Pelota (boat)

It was similar in some respects to the coracle of the British Isles or the bull boat of North America, but it had little or no wooden framework or internal supporting structure, often relying entirely on the stiffness of the hide and the packing of the cargo to keep it open and afloat.

[5] 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.

When this happens, the inhabitants of the country take a rawhide, they knot the four corners of it, and thus form a sort of rounded boat (pelota), to which they attach a strap.

Anyone who wants to cross the water sits in this type of canoe and remains motionless while a swimmer, holding the strap between his teeth, pulls it until he reaches the other bank.

[15] It was said that 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.

[14][17] The French traveller de Moussy, who rode very extensively over Argentina, wrote: This way of crossing rivers was naturally perilous, and more than one accident, sometimes fatal, was the result; but every Argentine countryman knew how to do it and did not hesitate to put it into practice.

[21] Where the rivers were too deep to be forded the postal service appointed pasadores (passers) whose function was to carry passengers and mail across in pelotas.

[22] Thus, at some places there were official pelota towers - persons who swam across rivers and pulled the boat with their teeth - whose charges were regulated by law.

[23] The most notable crossing was at the Río del Pasage or Pasaje (today called the Juramento River), which lay on the road between Tucumán and Salta.

It could be forded quite easily in the dry season, but when the waters rose it grew wide and deep, with strong currents and eventually, turbulent waves.

At this pass the local women were reputed the best swimmers, their dextrous handling of the pelotas being "justly admired";[27] according to Sir Woodbine Parish they were extremely expert at guiding these "frail barks" across the stream;[23] indeed according to the French geographer Martin de Moussy, in that region "they had a monopoly on this singular industry".

[7] Likewise, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, though he 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.

The towing horse lost his footing, which made me realise that the slightest movement could make me sink: I would have preferred to cross on horseback a thousand times.

But, I got used to it; it seemed quite a comfortable vehicle, and I even felt disposed to cross any river, in spite of my boat's flexibility, which gave way at the slightest change of posture—it obliged me to keep perfectly still.

Several times the man towing me disappeared underwater with his horse, but my boat floated on, though it became so deformed that I ended up finding myself at the bottom of a sort of funnel, where I could barely move.

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".

[33] The Rodrigues Ferreira expedition to the Mato Grosso (c. 1785) drew indigenous people taking their children across in pelotas, propelled by pairs of women.

[41] General Manuel Belgrano recalled taking a small revolutionary army across the Corriente River in 1811 with nothing but two bad canoes and some pelotas.

James Hornell thought that pelota knowledge spread with human migration along the eastern seaboard of South America and inland.

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.

(Unlike the pelota, the hide of the bull boat was soft and pliable, and was applied to the supporting wicker framework with hair side facing inwards.