(7 of 7)
Indians. From U. S. engineers General Barco ordered a model refinery with a daily capacity of eight barrels. First refinery in South America,* it was supplied by dipping oil from pits, and its products, packed out on burros, were marketed locally for years. In the end Motilone Indians burned clown the old Barco refinery, letting in the jungle upon the ruins. Indians are standard equipment in the Barco. Oilmen expect to be shot at with great regularity, and several oilmen and numerous native laborers have been killed or wounded. Only in one small area have missionaries succeeded in establishing any relations with the Motilones at all. There aborigines range the mountain slopes, live in communal houses where they wrap up their dead, hang them from the ceiling to rot. Expert bowmen, Motilones shoot fish in the clear streams, using special arrows with a shaft that shakes out of the head after the fish is hit. Wound around the shaft is a line attached to both parts of the arrow, enabling the fisherman to pick up the floating shaft, haul in the head with the fish on it.
Motilones can be smelled but not seen. They smear their small brown bodies with rancid alligator grease to keep off mosquitoes. Usually the only warning that Motilones are near comes from their terrible stench. Oilmen have tried to get into the Motilones' good graces by avoiding shooting them except when attacked and by leaving trinkets on the trails. Occasionally they appear from nowhere in the middle of a river, grin up at the white occupants of a passing canoe, deftly twist the canoe upside down. It is into the heart of the Motilone country that Texaco's Rieber and his Socony partner will have to march, taking the Indians along with their oil.
A claim disputed by Peru, which has a refinery built by the Spaniards to obtain tar.