512 ANlSrUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 63 



that are acceptable and often impose the use of others which are 

 actually deleterious.^ 



It is not enough to tell people that certain foods are good, and good 

 for them, and that they can easily produce them, for no amount of 

 urging will get them to produce — or even to consume — foodstuffs that 

 they do not, for whatever reason, luant to eat. A case in point : A few 

 years ago on a 10-day jeep trip from Bogota to Cartagena, Colombia, 

 our party stopped overnight at a little village surrounded by a vast 

 area inhabited by self-sufficient agriculturalists, where we were wel- 

 comed by the local priest who gave us lodging in his home. We were 

 extremely hungry and ate heartily of the excellent meal the kind 

 padre set before us, indeed down to the last crumb. Seeing this devas- 

 tation, our host excused himself from the table, left the room, and 

 came back with a 10-pound can of cheese spread, marked in Spanish, 

 "Gift of the People of the United States to the people of Colombia." 

 This can had been opened, but very little of it had been used ; when 

 asked if we would like this, we answered in the affirmative, and we 

 began a kind of second round of eating. Our generous host beamed 

 his delight at this cheese finding such a good market, for he pointed out 

 that even his most poverty-stricken parishioners were not interested 

 in it, that, although it tasted and smelled like cheese, and he had as- 

 sured them that it was cheese, it was soft and lacking in resistance. In 

 Spanish, cheese is macho^ that is, it is a male food, the opposite of soft 

 and malleable ; it must be one that offers resistance to the teeth, that 

 must be bitten off in hard chunks, and must be chewed on with vigor 

 if one is to make headway with it. Since this cheese spread did not 

 correspond to the local concept of what a cheese should be, few people 

 were interested in it, including himself ; he had used some of it to mix 

 with chicken feed and the fowls had rather enjoyed it, but he was 

 happy to find people who ate it with such relish, and he presented us 

 with an unopened can to carry along with us the next day ! 



THE PRIMITIVE FARMER: CULTURALLY AND TECHNOLOGICALLY 



ILL-FAVORED 



The millions of subsistence farmers have for the most part lived out 

 their obscure lives beyond the unpact of almost all those factors that 

 we associate with modern life. Education has not penetrated their 

 world, which means that, among other things, the fundamentals of 

 modern hygiene and asepsis are not Imown — even the boiling of water 

 to kill noxious, waterborne bacteria is not knowingly practiced. 

 Fortunately for the visitor to the little thatch-roofed hut in the forest, 

 water has first to be boiled to make the coffee or the sweetened water 

 that is so hospitably proffered by one's host. These primitive farmers 



= Frederick J. Simoons, "Eat Not This Flesh," University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 

 1961. 



