Account of the Ottomacs, a People who eat Clay.

Tableaux de la Nature, par A. de Humboldt, 2 vol. 12mo. Paris, 1808. vol. i. p. 191. For an account of the practice of eating clay among some tribes of Africans, the reader may consult Mr William Hunter’s Essay on the Diseases incident to Indian seamen, or Lascars, on long voyages, Appendix, No. X. and the several authorities referred to by him.

O n the coasts of Cumana, of new Barcelona, and of Caraccas, visited by the Franciscan monks of Guayana in returning from their missions, there was a tradition prevalent, that tribes inhabiting the banks of the Orinoco eat earth.

On the 6th of June 1800, when, on our return from Rio Negro, we came down the Orinoco, where we had remained thirty-six days; we spent a day in a mission inhabited by the Ottomacs, who eat earth.

The village called La Concepcion of Uruana, is situated, in a very picturesque manner, upon the declivity of a rock of granite.

Its latitude I determined to be 7° 8′ 3″ north, and its longitude 4° 38′ 38″ west of Paris.

The earth which the Ottomacs eat is a fat and unctuous clay, a real potter’s earth, of a greyish-yellow tint, coloured by a little oxide of iron.

They select it with much care, and gather it on particular banks on the sides of the Orinoco, and of the Meta.

They distinguish, by the taste, one kind of earth from another, for all kinds of clay are not equally agreeable to their palates.

They knead this earth into balls, of from four to six inches in diameter, and bake it at a slow fire, till its outer surface becomes reddish.

Before they eat these balls, they moisten them anew.

These Ottomacs are for the most part a very savage race, and have an aversion to improvement.

The nations of the Orinoco, that are farthest from that canton, say proverbially, when they wish to speak of any thing very filthy, “It is disgusting enough for an Ottomac to eat it.”

When the waters of the Orinoco and Meta are low, the Ottomacs support themselves on fish and tortoises.

When the fish appear at the surface of the water, they kill them by means of darts, with a dexterity which we have often admired.

When the rivers experience their periodical overflow, the fishing ceases; for it is as difficult to fish in rivers become too deep, as in the open sea.

During this inundation, which lasts two or three months, the Ottomacs swallow prodigious quantities of earth.

We have found in their huts immense stores of it, heaped up in pyramids.

Each individual consumes daily three-fourths or four-fifths of a pound of earth, according to the account which Fray Ramon Bueno, a very intelligent monk, a native of Madrid, who has lived twelve years among these Indians, gave us.

The Ottomacs themselves say, that, in the rainy season, this earth is their principal food.

In addition, they eat little fishes, lizards, and fern-roots, when they can procure them.

They are so fond of this earth, that every day they eat a little of it after their repast, to regale themselves, even in the dry seasons, and when they have abundance of fish.

These people are of a very dark copper colour.

Their features are as ugly as those of the Tartars.

They are fat, but they have not a large belly.

The missionary who resides among them, assured us, that he has remarked no difference in the health of these savages, during the time that they eat this earth.

Such is the simple narration of facts.

The Indians eat great quantities of earth, without their health suffering from it.

They consider it as a nourishing kind of food; that is to say, they find that this food satisfies them for some time.

They attribute this satiety to the earth, and not to the other very bad articles of diet which they are enabled to add to it.

If they are asked what is their provision in winter, the season, which in the warm parts of South America is called the rainy-season, they point out the heaps of earth piled up in their huts.

But these partial facts do not decide the following questions.

Can earth, in reality, be a nutritive substance?

Can earth assimilate itself to our nature?

Or is it but a load upon the stomach?

Does it not serve only to keep its sides distended, and in this manner contribute to alleviate hunger?

It is very singular, that Father Gumila, in other respects so credulous, and whose work is so void of sound criticism, should absolutely deny that the Indians eat earth.

He pretends that the balls of clay are mixed with the flour of Indian corn and the fat of the crocodile.

But the missionary Fray Ramon Bueno, and brother Fray Juan Gonzales, our friend and travelling companion, whom the sea on the coast of Africa swallowed up along with a part of our collections, both assured us that the Ottomacs do not mix this earth with the fat of the crocodile.

At Uruana we never heard a word about the mixture of flour.

The earth which we brought home with us, and which Vauquelin analyzed, was pure, and without any mixture.

May not Gumila, confounding strange facts, have wished to allude to the bread which is prepared with the long pods of a species of inga?

This fruit is buried in the earth, that it may ferment the sooner.

History of the Orinoco, vol. i. p. 283.

But what surprises me more is, that the use of so great a quantity of earth does not occasion any disease among the Ottomacs.

Has this colony been habituated to this kind of food for many generations?

In all the countries of the torrid zone, men have an astonishing, and almost irresistible desire of eating earth; not an alkaline or calcareous earth to neutralize the acid juices, but a clay which is very fat, and of which the odour is very strong.

They are often obliged to tie children, to hinder them from going out and eating the earth when the rains have ceased.

At the village of Banco, on the banks of the river Magdalena, the native women, who make earthen pots, put large pieces of clay into their mouth, as I have often seen with surprise.

The other tribes of America never fail to become diseased when they give themselves up to the singular desire of eating earth.

In the mission of San Borgia, we saw a child, who, according to what its mother told us, would not eat any thing but earth, which diet had made it as lean as a skeleton.

Whence is it, that, in the cold and temperate zones, the desire of eating earth is so rare, and exists only among children and pregnant women?

It may be asserted, that, in all the regions of the torrid zone, this desire for earth has been observed.

In Guinea, the negroes eat a yellowish earth which they call caouac.

The slaves which are brought into America, endeavour to procure a similar gratification; but it is always to the detriment of their health.

Gily has made the same remark, Saggio di Storia dell’ America, t. ii. p. 311.

In winter, the wolves eat earth, but, above all, clay.

In general it would be interesting to analyze the feces of man, and all those animals who eat earth.

“Another very general cause of the mal d’estomac,” says a modern traveller, “is, that many of the slaves who come from Guinea eat earth.

This does not arise from a depraved taste; it is a custom contracted in their own country, where they say that they habitually eat a certain kind of earth, the taste of which pleases them, and which does not hurt them. They search among us for earth most resembling it.

That which they prefer is a reddish yellow tufa, very common in our islands.

This they even sell secretly in our public markets, under the name of caouac. (M. Thibaut was at Martinique in the year 1751.)

Those who are accustomed to the use of it are so fond of it, that no chastisement can prevent them from eating it.”

Thibaut de Chanvallon, Voyage à la Martinique, p. 85.

In the villages of the isle of Java, between Sourabaya and Samarang, M. La Billardière saw little square reddish cakes exposed to sale.

The natives call them tanaampo.

Upon examining them more narrowly, they were found to be cakes of reddish earth, which they eat.

The inhabitants of New Caledonia, eat, to satisfy their hunger, pieces as large as the fist, of friable lapis ollaris.

Voyage à la recherche de La Peyrouse, Vol. II. p. 322.

M. Vauquelin, upon analyzing it, found in it a considerable quantity of copper.

At Popayan, and in many parts of Peru, the inhabitants purchase at the market calcareous earth, with other commodities.

In using it, they mix with it the cocca, or the leaves of the erythroxilon peruvianum.

Thus we find, that this taste for eating earth, which it would seem that nature ought to have reserved to the inhabitants of the ungrateful regions of the north, extends through all the torrid zone, among the indolent races of men, who live in the most beautiful and the most fertile countries in the world.

Ibid. p. 205.