Silleros often carried between of weight crossing the Quindio pass, considered the most difficult of the northern Andean
passes. Besides their baggage, silleros even carried the travelers, such as colonial officials or explorers, in a wickerwork chair mounted on their backs. The practice was described by
Alexander von Humboldt, who crossed the Quindio in 1801 – he refused to be carried and preferred walking. Humboldt noted that porters were generally
mestizo or whites, while others have stated that they were most often
Indigenous. The contemporary descriptions often referred to the mode of transportation as
a lomo de indio (on Indian back). Another traveler who described the practice was Captain
Charles Cochrane of the British Navy, who criticized the infrastructure of Colombia and, as Humboldt did, refused to mount silleros. He wrote that "I have been told that the Spaniards and the natives mount these chairmen with as much sang froid as if they were getting on the back of mules, and some brutal wretches have not hesitated to spur the flanks of these poor unfortunate men when they fancied they were not going fast enough". Cochrane also noted that the 300 silleros of
Ibagué rarely lived past the age of 40 and that a leading cause of death was the bursting of a blood vessel or pulmonary problems. According to nineteenth-century anecdotes, sometimes, when hired by particularly demanding or demeaning masters, the Indian porters would tire from the heavy burdens put upon them and eventually, would throw their riders into the abyss and escape into the forest. In his work
Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man,
anthropologist Michael Taussig describes the practice of using silleros to cross the Andes as part of the colonial tendency to see and treat the indigenous people as subhuman wild creatures. ==Today==