The most interesting and useful animal to the Indian is the llama. He
will travel for miles without food or drink, over precipitous mountains
and rocky paths, carry his 100-lb. load, and not an ounce more; for if
you should happen to impose upon him he simply lies down on the path
and refuses to budge an inch. They are splendid “passive resisters,”
these llamas, and will have no nonsense from anyone, though, of
course, their Indian owners know better than to overburden their llamas
with superfluous luggage.
The llama, known as “the Bolivian Railway,” can travel fifteen miles a
day. When he dies his flesh is eaten, but the Indian loves his animal
too well to kill him for food.
“In many places the Indians are ill-treated, deceived, and robbed by
the white Spanish-speaking people. They are looked upon as mere brutes,
fit for nothing but work, instead of human beings with immortal souls.
They sometimes live together in villages, sometimes in isolated, quiet
nooks, or it may be in clusters of huts where there are two or three
families.”
Each Indian has a few patches of ground for himself, and in exchange
for this cultivates a few acres of crops for his owner. He also has a
certain number of animals to care for, but this is mostly the work of
his wife and family. Little children of from four to five years of age
are supposed to be capable of driving a flock, and when a few years
older they are away on the hills all day alone with their flocks.
One scarcely sees an Indian, either man or woman, altogether idle. If
they have no other occupation, they spin away at wool for the clothing
of their families.
Though this is an open and very healthy climate there is much sickness
among the people, chiefly because they do not know how to take care
of themselves. It is very amusing to see what remedies they use for
inward and outward complaints. Dirt, feathers, and anything horrible
is the common ointment for sores or wounds. At a little ordinary warm
water they laugh. Through the ignorance of their mothers, children,
when sick, have a hard time. Some care very much, and would do anything
to save their children; but others, rather than have the trouble of
watching them, prefer that they should die, as a good many do.
“It is the condition of the little children that calls forth most
sympathy and pity, and makes us long for the day when the True Light
shall shine into the hearts of the people. The majority, unloved and
uncared for, surrounded by dirt and disease, know nothing of the joys
of childhood, nor of the blessing of home life.
“Mothers are continually seen carrying their babies, full of disease,
about the streets, and, what is worse, sitting in the market-places
selling meat and bread with their sick babies in their laps. Passing
along one day, a child was seen without a shred of clothing, yet with
its little body literally covered with smallpox.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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