Thomas Whiffen

Drinks, drugs, and poisons: their use and preparation—Unfermented drinks—Caapi—Fermented drinks—Cahuana—Coca: its preparation, use, and abuse—Parica—Tobacco—Poison and poison-makers.

If the Indian eats but little during the day, he drinks to excess whenever opportunity offers. In the early morning a beverage somewhat akin to tea, but colourless, made from an infusion of bitter herbs, is taken. It has some tonic properties, and when I drank it seemed always to have a slight taste of peppermint. This herb infusion is the first meal of the day. It is drunk out of half-gourds, after the morning bath, before the members of the household disperse to their varied avocations. I am under the impression that this decoction is made from a species of grass, and not the Ilex paraguayensis from which mate, or Paraguay tea, is made. It is probably the lemon grass mentioned by Simson.[192] The Indians also scrape the seeds of the capana, mix in some cassava flour, and wrap up the mass in plantain leaves. This is left to ferment in water, till it is the colour of saffron; then it is dried in the sun. This is drunk as a bitter tea in the morning when diluted in water.

The Indian drinks enormous quantities of water, or unfermented liquor, at times, and afterwards can abstain like a camel for a considerable period. He never drinks when eating, but afterwards. At a feast or a dance when he is unable to drink more he simply pokes his fingers down his throat, with the result that room is made for renewed doses of his non-alcoholic beverage.

The principal unfermented drinks made by these tribes are prepared from manioc, and from various fruits. The first is made from the grated manioc by merely squeezing out and boiling the water, and is thus a by-product of cassava in the making. This leaves a sweet drink, which is certainly insipid and is not considered to be healthy. The moisture squeezed out of the “squeezer” is boiled and boiled again into a rather thick drink. This is used more as a sauce into which cassava is dipped than as a “clean” drink. It still contains, I believe, a minute percentage of hydrocyanic acid.

Another beverage is prepared from roasted pines. The juice is squeezed out, and this liquid extract is ready to drink without further process. Plantains, bananas, and other fruits, grated and mixed with starch obtained from the manioc tubers, are boiled and flavoured with local spices to make another concoction. A thick yellow liquid prepared from the Patana palm is the national drink of all these Indians, except the Menimehe and Kuretu, who make fermented drinks from pine fruit. The Patana fruit is boiled and broken with the hand in water, so as to mix up the pulp and allow the heavy skins to fall to the bottom of the pot. These and any fleshy remainder are strained away in a sieve, and cassava flour is added to the liquid, which is drunk while warm. This drink is known as patana-yukise in lingoa-geral. There is a vegetable milk that is consumed by the Indians, which I take to be the cow-tree milk mentioned by other travellers.[193] I do not think it is very plentiful in these regions, and for my own part never saw nor tasted it. It is a creamy, sticky fluid, obtained by lacerating the bark, that can be drunk when fresh. I am certain these tribes do not use it for any cooking purposes, and do not think it is ever stored in their houses, but is only drunk in the forest from the tree.

There are intoxicating drinks among the Menimehe and the tribes north of the Japura, but among some of these northern tribes the men drink caapi,[194] which is strongly erotic. I would suggest that caapi is unknown to the tribes south of the Japura, except probably to their medicine-men. It would account for the frenzy of the latter when diagnosing disease, and so forth, which quite corresponds with the descriptions given by Spruce of the effect of caapi.[195]

The plant from which caapi is prepared is grown in plantations by Indians on the Uaupes and Issanna rivers,[196] and by other Rio Negro tribes. The drink is made from the stem, mixed in a mortar by the Uaupes Indians with the roots of the painted caapi.[197] The pounded mass is rubbed through a sieve, and water is then added. Women are not even allowed to touch the vessel that contains the caapi. This intoxicating liquor is unknown to me, but I heard that the Karahone and other tribes had this strong drink. Though known on the Uaupes to all the tribes it is said to have only a confined use on the Rio Negro.

Other drinks that are to be found north of the Japura are prepared from fermented maize, and manioc.[198] Caxiri, or manioc beer, is used by the Menimehe, the Ticano and Kuretu. Tribes on the Napo drink masato, which is also made from manioc that has been partly masticated by the women and then left to ferment.[199] They make another fermented drink from bananas, but pines are principally employed as they contain more sugar for fermenting purposes.

Before a dance the women of the Issa-Japura region prepare great store of kawana, a drink made from the yellow pulp of a pear-shaped fruit,[200] not unlike a mango, with a large black seed in the centre.[201] The liquid is stored in the large vessels made by the primitive process of stripping off a sheet of bark and setting it end up on the hard ground. These are usually to be found at the chief’s end of the tribal house. One of these impromptu vats will hold as much as thirty gallons.

By far the most important of the stimulants taken by these peoples are the preparations made from the leaves of the common coca shrub.[202] Coca is the mescal of the Indian,[203] and possibly a heritance from the Inca invaders of bygone centuries.[204] The use of coca is habitual, not intermittent. An Indian will take as much as two ounces a day.[205] All Indians use it, the Bara in especial being heroic coca-takers.

To prepare coca for use the sage-green leaves are carefully picked and fire-dried. They are then pounded with other ingredients in mortars made from small tree-trunks. The pestle shown in the illustration is made of mahogany. Beside the coca leaf the Indian pounds up lime that is procured by reducing to ashes certain palm leaves,[206] baked clay that is scraped from underneath the fire, and some powdered cassava flour. Whether these leaf-ashes are a form of calcium I do not know. In the Sierra powdered coca is mixed with pulverised unslaked lime, or with the ashes of the Chenopodium Quinoa. As this latter is one of the distinctive Sierra flora, I presume the Indians of the forest have found some substitute in the bush. The drug is carried in a bag, or beaten-bark pouch, that is worn suspended round the neck. The clay and palm-leaf ashes certainly neutralise the bitterness of the pure leaf, and it is possible that in these foreign ingredients the Indians have discovered an antidote, if such there be, to the worst effects of the drug.

The Indian by means of a folded leaf shoots the powder into the cheeks on one or both sides. This when moistened forms a hard ball, and with such a wad stuffed between the cheek and the teeth he can go without sleep, food, or drink, for several days. Coca is not swallowed, but gradually absorbed and passed down with the saliva.[207]

As to cocainism, we know that the Indians are veritable cocaino-maniacs, or rather coca-maniacs. It is a matter of great regret to me that I was unable to make observations—may I say psycho-medical observations—on Indians under the influence of this drug. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that it was not possible to observe one not to some extent under its influence, for it must be remembered that the use of the drug is so continuous that it is difficult—one has hardly the opportunity—to differentiate. Whether coca permanently injures the higher brain centres, as has been suggested,[208] is unknown to me, as unknown as the Indians themselves before they developed the heroic use of the drug. The evidences of its effect are contradictory in the extreme, and vary in individual cases. In my own case hunger and thirst were eliminated, but I was unable to establish a tolerance for the drug, and after many vain attempts gave it up, except when food was scarce and anything was preferable to the pangs of hunger. I was certainly able to make greater efforts without food, but its effects were evanescent in the extreme, and were soon followed by acute vomiting and cramp in the stomach. The nausea may have been due to the foreign substances with which the powdered leaves are mixed and not to the coca, but on that point only a trained opinion could be of value.

Even on the question of its influence on the appetite it is difficult to give any clear ruling. My own experience was that it utterly destroyed the appetite. Possibly the Indians’ “tolerance” accounted for the fact that despite the use of the drug they invariably eat heartily when opportunity permits.

The dilation of the pupil caused by the use of the drug is marked in the Indian, and gives a curious expression to the eye. On account of the darkness of the iris this is not so markedly noticeable as would be the case with grey-eyed peoples.

The Tuyuka and other tribes north of the Japura use as a stimulant parica or niopo, a wonderful snuff which is a strong narcotic, and very similar in its effects to coca.[209] It is made from the dried seeds of a mimosa,[210] and, like coca, is mixed with quicklime,[211] and baked clay.[212] The seeds are roasted, and then pounded in a shallow wooden mortar, and the snuff when made is packed in snail-shells[213] and is inhaled through hollow bird-bones inserted in both nostrils. It is used for curative purposes by the Uaupes Indians.[214]

The Menimehe and Yahuna tribes take snuff, but they neither smoke nor lick tobacco. The Uaupes Indians smoke enormous cigars,[215] but none of the tribes south of the Japura smoke their tobacco; it is only licked. After the tobacco leaves are gathered they are soaked, and then pounded in a mortar by the men. Tobacco, it must not be forgotten, is tabu to the women in any form, and it may be noted here that tabu on drink and drugs is far stricter than any tabu on food. The latter are intermittent, enforced only in special cases, or at certain times or ages; but the tabu on coca, aya-huasca, caapi and tobacco is always binding on all women. A little thickened cassava starch is added, which makes the mixture into a stiff dark liquid, to be used either privately or ceremonially, as already described. The tobacco-pot shown in the accompanying illustration is made of a thick and hard nut-shell, with apparently natural holes that are stopped with pitch.[216] Two artificial holes have been bored through for the string. It is about two and a half inches long, by one and five-eighths wide. The oval hole at the top is five-eighths of an inch across, and through it the point of a stick is inserted when the tobacco is to be taken.

The ingenuity with which the Indians prepare cassava flour, their staple provender, from a poisonous root, though notable, is ordinary in comparison with the intricate processes which the poor Indian’s “untutored mind”[217] has elaborated for the preparation of various poisons. Natural poisons abound in the forest. There is one tree known as the poison-tree and credited with most deadly properties.[218] On the Issa and Japura an arrow-poison is made from putrefying animal matter mixed with strychnos. Good poison is very rare, and very much in demand. The most potent preparation is made by the Karahone, who have great knowledge of poisons and are by far the cleverest toxicologists. The Menimehe understand poisons to some extent, but are not the equals of the Karahone, from whom most of the tribes obtain their poisons by barter. But poison of some sort is always manufactured by every medicine-man.

The most important poison is the curare.[219] It is made from two plants, called by the Witoto ramu and pani respectively.[220] The complicated recipe is a treasured hereditary possession.[221] The wood of the Strychnos toxifera is the most necessary ingredient in the manufacture of curare. It is pounded in a mortar, and the sap, mixed with water, is strained and boiled with peppers, ants, and a variety of more or less noxious material.[222] When it is sufficiently inspissated it is put into the small pots, about an inch and a half in diameter, in which these Indians carry it round their necks, in readiness to smear on the palm-spine points of their darts, arrows, and javelins.[223]