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Page 18
IV. ITS HISTORY.
[Illustration--Drawing: [_From Dufour._]
OLD DRAWING OF AN AMERICAN INDIAN, WITH CHOCOLATE-POT AND WHISK.]
Although now cultivated in many other tropical countries, the cacao
tree is one of the New World's rich gifts, first made known to our
ancestors by the venturesome Spaniards, who probably became acquainted
with its cultivation early in the sixteenth century, and spread the
knowledge derived from the Mexicans and the inhabitants of Central
America to their other colonies. They found cacao a more veritable
mine of wealth than even the gold of which they procured such store.
It is indeed a curious coincidence that in those countries of gold the
cacao-beans were not only the form in which tribute was paid, but
themselves passed as currency. On account of their use for this
purpose by the Mexicans, Peter Martyr styled them _amygdal�
pecuniari�_--"pecuniary almonds"--exclaiming: "Blessed money, which
exempts its possessors from avarice, since it cannot be hoarded or
hidden underground!"
Joseph Acosta tells us that "the Indians used no gold nor silver to
trafficke in or buy withall ... and unto this day (1604) the custom
continues amongst the Indians, as in the province of Mexico, instede
of money they use cacao." The Aztecs also made use of cacao in this
way, as many as 8,000 beans being legal tender--rather a task, one
would imagine, for the money-changers.
[Illustration--Black and White Plate: Native Americans Preparing
and Cooking Cocoa. _Ogibe's "America," 1671._]
In Nicaragua this practice was so general that "none but the rich and
noble could afford to drink it, as it was literally drinking money."
A rabbit sold there for ten beans, "a tolerably good slave" for a
hundred. Slaves must, however, have been at a discount just then, if
the silver value of the beans was no greater than when Thomas Candish
wrote in 1586: "These cacaos serve amongst them both for meat and
money ... 150 of them being as good as a Real of Plate"--about 6d. "A
bag," of unknown size, "was worth ten crowns." One of the storehouses
of Montezuma, the last of the old independent Mexican Chieftains,[18]
was found by the Spaniards to contain as much as 40,000 loads of this
precious commodity, in wicker baskets which six men could not grasp.
John Ogilby, writing in 1671 of the produce of America, says:
"But much more beneficial is the cacao, with which Fruit New
Spain drives a great Trade; nay, serves for Coin'd Money. When
they deliver a Parcel of Cacao, they tell them by five, thirty,
and a hundred. Their Charity to the Poor never exceeds above
one Cacao-nut. The chief Reason for which this Fruit is so
highly esteem'd, is for the Chocolate, which is made of the
same, without which the Inhabitants (being so us'd to it) are
not able to live. Before the Spaniards made themselves Masters
of Mexico, no other Drink was esteem'd but that of the Cacao;
none caring for Wine, notwithstanding the Soil produces Vines
everywhere in great Abundance of itself."
From contemporary travellers' records are to be gleaned many such
strange facts and stranger fancies regarding the precious bean and its
products, some of them extremely quaint and curious. Bancroft, for
instance, writing of the Maya races of the Pacific, tells us that
"before planting the seed they held a festival in honour of their
gods, Ekchuah, Chac, and Hobnil, who were their patron deities. To
solemnize it, they all went to the plantation of one of their number,
where they sacrificed a dog having a spot on its skin the colour of
cacao. They burned incense to their idols, after which they gave to
each of the officials a branch of the cacao plant." Palacio also tells
us that "the Pipiles, before beginning to plant, gathered all seeds in
small bowls, after performing certain rites with them before the idol,
among which was the drawing of blood from different parts of the body
with which to anoint the idol;" and, as Ximinez states, "the blood of
slain fowls was sprinkled over the land to be sown."
[Illustration--Drawing: [_From Bontekoe._]
A CACAO PLANTATION.
(_One of the earliest illustrations of this subject known, showing the
shade trees, and beans drying._)]
The idea that secret rites were necessary at the planting of cacao to
counteract their ignorance of its requirements was long current also
among the superstitious Spaniards, who similarly accounted for the
early failures of the English, as witness the following amusing
extract from a contribution to the _Harleian Miscellany_ in 1690:
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