402 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



increase in value. They have a small port on the estate, called Puerto 

 Lara, to which settlers from downriver bring their produce in great 

 dugout canoes, or bongos. Bags of yuca, corn, rice, and plantains, 

 along with fattened hogs, chickens, exotic birds, sewing machines, suit- 

 cases, and household effects, are here transferred from the dugouts to 

 trucks for shipment to Florencia, Neiva, or even Bogota (pi. 5, fig. 1). 

 Some canoes were loaded entirely with huge planks of mahogany and 

 tropical cedar. The dugouts are no longer paddled by hand. Every 

 one of them has a little outboard motor attached to it, and this means 

 a relatively cheap and rapid means of transport for both goods and 

 passengers. The head of canoe navigation on these rivers running 

 from the eastern Andes into the llanos is now, thanks to the internal 

 combustion motor, easily reached by people living 50 miles or more out 

 on the plains. When canoes had to be paddled by hand the settler had 

 to live within 10 or 15 miles of the head of navigation. One settler 

 on the Rio Pescado, 25 airline miles away, brought two immense hogs, 

 fattened on corn and yuca, to be loaded on the truck and marketed in 

 Florencia (pi. 4, fig. 1). It would have been impossible to transport 

 them by dugout canoe when the trip was measured in days instead of 

 hours. About 80 percent of the settlers who are establishing their 

 beachhead farms on the rich vega, or natural levee land, along the 

 rivers are from Huila. This man with the fat hogs for sale originally 

 came from Armenia, Caldas, 17 years ago. He has some good pastures 

 on which he would like to fatten cattle, but he has been unable to find 

 any lean steers for sale. 



FOOD CROPS AND VILLAGE TRADING TECHNIQUES 



The frontiersman in the Andean foothills plants his patch of yuca, 

 corn, or plantains, depending on the local climatic and edaphic con- 

 ditions, and on the starch to which he has always been accustomed. 

 However, the favorite starch food for the dweller of the llanos is the 

 topocho (Musa paradisiaca L.), a small eating and cooking banana 

 that is resistant to high winds, drought, and lack of care. Rice and 

 corn are frequently planted between the rows. When harvested, the 

 rice is kept in sacks in the loft while the ears of corn are tied in pairs 

 by the husk and hung near the roof over the open kitchen fire. This 

 protects it from weevils. Once a topocho patch is started it continues 

 to bear for years; it is bread, the very staff of life, for the llanero. 

 When grated and dried in the sun it is used in making fecula for feed- 

 ing small children; green or ripe it is used at every meal — boiled, 

 baked, roasted, or fried. The topocho is also used as chicken and hog 

 feed, and is fed to work animals and milk cows. The leaves are used 

 as wrapping paper in an area where that commodity does not exist. 



In the tiny stores on the streets nearest the public market an infini- 

 tesimal amount of goods is sold each day — possibly not more than 5 



