It is important to note that the readings of the week were highly insightful in providing a glimpse into how Indigenous tribes utilized poisonous plants in their environments. The curare and its use with the arrows was the subject that struck me as the most interesting. It is stated that curare is a poison that paralyzes the victim’s muscle causing tetanus (Jax Files, 2022). In other words, if a sufficient dose is delivered, the key muscles required for breathing, such as the diaphragm, become dysfunctional, causing death. Curare-tipped arrows were mainly used for hunting rather than warfare, which meant that Indigenous tribes that produced the agent were wealthy (Plotkin, 1994, p. 132). The main reason is that the abundance of the deadly ingredient meant and translated into the availability of food. In other words, the greater the potential capacity to produce curare for a particular tribe, the richer it was due to having plenty of food.
I will integrate this information into my current knowledge base by deepening my understanding of how different the values and social systems were between the Western colonizers and Indigenous people. For example, the Europeans viewed wealth through the prism of gold and the ability to export resources from their colonies, whereas Indigenous tribes considered wealth as the ability to extract resources from their own environments (Jax Files, 2022). In other words, these were completely opposed and distinct value systems. Similarly, the relationship between women and men among Indigenous tribes was significantly more equal than that of the colonizers. This is indicated by a massive increase in sexual coercion, rape, and violence against women with the arrival of Europeans (Kellogg, 2005, p. 58). Therefore, it is evident that Indigenous people led a more egalitarian, sustainable, and non-expansionist way of life.
References
Jax Files. (2022). Curare: A deadly arrow poison [Video]. YouTube. Web.
Kellogg, S. (2005). Colliding worlds: Indigenous women, conquest, and colonialism. In S. Kellogg (Ed.), Weaving the past: A history of Latin America’s indigenous women from the prehispanic period to the present (pp. 53-67). Oxford University Press.
Plotkin, M. J. (1994). Chapter 5: A recipe for poison. In M. J. Plotkin (Ed.), Tales of a shaman’s apprentice: An ethnobotanist searches for new medicines in the rain forest (pp. 126-139). Penguin Books.