Coca and Cocaine

The earliest accounts extant of Coca are contained in the writings of the historians who treat of the Spanish conquests in South America in the sixteenth century, and of Spanish travellers and Jesuit missionaries who followed in their wake.Pedro de Cieza de Leon thus writes,[2](A.D. 1532 to 1550):—“I have observed in all parts of the West Indies, where I have been, that the natives delight in holding herbs, roots, or twigs of trees in their mouths. Thus, in the territory of Antiocha, they use a small Herb called Coca, and other sorts in the province of Arma. In those of Quimbaya and Anzerma, they cut twigs off a sort of tender middling trees, which are always green, wherewith they are incessantly rubbing their teeth. In most parts about Cali and Popayan, they hold in their mouths the aforesaid small Coca, with a composition they keep in little calabashes, or else a sort of earth, like lime. Throughout all Peru, from the time they rise in the morning till they go to bed at night, they are never without this Coca in their mouths. The reason some Indians, to whom I put the question, gave me for so doing, was, that it made them insensible of hunger, and added to their strength and vigour. Something there may be in it, yet I am rather of opinion it is only an ill habit, and fit for such people as they are.