User:Ttocserp/Pelota (boat)

A pelota was an improvised hide boat used in South and Central America for crossing rivers. It was similar in some respects to the coracle of the British Isles or the bull boat of North America, but often it had no wooden framework or internal supporting structure, relying entirely on the stiffness of the hide to keep it afloat. Thus, it could be carried about on horseback and set up quickly in an emergency; knowing how to deploy one seems to have been a common rural skill. The vessel was towed by an animal or a human swimmer, women being considered particularly dexterous. Pelotas could convey substantial loads—around a quarter of a ton was common—and even small artillery pieces. They continued to be used well into the 20th century.

Necessity
To cross a river in an emergency e.g. when swollen by torrential rains or during a military campaign, travellers on horseback had to employ such means as were to hand. They were unlikely to be carrying wood, which in some regions e.g. the treeless pampas might be hard to procure. Ox-hides were common, however, and some travellers were in the habit of carrying one under their saddle.

Construction
A sun-dried bullhide or cowhide is inherently stiff, and tends to curve with the hairy side outwards. The legs were cut off to form a roughly rectangular structure and tied at the four corners to sustain its curvature.

Since animal hides were habitually dried by staking them out on the ground, they came with peg-holes along the margins. By passing a cord through the peg-holes, the curvature could be further enhanced. The vessel has been compared to the gigantic water-lily of the Amazon.. Martin Dobrizhoffer, a Jesuit missionary in Paraguay, recorded that the four sides were raised "like the upturned brim of a hat", a distance of about 2 spans. Sometimes, a few sticks were inserted for internal support, but this was not usually necessary, or always possible.

If no cowhide was available, one might be procured by slaughtering an animal on the spot and skinning it. Since this hide lacked stiffness, however, it was necessary to vary the construction. The skin was stuffed with, and tied around, a bundle of straw, and only served as a rudimentary float.

Stiffness
If the hide was allowed to get wet, it tended to become soft and pliable, hence useless. Then it was necessary to dry it out, or to use bracing sticks if these could be found.

Félix de Azara, a Spanish colonial official whose duties compelled him to travel through remote regions and who often used the pelota to cross rivers, complained in his travel diary that torrential rains not only caused flooding but gradually made the pelota useless.

If a pelota should take too long to cross a river, as might happen if the towing swimmer grew tired, or lost his hold, the hide would soften up and the vessel might sink.

Propulsion
The hide boat was towed across the river, either by a swimmer pulling a cord with his teeth, or by a bullock, or by holding onto the tail of a horse.

Women
An artillery officer wrote that, at certain river pass in northern Argentina, the local women were reputed the best swimmers, their dextrous handling of the pelotas being "justly admired". Likewise, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, who grew up in a completely different part of the country, upon reading James Fenimore Cooper, remarked "When the fugitives in The Prairie arrive at a river, and Cooper describes the mysterious way in which the Pawnee gathers together the buffalo's hide, 'he is making a pelota,' said I to myself, — 'it is a pity there is no woman to tow it,' — for among us [Argentines]] it is the women who tow pelotas across rivers with lassos held between their teeth. |undefined"

Utility
The boat served for transporting clothing and gear that one wanted to keep dry, or which must not get wet e.g. ammunition. It also served to convey those who could not swim, or would not. In the colonial era, Spanish military commanders, though they knew how to swim, held it was beneath their dignity to strip in front of the common soldiery, and were conveyed by pelota; "scorning the assistance of another person, they impel forwards by two forked boughs for oars".

A pelota could carry two men. Azara wrote that it could easily carry a load of 16 to 25 arrobas (180 to 280) kilos. Azara felt it was safer than a native canoe, and so did Father Dobrizhoffer. Military stores and even (small) artillery pieces could be conveyed across rivers.

General Manuel Belgrano recalled taking a small revolutionary army across the Corriente River in 1811 with nothing but two bad canoes and some pelotas. The river was about a cuadra (80 metres) wide, and unfordable. He noted that most of his men knew how to use a pelota, implying that it was standard rural knowhow.

The postal service in colonial and newly independent Argentina appointed officials whose job its was to carry the mail over rivers that could not be forded, towing pelotas for the purpose. Apparently, some of these rivers were a mile or more across.

Diffusion and origins
Its origin is uncertain, but it may have pre-dated the Columbian exchange. Some have denied this, arguing that the indigenous peoples lacked domestic animals that could provide a large, strong hide. Another view is that they sewed several small camelid hides together: after the Spanish introduced cattle and horses, this became unnecessary.

Even in the 20th century the pelota could be found "on the llanos of Colombia and Venezuela, in Matto Grosso, and Rio Grande do Sul, in Uruguay, on the rivers of the pampas of the Argentine and Paraguay, and by the Mojos or Moxos of northern Bolivia. Southern Bolivia has also to be added .. Southward it ranges (or ranged) almost to the farthest limits of Patagonia." It was also found in Central America.

Nomenclature
There is no specific word for this vessel. The Spanish word pelota is general, meaning a round object. It is sometimes specified more precisely as pelota de cuero (hide ball), but this can still mean a football. The Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy has the verb pelotear, to cross a river on a pelota, but it can also mean to bounce from place to place, a victim of buck-passing bureaucracy.

In parts of South America the boat was called a balsa but this is a only general word that can include raft or inflatable lifejacket. Amongst the Chiquitos people of Bolivia it was called natae; amongst the Abipones of the Chaco, ñataċ.

Eponym
The city of Pelotas, Brazil (pop. c. 350,000) is thought to have derived its name from the water craft, used in the 18th century for crossing a local stream.