HARRY TRUMAN LIBRARY Papers of NATHANIEL DAVIS Despatch no. 69, UNCLASSIFIED February 16, 1949, San José, Costa Rica American Embassy, Enclosure no. anything but the smallest of planes without a great deal of leveling and filling. The Job could be done 1ł it were possible to get bulldozers up there but with only hand labor it would be a torrific undertaking. The Indiana all agreed that they would donate their labor for nothing if we would just get to work and seened rather to expect that we would start to build an airfield then and there.
When we were ready to proceed to Boruca our guides said they wanted to give us some refreshment and suggested ve top in the shade of some nearby trees on the bank of a small atream. had noticed one woman carrying a bowl made from the husk of a large round gourd and a bag of Some greyiah green meal. This turned out to be the mash for making chicha, a mild, slightly aour, fermented drink something like weak bear. She dippad none 100 elsanlooking water out of the atream, put some of the mash into it, and mixed up with her fingere. She then passed around communal cups from which we all drank and so far we have suffered no 112 affects.
We then rode up a long, steep, hot trail across open sabano over the shoulder of a small volcano and Nnally through forest to Boruoa which we reached about p.
Boruca was the only town worthy of the name which we waw on the whole trip. It conalata of 40 or 50 thatched houses with bamboo walls and dirt floors, a school, a school master house (the former in process of being built with lumber carried up over the trail and the latter, copied somewhat from United Fruit Company houses at Palmar, was built with lumber carried in by hand. There 18 also a siseable church but here also the priest comes but once a year. The population is something over 700 with perhapo 1000 in the district. The school teacher had been there only two or three weeks having ridden in over the game trail we followed with his wife, three small children, and all of their possessions.
After lunch, served in the school master house and accompanied by a siseable proportion of the population, we visited a number of the houses. In one an old woman Waa weaving cloth from white and brom cotton and some which had been dyed various colors. The dyes ware produced by the Indians from bark (black) and a kind of cuttlefish (purple. had never been brown cotton before. It is native to the district, has a fairly long staple, and is of finer texture than the local white cotton which is quite CoArgo.
In this house a number of the women gathered around Louise to feel and discuss her hair. Unlike the Cuatemalan Indians who consider fair hair and blue eyes a sign of witchcraft and would cover their babies whenever Louise appeared, the Costa Rican Indians seemed to think blue UNCLASSIFIED www.
ba