Currency

The currency here in Ecuador is the US dollar, and I can't help but get a kick out of forking over a fiver for a papaya, a bag of oranges, or a bunch bananas.

"We're from the same place," I sometimes say to a vendor, pointing to Honest Abe -- but then I have to get into who he was, the whole civil war thing, and from there it's just a short hop to slavery, which is hard enough to explain in English.  Here these guys are, busy enough trying to sell their stuff, and some crazy gringo comes along trying to give a history lecture.  I usually cut it short with, "he was a good man" before I leave the market, vendor shaking his/her head, me muttering to myself about how "rail-splitter" or "stovepipe hat" translates to Spanish.

Anyhow, fruit always seems to cost a dollar, no matter what it is, and the change from a five is (check out my math skills in action!)… four dollars.  More often than not, the change is actual change, monedas, or coins that someone fishes out of a pocket or re-used plastic container.  Ecuador uses US coins, but also presses its own coins.  So when you get a fistful of (four) dollars for your bananas, you get a mix of US and EC coins.  EC coins come in 1, 5, 25, and 50 centavo versions -- but not the dollar; those are exclusively imported from up north.  Rarely, by the way, does anyone give back four dollar coins; it's always some combination of quarter, fifties, and dollars.  (Once I did get a taped up stack of 20 nickels from a cabbie.)

The most popular form of the dollar, hands-down, is the Sacajawea [sic] dollar coin, apparently also known as the "golden dollar," the second piece of US currency to feature the portrait of a groundbreaking, heroic woman.  Oh, I remember well the massive controversy when Susan B. Anthony dollar was first minted in the 80s:  how in the world were we going to use this in video games at Aladdin's Castle?  Of course, the furor died down quickly when the video game makers adapted the coin-slots, and you could use your SBA dollar to play a half an hour -- maybe 45 minutes -- of Tron.

In honor of Columbus Day, AKA Native American Holocaust day, I will now take a moment to digress on Sacagawea (sa-cah-gah-WEE-ah, as some Indian historians insist her name is pronounced).  She was born in Idaho, a member of the Shoshone Nation, daughter of a chief.  When she was twelve, she was kidnapped by a raiding party of Hidasta Indians and moved to North Dakota (or thereabouts) and then passed on to the Mandans who lived in the same vicinity.  Finally, at about age thirteen she was sold to a full-blood Quebecer trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau.  Not the best way to begin her teen years.  

By then a "free agent" trapper/trader, Charbonneau lived among the Hidasta and the Mandan Nations, at the headwaters of the Missouri River, near present day Bismarck, ND.  Charbonneau purchased Sacagawea (or Bird Woman) and another Shoshone woman (Otter Woman) from the local Mandans to be his wives, simultaneously.  It is not known whether these marriages were official, but apparently the Quebecer considered them so.  He was no hero; by some accounts he was an attempted rapist, and much later he struck Sacagawea when during a marital dispute (William Clark apparently intervened, presumably on her behalf). 

I digress within this digression because without Charbonneau's linguistic incompetence, Sacagawea would never have been a key member of the Corps of Discovery, and consequently the Corps of Discovery never would have succeeded.   Incidentally, Charbonneau's incompetence also extended to piloting boats, and he had to be rebuked on several occasions by Clark for not fulfilling his duties to the Corps; on the other hand, he apparently made a killer buffalo sausage.  Suffice it to say, only the sausage-eating component of the Corps were fans of Charbonneau.  More importantly to history, however, is the fact that he never fluently spoke Hidasta, despite living among them for much of his life. Though they hired him as an interpreter and guide, Lewis and Clark were never impressed with Charbonneau in large part because his Hidasta wasn't stellar, but more importantly, he didn't speak English.  

But Sacagawea did.  And fluent Hidasta, Mandan, and of course, Shoshone.  No dummies, Lewis and Clark knew that they would need her help to get through the Shoshone territory and the Rockies.  They intended to use horses to cross the Continental Divide, and they were aware that the Shoshone had good horses.  And another plus: Sacagawea knew a heck of a lot more about edible plants and medicines (one of Jefferson's main aims for the Corps).  So in short, they put up with Charbonneau in order to have the invaluable help of his much, much better half.

There's no shortage of drama in this narrative, but in a made-for-Hollywood moment, Lewis and three other members of the Corps met Cameahwait, Sacagawea's long-lost brother.  The men had split off from the bigger Corps for a scouting mission when they came upon a Shoshone camp.  Lewis wisely took a peaceful posture (60 Shoshone warriors, freshly returned from hunting, were ready to throw down on those whiteys, purportedly, the first they'd ever seen).  Painting his face with vermillion, a sign of peace, and preparing other gifts, Lewis convinced the Shoshone that he was not there to fight.  Eventually Lewis convinced Cameahwait (and his boys) to follow them to the larger Corps camp in order to find the translator, his sister.  (By some accounts, she was his cousin as the Shoshone, not distinguishing between the two, use the same word for brother and cousin.)  Of course, it was a moving reunion for Sacagawea, her brother-cousin, and eventually also Otter Woman, the second girl kidnapped by the Hidasta.

In return for reuniting him with his sister, Cameahwait offered the Corps of Discovery horses and important directions for passing through the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho.  The Shoshone, or Snake People as they called themselves, lived on both the plains east of the Rockies and on the western side of the range -- so they knew what they were talking about.  Again, good fortune for the party.  Again, thanks to Sacagawea.

All this brings me to the point of my rambling, albeit a super-obvious one: American history, especially as it concerns Native Peoples, is steeped in a giant melting pot of irony.  The Lewis and Clark Expedition is rightly celebrated as an amazing feat.  Those guys boated, hiked, rode horses and basically gutted it out for three years, eventually making to the Pacific Ocean, the first white people to do so.  There is one account of an Indian, Moncacht Ape, who made a trans-continental trek a century before Lewis and Clark penned by a Frenchman named La Page; Lewis and Clark as well as Pres. Jefferson were well aware of this -- they all had the book, and the boys even took it with them on the expedition.  Unfortunately, the book never mentioned the Rocky Mountains, which makes it suspect in my view.  

Lewis and Clark took the first botanical, zoological, and anthropological surveys of the west, that is the first Euro-American surveys -- Native people already had names for all the things and all the places.  In short, without Sacagawea and the serendipitous meeting with her brother, there's not much chance for their success.  The greatest irony -- and of course the greatest tragedy from Native Americans' point of view -- is that Indians helped <ahem> pave the way for so-called Manifest Destiny and the next hundred years of white people moving into the neighborhood uninvited -- and driving up the real-estate prices.  Basically the same thing happened at Plymouth Colony as well as countless other places -- Indians help white people; white people then help themselves.

Aside from the mapping and the naming, there was a whole lot of claiming.  Having recently purchased the entire midwest and then some (from the French, it must be noted, not the dozens of individual Nations already occupying that space), the core purpose of the Corps was to check out the new lands.  Maybe, POTUS Jefferson thought, we'd even find a trade route to Asia -- but no dice, Jimmy.  (Unfortunately melting arctic ice is finally making that pipe-dream possible.)  Since I was talking about coins, by the way, Jefferson had the mint create special peace medallions (with his own portrait) as symbols of friendship and peace.  The Corps was to hand these party-favors out to the nations they met along the way.  Oh yeah, this medallion was also a symbol of US sovereignty over the land and its indigenous inhabitants.  In effect: a consolation prize.  The Supreme Court, under head-honcho Marshall later invoked the Doctrine of Discovery, which was essentially a legal hoodwinking for taking land from heathen peoples.

So yeah, anyhow, Sacagewea was a serious badass.  She was 20 years old, spoke four or five languages, and took her then one-year-old son (Jean-Baptiste) on a three-year trek from North Dakota to the Washington coast and back mostly on foot.  Even -- and perhaps especially -- Lewis and Clark saw that she was an invaluable mediator, literally.  (Originally, the word was used for Jesus, who mediated between god and man, as one who dwells in the divide between places.)  She was seen as a symbol of peace, since A., she was Indian, and B. she was a woman.  Clark himself wrote in his journal, "a woman with a party of men is a token of peace."  And there was eventually a very important C. as well: her son Jean Baptiste, born just eight weeks before the COD set out.  In my mind she is rightly celebrated on the dollar, and there's JB, riding shotgun on the backboard.  

The Corps, it should be noted, was regular army, and they were packing plenty of heat for the time: new-fangled .44 caliber air rifles and boatloads of black powder for their flint-lock rifles.  Understandable, for sure.

Also in from the irony department: Sacagawea was one of two (of the 33) members of the party who were not paid for their efforts.  Charbonneau got 500 bucks and a chunk of land.  (At this time, women still didn't inherit their husband's property or wealth.)  Clark's slave, York, wasn't paid either, but he was the first person of African descent to see the Pacific, so they say.  Sacagawea and York did, however, get to vote on whether the party made camp and waited out their second winter in a fort south of the Snake river before completing their Trek.  (Both voted for making camp, swaying the majority to the prudent course.)  Very progressive and democratic -- as always, we are beautifully conflicted people.   Or conflictedly beautiful -- it's hard to say.

Where was I?  Oh yes, Ecuador.  And I was talking about coins.  About currency, which, by the way, comes from the Latin currere, or "to run", to flow, to circulate.  And here I happen to live, according to my friend Pete, in a place with the greatest concentration of indigenous wealth on the planet (maybe with the exception of the Mohegans in Connecticut and their popular casinos).  The Indios here in Otavalo run the government, and they own most of the land.  But outside of Otavalo, literally just outside of the city limits, people of indigenous descent are still poor as dirt and live the type of lives that ought to make "poor" Americans blush.  So how did Otavaleño Indios pull this off?  I'd guess it's a combination of skill and luck.

I will oversimplify it for you (as I have everything else in this sorry excuse for an essay): they are exceptionally skilled craftspeople.  So great and widely known was (and is) their weaving and cloth-making skill that the Incas conquered this area of Northern Ecuador just 40 years before the Spanish came knocking.  The Incan colonizers, masterminds of efficient suppression -- and apparently fans of alpaca ponchos, rounded up all of the men of reproductive age and headed them back to the main Incan cities, and then they had Incan men come up here and take up with the women.  (Otavalo women, by the way, are famously beautiful.)  That way, within a generation or three, Incas successfully instilled their language and culture... just as Pizarro was showing up on Atahualpa's doorstep a couple hundred miles south of here.  

Consequently, Otavaleños and Ecuadorians elsewhere in the Northern Andes especially embrace the old Inca culture, and their heroes are Incan resistance fighters like Rumiñahui, Atahualpa's general who never gave up the gold to Pizzarro and this civilized thugs.  Rumiñahui means "stone-face" and his bust and uber-buff statue adorn many a plaza around here.  (It's also the name of our suburban-ish neighborhood.)  It is even said that Otavaleño traditional dress and style is closer to Incan than in Peru (a fact that I cannot verify, even if I were into verifying facts).   Many men -- and even more women still dress in traditional garb.  For the men, white pants, shirts, and blue alpaca vests and ponchos; for women, long skirts and embroidered blouses, with more fabric draped over the blouses.  Both men and women, but more often men sport fedora hats.  Both sexes wear a closed-toe sandal.  Both campesinos (poor, usually, country-folk) and urban middle/upper-class people sport the same fashion... often with more modern touches.  I am finally getting over being startled by seeing a woman in traditional wear, but sporting an American Eagle hat and talking on a cell-phone.  You still hear a lot of Kichwa spoken here, and bi-lingual in Otavalo typically means Spanish and Kichwa.  Indeed, many Kichwa words have crept into the general lexicon in the Northern Andes, like naño, for example, which means brother.

Otavalo's market was famous even since the Incas arrived, particularly with tourists, the Incas being pioneers in this department.  Aside from the Galápagos Islands, the market at the Plaza de Ponchos is the biggest stop for tourists in Ecuador.  And as we know in VER-mont, tourism is a mighty industry -- one that makes us fat and comfortable whilst our Adirondack neighbors languish in a much slower economy.  Tourism has made this town very comfortably middle-class, though many Americans might not recognize it as such.  The standard of living for the average Otavaleño is significantly higher than in the rest of the country.  Not all the people here are indigenous of course, and there is a subtle friction between different groups of people.  Just as it's ridiculous to refer to a "Black Community" in the US, it's dumb to assume a uniformity of opinion here.  The all-indigenous market, for instance, is intensely political, and getting a stall in the main tourist plaza is only done through inheritance.  

So the other day, when I bought four avocados for a dollar, paid with a five, and ended up with a fresh pocketful of change, including a couple of Sacagawea dollars, it struck me how perfect this coin is for this place, another country of stark contrasts and perhaps more subtle irony.  I decided give my class a lecture on the importance of Sacagawea.  Actually, as usual, I wasn't thinking about importance at all until I got to the end of the lesson and we were drawing conclusions.  After Lewis and Clark, things went downhill for the American Indians west of the Mississippi (they'd already been going downhill east of it).  And I'm "lecturing" to a group of indigenous (and a few mestizo) kids.  (Another time, I was trying to explain the word "tan" using a skin-tone anecdote -- "you know, when you are out in the sun for a long time"... until I looked up at the class, realized everyone already was deeply tan -- and I just said, "It's like light-brown.")

There is a strong affinity for the American Indian here, whether or not it's a stereotype.  (American here means North American.)  People at the Saturday market sell Sioux-like headdresses and dream-catchers.  There are T-shrits with American Indian themes.  There's even a chicken roasting place called Inti-pollo whose logo is a chicken in a war-bonnet.   So, after attempting to convey some of the history and the irony of American Indians through Sacagawea's story, I realized that for the indigenous kids in my class at least, theirs is not a tragic story.  

Finally, in struggling to wrap things up for my talk, I hit on the fact that too many Americans consider Indians a part of a nostalgic, if not tragic past.  Part and parcel of history, but not a part of a present that the romanticized Sacagawea coin risks obscuring.  But of course, this is not the case at all.  You see her all over the place in Otavalo -- few if any mothers  here use a strollers; babies are strapped to backs with bolts of cloth.  Sacagawea, though perhaps not well understood, is alive and well here in Ecuador. 

Big shout-outs to the following sources: Biography.com, PBS.org, Rootsweb, The Anti-defamation League, N. P. Shear, and good ol' Wikipedia