Amazonian Warfare Laura Zanotti May 1, 2008. Amazon as a warscape Is there any connection between current conservation practices and past histories.

Amazonian Warfare

Laura Zanotti

May 1, 2008

Amazon as a warscape

• Is there any connection between current conservation practices and past histories of warfare?

• What does the Amazonian landscape today tell us about its history of warfare?

Cultural Parkland Perspective

• The biodiversity in the Amazon region until very recently was attributed to low population densities of human inhabitants and the unique ecology of the area.

• New figures demonstrate that warfare, ethnocide, and disease (biowarfare) severely depopulated the region

• The Amazon was more densely settled than we at first thought and biodiversity in the Amazon is in a part result of human modification

• Uncovering new data about Amazonian settlement patterns has shed light on old warscapes

• What Happened?• How did it Happen?• What evidence do we use?

What Happened?

* Colonization of the Americas by European powers (France, Spain, Portugal, UK)

* Severe decimation and ethnocide of indigenous populations

Reasons for Colonization

• Curiosity - Part of the European Renaissance culture to experience and observe as much as possible

• Religion - Connects to the 12th and 13th century crusades. Desire to save souls.

• Economic/Resources -Attracted to luxury items (e.g. spices) from the East

• Political - Naval technologies were advancing and desire for conquest and empire building

Brazilian Example

• Coastal and groups living along the Amazon were impacted first enslaved or engaged in warfare with colonizers

• Other groups fled inland to avoid battles and launched skirmishes/attacks from afar

• Some groups migrated and attempted to avoid contact

• For others, colonization intensified intergroup warfare

Amazon as a Warscape

• Depopulation figuresNew World Precontact Population Estimates Source Estimate Compared to: Alfred Kroeber (1939) 8.4 million New York City Angel Rosenblat (1954)

13.4 million Ecuador

Paul Rivet (1924) 40-45 million Columbia Karl Sapper (1924) 40-50 million Argentina Herbert J. Spinden (1928)

50-75 million Italy

Woodrow Borah (1964)

100 million

Mexico

Henry F. Dobyns (1966)

90-223.5 million Russia

Amazon as a WarscapeIndigenous Populations 40 Million

How did it happen?

Decimation and ethnocide

•Physical•Biological•Cultural

• Physical:– Massacre and mutilation– Deprivation of livelihood

(starvation, force migration)– Slavery/exposure to death– Exposure to disease

•Biological:–Separation of families–Sterilization–Miscegenation

•Cultural:– Desecration and destruction of cultural

symbols (objects of art, religious relics, etc.)

– Looting– Destruction of cultural leadership– Destruction of cultural centers – Prohibition of cultural activities or codes

of behavior– demoralization

Depopulation Figures

• Today the estimated indigenous population of Amazon is around 1,283,379

What is the evidence?

What is the evidence?

Ethnographic– Interviews and Life stories

• Contemporary indigenous populations narratives, stories, and histories about the contact period

– Myths and Histories– Ethnographic and Eye-witness

accounts

Davi Kopenawa, Yanomamo

• In my time, today, the Yanomami are no longer fighting with one another. In my time there is no more war among the Yanomami. In the past, it existed among us, just as it exists among you. Right now there is a war in Arabia, so you can see that it is not only the Indian who is dangerous. The white man is more dangerous than the Indian. The Yanomami do not have bombs like the whites, they do not mistreat and kill everybody [when they make war]. Our way of war is different. We don't have warplanes, we don't drop bombs.

• There was still warfare when I was in my mother's belly, but today it no longer exists. Today we are all friends. Disputes are rare, and when someone is killed, it does not lead to fighting year after year. The whites are saying this against us because they don't want to make our reserve, they are afraid of you [ie. foreign supporters], they are afraid of us too, the whites who speak this way are afraid that they might lose. They think the Yanomami are like them. On the contrary: we want our reserve for the Yanomami to live in. It was they who cut up our country into little pieces, without ever telling us what they were doing or why.

Davi Kopenawa, Yanomami

• Because we have so little [land], my Yanomami people today are very weak, [also] because of malaria. The whites speak this way [about the Yanomami] because they want to use the minerals of our land, to work the gold, the cassiterite of our reserve. They are not just talking, they are doing it: they. . . cut our land up into little pieces, one for each community, so they could enter our country and work its resources, so they could finish off our people. They have done much violence against us Indians in order to kill us off. So I am here fighting to keep my kinfolk from being wiped out.

What is the evidence?

•Archeological– Past settlement patterns

•Marajo Island (400 BC-1300 AD)•Xinguano Villages (1200-1600 AD)

Heckenberger et al. Science 19 September 2003. Page 1711

What is the evidence?

– Tree Patterns– Soils

Fruit and Nut Trees

• Most species in the Amazon are highly endemic and dispersed across the landscape

• At least 11 fruit and nut trees found in the Amazon region dominate the forest cover and are considered to be a result of human modification since they are not dispersed

• For example, Brazil Nuts and Acai fruit, two major nutritional sources for Amazonian communities grow in clusters, around current and previous human settlements

Indian Black Earth

• In the Amazon region soils are nutrient poor

• BUT archaeologists have found extensive agricultural soils (i.e. fertile soils) that are anthropogenic

• Formed when soils are altered by human garbage rich in decayed vegetal and faunal matter, shells, bones, finely divided charcoal, and human excrement

Conclusions

Conservation Movement and Memories of war

• Conservation movement has been behind international interest in the biological wealth of the Amazon

• At some level the conservation narrative has hidden past war histories by expertly promoting a picture of the Amazon as wild, and vacant landscape

• The conservation movement argue that this pristine landscape needs protection from human impacts

Conservation Movement and War Stories

• Conservation movement along with indigenous rights movement has linked biological and cultural diversity

• Many human rights abuses that were not addressed over the past 400 years are gaining ground because of the interest in preserving the cultural and ecological wealth of the region

Final thoughts. . .

• What and how we define a warscape

• How to read a landscape for past features of war

• The role of memory and forgetting in war and how these narratives can be replaced by new causes (i.e. conservation)