Christianized Indians of the Interior.—Their condition and character.—Hardships imposed on them.—Desire of revenge.
Tangur, in the curacy of Caina, and department of Junin, is one of those villages so common on the elevated slopes which overlook temperate valleys in the interior of Peru. In this small village, as we are informed by a gentleman who for several years visited it in the character of curate, there are two distinct municipalities, each possessing its separate church and magistrates.
These separate people, who speak the same Quichua language, do not associate together, nor do they even hold their religious festivals on the same day. The origin of this separation of interests, tradition informs us, is as far back as the time of the Incas, when some convicts, ordered from Quito, settled at this place, and formed a distinct family; which has here subsisted since that remote period, without ever mingling its blood with that of its neighbours, or entering into communion or alliance with any other people. This is the more remarkable, as it is the ordinary practice in other remote villages of the interior for the whole body of men to co-operate in any great work, such as constructing bridges for their common good, or building houses for the convenience of individuals; on which occasions one party conducts stones and turf, another builds the walls, a third conveys timber from the distant woods,[23] and a fourth cuts and lays on the thatch &c. The unanimity in this case, and the want of it in that of Tangur, are equally characteristic of that love which the Indian entertains for the usages of his predecessors in all things. In nothing does he approve of innovation; in his condition he has not yet known any durable or real amelioration, and in nothing does he desire change. In his local prejudices, habits, and daily pursuits, he only thinks, feels, and acts just as others did before him. If the general revolution has been in any degree useful to the poor uninformed Indian of Peru, who has already sunk from the short-lived excitement of patriotic enthusiasm into the dejection of a military despotism,—if it has really improved his prospects, it has been by rousing him, for a while at least, from his wonted apathy to the general concerns and conveniences of life; opening to his view a wider range of imitation and desire, and thus breaking in upon the hereditary routine of his customs and habits, to which, till now, he has adhered with the unvarying constancy of mere instinct.
The christianized Indians of the Inca dynasty, whose native tongue is Quichua,—for we do not at present speak of the savage, or half-christianized Pano, and other yet unsettled tribes of the MontaÑa,—are said to be an indolent race; but we have had the opportunity of knowing that their exertions will increase as the prospect of bettering their condition expands, and that in general their labour is only conducted in a slothful manner when it is compulsory, or to themselves unproductive. We have had ample opportunity to know, that when they labour by “tarea” or piece-work, and are sure of their wages, they work remarkably well. On their own little farms they are truly hard labourers; and, if they were not so often pounced upon by enemies to industry, the fruit of it would be seen in their growing prosperity. It is those who tyrannize over them who accuse them of laziness, duplicity, and natural perverseness of disposition. Of such persons we may be allowed to ask, Have they ever afforded the Indian any rational encouragement to honesty and industry? Have they ever, by fair dealing, persevered in the experiment of deserving the confidence, of conciliating the affections, or of calling forth the kindly sympathies of these humbler sons of the soil? What virtue, except patience, were they permitted to disclose under Spanish oppression—(would it were mitigated under the patriot system!)—when their masters supplied them with the necessaries of life just on what terms they pleased, and when the Indians could realize no property, however much they redoubled their toil, for in general the fruit of their labour was not their own?
The Indians for the most part are an agricultural people, for more live by tillage than mere pasturage or any other occupation. Many of the modern villages in the temperate climate of the interior were, not many years ago, large farms, possessed by Europeans or their creole descendants; but the labourers, set free at the revolution in consequence of the confiscation of the goods and property of their fugitive or ruined masters, have continued to cultivate the land for their own maintenance, till by degrees their families have swelled into villages, and at length assumed the important character of municipalities. With a few years of undisturbed peace, and exemption from undue exactions, small villages may thus arise and become considerable towns, wherever the locality happens to afford sufficient scope for cultivation. But as it often occurs that the Indian hamlet is erected on a pinnacle, or on the brow of a hill, around which there is but little suitable soil for the spread of agricultural industry, the consequence is that the father divides and subdivides the same piece of ground among the rising members of his progeny, till at length the means of subsistence become too scanty for the support of the whole family, and, the supernumeraries must seek employment in the mines or elsewhere, as they best may.
The mechanic arts are little needed by Indians who construct their own huts, and, with the exception of their coarse felt-hats, shape their own dress, which in warm situations consists of sandals of raw hide, wide trowsers or breeches open at the knee, a shirt, vest, and sometimes a jacket, and over all a poncho. In cold exposed localities, as Cerro Pasco, they always wear warm woollen stockings and a jacket; not omitting the poncho, which is the indispensable covering by day as well as by night throughout the Sierra. Besides such drawbacks on the growth of Indian population as arise from the want of efficient medical assistance, and the occasionally destructive effects of epidemic diseases, other causes have been frequently assigned, and especially an excessive passion for intoxicating liquors. This propensity operates strongly with the miner, stationed, as he is, in high and frigid localities, where he is much exposed to wet under ground, and to nocturnal frost or snow above it. Here the action of intoxicating drink, particularly when indulged in by those not born in very elevated regions, superadded to the usual effects of a highly rarefied atmosphere, and other causes of a less general character, tend greatly to shorten human life. But in the warm and temperate valleys which intervene between the coast and the Cordilleras this vice is by no means so prevalent as at the mines, where money circulates freely, and all manner of temptation is to be encountered. For though agua-ardiente, guarapo, and chicha usually abound in such places, yet it must not be forgotten that the peones or day-labourers of these favoured climates seldom have reals to spend; and that, when they have no money, their credit does not usually extend so far as to enable them to be often intoxicated. For about three years we had seldom less than a score, and frequently as many as fifty or sixty of these Indians, working under the eye of a major-domo; and, except upon some saint-day or festival, we do not recollect having any complaint made to us on the score of drunkenness. Licentiousness is usually stated as a further source of depopulation among all classes and castes in Peru: but, whatever be the true explanation of the fact, we think that evils springing from such fountains of impurity show themselves comparatively little in the Indian constitution; and though strict regularity of conduct cannot be claimed on the part of the Indian family, yet the modesty of their ancient mamaconas is still remembered among them; and it is a characteristic which to this day honourably distinguishes the Indians from their more cultivated masters, that with them conjugal infidelity is discouraged, punished, and felt to be a crime.
Incessant warfare and intestine broils, by keeping up continued agitation, are at this day as destructive and desolating to the aborigines of Peru, and to the general industry and prosperity of the country, as was formerly the compulsory system of working in the mines, and manufactories or “obrages,” under the Spanish conquerors. The factious and seditious spirit which has gone abroad in the republic is an excuse for a standing army, which in its turn becomes the fertile nursery, or, at least, frequent instrument of faction; and, what is worse, military licence is rapidly pervading all classes of society, and destroying the only true sources of population, which are domestic virtues, domestic habits, and simplicity of life. We shall dwell no longer on such causes, already too well known as principal sources of depopulation in Peru; but, before we quit the subject, it occurs to us to mention that during a litigation, in which the question at issue was to be partly determined by the evidence of tradition and ancient usage, a number of witnesses of the most advanced age in the Vale of Huanuco were called in to give their testimony, of whom several were from seventy to ninety years of age, and, with only one exception, in which the blindness of age came on in an European by birth, all of them were hale old people, and generally of Indian race.
We would remark of these Indians, that although for centuries they have endured oppression with the mute meekness of the lamb bound for sacrifice, they are by no means dead to feelings of domestic tenderness, or insensible to the natural ties of kindred or of country, whence they are violently torn when led away as recruits. Wanderers from their native soil, wherever the public service or the will of an usurper leads, they brood over the loss of the genial freedom, simple habits, and peaceful enjoyments that once were their own, when they herded their flocks or cultivated their corn and pumpkins. In an hospital, on the coast, we have seen some of these poor fellows unable to speak a sentence of Spanish to the physician who prescribed for their relief; and, in a few extreme instances, despair sunk the powers of life, and a hopeless love of home exhausted their spirits. We have seen one very young lad thus affected who refused food and medicine, until in silent sorrow he expired, a victim to nostalgia, or a love of home, and a broken heart. These hapless beings, whose devotedness to early attachments and associations bespeaks the warmth and fidelity of their affections, though cherished under a cold and apparently a passionless exterior, we found to be indeed reserved, but sagacious; and, when not under any unusual excitement, their minds, though not cheerful, were serene. Their exterior mien always struck us as solemn, and even sad; but this may be partly the effect of the awfully grand and sublime scenery so familiar to their view, which imparts a solemn and contemplative turn to the thoughts of the mountaineer, and influences his moral feelings in such a manner as stamps a certain air of mental gravity on his general deportment and expression. As an individual, the Indian is timid, and he will sooner take a cuff than give one; but, when they assemble for mutual support, then indeed they are seen to fight most valiantly, and like tame oxen, when the blood of one of their number is shed, they all become fearfully courageous. Bold and bloody battles we have seen between strong parties of the native miners in Cerro Pasco, armed for the combat with slings, stones, and clubs. At festivals, too, when roused by drink or enraged by jealousy, they lacerate and maul each other: and the meek-looking, dumpy, Indian woman becomes equally exasperated and vehement if in her quarrels any one should cut away a tress of her long and coarse black hair; for the cutting of these tresses is an odious mark of female dishonour, to which women of every caste in the land,—except the woolly-headed blacks and mulattas, on whom nature has not bestowed these ornaments,—are most acutely and painfully sensitive.[24]
From the beagle-courage of the Indian, who, like these gentle animals, fights better in company with others than singly, his military character stands very high; and a regiment of Indians when conducted by gallant officers, as was the case during the war of Peruvian independence, are sure to prove indomitably brave and hardy. The dark and zambo soldier of the coast, when urged forward on a rapid Sierra march, is very apt to sink under the pressure of fatigue, conjoined with pinching cold and inevitable privations, to which he has been little accustomed in the warm and humid “potreros” or enclosures near the sea. But the Indian foot-soldier is superior to such obstacles; and with only the support of a pouch of coca, and a bag of toasted maize, he will continue his march wherever the llama can keep its footing over ledges of rock, and rugged recesses so wild and so land-locked, that, as the dwellers in these solitudes say, it would seem difficult for the birds of the air to escape from them. But though, when engaged on long and forced marches over savage mountains and glens, one of these all-enduring and active natives hardly ever falls behind from mere fatigue, yet he has not so far forgotten the shade of his fig-tree in the bosom of the vale, or his airy home on some distant eyrie, from whence he was dragged in bonds, as not secretly to pant for his native nest; and, on long inland marches, the general or commander who is not singularly vigilant, or uncommonly beloved, has more to fear that the Indian may desert him on the journey than when engaged with the enemy.
In every village of the intermediate valleys, the white vagabond and roguish mestizo have “padrinos,” or protecting friends of their own caste in petty authority, holding the commission of captain of volunteers, governor, or alcalde, or something more subordinate still; but the more industrious Indian, who tills his own piece of ground, and peaceably labours to rear his little group of helpless children, is constantly the victim of oppression. This useful citizen, who happens not to owe a dollar to any man of influence whose interest it may therefore be to interpose with the colonel or sub-prefect of the district in his behalf, has, to use his own pathetic expression, no “arrimo” or powerful support, neither friend nor protector to plead his cause with the local authorities, who, though they are enjoined by the government to enlist none but idle and vicious characters, are daily seen to sacrifice, with insolence and impunity, justice and duty to malice and caprice. The native inhabitants are therefore searched out and dragged from their houses, or from the caves and fastnesses where they have sought concealment. Torn from their forlorn and destitute families, carried away as recruits on every new levy of conscripts, they are bound like galley-slaves, and then driven along, a spiritless crew, hopeless and helpless, from the recesses and glens of the interior to the coast, or elsewhere, as circumstances may require, there to die of ague or dysentery, or, if they survive the usual effects of great changes of climate and diet, to be harshly trained for the exercise of war.
It is a law of the country, contained in article 6th of the Constitution, that the common rights of citizenship be suspended towards the notoriously vagrant, the gambler, the drunkard, and the married man who without cause abandons his wife, or who is divorced on account of his own misconduct. The rich and influential can, when they please, easily evade such laws as these; but, among the peculiar hardships imposed upon the Indian of the interior, it is not the least that he may be seized for a soldier on the alleged ground of his being “mal-casado,” or habitually cohabiting with a woman to whom he has not been previously bound by the bonds of regular marriage. It is not impartial justice that he should be punished in this manner for a delinquency which is almost authorized by the practice of his superiors. These poor people pair together naturally, and at an early age; and would, we think, frequently render their union more binding by marriage, if they could afford it. That this may be understood, it is necessary to say that the curate’s fees for the performance of matrimonial and burial service vary in amount with the caste and complexion of the parties. The fee for marrying an Indian is lower than that assigned for the marriage of a mestizo, and the white man pays more than either. One consequence of this arrangement is, that it is often difficult to ascertain the class of the proposed bridegroom; and the curate may sometimes be induced to raise the beardless Indian to the rank of the scanty-bearded mestizo, and the latter has in his own person great ambition to be thought an “hombre blanco” or white man. The poor agricultural Indian of the Sierra has commonly enough to do to provide himself with his coca,[25] a hoe, and a chopping-knife, the tools that he usually works with; and seldom indeed has he got on hand as many dollars as would enable him to pay even the lowest rate of marriage fees. Now, he who cannot pay without difficulty the priest for marrying him in a Christian manner, thinks it can be no great harm to imitate others around him whose example ought to be worthy of imitation; and, ignorant of the language which Scripture addresses to his conscience, he contracts a marriage sanctioned by custom, though not by religion.
Another hardship in the Indian’s situation is, that he has often great trouble to pay the customary tribute or capitation tax, from which even the superannuated are not always exempt, though the Treasury professes not to receive contributions from the aged. When we resided in the Vale of Huanuco, men have come to us from the distant province of Conchucos, imploring work, to be paid for not in produce but in money, which is scarce in Conchucos, that they might be enabled to return with a few dollars to satisfy the collector of revenue, not less inexorable in his demands than the corregidor used to be in exacting the royal tribute, of which this vestige yet remains. On the coast, a day-labourer’s wages may be six reals or a dollar, according to circumstances; but in remote parts of the interior, as in the province to which we have referred, wages are very low,—for example, a real or sixpence per day. In Huanuco, wages are nominally three reals a day: but here the native planters usually run accounts with their workmen, whom they supply with such articles as clothes, spirits, maize, coca, and perhaps tobacco; though the cigar is more used by the natives of the coast, and such as use not the coca, than by the agricultural Indian. By this mode of management the poor man is commonly precipitated, before he is aware of it, into his employer’s debt, and very often remains involved, and virtually a slave, for the remainder of his life; while his sons after him are made to take upon themselves the burden under which the father sank to his grave. But the same grinding system involves even the better sort of men who are looked upon with respect in their own humble sphere, and permitted to prefix Don as a shining handle to their name,—they also are victims to ruinous custom and superstitious rites; for they are called upon in their turn to bear the expense of being the major-domos of the feasts which are celebrated in honour of the tutelar saint of the village to which they belong.
To defray the expense of these public entertainments, the major-domos have in most instances not only to spend all their savings, but to borrow, and to run up their credit with the sellers of fruit and preserves, the butcher, the baker, the distiller, and chicheras, or women that make the country beer, and sell the malt, called jorra, made of maize. In short, a major-domo of a festival in a village of any consideration gets well off if one hundred and fifty or two or three hundred dollars, pay his share of the anniversary feast and procession. To sustain the pageantry of one day of drunken and profligate religious enthusiasm in honour of a favourite saint, these men foolishly entangle themselves and families in the miseries of debt and embarrassments that destroy both ease and independence, and lead to a multitude of evils naturally arising out of such degraded circumstances. We have ourselves employed in weeding our cane-fields an honest and industrious family thus reduced to great privation; from which the children could never expect to emerge, after the death of an industrious father, except by the utmost prudence, perseverance, and industry on their own part, and friendly support on the part of their employer.
To conclude these remarks on the Indian’s condition, we have shown that evil example in high places, religious abuses, the exactions of the collector of revenue, and also of the priest, (whom, by the by, the state should deliver from this degrading necessity, by giving him an adequate income out of the tithes which it has appropriated to itself,) the arbitrariness of petty governors, alcaldes, and village captains, together with the restless and overweening ambition of military despots that allow their country no repose,—we have shown that these causes, collectively, tend to render the Indian race—which forms the bulk of the Peruvian nation—insecure in their persons and property, distrustful and cringing in their character, degraded in their morals, and heirs direct to civil and religious bondage.
The curates who reside in the mountain glens and deep corries feel assured, from the well-known feelings cherished by their flocks, that when the day arrives when these uneducated men of the hills shall understand what are their own political rights and physical strength, and shall be commanded by bold and sagacious leaders of their own blood and kind, they will fearfully and cruelly avenge their wrongs on all “advenedizos,” all exotics!—on their white oppressors and sable interlopers![26]
