Food is the dominant problem of an Indian’s existence. The food quest is to him no indefinite sociological issue of future “food control,” but an affair of every day. Living, it would seem, in the midst of plenty, starvation is a frequent visitant in an Amazonian household. They are an improvident folk, as I have already stated, and if food be plentiful give no thought to make provision for the morrow, when there may be none to be had.[165] “None” to the man of the forest has a different significance, a more inclusive meaning, than it has to the white man, for it comprehends everything that by the widest stretch of the imagination can be considered possible for human consumption. And it is well for the Indians that they are omnivorous, for the uncertainty of food supply is the most certain factor of life in the Amazonian bush.[166]

To run through the details of the possible provision of meat: there is, to start with, the tapir,[167] though the Witoto consider much tapir is bad, especially for women. The print of its three toes, with a fourth on the forefeet, is very seldom not to be found in the damp soil by stream and river. The tapir is in fact plentiful throughout these regions, though, thanks to its protective colouring, it may often not be obtrusively present. The young tapir is flecked and dotted with pale yellow spots on its brown coat, an exact imitation of sunlight on the earth through foliage. Gradually these stripes and spots fade to dull greys, only the fully grown animal is entirely without them, and of a uniform dead slaty colour. Young tapir flesh makes an excellent dish, and is like pork in taste, but it must be eaten very fresh, for the meat will not keep sweet many hours on account of its richness. Therefore if a tapir is killed in the water and sinks,[168] it must be eaten immediately it comes to the surface, that is after some hours, during which the gases have generated in the animal’s stomach, and so caused it to rise. But tapir is always considered unhealthy if eaten too frequently, and at certain seasons of the year is said to be quite uneatable, and if taken gives rise to sickness. An old tapir is tough and heavy eating at the best of times. Tapir flesh dried over a smoky fire is excellent eating, though I have never seen the Indians smoke meat for keeping, even when they found I did so myself. Another meat that has been compared with pork is that of the paca.[169] It is rich and fat, but it is eatable, and not so strong in flavour as the flesh of the capybara,[170] a larger animal, found usually in the vicinity of water. In appearance the capybara is not unlike a long-nosed, crop-eared rabbit, while its cousin the agouti,[171] chestnut-coloured and rough-haired, has a rat-like face on a rabbit’s body, though the flesh has nothing in common with the rabbit’s. Both the paca and the agouti are plentiful in the forest. Of the two the latter is more of a forest-dweller, and seeks the streams only to drink.

A small species of ant-bear is fairly common, but the large ant-eater is not often found. The latter does exist in the Issa-Japura watersheds, according to Indian accounts; and ant-bear is eaten by the Boro, but has too strong and pungent a taste for the white palate. Armadilloes, when obtainable, are baked in the ashes of the fire, as hedgehogs are roasted in England.

Monkey flesh, though usually tough and invariably insipid, is by no means despised, nor must a traveller in these regions be squeamish over it, horribly suggestive as the body of a cooked monkey very certainly is in appearance, for monkey meat most frequently will be the only plat on the dinner menu. It is the most ordinary food of the Indian, though monkey is not the easiest game to collect. The wounded or dying animal is very apt to clutch at the boughs in its agony, and the hand will contract in death and the body remain pendant. Even if it drop it will frequently stick in a forked branch out of reach; so that for one monkey eaten probably several are slain. Monkeys of all sorts, however, abound throughout the forest, and also marmosets, pretty little creatures with something of the squirrel about them.[172] Though I never saw the big-bellied monkey mentioned by Spruce,[173] I noticed a large number of spider-monkeys, with tails so prehensile that they serve as additional hands to convey fruit to their mouths. The supply of monkey flesh depends in the first instance on what provender there may be in the neighbourhood for those animals. Monkeys are wanderers, and when they have cleared one part of the forest of fruit and nuts, they migrate to another. The migration of game is a serious matter for the Indian, for all animals here are subject to periodical movements as noted in the previous chapter. It may result in the abandonment of a homestead when scarcity of animal life in a district drives the human inhabitants away.

When it can be obtained a deer, or a sloth, furnishes a variety for the cooking-pot; and then there is the peccary, so dreaded by the Indian. The peccary,[174] the wild pig of the forest, lives in small herds, and the reason proffered by the Indians for their fear of the animal is that when one is wounded it sets up a loud cry, and the rest of the herd promptly come to its aid and join in attacking the aggressor. This story is universal among the tribes. The peccary has a deceptively harmless appearance. They have not all tusks, and in no case are the tusks very prominent; yet, so sharp are they, that the fearless and pugnacious creature can inflict a severe wound. The shoulder and leg are the parts prized for eating. I know of no temporary tabu connected with this animal, though it has been said that at times the flesh is unfit for food on account of a gland in the back.[175] This may, however, be the reason why the body is rarely eaten.

Of birds, parrots are the most plentiful, and the toughest. For a hard, tasteless, and unappetising meal commend me to the carcase of that noisy bird. They require to be stewed for quite twenty-four hours, and that over a slow fire, or else the flesh is impossible to eat. Their chief use is in soup. Macaw, curassow, piuri and panje, mocking-bird, toucan, and egrets all go to the family pepper-pot of the successful hunter, with the turkey of these parts, pigeons, partridges, herons, ducks, and geese; in fact quite a good assortment of feathered fowl.

The frogs that make night hideous with their croaking provide the Indian epicure with one of his most esteemed dishes, for both frogs and snakes are considered delicacies, so that the traveller who pitied tribes like the Botocudo, because insects and reptiles formed a large part of their diet,[176] would simply be wasting his sympathy. Even the white man does not disdain the delicate flesh of the iguana, ugly though that green-bellied, black-ridge-backed reptile is. Turtles are caught and eaten during the dry season when the rivers are low. The native method of capturing them is to turn the unwieldly creature over on its back when asleep on the sand-banks. This renders the turtles perfectly helpless, though a snap from their powerful jaws will do serious damage.[177] The eggs also are eaten by these tribes, although none of the Issa-Japura tribes will touch birds’ eggs, for they look upon them as foetal, and therefore unclean.[178] Further it is beast-like, in their opinion, to eat the liver, kidneys, and other intestines of animals, though these may be made into soup or hot-pot. For the same reason the Indian does not touch carrion.[179] But such niceness is outbalanced by tastes that in our eyes would be equally or even more filthy, for the Indian will eat vermin, and head lice are looked upon as quite a bon bouche. Hence a scurf-comb is a most important present, and to comb your neighbour’s hair and eat the “bag” an honour and a luxury.[180] They will also eat the grubs of wasps and bees, in fact any larvÆ—nothing comes amiss to them.

All the Indians—except the Menimehe, who, as mentioned, keep hives in their houses,—collect wild honey from the hollow trees and other places where the bees nest in the bush. Sometimes these insects make nests of a considerable size, that look like lobster pots full of black pitch hanging on the tree-trunks. The large cells are full of a thin honey that is used by the natives to mix with various drinks. The Indians are very fond of honey, and smoke the bees out to secure it. Bees are more common than wasps in these parts, and fortunately are less dangerous.

Fish abound in all the rivers, though like the plants and animals they are smaller in the upper reaches than in the lower Amazon valleys. Robuchon gave the following as found in the Issa: Silurios of all kinds, that is to say platysomas, planiceps, platyrhynchos, leopardus, and the little caudirus (Serasalmys), Pygo, Cebras, Piraga (D. costatus et carinatus); also many kinds of needle fish and shark-toothed fish. There is any quantity of skate in the Issa, though its power to inflict a nasty wound does not recommend it to the naked Indian fisherman. Some of the fish are very good eating; none better than the uaracu, which is said to feed on laurel berries.[181]

It is when one turns to the vegetable world that one finds the staple food of the Amazonian native. The manioc is to the Indian the chief necessary of life. The sweet manioc,[182] although known to these Issa-Japura tribes, is never planted, because it is not appreciated by them. They prefer the poisonous species which, as its botanical name Manihot utilissima implies, can be put to a multiplicity of uses. To eliminate the poison and render it fit for food, the manioc is subjected to several processes. So far as I could observe, or learn by leading questions, these are roughly as follows:

The women bring the brown tubers of the manioc in baskets from the plantation. On their way up they stop by the river and cleanse the soil from the roots, which are like a small beet in appearance, but white when peeled. The manioc after it has been washed and soaked for a short time is next scraped by means of a sharp wooden knife in order to peel off the thin adhesive skin, similar in substance to that of a potato, but if anything thinner. Sometimes the women instead of using a wooden knife simply scrape the skin off with their teeth. The peeled roots are washed in the river again, and taken up to the house. Each root is then cut longitudinally into three or four sections, which are put in a bowl near the fire and left to soak for twenty-four hours. When, at the end of this time, the manioc is sufficiently softened, they place a piece or two of rotten manioc in the bowl with the fresh stuff. The object of this is to promote fermentation and thus to extract the poison from the fresh root.

The next process is to mash the manioc, and for this purpose it is all—both fresh and rotten—removed from the pan and grated into a large wooden trough, with the special implement that has black palm-spines inserted in the soft wood for teeth. The grated pulp is removed from the trough and put into a cylindrical palm-cane wringer, the cassava-squeezer which is used by the Boro, the Andoke, the Resigero, the Okaina, and all tribes to the north. The Witoto and other tribes on the south use a long rectangular palm-fibre wringer, which is twisted to form a cylinder in the same way as a puttee is wound round the leg. In this elastic cylinder it is compressed till all the poisonous juice has been drained away, when the remainder, a coarse kind of flour, is placed in an open pan and left to get thoroughly dry. Afterwards it is rubbed between the hands to make it finer.[183]

The next operation is to sift this flour through a basket sieve. Any coarse stuff that does not rub through the sieve is thrown away. The fine residue is baked in a clay platter, and should be turned over with the hands once during the process. No water is added to the flour before it is baked.

This flour is kneaded with water, put in a pan and cooked over the fire. The result, the cassava bread, is leathery and tough, and when one speaks of “bread” unleavened bread must be understood. It is never allowed to brown, the outer crust is merely hardened, and as a result the cassava cake has always a raw uncooked taste. But I found that if one of these native cakes were cut in small pieces and fried in animal fat till crisply toasted, it was quite good eating, better if anything than ordinary bread.

The Boro leave the starch in the cassava flour, so their bread is more sustaining than Witoto bread, as Witoto women remove the starch and use it for other purposes.[184] Boro bread is also thicker, and when pulled apart is of a stringy consistency.

Spruce mentions a manioc oven,[185] but this is quite unknown to me. All the tribes I visited cooked their cassava on large earthenware plates on an open fire. Nor could they prop their cooking utensils on stones, for—as has been noted—stones there are none in these districts. The pot is put simply on the three logs that compose the fire where their ends meet. The hot embers in the centre give plenty of steady heat, and if more be required the pot must be placed on a tripod of branches and the embers fanned with a palm-leaf to a flame.

Among the Andoke manioc is peeled by the women with their teeth, and then washed. The roots are pulped with a grater, and the starch is washed out by adding water to them in a basket suspended on a tripod over a calabash. The partially prepared manioc is left till required for use and will keep in this state for a week at a time. When they wish to use it the grated pulp is strained in a cassava-squeezer, then mixed with starch and sifted through a sieve. The fine stuff is baked immediately, and the water that was drained off in the wringer is boiled up at once to make a sweet-tasting drink. The starch will keep for a month.

Among the Boro and Witoto the manioc water is boiled till it thickens, and is then used as a sauce into which the cassava is dipped before it is eaten. Another way of eating cassava is to dip it in soup. The Boro on the Japura concoct a sauce of the consistency of paste by seasoning the manioc water with peppers and fish.[186]

Though the tuber is the most valuable portion of the plant it is not the only part used for food. The leaves may be eaten as a vegetable. They are boiled till quite soft; pounded very fine with a pestle; fish, worms, frogs, ants and peppers are added as seasoning, and this brew is eaten with cassava bread and with meat. Another method of preparation is to take the leaves and cook them in the water squeezed out of the roots in the wringer. This sauce is boiled in an earthenware pot suspended from a cross-beam, or placed like the earthenware pan on a triangle of sticks, over a slow fire, until the leaves become a paste. This is carried in a palm-leaf as an emergency ration by an Indian when going into the bush.

Cassava, then, is the Indian’s “staff of life.” Its complement is the hot-pot, or pepper-pot, which is a “generous” soup supercharged with meat that forms the staple, while the liver and so forth are added to enrich the brew. It is a standing dish with the aborigines. Each family has a big pot that simmers constantly over the special fires. Into this go all things, and it is replenished daily from the proceeds of the kill. Portions of animals that may not be eaten—blood, brains, intestines—can be utilised in the stew; and everything is very highly qualified with peppers, the chief stimulant in native diet.

Wallace has suggested that the excessive use of peppers is due to the lack of salt.[187] This very serious need is not without considerable influence on the Indian, and it is possible—as has been suggested—that it is at the root of more than over-indulgence in pepper. Mineral salt is not to be had,[188] except by barter, throughout the middle Issa-Japura regions; and what little the tribes can obtain is chiefly secured by burning certain plants with saline qualities.[189]

On account of its rarity salt is much sought after, and a present of salt is always highly appreciated.

The Indian feeds at sunrise after he has had his drink of “tea” and his first bath. This morning meal is an informal one of cold cassava cake, and any meat that may have been left uneaten overnight, or a dip in the hot-pot. He eats sparingly, and never takes much of a meal if a day’s march or a hunt is in prospect. Nor does he carry food with him, unless he be going on a journey. Coca, which of course is but a stimulant, is sufficient sustenance in his opinion. Still, he will eat a little at any time it may be possible, and there is usually no lack of fruit for the taking in the bush.

The great meal of the day is towards sundown when the hunt is over, the quarry killed and cooked.[190] Then all the men, squatting round their private family fires in the big house, help themselves from their hot-pot and eat to the limit of its contents. An Indian will not take a bite at his food; he tears whatever he is eating into small pieces with his fingers. Among the Issa-Japura tribes, as with the Tukana, men and women do not eat together, and the children feed with the women. None of the tribes have any special observances or purifications before or after eating, so far as I am aware, nor are there any general restrictions, except so far as carrion and the intestines are concerned. But even these may at a pinch be made use of without prejudice, by resorting to the simple expedient of blowing, or rubbing with a magic stone, the two antidotes for all evils with the Indian. There are temporary food tabu for women, and certain prohibitions for children. These will be dealt with later.

The usual method of cooking is to rest the pot as described on the fire-logs themselves. Sometimes the pot is placed, like the pan for baking cassava, on lumps of clay, or on a triangle of sticks roughly made for the occasion. The sticks must be long in comparison to the height from the ground that is required, and are not tied, but merely so adjusted that each supports and locks the others. Such a tripod makes a firm seat, though never employed by the Indians for that purpose. I have never seen pots hung. The pot is covered with a single leaf, and the soup is stirred with any stick that comes to hand at the moment; there are no special ones, nor are any fashioned for use as ladles. Meat is almost invariably put in the hot-pot, but occasionally it is toasted over the fire.

When the women have cooked the food the men help themselves from the pot; they are not waited upon by their women. An Indian will help himself from the hot-pot at any time the fancy may seize him, or, for that matter, from any hot-pot, so long as the owner thereof is present. The tribal or chief’s fire carries the tribal hot-pot, which is open to all, as all contribute to it, at least all the unmarried warriors must do so. This is the hot-pot which always remains, and the fire that never dies out. The family hot-pot and fire is the concern of each individual family only.

Fruit is to be had in plenty, and throughout the year in this country of endless summer. Not being a botanist, and aware that some of the most tempting fruits held latent poison under an alluring exterior, I was most chary of eating fruit unknown to me, and never touched any until quite satisfied of its wholesomeness from its effects on the Indians; nor, mindful of the fact that the Indian will, and apparently can, eat anything, would I venture to eat many fruits the Indians partook of as a matter of course. Sweet and ripened fruit is rarely eaten by them; they prefer a bitter taste, and, as mentioned in connection with sugar-cane, have no particular use for anything sweet. The Indian will gather fruit and bring it to the house, though the usual custom is to pluck and eat it in the bush. So far as I was concerned especially, it was brought in as a present to denote good-will.

One fruit the Indians grow in the plantations resembles and tastes like grapes.[191] It is very plentiful, particularly in the old plantations, and the Indian will often return to one of these in order to obtain this fruit. Another fruit, also found growing in old plantations, is the colour of a lemon, and the size and shape of an orange. It is very good eating, extremely sweet when ripe, with huge black pips, and the part immediately under the skin is gummy, like rubber latex, and sticks to the mouth.

A fruit we knew as the mauve berry is found at the top of trees. In size it approximates to a red currant, and it grows in large bunches. The colour is a light pinky mauve. It is intensely sweet, and according to popular report has an intoxicating effect upon the eater. It certainly appears to have very heady properties.

Various palms furnish palatable fruits. There is a small edible palm from which the Indians strip the bark after they have cut it down, and remove the cylinder of hardened sap which is of the same consistency as a hard woody apple. It is heavy but rich-flavoured and good eating. Then there is the cabbage palm, not to mention the pupunha.

Nuts and seeds abound. There is a large oval seed in a fleshy envelope that birds feed on freely, and another fruit with a large stone is the wild alligator pear. The stone of this is more than one-half the size of the whole fruit. It is delicious in taste, and is looked upon by both whites and natives as a great delicacy. In shape it resembles a pear, and in colour it varies from green to yellow or russet.