State of Chili before the arrival of the Spaniards: Its Agriculture and Aliment
Man, in his progress to the perfection of civil life, passes in succession through four important states or periods. From a hunter he becomes a shepherd, next a husbandman, and…
From: Unknown To: 1809 C.E.
Location: Chile
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From The Geographical, Natural and Civil History of Chili by Giovanni Ignazio Molina, 1809.
Man, in his progress to the perfection of civil life, passes in succession through four important states or periods. From a hunter he becomes a shepherd, next a husbandman, and at length a merchant, the period which forms the highest degree of social civilization. The Chilians, when they were first known to the Spaniards, had attained the third state; they were no longer hunters but agriculturists.
Reasoning from general principles, Dr. Robertson has therefore been led into an error in placing them in the class of hunters, an occupation which they probably never pursued, except on their first establishment. Becoming soon weary of the fatiguing exercise of the chace, in a country where game is not very abundant, and having but few domestic animals, they began at an early period to attend to the cultivation of such nutritious plants, as necessity or accident had made known to them. Thus were they induced from the circumstances of their situation, and not from choice, to pass rapidly to the third period of social life.
These plants, which have been described in the first part of this work, were the maize, the magu, the guegen, the tuca, the quinoa, pulse of various kinds, the potatoe, the oxalis tuberosa, the common and the yellow pumkin or gourd, the Guinea pepper, the madi, and the great strawberry. To these provisions of the vegetable kind, which are far from despicable, may be added the little rabbit, the Chiliheuque, or Araucanian camel whose flesh furnished excellent food, and whose wool, clothing for these people. If tradition may be credited, they had also the hog and the domestic fowl. Their dominion over the tribe of animals was not extended beyond these, although they might as readily have domesticated the guanaco, a very useful animal, the pudu, a species of wild goat and various birds with which the country abounds.
However, with these productions, which required but a very moderate degree of industry, they subsisted comfortably, and even with a degree of abundance, considering the few things which their situation rendered necessary.
To this circumstance is owing, that the Spaniards, who under the command of Almagro invaded Chili, found upon their entering its valley an abundance of provisions to recruit themselves after the hunger which they had endured in their imprudent march through the deserts bordering upon Peru.
Subsistence, the source of population, being thus secured, the country, as before remarked, became rapidly peopled under the influence of so mild a climate; whence it appears, that the first writers who treated of Chili cannot have greatly exaggerated in saying that the Spaniards found it filled with inhabitants. It is a fact that there was but one language spoken throughout the country; a proof that these tribes were in the habit of intercourse with each other, and were not isolated, or separated by vast desarts, or by immense lakes or forests, which is the case in many other parts of America, but which were at that time in Chili, as they are now, of inconsiderable extent.
It would seem that agriculture must have made no inconsiderable progress among a people who possessed, as did the Chilians, a great variety of the above-mentioned alimentary plants, all distinguished by their peculiar names, a circumstance that could not have occurred except in a state of extensive and varied cultivation. They had also in many parts of the country aqueducts for watering their fields, which were constructed with much skill.
Among these, the canal, which for the space of many miles borders the rough skirts of the mountains in the vicinity of the capital and waters the lands to the northward of that city, is particularly remarkable for its extent and solidity.
They were likewise acquainted with the use of the manures, called by them vunalti, though from the great fertility of the soil but little attention was paid to them.
Being in want of animals of strength to till the ground, they were accustomed to turn it up with a spade made of hard wood, forcing it into the earth with their breasts; but as this process was very slow and fatiguing, it is surprising that they had not discovered some other mode more expeditious and less laborious. They at present make use of a simple kind of plough, called chetague, made of the limb of a tree curved at one end, in which is inserted a share formed of the same material, with a handle to guide it.
Whether this rude instrument of agriculture, which appears to be a model of the first plough ever used, is one of their own invention, or was taught them by the Spaniards, is uncertain; from its extreme simplicity I should, however, be strongly induced to doubt the latter. Admiral Spilsberg observes, that the inhabitants of Mocha, an island in the Araucanian Sea, where the Spaniards have never had a settlement, make use of this plough, drawn by two chilihueques, to cultivate their lands; and Fathers Bry, who refer to this fact, add, that the Chilians, with the assistance of these animals, tilled their grounds before they received cattle from Europe. However this may be, it is certain that this species of camel was employed antecedent to that period as beasts of burden, and the transition from carriage to the draught is not difficult.
Man merely requires to become acquainted with the utility of any object, to induce him to apply it by degrees to other advantageous purposes.
It is a generally received opinion that grain was eaten raw by the first men who employed it as an article of food. But this aliment being of an insipid taste, and difficult of mastication, they began to parch or roast it; the grain thus cooked easily pulverizing in the hands, gave them the first idea of meal, which they gradually learned to prepare in the form of gruel, cakes, and finally of bread.
At the period of which we treat, the Chilians ate their grain cooked; this was done either by boiling it in earthen pots adapted to the purpose, or roasting it in hot sand, an operation which rendered it lighter and less viscous. But not satisfied with preparing it in this mode, which has always been the most usual among nations emerging from the savage state, they proceeded to make of it two distinct kinds of meal, the parched, to which they gave the name of murque, and the raw, which they called rugo. With the first they made gruels, and a kind of beverage which they at present use for breakfast instead of chocolate; from the second they prepared cakes, and a bread called by them couque, which they baked in holes formed like ovens, excavated in the sides of the mountains and in the banks of the rivers, a great number of which are still to be seen.
Their invention of a kind of sieve, called chignigue, for separating the bran from the flour, affords matter of surprise; that they employed leaven is, however, still more surprising, as such a discovery can only be made gradually, and is the fruit of reasoning or observation, unless they were led to it by some fortunate accident, which most probably was the case when they first began to make use of bread.
From the above-mentioned grains, and the berries of several trees, they obtained nine or ten kinds of spiritous liquor, which they fermented and kept in earthen jars, as was the custom with the Greeks and Romans. This refinement of domestic economy, though not originating from actual necessity, appears to be natural to man, in whatever situation he is found; more especially when he is brought to live in society with his fellow men.
The discovery of fermented liquors soon follows that of aliment; and it is reasonable to believe that the use of such beverages is of high antiquity among the Chilians, more especially as their country abounds in materials for making them.
Molina, Giovanni Ignazio. The Geographical, Natural and Civil History of Chili: Translated from the Italian. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809.
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