E1 Gran Chaco Fantastic Legends From South American Republic

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6844, 25 February 1929, Page 4

E 1 Gran Chaco Fantastic Legends From South American Republic

of the world’s last

great regions of the mysterious and the unknown lies at the centre of the Gran Chaco in South America, the territory lying between Paraguay and Bolivia that has once more brought the two countries to the verge of war. Fantastic legends of the beasts and aborigines that inhabit its tropical fastnesses have been told since the days of the Spanish Conquistadores. Explorers bearing the cross and the sword have brought back tales of curious and spectacular jungle life scarcely more credible. Through nearly four centuries an endless series of efforts to open up the country and develop its unlimited resources has resulted in a beginning being made along the edges, the establishment of a few outpost garrisons in the interior, and the making of maps that serve to indicate more clearly where the heart of darkness lies.

There is a legend, writes C. G. Poore, that when the Spaniards began their marches across the continent in search of jewels and gold the Indians who had lived under the Incas fled to the Gran Chaco to perpetuate their civilisation undisturbed. Romances have been woven about that appealing theme, with lost cities buried in the wilderness where no white man has ever gone. To-day, perhaps a dozen tribes of aborigines are known to live in that wilderness, and it is largely from those who come down to the estancias on the edges of the Grand Chaco to work for the settlers that the fabulous stories of mythological beasts and fishes come.

Legendary Animals

Frank G. Carpenter, who has collected many of these legends, tells of the dog-snake, one of the beasts unknown to natural history, that they say has a head like that of a dog and a cry like, a puppy’s bark. “The end of its tail is hooked in order that it may hold its prey more securely,” writes Mr. Carpenter. “Another interesting beast is the ow-ow, said to be a white, long-haired animal the size of a sheep, which hunts in packs and attacks human beings. The Indians describe also a monster called the iguana-dog. They say it does not live now, but their tradition is that it had the head and tail of an alligator and the body of a dog.” And then the birds —“One species has phosphorescent feathers, and another *s sa4d to mesmerise other birds and then kill them. The ypecaha, according to Hudson, the great English naturalist, i 3 a little bird in this region that holds public meetings and has dancing performances, including a concert in which a dozen or more will rush into an open space and scream, raising their long beaks as they do so.” Closer perhaps to reality are the fish, of which Mr. Carpenter writes: ‘,‘The Chaco has some that live in the water and some that live in the mud. There is one called the palowhich grows to an enormous size, and is said to bite at a bather if he comes within range. In the waters of the Paraguay is found also the pirana, which Theodore Roosevelt described as ‘a cannibal fish that eats men.’ The pirana grows to a length of only 18 inches, but, if the stories told are correct, it is about the most ferocious fish known. Unlike sharks, which usually will not fight any fish larger than themselves, piranas will attack anything living. They tear wild fowl to pieces, bite

the udders from cows as they stand in the water, and even attack men when bathing and tear off a finger or a piece of flesh. This fish has teeth as sharp as a razor and powerful jaw muscles. Some of them, when caught on a hook, have been known to bite through the metal and thus escape.” If you look at a large scale map of the Gran Chaco you will see that the areas in various parts of it are ascribed to different Indian tribes, much as the American South-west was a century ago. By any standard of civilisation they are all practically aborigines, but some of them maintain rigid standards of living. There are the Lenguas, near the centre, who believe in sorcery and demonology still, in spite of centuries of effort on the part of missionaries to bring them securely into the fold of Christianity. The Ma-

tocos are said to be among the most docile. »They are the ones who have come down to work on the plantations and as woodcutters in the forests. The Tobas, who are noted for their ferocity in South America, have been blamed for countless atrocities, but one of the orders of missionaries who have worked among them for years, the Franciscans, have found them amenable to equitable dealing. A confusion of tongues separates the tribes. J. A. Zahm, who went to South America with Roosevelt, quotes a priest who spent 18 years among the Indians as saying that Europeans have the greatest difficulty in becoming accustomed to their dialects. When they talk, he said, “they hiss with their tongues, snore with their nostrils, grind with their teeth and gurgle with their throats, so that you seem to hear the sound of ducks quacking in a pond rather than the voices of men talking.” As in so many other instances in the chronicles of the white man’s conquest of the far places of the earth, priests and missionaries marched in the van of the explorers of the Gran Chaco. The Jesuits and the Franciscans have missions in that country that are centuries old. San Francisco Solano is the name of a priest who went into the terra incognita at the time the Spaniards first came and Zahm states that Padre Lozano, a Jesuit, wrote the most complete description of the country and its inhabitants more than two centuries ago. Protestant missionaries have entered the country since then, and now the Indian has a wide variety of Christian counsel at his command if he cares to accept it.