214 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I33 



with earth, and an active fire kept burning over them all day. In time 

 for the evening meal, the luche is removed from the leaves and cooked 

 in water until well done. It is then either added to a caldo, usually 

 meat broth with potatoes, or is deep fried and eaten with boiled 

 potatoes. Cochayuyo is collected at low tide by women. They can be 

 seen standing on the shore, each pulling at one until it is released from 

 its roots. Cochayuyo is tied into small bundles, cooked, and eaten 

 either deep fried or in a caldo. 



Drinking water — uncontaminated, clear, and clean — is taken from 

 springs. Springs are found at the upper ends of ravines, on worn- 

 down sides of hills, or in brooks or rivers, where one can see them 

 bubbling up. Ruka are built only where springs exist. No family in 

 the areas studied had a well. Water is carried to the ruka in cantaros 

 or pails. Children usually fetch it. 



At the end of a meal a beverage known as yerba mate is taken by 

 all adults and many children (pi. 51, 5). This drink was only recently 

 introduced among Araucanians. A 60-year-old Coiiaripe woman 

 remembered when an Araucanian man first taught them how to drink 

 it ; he had learned to do so in Argentina. "This was during the First 

 World War. Little by little the Mapuche began to drink it. I drank 

 the first yerba mate when my eldest son was a baby ; he is now 26 

 years old. We buy packages of it in Temuco, Villarrica, and Lon- 

 coche." It is made by pouring boiling water on the leaves of Ilex 

 paragnariensis, a non-Araucanian commercial product imported from 

 Argentina and Paraguay. Usually it is prepared for drinking in a 

 dried gourd ; sometimes in a spherical porcelain cup, called mate. In 

 either case it is sipped slowly through a bombilla. If the beverage is 

 preferred sweetened, sugar is mixed with the herb before the boiling 

 water is poured on it. 



If chicha, a fermented juice made of grains, fruits, or berries, or 

 wild apples (manzanas silvestre) or cultivated ones, is at hand, 

 it is usually drunk in place of yerba mate. Both homemade and 

 commercial chicha is taken. Cooper's sources listed maize, quinoa, 

 araucaria nuts, and, in later times, wheat and barley as being used in 

 making fermented beverages ; also berries and fruits, such as molle 

 (Schimts letifolius), maqui, myrtle berries, strawberries (frutilla, 

 Fragaria chilensis), and, in more recent times, apples, pears, quinces, 

 and potatoes (1946, p. 741). Today Araucanians who wish to make 

 chicha generally use the juice of apples or the berries of maqui or 

 voqui Colorado. Some old people use wheat, or berries other than 

 those of maqui. Usually this beverage is consumed before it reaches 

 the stage of alcoholic fermentation. 



