Through Five Republics on Horseback, Being an Account of Many Wanderings in South AmericaRay, George Whitfield
Religion
Through Five Republics on Horseback, Being an Account of Many Wanderings in South America
Ray, George Whitfield
Ray, George Whitfield, 1868- -- Travel -- South America; South America -- Description and travel
When the Chiquitana women go down to the bay for water, with their
pitchers poised on their heads, the sight is very picturesque.
Sometimes a little boy will step into one of the giant, traylike leaves
of the Victoria Regia, which, thus transformed into a fairy boat, he
will paddle about the quiet bay.
The village is built on the edge of the virgin forest, where the red
man, with his stone hatchet, wanders in wild freedom. It contains,
perhaps, a hundred inhabitants, chiefly civilized Chiquitanos Indians.
There is here a customs house, and a regular trade in rubber, which is
brought in from the interior on mule-back, a journey which often takes
from three to four months.
One evening during our stay two men were forcibly brought into the
village, having been caught in the act of killing a cow which they had
stolen. These men were immediately thrown into the prison, a small,
dark, palm-built hut. Next morning, ere the sun arose, their feet were
thrust into the stocks, and a man armed with a long hide whip thrashed
them until the blood flowed in streamlets down their bare backs! What
struck us as being delicately thoughtful was that while the whipping
proceeded another official tried his best to drown their piercing
shrieks by blowing an old trumpet at its highest pitch!
The women, although boasting only one loose white garment, walk with
the air and grace of queens, or as though pure Inca blood ran in their
veins. Their only adornment is a necklace of red corals and a few
inches of red or blue ribbon entwined in their long raven-black hair,
which hangs down to the waist in two plaits. Their houses are
palm-walled, with a roof of palm-leaves, through which the rain pours
and the sun shines. Their chairs are logs of wood, and their beds are
string hammocks. Their wants are few, as there are no electric-lighted
store windows to tempt them. Let us leave them in their primitive
simplicity. Their little, delicately-shaped feet are prettier without
shoes and stockings, and their plaited hair without Parisian hats and
European tinsel. They neither read nor write, and therefore cannot
discuss politics. Women's rights they have never heard of. Their
bright-eyed, naked little children play in the mud or dust round the
house, and the sun turns their already bronze-colored bodies into a
darker tint; but the Chiquitana woman has never seen a white baby, and
knows nothing of its beauty, so is more than satisfied with her own.
The Indian child does not suffer from teething, for all have a small
wooden image tied round the neck, and the little one, because of this,
is supposed to be saved from all baby ailments! Their husbands and sons
leave them for months while they go into the interior for rubber or
cocoa, and when one comes back, riding on his bullock or mule, he is
affectionately but silently received. The Chiquitano seldom speaks, and
in this respect he is utterly unlike the Brazilian. The women differ
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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