Chapter 17

with much creaking and cracking, by a large, rustic wheel made of roughly hewn timbers fastened together with wooden pins and lashed with thongs, worked by hand and foot power. Since Saavedra had been unable to coax any pack animals over the trail to Conservidayoc he was obliged to depend entirely on his own limited strength and that of his active son, aided by the uncertain and irregular services of such savages as wished to work for sugar, trinkets, or other trade articles. Sometimes the savages seemed to enjoy the fun of climbing on the great creaking treadwheel, as though it were a game. At other times they would disappear in the woods.

Near the mill were some interesting large pots which Saavedra was using in the process of boiling the juice and making crude sugar. He said he had found the pots in the jungle not far away. They had been made by the Incas. Four of them were of the familiar aryballus type. Another was of a closely related form, having a wide mouth, pointed base, single incised, conventionalized, animal-head nubbin attached to the shoulder, and band-shaped handles attached vertically below the median line. Although capable of holding more than ten gallons, this huge pot was intended to be carried on the back and shoulders by means of a rope passing through the handles and around the nubbin. Saavedra said that he had found near his house several bottle-shaped cists lined with stones, with a flat stone on top--evidently ancient graves. The bones had entirely disappeared. The cover of one of the graves had been pierced; the hole covered with a thin sheet of beaten silver. He had also found a few stone implements and two or three small bronze Inca axes.

On the pampa, below his house, Saavedra had constructed with infinite labor another sugar mill. It seemed strange that he should have taken the trouble to make two mills; but when one remembered that he had no pack animals and was usually obliged to bring the cane to the mill on his own back and the back of his son, one realized that it was easier, while the cane was growing, to construct a new mill near the cane field than to have to carry the heavy bundles of ripe cane up the hill. He said his hardest task was to get money with which to send his children to school in Cuzco and to pay his taxes. The only way in which he could get any cash was by making chancaca, crude brown sugar, and carrying it on his back, fifty pounds at a time, three hard days' journey on foot up the mountain to Pampaconas or Vilcabamba, six or seven thousand feet above his little plantation. He said he could usually sell such a load for five soles, equivalent to two dollars and a half! His was certainly a hard lot, but he did not complain, although he smilingly admitted that it was very difficult to keep the trail open, since the jungle grew so fast and the floods in the river continually washed away his little rustic bridges. His chief regret was that as the result of a recent revolution, with which he had had nothing to do, the government had decreed that all firearms should be turned in, and so he had lost the one thing he needed to enable him to get fresh meat in the forest.

FIGURE

Saavedra and his Inca Pottery ------

FIGURE

Inca Gable at Espiritu Pampa ------

In the clearing near the house we were interested to see a large turkey-like bird, the pava de la montaña, glossy black, its most striking feature a high, coral red comb. Although completely at liberty, it seemed to be thoroughly domesticated. It would make an attractive bird for introduction into our Southern States.

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.

Saavedra said that he had named his plantation Conservidayoc, because it was in truth "a spot where one may be preserved from harm." Such was the home of the potentate from whose abode "no one had been known to return alive."