Handbook of Vanilla Science and Technology

Within the past century, the Siona and Secoya have joined together to live in common settlements. This shift was catalyzed by the outbreak of diseases that greatly reduced population sizes, and the increased need for defensive action against attacks by exploitative white patrones (Vickers 1989). Population estimates of the Siona-Secoya in Colombia and Ecuador vary between 400 (Paz y Mino et al. 1995) and 1,000 (Vickers and Plowman 1984).

In 1942, ethnobotanist R.E. Schultes acquired a necklace that came from a Siona village in Puerto Ospina, along the Putumayo River, in the department by the same name in Colombia (Figure 8.2; Botanical Museum # 6836). The necklace is about 140 cm in total length (ca. 65 cm long while hanging) and weighs approximately 238 g. It includes three pairs of snail shells, several beetle parts, three small bundles of tobacco, one short segment of bird bone, one small brass bell, and ten bundles of vanilla, the latter outnumbered only by the currently unidentified, cut-out seeds (the necklace will be described in detail separately; Romero et al., in preparation). All ten bundles of vanilla are quite fragrant, indicating that the vanilla fruits from which they were made had been properly cured. The bundles vary in the way they were attached to each other: some join 3 to 7 fruits, folded lengthwise in 3.5 to 4.5 cm long segments; there are also single fruits, much thicker and longer, also folded lengthwise and tied in 7 cm long bundles. Some of the smaller vanilla bundles have been carefully “re-packaged” with strings of different texture and color, suggesting that the owners spent considerable time maintaining the integrity of the necklace.

Fig. 8.2 Siona necklace (Harvard University, Botanical Museum 6836) from Puerto Ospina, Putumayo Department, Colombia. The arrow indicates one of the vanilla bundles. Scale bar = 10 cm. Photograph by G.A. Romero-González.

The Siona have a common name for vanilla, Semenquete (Espada 1904; p. 40, cited in Patino 2002; p. 538). If the Siona cured vanilla to be used in their artifacts, the practice may

have eroded since there is hardly a trace of vanilla in the current, extensive ethnobotanical literature dedicated to the Amerindians of northern South America. Patino (2002; p. 538) also cites the use of vanilla in Colombia as a perfume together with a necklace, which he says was for the purpose of magical protection.

As far as we have been able to ascertain, the Siona necklace described above is the only surviving artifact that tangibly shows the use of vanilla in a ceremonial context. Perhaps a more expansive search of ethnobotanical collections will reveal the existence of other such objects. Interestingly, the use of vanilla beans in necklaces is also documented from Mesoamerica. In the Badianus Manuscript (1552), it states that vanilla was worn in an amulet around the neck as a medicinal charm (Bruman 1948).

The magic-religious use of vanilla beans as pendants may have once been more widespread, but has doubtless decreased significantly due to processes of cultural erosion, and the concentration of rare knowledge among only a handful of remaining individuals that may now be reluctant to transmit it to anyone outside their group (“the custodians of botanical knowledge”; Hemming 2008; p. 18).

8.3 SUMMARY

The origin of vanilla cultivation in Veracruz in the 1760s grew out of a context of European colonialism, when various tropical colonies worldwide served as staging areas for the establishment of plantation economies. First introduced to Europe as a rare luxury in the sixteenth century, vanilla reached its zenith as a plantation crop 300 years later in French colonies in the Indian Ocean (Smith et al. 1992). For most of its history, however, vanilla has been utilized in a strictly cultural context: as a flavoring agent, a ritual plant, and as a medicine. The advent of market economies and the need to supply an external entity was what engendered vanilla cultivation, as probably happened during the rule of the Maya and Aztec elite of Late Post-classic Mesoamerica (ad 1350-1500), and certainly with the explosive rise in demand for chocolate in Europe in the colonial period.