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Snake Stones and Bezoars: Occidental

A letter written in the sixteenth century by one who had travelled extensively in India and in Peru, illustrates the ideas of that time regarding both Oriental and Occidental bezoars:

A gentleman living about twenty-eight years in these Countries, writes to his Friend, that he saw those Animals out of which comes the Bezoar, and saith, they are very like Goats, only they have no Horns; and are so swift, that they are fore'd to shoot them with guns. He tells us, that he and some Friends, on the 10th of June 1568, hunted some of these Creatures, and in five Days kill'd many of them; and that in one of the oldest of them, they made diligent Search for the stone, but found it not, neither in the Ventricle, nor in any other Part of the Animal. They ask'd the Indians that attended upon them, where the Stones lay; they denied they knew anything of them, being very envious and unwilling to disclose such a Secret. At length (he saith) a Boy about twelve years old perceiving us to be very inquisitive, and to be very desirous of Satisfaction in that Particular, shew'd us a certain Receptacle and (as it were) a Purse, into which they receive their eaten herbs, which afterwards when churned, they convey into the Ventricle.

The same circumstances were observed by this informant in regard to the Peruvian bezoars, and from the "pouch" of one of these animals were taken no less than nine stones, "which, by the help of nature, seemed to be made of the Juice of those salutiferous Herbs, which were crammed up into this little Pouch."

While the Occidental bezoar from South America enjoyed a special repute in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when bezoars were so freely used as poison-antidotes, and for the cure of fevers and other diseases, it has been doubted whether the aborigines of South America ever valued them in any way before the time of the Spanish Conquest. What seems, however, to be a proof that they sometimes did so, is afforded by the discovery of a bezoar, probably taken from the body of a Ilama, in a tomb at Cojitambo, in the Canari region of Ecuador. In spite of the contrary opinion expressed by Garcilasso de la Vega, there is reason to believe that such animal concretions were used by these Indians in magic practices. The Quichua name is illa, and Holquin in his Quichua dictionary says that the natives believed that bezoars were luck-bringing stones. Another name, quicu, is vouched for by Arriaga, who states that the Spaniards found some bezoars stained with the blood of sacrificial victims, thus showing that they were thought to possess a certain religious or mystic significance. Another author, Don Vasco de Contreros y Vievedo, writing in 1650, states that the most highly valued of these concretions among the natives of South America were those taken from the American tapir, which they called danta.