Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of PeruBingham, Hiram
History
Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru
Bingham, Hiram
Incas; Peru -- Antiquities; Peru -- Description and travel
Saavedra gave us some very black leaves of native tobacco, which he
had cured. An inveterate smoker who tried it in his pipe said it was
without exception the strongest stuff he ever had encountered!
So interested did I become in talking with Saavedra, seeing his
plantation, and marveling that he should be worried about taxes and
have to obey regulations in regard to firearms, I had almost forgotten
about the wild Indians. Suddenly our carriers ran toward the house
in a great flurry of excitement, shouting that there was a "savage"
in the bushes near by. The "wild man" was very timid, but curiosity
finally got the better of fear and he summoned up sufficient courage
to accept Saavedra's urgent invitation that he come out and meet
us. He proved to be a miserable specimen, suffering from a very bad
cold in his head. It has been my good fortune at one time or another
to meet primitive folk in various parts of America and the Pacific,
but this man was by far the dirtiest and most wretched savage that
I have ever seen.
He was dressed in a long, filthy tunic which came nearly to his
ankles. It was made of a large square of coarsely woven cotton cloth,
with a hole in the middle for his head. The sides were stitched up,
leaving holes for the arms. His hair was long, unkempt, and matted. He
had small, deep-set eyes, cadaverous cheeks, thick lips, and a large
mouth. His big toes were unusually long and prehensile. Slung over one
shoulder he carried a small knapsack made of coarse fiber net. Around
his neck hung what at first sight seemed to be a necklace composed
of a dozen stout cords securely knotted together. Although I did not
see it in use, I was given to understand that when climbing trees,
he used this stout loop to fasten his ankles together and thus secure
a tighter grip for his feet.
By evening two other savages had come in; a young married man and
his little sister. Both had bad colds. Saavedra told us that these
Indians were Pichanguerras, a subdivision of the Campa tribe. Saavedra
and his son spoke a little of their language, which sounded to our
unaccustomed ears like a succession of low grunts, breathings, and
gutturals. It was pieced out by signs. The long tunics worn by the
men indicated that they had one or more wives. Before marrying they
wear very scanty attire--nothing more than a few rags hanging over one
shoulder and tied about the waist. The long tunic, a comfortable enough
garment to wear during the cold nights, and their only covering, must
impede their progress in the jungle; yet they live partly by hunting,
using bows and arrows. We learned that these Pichanguerras had run
away from the rubber country in the lower valleys; that they found it
uncomfortably cold at this altitude, 4500 feet, but preferred freedom
in the higher valleys to serfdom on a rubber estate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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