The Chocó Indians live in small villages of 10 to 20 houses along the banks of rivers. Each village was about a half day's walk of several hours to the next village. As you get close to a village the jungle topography on the shores begins to change and you start to see less jungle and more platano fields. The villages are built on a small rise, set approximately 100 feet in from the river. The hill leading down to the river from the village is hard packed with smooth reddish dirt. There are large rocks in the river by the banks, and you can see young, naked children playing on the shore and in the shallows as the dugout canoe pulls up to the banks. The houses of the village are set atop the rise and stand out as they are raised on poles and have tall thatched roofs. If you arrive by motorized dugout it is a big event, as they can hear the motor coming from a distance and it seems that everyone has to walk to the top of the rise to see who is arriving to their village.
The Chocó are a matriarchal society and live in family units based around defining lineage through the mother's side of the family. They are a very mellow and easy-going people and are always very nice, accommodating and polite. They are a short people who generally never grow much taller than five feet. The men are muscular and stocky. The women have long, thick, beautiful jet black hair. I found out that the Chocó have no other hair growing on their bodies except on their head. I don't think I ever met a Chocó Indian over five and half feet tall.
The Cacique (chief) of the Chocó lived in the largest village, and capitol of the Chocó Nation, named Union Chocó. The city was on the banks of the same Rio Tuira that we lived on, and the trip there by dugout canoe was only about two hours up river from our house. The Chocó are by far the most passive people that I have ever met. A good indication of the kind of people the Chocó were was when a person shook the Cacique’s leathery, calloused, rough hands, his limp grip made it feel like shaking hands with a damp spaghetti noodle. Actually all the Chocó were that way, very easy-going, never in a hurry, and nothing was so important that it had to be done right away. They take life slowly, at a leisurely pace, and have hearts as big as all of nature itself. Every time I was in one of their villages they seemed to not be able to do enough for me. What was theirs was mine, even if food was scarce and hard to come by, the guests always got fed first.
Over the years I lived in the Darien I became very good friends with the Cacique. We hired his sister to be in charge of the Chocó that worked at the hotel. The other hotel workers were more distant family of the Cacique.
The Chocó women who worked at the hotel were around us most of the time, yet rarely spoke unless they were spoken to. Actually, they rarely spoke with each other as well. They kept quietly to themselves and methodically went about their daily duties. They were always very respectful and considerate to the tourists as well as each other.
The Chocó had their own form of government, and lived by their own set of laws. It seemed that they had little or no contact with the Guardia Nacional or the Panamanian government. Regardless, they tended to ignore any governmental rules or regulations, and the Guardia left them alone. They had never been assimilated into Panamanian society, and I never saw a Chocó Indian that held a civic position or one that was a member of the Guardia.
I have read reports of the Chocó intermarrying with the Panamanians and Columbians, but do not believe this to be true. In all the years I was in Darien I never heard of a mixed marriage and never witnessed a mixed couple. The Chocó always kept to themselves, and showed indifference toward their Panamanian and Columbian neighbors, an indifference that was likewise shared in return by the Mestizos.
Their houses were raised off the ground about eight feet. Each house stood on several large logs, and had a thatched roof made from large palm leaves. All the joints were tied together using vines. There were no walls to the house. Hanging from the supporting log beams were baskets, pots, bows and arrows and other items that had been hand fashioned for fishing or hunting. The floor was made of split cana blanca (the same materials we used on the animal and tourist houses), and at one end was the kitchen. This consisted of a clay platform that was about three feet square; on top of this base they set the logs for the fire, supporting the cooking pot over the fire by using a tripod of sturdy sticks. The Chocó would climb up to the house on a log that had notches in it to serve as a ladder. They would turn the notches facing down at night so wild animals could not climb up into the house while they slept.
The local 'K-Mart' kitchen supply store was called the calabash tree. They scooped out the gourds from this tree and used them for both eating and drinking. They would then fashion spoons out of pieces of these same gourds.
The villages were always full of women and children when we arrived, as some of the men worked inland on the farms, and others hunted during the day. The women took care of the children, cooked, and washed clothes, etc. while the men were in the fields. They also made the baskets that they sold to the tourists. They wove these baskets from palm fibers using a very tight weave. They would make dyes from mashed berries and color the fibers before weaving. A typical basket would take a Chocó woman a couple of weeks to make.
I would school the tourists on treating the Chocó with respect when they were in the villages and interacting with the women. An example of this was the etiquette behind the taking of pictures. You would always ask first, because there were some Chocó that did not want their picture taken. After taking the picture you would always give the person something; and if you had no trade items (which they preferred) the price that we established was a dollar.
Everything was communal. The land is community owned and community farmed. Everyone in the village, including women and children, pitch in to help out at harvest time. If someone killed a Puerco de Monte while hunting during the day, and brought it back to town, everybody in the village ate Puerco de Monte that night. They even shared the fruits of the hunt with the tourists if it happened to be a village where we were staying the night.
When I encountered the Chocó they were living very much like they had hundreds of years ago when Pizzaro and Balboa first met them. The men wear loin cloths, the women wear brightly colored materials wrapped at the waist, which looked like skirts. Both the men and the woman had long straight black hair, and wore no clothing from the waist up. No, I am sorry, this does not qualify for a 'Girls Gone Wild Video;' a National Geographic pictorial would be more appropriate. The Chocó Indian women had breasts that had never known a bra. After a Chocó woman passed 30 her breasts became triangular shaped, pointing straight toward the ground as gravity, and daily hard work, had taken its toll over the years. Constant exposure to the Chocó meant being around these women with unattractive bare breasts. After a little time I just accepted it as natural and didn't even pay attention to it. The little kids just went naked most of the time, and no one wore shoes.
They liked to paint their bodies with a dye made from the berry of the genip tree. They would completely coat their bodies with the black dye, and told me they did this to keep the bugs off them at night. But I noticed that on special occasions, they would use this same dye and paint their bodies in intricate geometric patterns, it was a way the women had to adorn themselves. The women also wore silver necklaces and silver earrings on these special occasions; many of the necklaces were made with old silver dollars, and silver half dollars. They would punch a hole in the coin and run a silver chain through the holes. Many of the coins you saw on these necklaces dated back into the 1800's, and had been passed down from mother to daughter.
When I moved back to the States I brought with me many Indian artifacts. One piece is made from a hard dark wood called mahogany (the hardest and strongest wood available), and has a flat wide paddle on one end and a handle on the other end. The density of the wood makes it feel much heavier than it appears. The paddle is about nine inches long, four inches wide, and about an inch thick, and the handle is round and about six inches long. The piece I brought back is ornate and has two alligators carved on the top for decoration, which signify the spirit of the woman who used the tool.
The hand that wielded the knife that carved the alligators on top of the piece was both thoughtful and skillful. Although the piece is for a practical use, the artist was showing respect to the woman who received the paddle by working her spirit into the mahogany. Primitive, ethnographic art shows the basic skills of the artist. One gator is lying flat, while the other is in movement from a side view. Both are moving in the direction of the handle and the user. This painstaking process is slow, tedious, and takes hours of cautious, careful work.
When I show the piece to people at home, or in the talks I give about Panama, I always ask if anyone can guess what it is used for. Most people guess, because of the shape of the handle, that the piece may have some kind of erotic use (oh, the dirty minds). Only one person has guessed its use without the clue.
The clue is: "A Chocó Indian woman would use this tool almost every day."
The answer is: "It is used to wash clothes. They go down to the river where there are large rocks, and they use it to beat the clothes against the rocks to get them clean.
Based on my background and upbringing, the Chocó were about as alien as a culture could possibly be to me. When the tourists encountered the Chocó, during our tours up the rivers, they, too, were always shocked by the simple way that the Indians lived.
"How could they live like this, in such poverty?" tourists would inquire.
We tend to impose our own values and lifestyle on other people whom we meet if they are not like us. I believe that the goal of life should be 'happiness.' Therefore, I pose this question to you: Who is 'happier,' the Chocó Indians who have what they need provided to them by God, the earth and the jungle, or the family who lives in the big house in California, with two cars in the garage and all of the modern conveniences? The father is under tremendous stress at work, the wife is having an affair and taking anti-depressants, their teenage kids are disobedient and on drugs, and everyone is seeing the psychiatrist.
The Chocó could be characterized as “primitive and poor”; but in reality their lives were richer than any of our lives because they understood what true happiness in life is. To them the goal in life was not accumulation of wealth as it is in our lives, yet they became wealthy in understanding reaping riches of leisure, inner peace and happiness. They were aware of what it meant to live as one with nature, as well as what it meant to live in a conflict free environment with their fellow man. I never knew a Chocó Indian that was unhappy or was not satisfied. They didn't want for more (a bigger this, a better or newer that) and were always happy and contented with what they had in life. In fact they were the first to share what they had with someone else. That is why I always took care of the Chocó when they came down river. My house was open for anyone to stay the night, and I always provided the night meal. I also responded immediately to requests by the Cacique, and his family, when they were in times of need.
