor of Varinas, took the same course to return to his family.

At the period of the high waters, several months are lost in contending with the currents of the Orinoco, the Apure, and the Rio de Santo Domingo.

The boatmen are forced to carry out ropes to the trunks of trees and thus warp their canoes up.

In the great sinuosities of the river whole days are sometimes passed without advancing more than two or three hundred toises.

Since my return to Europe the communications between the mouth of the Orinoco and the provinces situated on the eastern slope of the mountains of Merida, Pamplona, and Santa Fe de Bogota, have become more active; and it may be hoped that steamboats will facilitate these long voyages on the Lower Orinoco, the Portuguesa, the Rio Santo Domingo, the Orivante, the Meta, and the Guaviare.

Magazines of cleft wood might be formed, as on the banks of the great rivers of the United States, sheltering them under sheds.

This precaution would be indispensable, as, in the country through which we passed, it is not easy to procure dry fuel fit to keep up a fire beneath the boiler of a steam-engine.

We disembarked below San Rafael del Capuchino, on the right, at the Villa de Caycara, near a cove called Puerto Sedeno.

The Villa is merely a few houses grouped together.

Alta Gracia, la Ciudad de la Piedra, Real Corona, Borbon, in short all the towns or villas lying between the mouth of the Apure and Angostura, are equally miserable.

The presidents of the missions, and the governors of the provinces, were formerly accustomed to demand the privileges of villas and ciudades at Madrid, the moment the first foundations of a church were laid.

This was a means of persuading the ministry that the colonies were augmenting rapidly in population and prosperity.

Sculptured figures of the sun and moon, such as I have already mentioned, are found near Caycara, at the Cerro del Tirano.

* (* The tyrant after whom these mountains are named is not Lope de Aguirre, but probably, as the name of the neighbouring cove seems to prove, the celebrated conquistador Antonio Sedeno, who, after the expedition of Herrera, sought to penetrate by the Orinoco to the Rio Meta.

He was in a state of rebellion against the audiencia of Santo Domingo.

I know not how Sedeno came to Caycara; for historians relate that he was poisoned on the banks of the Rio Tisnado, one of the tributary streams of the Portuguesa.

) It is the work of the old people (that is of our fathers), say the natives.

On a rock more distant from the shore, and called Tecoma, the symbolic figures are found, it is said, at the height of a hundred feet.

The Indians knew heretofore a road, that led by land from Caycara to Demerara and Essequibo.