522 ANNUAL KEPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1925 



mines of Potosi. Pappas are also eaten fresh either boiled or 

 roasted; and from one of the mildest varieties which also grows in 

 warm situations they make a certain ragout or cazuela which they 

 call ' locro.' Indeed, these roots are the only wealth of that land, 

 and when the season is favorable for the crop they (the Indians) 

 are glad; for many years the roots are spoiled and frozen in the 

 ground, so great is the cold and bad climate of that region." 



In preparing chuho, potatoes were subjected to freezing as well 

 as drying. The process is described in detail by Padre Bernabe 

 Cobo, who writes as follows: "The tubers are. gathered at the begin- 

 ning of the cold season, in May or June, spread out on the ground, 

 and exposed for a period of 12 or 15 days to the sun during the day 

 and the frost at night. At the end of this time they are somewhat 

 shriveled, but still watery. In order to get rid of the water, they 

 are then trampled upon and then left for 15 or 20 days longer to the 

 action of the sun and frost, at length becoming as dry and light as 

 a cork, very dense and hard, and so reduced in bulk that from four 

 or five fanegas of fresh tubers there results only one fanega of 

 chunyo." Cobo adds that chunyo thus prepared will remain unspoiled 

 for many years and that the Indians of the Collao provinces eat no 

 other kind of bread. "A choicer and more highly prized quality is 

 j^repared by soaking the tubers in water for about two months 

 after their preliminary drying. They are then taken out and dried 

 in the sun once more. This quality of chunyo, which is chalky white 

 within, is called ' moray.' From it a kind of flour, finer than wheat 

 flour, is prepared by the Spanish women, who use it for starch, 

 biscuit, and sweetmeats of all kinds, like those confections usually 

 made with sugar and almonds." -- 



In the economic herbarium of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture are specimens of chuno from ancient coast graves, and 

 in various museums of ethnology in America and the Old World 

 there are huacas, or funeral vases, representing tubers of Solarium 

 tuherosum similar to those I have already described. The accom- 

 panying illustration, Plate G, Figure 1, for which I am indebted 

 to the Hon. Hiram Brigham, shov/s the elevated Peruvian Collao 

 with piles of potatoes and Quichua Indians preparing chuiio exactly 

 as they did at the time of the visits of Cieza de Leon, Acosta, and 

 Padre Cobo. Plate 8 is an original photograph of moray, or white 

 chuno, in the United States National Museum, collected by Mr. O. F. 

 Cook, of the Bureau of Plant Industry, between Sicuani and Santa 

 Rosa, on the road from Cusco to Lake Titicaca. 



"Cobo, Beinabe, Histoiia del Nuevo Mundo (1653) 1:361. 1890. 



