Coca chewing and high altitude stress.pdf - StFX Faculty and Staff ...

peninsula on the western frontier [Patifno 1967:202; Plowman
1981:199]):
Bray and Dollery: COCA AND ALTITUDE STRESS
They all keep their mouths filled with a certain green herb which they
ruminate, in almost the same manner as animals, so that they are
hardly able to utter a word. Also, around their necks they all of them
carry two dried calabashes, one filled with the herb which they have
in their mouths, and the other with a certain white flour like powdered
plaster, and with a little stick which they moisten and chew in
the mouth, and frequently dip into the flour calabash, they take out
enough to sprinkle on both sides of the herb which they carry, an
operation which they repeat frequently and very slowly.
to Chile and from sea level to the high Andes. Since the region
from Colombia northward is outside the area of Inca influence,
this wide dispersion is not simply a consequence of Inca expansion.
Coca chewing can therefore be expected to show a long
history of indigenous development all over this vast region.
Archaeological evidence corroborates this view.
THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR COCA
Observations spanning the next few decades attest to the
habit among the Nicarao of Pacific Nicaragua and all along the
CHEWING
Caribbean coasts of Venezuela and Colombia. Of the Indians Archaeology demonstrates that the 16th-century pattern outin
the Caracas area, Juan de Pimentel wrote in 1578: "they say lined above has considerable antiquity. Most of the finds of
that it takes away hunger and thirst, and gives them strength actual coca leaves are from the arid coasts of Peru and Chile,
to work, and so they use this hayo [the local name for coca] where organic materials are well preserved; elsewhere the eviwhen
they work or have to walk" (Patifno 1967:203).
dence is indirect, taking the form of stone or pottery represen-
For inland Colombia the 16th-century documents make it tations of coca chewers and examples of the paraphernalia (lime
clear that coca chewing was widespread all over the country containers, dippers, spoons) associated with coca taking.
and at all altitudes, from the Sinfu lowlands (Castellanos 1955 In coastal Peru, coca chewing first appears in the late Pre-
[1598]) through Antioquia and the middle Cauca Valley at ceramic period. At Culebras, on the central coast, Engel (1957:
around 1,000-2,000 m (Cieza de Leon 1971 [1554]) to the 67-68) excavated two burials (one of them a female) accom-
Muisca kingdoms of the altiplano at over 2,500 m (summarized panied by a gourd vessel and three Mytilus-shell containers
in Patifio 1967 and Perez de Barradas 1950-51:42-64) and filled with powdered lime. The Culebras site should be dated
southward to Popayan and to Pasto on the Ecuadorian frontier. somewhere around 2000 b.c. Coca leaves are found at Anc6n,
Of the warrior tribes of the Magdalena Valley, Vargas Machuca in the Chill6n Valley, between 1800 and 1400 b.c. (Cohen 1978:
commented in 1599 that they could keep going for three days 125), and coca-like leaves (variety unspecified) and powdered
on coca alone and also chewed it to keep awake when they were lime came from the site of Asia, in the Omas Valley of the
on sentry duty.
south-central coast, with a radiocarbon date of 1314 + 100 b.c.
The abundant information on coca chewing in Inca territory (Engel 1963).
need not be repeated here, but the data from another lowland For the ceramic period, evidence is abundant from all parts
area-the Amazon Basin-do require some consideration of the coast. At Huancayo Alto, in the chaupiyunga zone (i.e.,
(Plowman 1981). Here coca may be chewed as a quid (e.g., the coca-producing zone, between 600 and 2,000 m above sea
among the Mashco [Califano and Fernandez Distel 1977]) or level) of the Chillon Valley, Dillehay (1979) tested a group of
taken as a snuff (Schultes and Holmstedt 1968:119; Schultes storage structures dating somewhere between 800 and 200 B.C.
1981), but it is more often ingested in the form of a powder The main products stockpiled for distribution were maize, coca,
made from toasted leaves. To this powder is added an alkaline and marine shell. From the midvalley plantations, the leaf was
substance, usually an ash made from the wood, bark, or leaves presumably traded to both highlands and coast, for coca was
of certain trees or lianas (Holmstedt et al. 1979; Schultes 1981; found at the contemporary coastal site of Garagay with pottery
Plowman 1980, 1981). Coca may also be taken with tobacco resembling that of Huancayo Alto (Dillehay 1979:31 n. 17).
snuff (Califano and Fernfandez Distel 1977) or tobacco concen- From Tembladera, in the Jequetepeque Valley of northern
trate (Uscategui Mendoza 1954:283). The combination of coca Peru, comes a Chavinoid effigy pot representing a figure with
and tobacco is not confined to Amazonia. The Indians of the a quid in its cheek and dated ca. 500 B.C. (Jones 1974:4, 7).
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta take tobacco concentrate with Another effigy jar, this one clearly showing the lime dipper, is
their coca (Uscategui Mendoza 1954:273; Reichel-Dolmatoff attributed to the Lambayeque Valley and is dated around the
1949-50:79), and some archaeological coca bags from south- time of Christ (Jones 1974:4).
coastal Peru, dating from Nazca to Inca times, contain a mix- For the last 1,500 years before the Conquest, the evidence
ture of coca leaves and what appears to be tobacco, though this from coastal Peru is too abundant to discuss in detail. There are
latter identification has yet to be confirmed by analysis (Rost- numerous representations of coca chewers on Moche and Nazca
worowski de Diez Canseco 1973:205).
pottery; Rostworowski de Diez Canseco (1973) notes a series
It is still uncertain whether coca chewing has a long history of coca bags in the Ica museum ranging from Nazca to Inca
in Amazonia or is an introduction from the Andes in late pre- periods in date; Towle (1961) and Jones (1974) list a selection
Hispanic or colonial times as Uscategui Mendoza tends to of finds, of all periods, from the south and central coasts. If we
believe. All one can say is that the custom was recorded over a had to rely on archaeological evidence alone, we could conclude
wide area at the time of first European contact. Patinlo (1967: -not necessarily correctly-that coca chewing was more
214-17) notes that the Cofanes were cultivating coca by 1560- ancient and widespread on the coast than in the Andes.
70 and that it was used by the tribes of the Rio Coca in 1662, Farther north, in coastal Ecuador, there is a late Valdivia
in the Ambiyacu region near the Amazon confluence in 1740,
and at the confluence of the Purfus and Amazon Rivers in 1774.
figurine of ca. 1600 B.C. depicted with a quid in its cheek and
also a series of Valdivia lime pots which push the history of coca
In the 1774 account, the Indians reported that the coca kept chewing back beyond 2000 B.C. (Lathrap, Collier, and Chandra
them awake through nocturnal ceremonies. On botanical 1975:48, 79). Inland, in the Jubones Valley at about 1,000 m,
grounds, Plowman (1981:210) believes that the development
of Amazonian coca as a distinct cultigen must have preceded
the first European reports by several centuries, and the myunpublished
excavations by Bray and Elizabeth Carmichael
have produced miniature lime-encrusted pots in Machalillarelated
deposits, one of which has a radiocarbon date of 1231 ?
thology of various tribes of the northwestern Amazon attributes 53 b.c. (BM-912). From the early centuries A.D. to the Conto
the plant an ancient and supernatural origin (Schultes 1981, quest, a group of poorly dated pottery figurines and lime pots
Plowman 1981).
from the coastal provinces of Manabi and Esmeraldas extends
In summary, the ethnohistorical evidence indicates that, at the documentation to the whole of the Ecuadorian coast
the time of European contact, coca was used from Nicaragua (Saville 1910: pl. 92.5; Jones 1974: 12; Lowe Art Museum 1981:
Vol. 24 * No. 3 * June 1983 271