164 



CHIQUITOS INDIANS* 



gather the coffee, work the mines, and transport silver, copper, and 

 tin to the coast of the Pacific. Looking on the map, and running the 

 eye along the road from the town of Santa Cruz towards the southeast, 

 the traveller finds a country nearly level. Among hills near the river 

 Paraguay, in the province of Chiquitos, the inhabitants are composed 

 of many tribes of Indians ; some savages are warlike, while others are 

 inoffensive and friendly to the whites. Those of the small villages of 

 Santiago and Jesus are described as nearer the color of chalk than 

 of copper, and to be a robust, intelligent people, willing to be taught 

 the Spanish language, to cultivate the soil, tend cattle, and give up 

 the life of wandering for that of the civilized man, under the instruc- 

 tion and labors of the Jesuits ; while the tribes south of them, near the 

 mouths of the rivers Pilcomayo and Bermejo, obstinately refused any- 

 such interference, and remain savage to this day. They are the Gran 

 Chaco Indians, and are called Tobas. As they are 'unfriendly, we have 

 no account of their number, and will confine ourselves to the Chiqui- 

 terios, who understand the art of planting and gathering a harvest, the 

 management of cattle on the grassy plains, and the collecting of wax 

 from the forest trees, with which, and the cotton they cultivate, they 

 pay tribute to the State, as well as with salt from lakes found in the 

 wild regions. In their little huts are carpenters, blacksmiths, silver- 

 smiths, shoemakers, tailors, and tanners. Their houses are usually built 

 of adobe, and thatched with coarse grass ; yet they were taught to burn 

 tiles for the roof of their little church. For the purpose of manufactur- 

 ing sugar and melting wax, they erected founderies to smelt, and fabri- 

 cated their own copper boilers. The cotton of their small farms is 

 woven by hand into ponchos, hamacs, saddle cloths, and the fine cloths 

 of which their white frocks are made, after a fashion of their own inven- 

 tion, in bark. The women in Chiquitos are good farmers ; most of 

 the spinning is performed by them, as well as the manufacturing of 

 chicha from corn and yuca. 



They find gold and silver in the tributaries of the Otuguis river, with 

 which they decorate the altars of their churches and hammer into 

 crosses, ear and finger-rings. 



The men make straw hats, more for sale than for their own use — for 

 both sexes go bare-headed — a good sign of a delightful climate, as it is 

 said to be. The baskets made of the leaf of the palm-tree, which grows 

 in, the plains, are carried on their backs as they travel through the 

 countrjj^ On such occasions they are armed with bows and arrows. In 

 the Spanish settlements, near the unfriendly tribes, they are permitted 

 to attend church with war-clubs and other weapons, for the protection of 



