Ethnic Names and Affiliations in the Western Amazonia. An Inquiry into Ethnohistory of the Sierra del Divisor, Eastern Peru.

Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza

Instytut Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej

Łukasz Krokoszyński

Ethnic Names and Affiliations in the Western Amazonia.

An Inquiry into Ethnohistory of the Sierra del Divisor,

Eastern Peru.

praca magisterska

napisana pod kierunkiem

prof. dr hab. Aleksandra Posern-Zielińskiego

Poznań 2008

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Adam Mickiewicz University

Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology

Łukasz Krokoszyński

Ethnic Names and Affiliations in the Western Amazonia.

An Inquiry into Ethnohistory of the Sierra del Divisor,

Eastern Peru.

Thesis submitted for the degree of

Master of Arts in Cultural Anthropology

Written under tutorship of

prof. dr hab. Aleksander Posern-Zieliński

Poznań 2008

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OŚWIADCZENIE

Ja, niżej podpisany Łukasz Krokoszyński, student Wydziału

Historycznego Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu

oświadczam, że przedkładaną pracę magisterską pod tytułem: „Ethnic

Names and Affiliations in the Western Amazonia. An Inquiry into

Ethnohistory of the Sierra del Divisor, Eastern Peru” napisałem

samodzielnie. Oznacza to, że przy pisaniu pracy, poza niezbędnymi

konsultacjami, nie korzystałem z pomocy innych osób, a w szczególności

nie zlecałem opracowania rozprawy lub jej części innym osobom, ani nie

odpisywałem tej rozprawy lub jej części od innych osób.

Oświadczam również, że egzemplarz pracy dyplomowej w formie

wydruku komputerowego jest zgodny z egzemplarzem pracy dyplomowej

w formie elektronicznej.

Jednocześnie przyjmuję do wiadomości, że gdyby powyższe

oświadczenie okazało się nieprawdziwe, decyzja o wydaniu mi dyplomu

zostanie cofnięta.

...................................................

Poznań, dnia 23.07.2008

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Acknowledgments

This work would not have been possible without the continuing support of many

people. I want to express my special gratitude to: Prof. Aleksander Posern-

Zieliński for guidance in preparing the thesis; to Dr. Mariusz Kairski, for his

unending support throughout all of my work, for countless revisions of different

papers and long talks, for sharing his experiences, knowledge, and friendship – his

overall support throughout the years cannot be underestimated; Dr. David Fleck,

who since my first experiences with the Panoan literature has been most generous in

his support, advice and in sharing information – this thesis owes a lot to him; Filip

Rogalski has been a friend, playing an important role with his peer encouragement

for this work, and conversations with him have always been inspiring and helped me

to shape my view on anthropology and Amazonian studies that underlies my

interpretations.

I also want to thank Prof. Julio C. Melatti, Prof. Delvair Montagner,

Prof. Edilene Coffaci de Lima, Dr. Bernd Brabec de Mori, and Dr. Jose A.

Elias Ulloa for their help since the very beginnings of my engagement in the subject,

in sharing their work, experiences and information. I am also immensely gratefull to

Mrs. Michelle Mears, who spent many hours looking through the Victor

Oppenheim’s archives in Univeristy of North Texas.

At the same time I would like to make it clear that any errors and flaws that may

be contained in this thesis are mine only.

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Contents

Introduction.........................................................................................................................................................1

Indigenous population of the Sierra del Divisor and its historical context. ................................................1

Ethno(nym)history. ....................................................................................................................................... 3

Material and method. .................................................................................................................................... 4

Theory. ........................................................................................................................................................... 6

Chapter 1. The Kapanawa.....................................................................................................................................13

1.1. Introduction. ..........................................................................................................................................13

1.2. The Kapanawa sources and contexts. ...................................................................................................14

1.2.1. The Ucayali River Kapanawa. ........................................................................................................14

1.2.2. The Javari River basin Kapanawa, nineteenth-twentieth century. ........................................... 22

1.2.3. The Juruá – Purus Kapanawa. ..................................................................................................... 28

1.2.4. The Môa River Kapanawa, twentieth century. .............................................................................31

1.2.5. The Sierra del Divisor Kapanawa, twenty-first century. ............................................................. 32

1.2.6. The Maquia, Buncuya and Tapiche rivers Kapanawas, twentieth-twenty-first century. ........... 34

1.3. Connections and identites. ................................................................................................................... 42

1.3.1. Application of the name Kapanawa.............................................................................................. 42

1.3.2. Language Affiliations.................................................................................................................... 49

1.3.3. Affiliations based on cultural traits and territory........................................................................ 50

1.4. Conlusions..............................................................................................................................................55

Chapter 2. The Remo........................................................................................................................................ 59

2.1. Introduction. ......................................................................................................................................... 59

2.2. The Remo sources and contexts .......................................................................................................... 60

2.2.1. Remos of the Ucayali between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries ................................ 60

2.2.2. Remos of the Javari River area at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth

century .................................................................................................................................................... 72

2.2.3. Remos and other isolated groups between the Buncuya and Yavarí Mirim rivers (twentieth–

twenty-first century)................................................................................................................................77

2.2.4. Nukini of the Môa River............................................................................................................... 78

2.2.5. Iskonawa of the Utuquinía and Callería rivers............................................................................80

2.3. The Remo connections and identities ................................................................................................. 82

3.3.1. Application of the name Remo..................................................................................................... 82

2.3.2. Language Affiliations. .................................................................................................................. 85

2.3.3. Affiliations based on cultural traits and territory. ...................................................................... 86

2.4. Conclusions........................................................................................................................................... 93

Conclusion. ....................................................................................................................................................... 99

1. Kapanawa and Remo. ................................................................................................................................. 100

1.1. Ethnic situation – what was the ethnic-linguistic affilitation of groups named Kapanawa and

Remo?.......................................................................................................................................................100

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1.2. Ethnonymic histories – Where do the names come from?............................................................... 103

2. Panoan identities and social reality. ........................................................................................................... 110

2.1. What are Panoan ethnic groups? ........................................................................................................ 110

2.2. Are there ‘groups’ among Panoans? ................................................................................................... 112

2.3. The givens and the visions of history.................................................................................................. 114

References. ........................................................................................................................................................123

1

Introduction

Indigenous population of the Sierra del Divisor and its historical context.

Between 2005-2007 I have had the opportunity to conduct research on the

habitat of isolated, unknown indigenous people living east of the Middle and Lower

Ucayali River in Peru, specifically in the elevated area known as Sierra del Divisor,

which extends towards the Brazilian border and further into the State of Acre. No

actual, sustained contact between this population and inhabitants of the river shores

has been maintained. The aislados were usually spotted from a distance, or only for a

glimpse. A few features of their appearance have been recorded by those who had seen

them or their traces. There is also an indication of unintelligibility of their language

and that of the Shipibo-Konibo based on a short direct encounter. This tenuous

information of the factual type was often intermixed with local theories on how these

people look, live and behave. Those speculations were always influenced by their

social distance and classification as ―wild Indians‖. Simultaneously, these scant data,

along with riverine images of interfluvial population, were usually accompanied by the

application of specific denominations, some of which are connected with a particular

ethnic group in anthropological literature. During my research in the area, the names

which the isolated groups were known by were primarily Kapanawa and Remo/-auca

(see Maps 1 and 2).1

1 The investigated territory comprised the middle and lower Ucayali, from Pucallpa to the Guanache and

Buncuya Rivers. The research was realized between 11. 2005 and 01. 2006, and between 02 and 04. 2007.

It was a result of cooperation between Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana

(AIDESEP) and the Univeristy of Adam Mickiewicz in Poznań (UAM). The results have been presented in

the report Indìgenas aislados en la Sierra del Divisor (Krokoszyński et al. 2007), with the intent of

supporting creation of a protected area in favor of the isolated groups. Initially, the proposition of the

reserve has been named Reserva Kapanawa, and currently it is referred to as Reserva Maquìa-Callerìa.

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Unable to confirm those identities on the basis of material recovered during

my research, and unwilling to force direct contact on the aislados themselves, I have

turned toward the historical and contemporary literature available on the region. I

realized that the indigenous presence in this specific area – comprised between the

Maquìa and Callerìa rivers – has not been widely reported in the literature since the

early twentieth century. Heretofore, this territory has not been taken into

consideration in speaking of the contemporary ethnic composition of eastern Peru.

Secondly, I discovered that the area of Sierra del Divisor has been historically

connected with a number of little known ethnic groups. Since seventeenth century,

when Occidental historiography has begun on the Ucayali river, among the names

mentioned for the area predominant ones have been the Kapanawa and Remo –

denominations I have recorded recently. The first one refers to a contemporary

indigenous group living north of this area, and the second to a historical group of

which only few survivors were thought to be left (Iskonawa or Nukini). Both names

have also been reported on a much larger territory, stretching along the Peruvian-

Brazilian border, and comprised between the Ucayali and Juruá rivers. They have

been most widely and most often mentioned, and have been accompanied by the

Mayoruna, Amawaka and various other denominations. Moreover, through the

appearance of the same ethnonyms, territory of Sierra del Divisor proved to be related

with yet larger area that extends beyond the Ucayali-Juruá divide and reaches the

Purus river to the south-east and the Yavarì Mirim River to the north-east.

The Ucayali-Juruá divide forms part of a territory marked by continuous and

almost exclusive presence of the indigenous populations belonging to the Panoan

linguistic family. This family composes the fifth largest in South America, following

the Arawakan, Cariban, Tupian and Gê families, with approximately 30 known

languages and 40-50,000 speakers (Fleck forthcoming). This population inhabits

territories between northern Bolivia, western Brazil and eastern Peru. The largest and

most uniform concentration inhabits the area located between the Ucayali, Jurua,

Purus and Madre de Dios rivers and it is classified in the Nawa group of the Mainline

Branch of the Panoan family (see table 4 and Map 5). Virtually all the groups found

between Ucayali and Juruá or Javari have proved to be Panoans of the Nawa group. It

is therefore very probable that the remaining, unknown groups in the area have also

spoken languages that could be classified as Panoan.

This work investigates the history and identity of Kapanawa and Remo as

interfluvial groups of the Sierra del Divisor and more generally of the Ucayali-Juruá

divide.

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Ethno(nym)history.

The present thesis can effectively be seen as an exercise in the ethnohistorical

analysis. In presenting, organizing and discussing historical sources, I am employing

ethnography and anthropology in two ways. First, I analyze the subject that belongs to

the area explored by ethnography, which is Amerindian identities and their

transformations. As such, it is a study of ethnic complexity in specific time and place.

Secondly, I am applying the anthropological perspective by taking into account the

cultural and subjective factors that might have played part in the production of

sources themselves on one hand, and in making history in the region on the other.

From this angle, it is an attempt in a recently valorized trend of anthropologizing the

historical information.

Sheer nature of the available historical material on the subject determines a

specific character of this argument. Study of historical evidence reveals that names

used in the area towards interfluvial groups are highly problematic. Their usages have

covered vast areas, each has appeared in different spatial and temporal settings, and

identifications have been based on uncertain information similar to the data I found

myself while working on the Ucayali. Although these usages appear to have been of a

social rather than actual ethnic or linguistic character, they have been until now

considered markers of coherent, natural units in the anthropological and linguistic

literature. Furthermore, those names with more general and exogenous character

contrast sharply with the proliferation of local, endogenous denominations or

indigenous identities and histories documented upon initial contact with Occidental

observers, as well as with the histories and internal classifications of contemporary

Panoan ethnic groups. Character of these internal identifications, treated as

subjective, and thus part of a larger, natural and objective unit, has not been the

subject of considerations.

For those reasons – coupled with the lack of reliable material that would allow

tracing historical continuities in these interfluvial, sporadically contacted groups –

history of the actual people that have been called Remo or Kapanawa is highly vague.

So far, no attempt to reconstruct this recent ethnic history of the Sierra del Divisor

and Ucayali-Juruá divide has been undertaken, and neither have its ethnic categories

been organized and analyzed with more attention. In other words, we do not know

what identities and objective affiliations were connected with these names, and the

problematic character of these denominations has not been addressed.

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On one hand, the present thesis cannot be treated as ethnohistory in the

classical sense, in that I do not claim to present a continuous account of historical

developments of particular ethnic entities. Rather, it is an inspection of the basis on

which different people have been identified as Kapanawa or Remo. In this sense, it is a

study in construction of a certain discourse on identities. It illuminates the process of

making ethnohistory in this area.

At the same time, it sets out to contribute to the understanding of historical

ethnic complexity of this particular part of Amazonia. It situates this history of

names against the results of renewed analysis, as the primary goal here is to

systematize data available on the history of groups inhabiting upper portions of

eastern tributaries the Ucayali river, and their actual identities.

Analyzing the history of two groups composing a category known as Middle

Panoans, I intend to contribute to the knowledge on this very little known part of the

Panoan continuum. In speaking of the Panoans (or for the most part, presumably

Panoans), this work is also bound to present conclusions relevant to the

understanding of history, ethnic composition and social logics operating among

Panoans.

Additionally, the analysis helps to understand the ways in which identities are

applied to the contemporary interfluvial groups which still inhabit the whole extension

of the Ucayali-Juruá divide and are currently designated as ‗auto-isolated‘ or

‗remaining in voluntary isolation‘.

Material and method.

The material used in this thesis is composed of sources mentioning the

Kapanawa or Remo name in any of its applications, and published between the

seventeenth century and the most recent years. Sources vary from missionary reports

based on journeys or work in various parts of the Ucayali (they are almost exlusive

source of information for the earliest period), through narratives of, mostly foreign,

travellers who visited the region, to the reports and ethnographies eleborated by

antropologists working in the area. Furthermore, the material is supplemented by the

results of my research on the Ucayali between the years 2005 and 2007.

It is the large territorial extension of Kapanawa and Remo groups or names

that sets territorial boundaries for my analysis. It stretches from the Javari river,

affluent of the Upper Amazon, through all eastern tributaries of entire length of the

Ucayali, through the Upper Javari river to the Purus river. The Sierra del Divisor runs

along the center of the Ucayali-Juruá divide, which is the principal arena for the

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presented history. The time limits are set by first mentions of both names in the

available sources, which is seventeenth century, and the most recent identifications

documented on the Ucayali.

Discussing all the mentions of names, varied geographically and historically as

they are, one is bound to ask if the Kapanawa or Remo designations refered to actual

linguistic, social or cultural connections between the groups they described? The two

chapters of this thesis summarize all the available, published historical data on the

people called Kapanawa and Remo. I have divided the historical mentions of

Kapanawa and Remo presence in any given area or period into principal

spaciotemporal clusters that are presented chronologically, from the first mentions of

a name to the most recent uses. The general question I ask in the process of organizing

data is whether all those Indians characterized as Kapanawa or Remo were actually

closely related with each other to a degree that would justify placing them in a

distinctive ethnic category within the Panoan family. I look for an answer in the final

section of each chapter, by presenting unpublished results of recent linguistic analysis

and tracing the cultural and all other possible connections. These conclusions

represent an approximation to the actual ethnic complexity obscured under each

denomination.

My second question in describing the sources is concerned with the nature of

such identifications whenever they have been applied in any given location and time.

What was the basis of designating particular people with a specific name? As much as

possible, I try to present wider context for the use of each name, attempting to specify

who was the one identifying, and in what historical circumstances, and what type of

information were they based on. Specifically, I consider the cultural background of

those who used the name. I assume it has determined their attitudes and offered a

range of categories for classifing social relations. Some historical background is also

presented in each case, to show the context of relations in which such classifications

were used. I believe they determined the schemes in which relations have been

established and categorized. That is to say, that the new, historically determined

relations might have been constructed and conceptualized based on previous

experience and entailed using social categories already available for similar situations.

By the basis of information, I mean the way in which identifications were established

– does the historical evidence allow us to determine their sources? Specifically, I am

interested in whether they were identities applied a priori, based on the social

categories and experiences of the outsiders and without consideration of – or even

contact with – the designated population, or were they rather formed on the basis of

direct contact with the ones named, their autoidentifications or comparisons with

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other groups of the same name? Conclusions based on such considerations concerning

names themselves in particular cases, are presented in the final section of each

chapter. They offer a view into the ways denominations have been used throughout

history.

Finally, I am interested in the internally perceived identifications of those who

have been denominated with such names. Whenever possible, I present and analyze

these identifications, eventually comparing them with the Panoan material generally.

These internal classifications point to an alternative vision of history and modes of

establishing identity. As such, they hold a potential for illuminating perspectives on

the nature of social groups among populations of the interfluvia. Lack of space and

thematic scope of this thesis will only allow me to offer some conclusions to this type

of material and signal certain aspects of this extremely interesting issue in the

conclusion to this dissertation. It is my intention to further these considerations in

my future work, based on further fieldwork with the Tapiche-Buncuya Kapanawa

population.

Theory.

In organizing the material, I am directed by the most basic conception of a

―group‖ which is funded on the assumption that people speaking related languages are

inherent and unproblematic – in other words, natural – units of analysis (Gow 2002).

This is a heuristic device, which will be employed first to ascertain the geographical,

cultural and linguistic connections that might justify or negate adequacy of using the

Kapanawa, Remo or other names and classifications in reference to discernible

linguistic and ethnic units. It is a process of testing available historical material

against the image of what composes groups according to Occidental perspective and

thus in the traditional ethnography, or in other words, of the Amerindian praxis

against a conception of ethnolinguistic group and the history that leads to its

existence. This aspect of the thesis corresponds with the project of ethnography and

ethnohistory interested in classifying people in groups sharing language, culture and

geographical location. The underlying discourse of such a project is that of genetic or

genealogical interconnections between people, traceable to a common stock. I intend

to find out if Kapanawa and Remo have been ethnic groups in this understanding.

At the same time, analysis of the historical material, along with the content of

autohistories among the living Panoans, allows a glimpse into an alternative

perspective on sociality and ethnogenesis. The Panoan social praxis presents an

evidence that this perspective does not merely compose a folkloristic vision of the past

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and presents differently what is assumed to be objectively and naturally constituted as

history and the genetically related ethnic group. In its investment into certain parts of

the world‘s experience as the natural or given, it structures day-to-day actions of

people who employ this logic (in speaking of the past, for example). Once we realize

the invented character of our notions of nature and history, this Amerindian vision

appears as no less real and objective than our own genetic discourses, and cannot be

set apart from the contemporary ethnic reality or from the historical events. To the

contrary, it has very real consequences by structuring practice of people who conceive

it as natural and real, and act accordingly.

Perceived in such a way, the historical and contemporary information on the

identities actually structured by Panoan social logics allows testing of the very

conception of an ethnolinguistic group and the history that leads to its existence,

against the Amerindian praxis and ideology. Therefore, in the wider context, this

thesis is concerned with the ways of conceptualizing groups and their histories in

Amazonian indigenous reality.

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Map 1. Sierra del Divisor complex, with areas with the most dense evidence of isolated group(-s) presence and the existing and projected Peruvian Reserves (source for the map: www.fallingrain.com) (Krokoszyński et al. 2007).

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Map 2. Outline of the proposed reserves, with local populations and the names, which they currently use in reference to the isolated population.

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Chapter 1. The Kapanawa

1.1. Introduction.

One of the names most commonly used on the Lower Ucayali in reference to

native population of interfluvial zone east of the Lower Ucayali has been Kapanawa.

Presently, the people identified as Kapanawa inhabit large territory stretching along

the right bank of the Middle and Lower Ucayali River, in the elevated areas of upper

parts of the Ucayali‘s tributaries.

Historically, references to the Kapanawa (Capanahua, Capanagua,

Capanana, Kapanaua, Cappa-nahua, Cupanahua, Capachos) have been documented

from the mid-seventeenth century onwards, but only a few times the name did

actually refer to a group that was contacted and described. In the beginning of the

nineteenth century, a Capanagua group had been reduced in a Franciscan mission for

a short time. After its failure, the natives had returned to their original territories and

the next mention of a contact with Kapanawa dates from the early twentieth century.

This leaves the whole century without Kapanawa actual, documented presence on the

Ucayali. At this latter occasion, the people called Kapanawa had been pacified and

made or convinced to stay with the mestizo bosses, and their descendants still live

today on the Tapiche and Buncuya rivers. At the inception of twentieth century, the

Kapanawa Indians had been simultaneously reported in various other parts of

easternmost Peru or westernmost Brazil, but none of those can be identified among

the contemporary Panoan ethnic groups. Apart from the Lower Ucayali, isolated

Kapanawa are currently inhabiting elevated areas east of the Middle Ucayali.

Eventually, the area attributed to Kapanawa groups in different periods thus

stretches over some 500 km from the Upper Purus River in the south-east, through

the Tamaya River to the south west, Lower Ucayali to the north-west and the Javari

River in the north-east, through the Upper Juruá River and the whole stretch of land

east of the Middle Ucayali (see Map 3). This geographical location between the

southern, western and northern blocs of Panoans, has given rise to their classification

13

as Middle Panoans (Pano Medianeros) along with Remo, Marubo, Poyanawa and

other groups (Erikson 1992, 1999) (see Map 5).

This chapter presents all the available, published data on the people called

Kapanawa throughout history and contemporarily. The historical mentions of

Kapanawa presence in any given area and period have been organized into six

principal spaciotemporal clusters in section 1.2. The final section of this chapter (1.3)

summarizes presented information, and analyzes their internal connections.

1.2. The Kapanawa sources and contexts.

1.2.1. The Ucayali River Kapanawa.

First mentions, seventeenth century

The name Kapanawa appeared in the context of missionary work in what was

to become Peru. It was documented by the Jesuit missionaries of the Marañón and

Huallaga rivers in reference to the then little know territory of the Ucayali. Jesuit

activities in the Upper Amazon, an designated as the Maynas date between 1638 and

1767, and concentrated on the Marañón River and its tributaries (see Grohs 1974). An

isolated missionary outpost on the Upper Ucayali was maintained for only a very short

time in late seventeenth century (see Chapter 2).

The earliest mention I have been able to identify comes from a 1654 letter by

Father Raimundo de Santa Cruz to his superior Father Lúcas de la Cueva reporting

attempts to reduce the Mayorunas, as in this context the Cocamas identified people

living in the highlands east from the Huallaga River. It was first discovered in 1653

that the overall hostile Mayorunas or Barbudos who nevertheless sporadically came

to the river bank to trade with mission population, spoke the same language as

members of a ―nacion que vive en Ucayali con los cocamas‖. Two members of this

―nation‖ lived in Santa Marìa de Guallaga mission on the Lower Huallaga River.

Identity of this group is to be deduced from a further notice concerning expedition to

reduce the Barbudos, as da Cruz stated that ―la lengua [of the Mayoruna/Barbudos]

es la misma que la del Chipeo, Cheteo y Capanagua que están en el rìo Ucayali‖

(Figueroa 1986: 213-14). Further information on this ―nation‖ is absent. We could only

affirm that in this context, Capanagua are identified alongside other Panoan groups

whose descendants are contemporarily identified as Shipibo-Konibo, the Chipeo

(Shipibo) and Cheteo (Shetebo). The mention does not, however, give us information

as to the location of these earliest Kapanawas.

14

Similarly, for the year 1661, Father Figueroa reported people identified as

Capanaguas living on the Ucayali, along with Chipanaguas, Chipeos, Cocamas,

Maparinas or Panipas, and Mayorunas (Espinoza 1955: 287).

According to Paul Rivet and Constant Tastevin, the Kapanawa name appeared

on the map elaborated by Jesuit Priest Samuel Fritz in 1691. The population identified

with this name was then located to the north of the enigmatic Avantiu group from the

Upper Javari (or Jaquirana) River (Tastevin 1921: 452).

As far as I am aware, no mentions of Kapanawa were made in connection with

the Franciscan missions of Manoa (Cunshabatay) and Pisquì rivers among the Setebo,

Shipibo and/or Calliseca Indians throughout 1641-1668. This might suggest that

people of this name documented in Jesuit relations were actually located north of the

Cunshabatay River, where Franciscans at that time did not extend their activities.

The Maquía River “nations”, eighteenth century.

In 1790, Father Narciso Girbal y Barceló was the first missionary to have come

to the Ucayali in over thirty years that had passed since the killing of all the Franciscan

missionaries of the Manoa missions in 1766 (see Izaguirre 1922-29; Ortiz 1984;

Steinen 1904). Upon this first visit, he was presented by the locals with a variety of

names that he assumed referred to independent groups found on the Ucayali. Among

the many groups named east of the Ucayali by a Shetebo woman there were the

Capanahuas. All of these groups were said to be very similar, to use bows and

macanas (warclubs) and to be in constant warfare with each other (Izaguirre 1922-29,

8: 161). This was the first documented mention of the Kapanawa name since

seventeenth century.

Having reestablished the Franciscan mission on the Ucayali after coming back

in 1791, this time among the Shetebo Indians gathered on the Sarayacu Stream, Girbal

and his two colleagues B. Marques and A. Dueñas continued to search for other

groups of the Lower Ucayali that would agree to be reduced and evangelized. Those

efforts included Girbal‘s project of locating and reducing groups east of the Ucayali of

which he was told by the Indians from Sarayacu.

In April of 1792 he was planning an expedition to the Nianagas (or Nianaguas

according to Dueñas‘ transcription) who were said to compose a large and peaceful

population living in the upland area 12 leagues (approx. 58 km) east of Sarayacu.

There was one captive Nianga boy living with the Panos who was to serve in

establishing relations with this group (Fuentes 1861: 162-63). The Nianaga area

15

corresponds to the Upper Buncuya River zone, or the feet of the Contaya Hills.

However, no mention is to be found on realization of this project. Instead, we get to

know that in the winter of 1792, Father Girbal had conducted a rather large expedition

on feet, heading into the woodlands of the eastern bank of the Ucayali in search of

upland groups identified as Capanahua by Hipólito Unánue who related Girbal‘s

progressions in Lima. After several days of advancement inland, the group had to

regress without finding any trace of the Capanahua, mainly due to accompanying

Indians‘ fear of the area‘s inhabitants and depletion of provisions (Izaguirre 1922-29,

8: 288).

In February of 1793, Girbal organized another expedition stimulated by the

Maynas Province governor, Francisco Requena. Its goal was to locate and reduce ―las

naciones que están esparcidas por el bosque‖, according to Requena (Izaguirre 1922-

29, 8: 279), and generically named Capanahuas by Unánue (op. cit.: 278).

Additionally, the expedition was to ascertain course of the Maquìa River and its

distance from the sources of the Javari River that marked the Peruvian-Brazilian

border, and thus help to estimate possibility of a Portuguese invasion from this

direction. Significantly, from Jeberos, Requena sent a translator named Antonio Ytaya

(Unanue identifies him as a Pano – we will elaborate on this further) to accompany

Girbal on this journey.

This time the party tried to enter the unknown territory on canoes through the

lake of Cruz Muyuna, at that time called Sahuaya. The high level of water made it

impossible to enter any of the streams that drained into the lake, and the missionary

was forced to return. On entering another canal, Girbal was convinced that he had

found the mouth of the Maquìa River. Even so, he decided to regress without getting

anywhere near the Javari or the Kapanawas, similarly as during the first expedition

because of the Panos‘ fear of the ―cannibal‖ Capanahuas (Izaguirre 1922-29, 8: 270-

288).

The Capanahua were on this occasion characterized as those who ―dan

sepultura en sus vientres a los difuntos‖ (Izaguirre 1922-29, 8: 279), and the

reluctance of Girbal‘s crew to the perspective of meeting with anthropophagous

Indians testifies that they were believed to also eat their enemies‘ flesh. The Panos‘

fear of people characterized as Capanahua was even stronger because they were

believed to be looking for vengeance. Reportedly, some forty years earlier (that is

around 1750) their fathers had conducted a raid against people called Capanahuas

and had taken many captives. Only two of these, captured as children, had still been

alive, and even though considered themselves to be Pano, they accompanied Girbal‘s

expedition as translators or mediators (op. cit.: 286). Evidently, however, there was

16

nobody in the current generation who knew where the fight had taken place, other

then in the ―Maquea‖ area, and none of the crew members knew the way to reach the

Capanahuas. The party had thus taken a mistaken route, and while Girbal was most

probably entering one of the canals between Ucayali and Chunuya River, he thought

he was entering the Maquìa River. The expression of the ―Maquea‖ River (―que corre

Nordeste Suroeste‖), in this context indicated rather the general area of the Maquìa,

Buncuya and possibly Tapiche rivers‘ upper courses.

During the second journey, the inland groups of this territory were identified

by the accompanying Panos as Capanahuas, Manahuas, Sentis ―y otras varias

naciones esparcidas por aquellas dilatadas pampas‖ (op. cit.: 284).

At the same time that Unánue was relating occurrences of the second

expedition, Girbal had already been planning another one. I did not find any further

mentions of such an expedition, as the sources describing developments of the

Sarayacu missions in the following years are increasingly scarcer. However, by 1810,

at the very same area where Girbal was trying to find any of the groups mentioned

earlier, Father Manuel Plaza had contacted and reduced Indians that came to be

known as Sensi.

In another document relating the advancements of missionaries on the

Ucayali, the viceroy of Peru, Francisco Gil de Taboada y Lemos, reported the

information recovered by N. Girbal. In 1796, he was able to state that the Capanaguas

lived between the limits set by rivers Maquea and Unknown, ―situados los primeros á

los 7 grados y 5 minutos como á los 6 segundos‖. This area can be identified as the

upper parts of Maquìa, or its tributary contemporarily denominated Yamìa Stream.

These Indians were reportedly of a ―color de cobre, comun ó general á los indios‖, but

contrarily to the Chipeos and Casibos from the Pachitea River, whose complexion was

notably lighter. The Capanaguas were said to have the ―extraordinaria costumbre de

asar á sus difuntos, y combidando á toda la parentela, reservan la caveza para mayor

banquete en dias posteriores‖ (Gil de Taboada 1859: 136). In this, they thought, ―les

hacen un gran sufragio y beneficio, sus manjares los condimentan con las cenizas‖ (op.

cit.: 134-135). There had been different ―tribes‖ known under the name Capanaguas,

and they were living in houses that were the largest among these used by groups of

these regions, being of two cuadras long and one cuadra wide. Such a house was

occupied by various families, divided by ―socarañon ó division‖. They were said to be a

humane and docile nation (Gil de Taboada 1859: 134-135).

17

The level of detail in these notes goes beyond information provided by Unánue.

Viceroy‘s account was also accompanied by a picture of Capanagua man in a

breechcloth (see Fig. 1). In this situation, we are left with two possibilities. One is that

Girbal managed to find the Kapanawa group east of Ucayali in one of his other

expeditions after 1793 and before 1796, when the report was published, but we find no

mention of missionaries establishing contact with such a group in viceroy‘s account.

This could point to a possibility that this information came either from the captives of

people identified as Kapanawa such as the two men who accompanied Girbal in 1793,

or from the descendants of a generation of Panos who had raided this population.

Buncuya River. First contact, nineteenth century

In 1817, people called Kapanawa were contacted for the first time by the

Franciscan missionaries. The group(s) was (were) identified as Capanahuas, ―also

called Busquipanis‖. Lamentably, the information on this event is extremely scarce

and only of a lexical character. Father M. Plaza, being the missionary who could have

been the one who made the attempt, despite his magnificent role in the Ucayali

Figure 1. Capanagua in Gil de Taboada 1859: 134-135.

18

missionary work, did not leave an account of his missionary activities among the

various groups. Whatever has been written of a contact with Busquipanis seems to

rely on only one secondary source, which B. Izaguirre characterizes as:

Informe que manifesta los progresos de las misiones del rìo Ucayali, desde el año de

1771, en que se dió principio a su restauración, y el estado en que se hallan, con mapa del

verdadero curso de este rìo, según las observaciones hechas en estos últimos años. Noticia

cronológica de la fundación de cada pueblo de estas Misiones, presentada al Secretario de

Estado y del Despacho de Garcia y Justicia de Indias, por el Padre Fray Buenaventura

Bestard, en Madrid 21 de Noviembre de 1819. Su autor Fray Pablo Alonso Carvallo,

Prefecto y Comis. de Misiones (Izaguirre 1922-29, 9: 31)

This document has not been directly available to me. However, as an appendix

to the account of his journey through Peru, Henry L. Maw – not having visited the

Ucayali River himself – has published an ―extract‖ of a report on the Ucayali missions

dated July 1818, which could have only come from Padre Caravallo (and possibly re-

edited in El Peruano with the date June 28th 1826) (Maw 1829: 468-73). D. Ortiz

identifies this missionary as Alonso Carballo, Comisario de Misiones, and an author

of the Mapa de las Misiones copied in 1833, reproduced by Antonio Raimondi (1942

[1862]) and finally by Dionisio Ortiz (Ortiz 1984: 150-51).

Moreover, B. Izaguirre reproduced or edited parts of another version of

Carvallo‘s report, rewritten and added-to by Jerónimo de Leceta and dated 1837,

under the title:

Breve Noticia del Estado de las Misiones de Manoa en la Pampa del Sacramento,

sus progresos y adelantamientos, con un discurso cronológico de sus naciones

bárbaras, rìos, costumbres y el Estado en que se hallaban el año de 1820 (Izaguirre

1922-29, 9: 31).

I assume that Maw‘s version was closest to Carvallo‘s original, as it had not

been additionally edited (as Leceta‘s version by Izaguirre). In it we read of the 1817

Busquipanes:

The Capanahuas, or Busquipanes, are (...) settled to the southward [of the

Mayorunas, ―extending almost to the river Auanacha‖ (Guanache)]: their reduction

was attempted in 1817, but with little or no success, on account of an epidemic that

attacked them immediately on leaving the Ucayali, when they took flight and returned

to their huts (Maw 1829: 468).

And Leceta states:

Los Capanahuas o Busquipanes, a cuya reducción se dió principio el año de 1817,

con poco o ningún fruto por la epidemia que les acometió luego que sacamos algunos a

nuestras misiones, se atemorizaron y se volvieron a sus rancherìas (Izaguirre 1922-29,

9: 41).

19

These two sentences are the only information available on this mission and

actual contact with Kapanawa. The two versions differ as to circumstances of the

reduction. While Maw says the epidemic stroke when they left Ucayali, Leceta

maintains it had happened when Franciscans brought some Kapanawas to their

missions. The whereabouts are missing, and it is not clear whether they had been

taken to Sarayacu or another mission, or whether there was a village prepared closer

to their homeland. The story would make sense if we hypothesized that the

missionaries had taken a few persons to a Ucayali mission (as in Leceta version) and

on their return from there (as in Maw‘s version), they had brought with them the

disease that hit the Kapanawas in their homeland. Of course it is not clear who tried to

reduce them, how many there were, or what the identifications were based on.

Interestingly, a copy of the original Carvallo‘s map reproduced by Ortiz (1984:

150) provides some further information. The Map shows advances of the Franciscan

missionaries of the Ocopa Convent between 1814-1818, and is quite accurate in

comparison with other maps published in the period. The very well outlined Maquìa

River is named rìo Alacran, and the inscription says navegado año 1818. In its upper

part, at the feet of Contaya Hills, there is a village Pto de la Esperanza. Downriver,

there are another two locations or missions, one called Noabus, the other Inosayas

(or Inocayas?). Between the Alacran (Maquìa) and Guanache (Guanache-Buncuya)

rivers we find the inscription Capanahuas N.B. [Nación Barbara] o Busquipanis.

Apart from connecting the Busquipani habitat with a territory of the contemporary

Capanahua group, the map leaves a possibility that the Maquìa locations were in fact

Kapanawa missions. Moreover, the Puerto de la Esperanza location corresponds with

the location of Capanaguas according to Gil de Taboada (7o5‘‘6‘).

The Busquipanes were entirely naked (in contrast to Pano or other groups

wearing cushmas). Both Maw and Leceta mention funeral anthropophagy – in the

words of Maw, ―from a sort of piety [they] eat their deceased parents, smoking and

roasting them in the same manner as they do the animals that they catch in the

woods‖ (Maw 1829: 468). Leceta goes on to add ―y la sangre la beben como nosotros el

vino‖ (Izaguirre 1922-29, 9: 41). Also, both maintain that the Capanahuas were

divided into different ―parties‖, and their language was partly comprehensible for a

Pano speaker.

Further notes of the Kapanawa on Ucayali brought only minor, if any,

contributions to the above information. The scarcity of data evidence that there most

probably wasn‘t a contacted group of Kapanawas ever since the attempt at their

reduction in 1817. It is likely that any information appearing to contribute to

Carvallo‘s sketchy notes came from incidental encounters with people captured on the

20

territory that was assigned to the Kapanawa. Most probably, they had been based on

information gathered from the people called Kapanawa living in Sarayacu as captives.

For example, Sarayacu was visited by William Smyth and Frederick Lowe in

1835. On this occasion, Father Plaza denied that Kapanawa practiced funeral

anthropophagy, as was noted in Carvallo‘s report available to the British through

Maw. They had been told by Plaza that the Capanaguas were not numerous, and did

not use canoes, so although being a ―bold race‖, they were not much feared by the

others. They occupied the territory between the Tapiche River and the ―Sencis

mountains‖, living in constant war with neighbouring Mayoruna and Sencis. Also,

they went quite naked (Smyth and Lowe 1835: 225). Information on the Kapanawa is

absent from the account of Pedro Beltrán who accompanied the British expedition,

apart from the mention of a few slaves living in Sarayacu (Beltrán 1907: 57). It is

worth to point to an important context for this source, which is that these accounts

present much more detailed information on the Sensi. This indicates that this latter

group had much more contact with missionaries and travelers, and their perspective

might have influenced the view of the people called Kapanawas, their neighboring

enemies.

Also Francis de Castelnau who passed through Sarayacu in 1846, evidently

repeated basic information given to him by Father Plaza. He stated that Capanawas

lived to the north of Sarayacu, on the Chana-ao [Chunuya] or Oquanacha [Guanache-

Buncuya] River. They lived mostly in the headwaters, were ferocious and went naked,

as the other groups in this general area, living some 20 leagues east from Sarayacu –

Remos, Pitsobus, Jawabus and Sensis (Castelnau 1850-9, 4: 377). Interestingly,

Castelnau‘s companion on the journey down the Ucayali, Laurent Saint-Cricq (alias

Paul Marcoy) did not mention the Kapanawa at all. Instead, on the territory generally

ascribed to Kapanawa in other sources, bordered by the Yanayacu Canal, he located

two different groups. The Amahuacas lived ―on streams of the Canchahauya [Hills]‖,

north of the Contamana Hills and Sensis habitat, and the Chacayas north of these

hills and between Juanacha [Guanache-Buncuya] and Tapichi [Tapiche] rivers. They

were both very small, and while linguistically related to Shetebo, had intermarried

with the Cocamas (Marcoy 2001: 238, 463-64).

Another mention similar to the previous ones is that of Father F. Pallarés, who

more than 20 years after Smyth and Lowe repeated basic information from Carvallo‘s

report. Curiously though, in his reiteration of all the data from this report, he added

that the Cappa-nahuas painted ―la mitad del cuerpo comenzando desde la cara‖. He

also compared their funeral anthropophagy to that of the Remos, and maintained that

21

their language (dialecto) was ―derivado de la lengua Rema‖ (Izaguirre 1922-29, 9:

202).

The Pallarés‘ report, written between the 1850‘s and 1860‘s, concludes

accounts adding original information of any kind on the Kapanawa in the nineteenth

century on the Lower Ucayali. According to Karl von den Steinen, Olivier Ordinaire

(1887) in the 1880‘s located the Kapanawa on Quebrada Fanache [Guanache-

Buncuya] (Steinen 1904: 22), and in 1901 Francisco Sotomayor was only able to state

that Capanaguas name referred to people living in extreme upper sources of

Juanache [Guanache-Buncuya] and Capanagua [?] rivers. Nothing could be said of

their customs, but the few that were spotted were naked and tattooed. Their

neighbours to the west were the Mayorunas, equally little known, and tattooed ―just

like the Remos‖ (Sotomayor 1901: 176).

1.2.2. The Javari River basin Kapanawa, nineteenth-twentieth century.

At the end of nineteenth century the name Kapanawa appeared in the context

of Peruvian-Brazilian colonization of the Javari River during rubber boom. Their

locations given at this period were distant up to over 200 km from the areas indicated

on Carvallo‘s 1818 map.

Although the first nationals and rubber estates were appearing on the Lower

Javari River in the 1850‘s, its upper parts yet around 1874 were seldom visited by

outsiders for the fear of the hostile natives, and ―those who did venture out onto the

Javari generally traveled no more than three days, and if they went further, did so only

after taking considerable precautions‖ (Matlock 2002: 102).

In 1866, the first joint Peruvian-Brazilian boundary commission navigated this

river to chart its actual flow and thus the borderline between the two countries. The

commission was accompanied by a Lower Javari native, a Ticuna man. It was

apparently based on his information that they affirmed having entered the Mayoruna

territory upon passing the mouth of the Yavarì Mirim River. Much further, a little

upriver from the mouth of Paissandu or Batã River, they were attacked by unknown

natives. One of the members was killed, many others wounded. The attackers were

assumed to be Mayorunas (Matlock 2002: 87-88; Melatti 1981: 17). According to J.

Matlock, also members of the second boundary commission in 1874 were ambushed

by Indians as well, farther upriver from the previous expedition, some 50 miles (80

km) from the mouth of the Batã River. They couldn‘t specify identity of their attackers.

The third, and last, official expedition in 1897 reached the headwaters of Javari-

22

Jaquirana. They also reported encounters with natives in the same area of the Upper

Jaquirana (Gomes 1897). There was no military conflicts on the Javari as there were

on the Juruá River, and the final agreement on the Peruvian-Brazilian borders on the

Javari was ratified in 1910 (Matlock 2002: 92).

According to the historical sources consulted by J. Matlock, major influx of

settlers into the Upper Javari and the Jaquirana River can be dated between 1874 and

1897, that is between the second joint Peruvian-Brazilian boundary commission and

the third one. By the 1897 commission, Jaquirana River had already been occupied by

rubber gatherers, mostly Quechua-speaking Peruvians:

Toda a população que hoje occupa os valles dos rios «Jaquirana», «Bathan» e

grande parte do «Ipixuna» e dos seus affluentes, já em numero superior a 5.000

pessoas, é de origem peruana, fallam, em geral, a lingua «Quichúa» (...), e máo

hespanhol, que só fallam os patrões com agentes das casas fornecedoras de Iquitos.

Todos trabalham com pessoal vindo do Perú, em geral indios já domesticados

da tribu dos «Chamacôcos», e com aquelles que, em suas correrias colhem das malócas

das tribus dos «Rhemus» e «Capanánas» (Gomes 1898: 248).

Matlock presents further details on the ethnic composition of the colonist

population. One of the first patrons on the Jaquirana was José Encarna or José

Encarnación Rojas. Himself a Campa, Cocama or Cocamilla Indian from the Huallaga

River, raised by the Encarna (mestizo) family, he had brought with him workers from

the Huallaga and Cashiboya rivers, establishing a rubber estate on the Jaquirana

about 1897. According to some sources, he was in charge of some 400 Campa Indians,

and there were also local natives who had been working for him, as stated in the above

citation. Rojas took native woman from the Choba Stream (the Gálvez River affluent)

as a wife and maintained relations of trade with local natives (Matlock 2002: 107-

109).

Such a population was thus composed out of the Huallaga inhabitants – that is

of the Cocama or Cocamilla substrate, or as Gomes has it, Chamacôcos (the name

could either refer to Chamicuros from Maynas or to Chamas substrate, as the Ucayli

riverine groups were generically and derisively called), and less probably Campa – and

settlers from the Cashiboya, whose population had in the 1860‘s been composed of

Sarayacu Indians – mostly Shetebo (Izaguirre 1922-29, 9: 254-264), though later, in

the twentieth century, there were Campas reported on this river (see Oppenheim

1936b: 148). Most likely, influx of these Peruvian workers on the Jaquirana was

primarily through a route leading from the Ucayali River through the Tapiche and

Blanco rivers and further the Lobo Stream and a varadero leading to Seis Soles

settlement on Jaquirana.

23

At the time of his visit in 1901, C. Satchell estimated number of nationals on

the Javari at 3,000 and although he affirmed that rubber-gathering was ―practically

the sole industry‖, he had the impression that it was already decaying (Satchell 1903:

438). This however is not confirmed by other sources. In 1908 H. Fuentes listed 55

rubber estates on the Peruvian side of the Javari alone and noted one of the highest

levels of commerce in Loreto for 1905. At this date he also pointed to the steady

increase in the number of boats that cruised between the Javari River and Iquitos, so

that communication was mainly by river, and portages had been neglected and only of

marginal importance in transport (Fuentes 1908: 147-49). Moreover, despite the fall

of rubber prices that begun in 1911, and the eventual collapse of the rubber industry by

1912, its collection continued locally throughout the second decade of nineteenth

century. It was only by the 1920‘s that most rubber workers had left areas of extraction

such as the Javari River (San Román 1994: 143; Matlock 2002: 98).

By 1903, the rubber industry has also been well established on the Blanco

River (affluent of the Tapiche River), whose headwaters approximate those of the

Jaquirana. Steamboats reached its upper course up to the largest concentration of

rubber workers called Capanagua, and there was communication between the Blanco

and Jaquirana rivers (Izaguirre 1922-29, 12: 204). In 1901 there was a route from the

Blanco River through Loboyacu Stream and six hours by land to the town of Seis Soles

on Jaquirana, situated a little downriver from Batã River, and by 1909 there were two

roads connecting Blanco and Jaquirana (Matlock 2002: 106-107).

Differing methods required for extraction of two types of rubber collected in

the area implied different modes of relating to the territory – and obviously, to its

inhabitants. As in other areas claimed by both Peru and Brazil, Peruvians were

generally interested in extracting caucho or Castilloa elastica. It demanded felling

trees that grow in higher altitudes and interfluvial areas. The caucheros mostly

worked alone and after extracting the caucho in any given area, they were forced to

move further into another territory. On the other hand, the Brazilians specialized in

extracting rubber from the shiringa or Hevea brasiliensis that prefers flood plains of

the rivers. Its sap was gathered by continuously tapping sets of trees for longer periods

of time, without cutting it. Therefore, while the Peruvians swept over vast territories

for a short time and were in constant movement, the Brazilian shiringa workers

settled in certain location for longer time, often with their families. Various sources

indicate that in being the first to exploit new territory, Peruvian caucheros were also

the most infamous in their interactions with the indigenous inhabitants of the selva,

and violently ―pacified‖ areas into which later entered shiringueros (San Román 1994;

Matlock 2002).

24

In this context, the Kapanawa were first mentioned in written sources by

leader of the 1897 Boundary Commision. Information on the local natives of the

Jaquirana River presented by Gomes was recovered from the Peruvian rubber

collectors working in the area. They composed mostly migrants from the

Marañón/Huallaga and Ucayali rivers. At that time they have identified only two

groups on the Jaquirana, the Rhemus and the Capananas.

These Kapanawa had been described as the indios ferozes, whom Gomes

believed to be the Mangeronas or Mayusunas referred to in earlier reports from the

Upper Javari ―pelo seu estado de salvageria, usos y costumes‖. It was the Capananas

who were said to be the only inhabitants of the Gálvez River valley. The group was also

said to have exclusively occupied the right bank of Jaquirana from the mouth of the

Gálvez to the Bathan (Batã) River, and further upriver on both sides of the Jaquirana

to its very headwaters (Gomes 1898: 252).

Gomes‘ expedition did not experience any violent encounters with the

Capananas, despite their fighting reputation among the settlers, but its members felt

having been watched by the Kapanawas on their way up to the sources of Jaquirana,

and the one approaching Kapanawa had been scared off with a shot in the air.

Although the descriptions of Capanana and Rhemu cultural and social features are

relatively detailed, their direct source is left unspecified in Gomes‘ account. The only

direct contact with a Capanana expressly stated by Gomes was that with a native

woman, presumably one of the Peruvian settlers‘ captives (op. cit.: 253).

The Capananas were of lighter complexion (some almost ―white‖) in

comparison with their enemies and neighbors, the Rhemus, and they were described

as the more robust and stronger. Their heads were deformed artificially in the infancy

―com talas de madeira, dando a ella, pelo uso continuo deste apparelho, a fórma de um

chapéo armado‖ (op. cit.: 253). This cranial compression was applied to both men and

women, though in the opposite direction according to sex. In contrast to the Rhemus,

the Kapanawas did not paint or tattoo their bodies, and neither were any facial

perforations reported to Gomes.

The Capananas were brave and courageous in combat, fighting with lances

and tacapy, while the bow was only used for fishing and hunting. They were said to

eat their enemies‘ bodies (whom they killed ―sem piedade, fazendo as maiores

atrocidades‖) during cannibal feasts, and had a special predilection for the ―civilized

man‘s‖ meat. Their victims‘ ears, teeth etc. were made into war trophies, and

sometimes a head was guarded in front of the longhouse, stuck on the killer‘s lance.

Apart from that, they were also said to consume their deceased kin (op. cit.: 253-54).

25

Gomes maintained that marriage among Capananas was established between

adults based on their mutual inclination, and not in infancy as among the Rhemus,

and it didn‘t involve much ceremony except for the Curáca‘s (the chief) acceptance.

Only four years later, in 1901, the Bolivian Boundary Commision had

navigated the Javari River up to its source. On this occasion, C. Satchell, member of

the expedition, noted significantly that ―no trustworthy reports as the numbers of

‗savages‘ could be obtained‖. He wrote down it appeared that those on the right bank

of Javari were known as Rhemus, while those on the left, or Peruvian, side were

Mayus and Capanaguas. This expedition did not encounter any of these Indians, who

had been ―driven away from the banks of the river by the Peruvians and Brazilians

who have gone there in search of rubber‖ (Satchell 1903: 438). However, the

commission stopped at a place located at latitude 6°35', where a few days before, all 17

of its inhabitants were killed by Indians called Mayus. This latitude indicates a point

on the Javari a few miles downriver from the place on Satchell‘s map called Bolognesi,

near the mouth of Batã River (Satchell 1903: 438).

A few years later, in 1908, Hildebrando Fuentes has gathered information

according to which the groups of the Javari River were the Cupanahuas along with

Catuquinas, Nayarcus and ―algunos Cocamas‖ (Fuentes 1908: 161).

In 1904 Father Agustìn López (founder of Requena and an active missionary of

the Lower Ucayali River) went on a journey to the Blanco River of the Tapiche.

Although no contact was at that time established with the natives, López documented

signs of presence of the Indians locally called Kapanawa, dating only few years before

his visit. First, he wrote down in his diary, that in the middle course of the river the

locals indicated a place called España, where in 1899 the Cahuapanas [sic!

Capanahuas?]2 killed 18 shiringueros, including two Spaniards (Izagurre 1922-29, 12:

196). This location most likely corresponds to a small right affluent of the Blanco

River, called España Stream on Peruvian national maps.

Further upriver, at a point called Ayacucho, where López got two days before

reaching the mouth of the Tambo River on the Blanco, the missionary noted that in

this location formerly lived the infieles Capanahuas, but had been scared off by the

rubber collectors. Their fields could still be seen at a short distance (op. cit.: 198).

Also, the most important settlement on the Blanco River connected with the rubber

tapping was named Capanagua. In fact, Julian Steward and Alfred Métraux

maintained that rubber workers had actually called the Upper rìo Blanco with the

name Capanawa (Steward & Métraux 1948: 564).

2 Cahuapanas is another ethnic name from the Marañón and Huallaga Rivers‘ context.

26

By 1926, a Brazilian medic João Braulino de Carvalho working on the Javari,

concluded that Indians called Capanaua were located on the Igarapé dos Lobos (that

is, a right tributary of the Lower Jaquirana, also called Lobu or Lobo Stream), and on

the right bank of Jaquirana, from the mouth of the Gálvez River to the Lontananza

settlement (Carvalho 1931: 252). At this point, national locals of the Jaquirana

identified other neighboring groups as the Mayus, Remus and Marubius.

Kenneth Grubb, without specifying his sources, designated as the Kapanawa

habitat territory extending even further into Brazil. He maintained they occupied the

Pardo River (right tributary of the Curuça River), and connected them with the

population of the headwaters of rivers between the Alacrán or Maquìa River and the

Javari (Grubb 1927: 83-84).

This is the last published source I have been able to find so far to identify any

Jaquirana group as Kapanawa. This situation might be connected with the fact that

decline in the rubber prices had eventually led to a virtual abandonment of the

Jaquirana River basin by nationals. Apparently, however, the Lower Ucayali mestizos

continued to identify groups of the area as the Kapanawas, Remos or Mayorunas. In

March of 1954, Eugene Loos and Bob Wacker, the Summer Institute of Linguistics

(SIL) members traveled to the Blanco River in search of the Indians called Mayoruna

on the Lower Ucayali. They trekked over territory later identified as inhabited by the

Matses. They found ―nothing except rumors of where the Mayorunas lived, but

learned of the Capanahuas‖ (Loos 1968). In 1963, another SIL missionary, Harriet

Fields, recovered information on a Jaquirana group from a mestizo woman who left

the group after 16 years of living with them as a captive (Matlock 2002: 171-72). These

people were identified as Mayorunas or Capanahuas salvajes, that is, ‖wild

Kapanawa‖ (Fields 1963 in: Erikson 1994: 17). This proves that on the Lower Ucayali

and perhaps the Jaquirana itself, Indians called Kapanawa were still thought to be

living on the Upper Jaquirana (and its tributary, the Gálvez River).3 A few years later,

the group has been contacted by H. Fields and H. Kneeland and denominated

Mayoruna. Since S. Romanoff‘s ethnography (1984), this group is most often called

Matses, and continues to live on the Gálvez River.

3 I have recorded two mentions of the Kapanawa that seem to be used in a similar context. One was

related to me by a middle Ucayali informant. He was acquainted with an old mestizo who used to recount

the times when there were patrones (presumably on the lower Ucayali?) working with both the ―civilized‖

Kapanawas and the ―wild‖ Kapanawas. More recently, another informant recalled having seen tattooed

individuals in Requena that were said to be the Kapanawa Indians. Both of these mentions seem to refer

to population other than the Kapanawa from the Buncuya and Tapiche Rivers, possibly the Matses.

27

1.2.3. The Juruá – Purus Kapanawa.

About the same time that Kapanawa groups were first reported for the Javari

River, they have simultaneously been identified in a very distant location, up to over

500 km to the south-east, in the area comprised between the Upper Juruá and Upper

Purus rivers.

Until the last decades of the 1800‘s, this territory had been little explored by

nationals either from Peru and Brazil (or Bolivia, to which the area officially belonged

at that time), and only rarely did explorers reach the upper sources of these rivers or

their tributaries. O. Calavia Sáez argues that historical sources point to Konibo

presence on the Juruá River before and during the rubber boom, and maintains that

the portages linking the Ucayali with the Juruá and the Purus were used by them long

before they were exploited by the nationals. According to Castello Branco that Calavia

refers to, João da Cunha Corrêa navigated the Juruá around 1854 and came into

contact with a group of Nawas called Capanawas on the Upper Juruá River. They had

recently been attacked "pelos Jaminawa e Cunibo" (Calavia 1995). This seems to be

the earliest mention of Kapanawa on the Juruá. Nevertheless, it was not until the flow

of nationals into the headwaters stimulated by the ―black gold‖ that various names of

local indigenous groups had been documented. In this early context one often finds

Kapanawa among the multitude of other ethnonyms.

Although the Brazilian migration into territory of the current State of Acre

dates from the mid-nineteenth century, the massive influx to the upper course of

Juruá did not begin until the rubber boom, when both Brazilians and Peruvians begun

to occupy and exploit this region in the 1890‘s. According to C. Tastevin, Brazilian

settlers reached the Taraucá River by 1881, and the Ipixuna River in 1889. By 1900

there was no point on the Juruá left unexplored, unoccupied and unowned, and no

river or stream that hasn‘t been navigated to its sources (Tastevin 1920: 135). Claims

over this territory on both sides soon escalated to violent conflicts on the Amonea

River (a tributary of Upper Juruá) in 1902 and on Purus River in 1903. Eventually, the

borders were established in their current shape in 1909 (Deleage 2005: 29).

In 1898, population of the Upper Juruá was estimated at 1000 Peruvians and

6000 Brazilians, while there were 2000 Peruvians and 3500 Brazilians on the Purus

River (Deleage 2005: 28). By 1908, Peruvian population of the (Upper) Juruá was

calculated at 600 men, with some Chamas, Amahuacas and Campas (Fuentes 1908).

Communication with the Ucayali was maintained by portages, among which the most

important were: connection between the Tapiche and the Javari and further the Juruá

28

rivers through the Ipixuna River; between the Abujao River (of the Ucayali) and the

Juruá Mirim River (of the Juruá); the Tamaya River and the Juruá; and the Sepahua

River and the Purus.

By 1919 when the rubber boom was at its terminal phase, Tastevin maintained

that the castilloa was all but exhausted by Peruvian workers in the upper parts of the

Juruá‘s tributaries (Tastevin 1919: 133). For this reason, the area was again left

unexplored by nationals and retaken by the hostile natives identified as Jaminauas.

José Castello Branco maintains that at the end of nineteenth century, or the

time of the Juruá River‘s conquest by Brazilians, Indians known as Capanauas were

living in rubber estates or seringais named Jaburu, Paratari, Triunfo e Cachoeira

(1950: 10), which could be identified as the Upper Juruá, between its tributaries Rio

das Minas and Amonea River. According to a report written by G. T. de Azevedo in

1905, villages of the Capanauás were located in the neighborhood of those of

Aninauás and Bocas Pretas, on the right bank of Upper Embira River (right tributary

of the Juruá River) (op. cit.: 15). Between the years 1905-06, the Capanauás were

reported on the Taraucá River by a military Luis Sombra (op. cit.: 23).

According to Manuel P. Villanueva‘s account (1902 in: Fuentes 1908: 140; see

also Erikson 1993: 100), the most important ―savages‖ of the Juruá River, living in the

headwaters of the Breu River (a right tributary of the Juruá River) were the

Capanaguas. They shaved their heads entirely. Three years later, Jorge von Hassel

must have combined all the information available at that time when he maintained

that the Capanahuas lived in the headwaters of the Tapiche, Blanco, and Javari rivers,

but also ―in the area of the Juruá River‖. He estimated their population at 3,000

people, divided into subtribes with distinct names. According to his information,

Kapanawas used bows and shaved their heads completely, sometimes leaving only a

bit of hair on the top of the head, and this last information suggests that the

description refers to the Kapanawa from the Juruá area (Hassel 1905: 37).

In 1911, M. Linhares listed the Capanauás as one of the groups inhabiting the

Upper Embira along with Caxinauás, Jaminauás, Curinas, Catuquinas, Aninauás

and Ararauás (Branco 1950: 23).

Father Constant Tastevin of Congregation of the Holy Spirit, who traveled

various times through the Juruá River and its affluents between 1905 and 1926, listed

the Capanawas (also spelled Capanaua, Kapanawas and Kapanáuas) among Indian

groups inhabiting this river‘s basin. The different locations of these Indians given by

French missionary were generally concentrated on the right bank of the Upper Juruá

River. In 1919, he noted that their territory was comprised between the Upper

Liberdade and Upper Juruá River, were they lived along with the Chipinawas

29

(Tastevin 1919: 146). Furthermore, they were identified among the groups catechised

by the Brazilian Government‘s agents between the Amôacas [cont. Humaitá River,

right tributary of the Upper Juruá] and Natal rivers, along with the Sipinawas,

Amauakas, and Jaminawas (op. cit.: 149). In 1920, Tastevin situated ―survivors‖ of

the Capanauas, Chipinauas, and Amôacas on the right bank of the Amoácas River

(Tastevin 1920: 133). Coffaci de Lima (1994: 21) reports that Kapanawa name has

been identified by Tastevin among the many groups known collectively as Katukina

(Panoan) (Tastevin 1921). Between 1919 and 1922, Tastevin left notes concerning the

shiringal Acuarana on the Juruá, but this source is not available to me, and because O.

Calavia Sáez who cites it (1995) does not provide any additional information, I am

unable to specify what area the note refers to. In the proximity of the mentioned estate

(?) there were the Colina and Capanaua on the right, and on the left, the Caxinaua

and Katukina. The ―hardworking‖ Capanaua (presumably with patrons), were

exterminated by Kolina. Tastevin‘s work does not bring any substantial information

on the Kapanawa of this area, and the only first-hand information concerning

Kapanáuas I was able to find is anecdotic to say the least, and refers to a woman who

married to a white man and had never accustomed to eating salt, as it was not known

to these Indians before contact with nationals (Tastevin 1919: 150).

To the above sources I can only add information compiled by J. Steward and A.

Métraux, according to which the Kapanawas lived:

near the headwaters of the Tejo, Gregorio, Libertade, and Breu rivers, between Sao Pao

and Capoeira rivers, tributaries of the Upper Jurua, and around the headwaters of the

Envira River (lat. 6° S., long. 74° W.) (Steward & Métraux 1948: 564).

There is little information of the various Kapanawa, as well as other among the

variety of groups enumerated in passing in these sources. Among the general group

names of this region in which context were mentioned the Kapanawa (all sometimes

designated as Nawa), there were the Katukina, Kashinawa, Yaminawa, Yawanawa

(which are still in use today in reference to specific ethnic units), and the Contanaua,

Araraua, Paranaua, Chipinawa (without contemporary referents). In this context,

the Nawa identity seems to had been applied to various groups living on both sides of

the Upper Juruá River (starting from the Môa and further upriver) (Blanco 1950,

Tastevin 1919). The indigenous population in the Juruá-Purus area was therefore

defined by a multitude of names enumerated for any given location and the

reappearance of similar configurations in other places. One of these had been

Kapanawa.

30

1.2.4. The Môa River Kapanawa, twentieth century.

In 1924 on one of his journeys, Father Tastevin learned of the ―totemic name‖

of the Nawa group that lived on both sides of the Juruá River in the vicinity of the Môa

River‘s mouth, and especially on the location of current town Cruzeiro do Sul before

the nationals came into the area. The Kapanaua ―clan‖ lived in this region before and

was either killed off or migrated to Peru, on ―the other side of the Contamana Hills‖. A

woman named Marurini was their sole descendant, and came to see Tastevin from the

Upper Môa River. She was born in the same place were the town was, and her father

belonged to the Kapanawa clan, while her mother has been kidnapped by Kapanawa

from Canamari (Katukina) at the mouth of the Pixuma River. Tastevin gathered a

word list and took a photograph of the Nawa/Kapanawa woman, but neither was ever

published and is not available to me4 (Tastevin 1924: 424).

Castello Branco also made similar note concerning Capanauas on the Môa. He

maintained that such a group lived on the banks of this river and also between the

Javari and the Tapiche rivers. They were called Nauas when they had been scattered

on the Juruá River (1950: 28). Although this information echoes data provided by

Tastevin, it does present the original data on the location. Unfortunately, Branco did

not name the source where his information came from.

The Môa River was in this early period mostly associated with the Inokuinins

(Linhares 1913 in: Correia 2005b, Montagner 2002, Rivet and Tastevin 1921) or the

Nukini Indians (Tastevin 1919, 1920, 1924) in its upper parts, and the

Kuyanawa/Cuyanawa or Poyanawa reduced on the Lower Môa (1919, 1920, 1924).

Among inhabitants of the Môa River themselves, Delvair Montagner has more

recently recovered oral histories according to which the Indians called Kapanáwa

(along with Sáninawa and Sipináwa) have been living in the Môa basin. The

Kapanáwa specifically had been living in the headwaters of a left tributary of the Môa,

the Capanaua Stream, where they were contacted by the ―pacificator‖ of Indians of

native descent, speaking a couple of Panoan languages, named José (Zé) de Souza, at

an unspecified date (Montagner 2002: 113).

According to Latvian geologist Victor Oppenheim, upper parts of Rio Azul

(right tributary of the Môa River) had been also occupied by the cashinauas in 1936

(Oppenheim 1936b: 147-48). In another article, Oppenheim reported that during his

expedition, natives identified as Cashinauas were living in one of the most important

estates on the Upper Môa at that time, called Republica, presently a community of

4 The Tastevin manuscripts are currently located in Paul Rivet‘s archives in Paris.

31

Indians known as Nukini. It seems that Cashinaua old campgrounds were to be found

on the Upper Azul River (Oppenheim 1971: 156, 162).

Today, the native population of the Môa River is characterized as Nukini

Indians (see Chapter 2) and descendants of a native group of undefined identity,

designated today as Nawa (Montagner 2002; Correia 2005a).

1.2.5. The Sierra del Divisor Kapanawa, twenty-first century.

Between the years 2005 and 2007 I have conducted research on the isolated

groups of the Sierra del Divisor area (also called Contamana Hills on some maps) in

eastern Peru. Previous to the research expedition, reports of presence of uncontacted

Indians called Kapanawa by Shipibo-Konibo had been documented by members of the

local indigenous organization FECONBU (Federación de Comunidades Nativas del

Bajo Ucayali) east of the Middle Ucayali (unpublished report), and especially on the

former Cashiboya River‘s right tributary (now draining directly into the Ucayali River)

the Sinuya Stream. The two joint AIDESEP-UAM expeditions were to investigate

traces of this unknown interfluvial group among locals living in the area and provide

evidence for its presence. This material was to be used by AIDESEP (Asociación

Interétnica del Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana) as an argument for creation of a

protected area designated initially as Reserva Territorial Kapanawa5, stretching

between the Upper Callerìa River, the Sinuya Stream and the headwaters of the

Maquìa and Buncuya rivers. Detailed results of this study have been presented in

Krokoszyński, Stoińska-Kairska and Martyniak (2007).

To the south-east, the area is bordered by the already existing Reserva

Territorial Isconahua, inhabited by an isolatated population designated with a name

of a small Iskobákëbu group contacted in the territory comprised by the current

reserve in 1959 (see Chapter 2.). To the north-east streches another area proposed as

reserve for uncontacted Indians (Reserva Tapiche-Yaquerana), and further east runs

the Brazilian border with the Serra do Divisor National Park and uncontacted Indians

locally called Nawa or Iskonawa.

The population inhabiting on the banks of Ucayali and its tributaries was the

source of information on the aislados for our expedition. It is composed mostly by the

Panoan Shipibo-Konibo, concentrated in various comunidades nativas on the Ucayali.

Also, there are the Peruvian mestizos of different proveniences, scattered in small

5 Later the proposition has been renamed to Reserva Territorial Maquìa-Callerìa.

32

villages along the Ucayali and towns such as Pucallpa, Contamana or Orellana.

Further downriver one finds the Capanahua Indians living in communities on the

Upper Buncuya River and Upper Tapiche (see below). Due to a curve made by the

Lower Ucayali, territories used by this group collide with the area occupied by the

isolated Indians of the area under study. Apart from the locals, we have interviewed or

had contact with seasonal workers in the area of research such as commercial hunters,

fishermen, lumbermen and oil company‘s workers.

During almost four months of research, the expedition recovered numerous

accounts concerning mostly indirect contacts with the aislados. However, the

unknown Indians have almost always been designated in different ways depending on

the background of the interviewee, and the most popular denomination in use in the

given location. The uncontacted natives are called Kapanawas most of all on the

Middle Ucayali, downriver from Callerìa River to the town of Contamana, and

sporadically Lower on the Ucayali, for example in the Canchahuaya village. Those who

most often use the name exclusively are the Shipibo-Konibo. Along with this

identification, they have sometimes characterized the isolated population as Remo(-

bo), Remonawa, or Amawaka. The name is also quite popular with the mestizos in

the same zone, although many of them call the uncontacted Indians with names such

as Cashibo or Campa. On the Callerìa River, the Shipibo most often simply call the

natives inábo (Ship. ―savage‖) or refer to them as familiares of the Iskonawa. Map 2

presents locally prevailing names given by the riverine population to the backwoods

Indians during our research.

The Shipibo-Konibo who maintained that the isolated Indians were Kapanawa

often connected them with people from Tapiche River, arguing that it is possible to

cross from the Upper Tapiche to the Callerìa River or Sinuya Stream by land.

Wherever this identification prevailed, the Kapanawa were thought by Shipibo to live

in the Sierra del Divisor and cross from the Tapiche River to the Callerìa for a couple

of generations back. Also, some of those who had been to the Lower Ucayali or met

people from this area, referred to the Kapanawa salvajes in the past and recently.

Moreover, the Shipibo from the Sinuya Stream identified as Kapanawa a group

contacted by SAM in 1959 and living on the Callerìa River (actually now called

Iskonawa).

The Kapanawa met by one of our informants in the 1980‘s wore long hair,

beards and bows, which was confirmed by several others who spotted the Indians

from distance. There was no mutual intelligibility between a Shipibo man and the

Kapanawa individuals. The description of a maloca found on Kapanawa territory

corresponds to those of other Panoans.

33

Apart from such descriptions, we were told on various occasions that the

Kapanawas are skilled in sorcery (secretos) which can be used for hunting and

warfare, and for this reason they are feared by locals. In fact, headaches and fever

experienced by some members of our expedition to the Kapanawa territory have been

interpreted as caused by the demonios of Indians whose recent presence in the same

locale has been evidenced.

In speaking abstractly of the Kapanawas, informants envisioned them as

wearing long hair, being robust and of tremendous height, having especially large feet,

and expert in walking the forest for long distances. Also, they were said not to eat

cooked meat, not to grow crops or raise animals nor build permanent houses.

1.2.6. The Maquia-Buncuya and Tapiche rivers Kapanawas, twentieth-twenty-first century.

Currently the only known population designated as Kapanawa (Capanahua) in

the literature and in the Peruvian reality inhabits the upper parts of Buncuya and

Tapiche rivers, as well as mestizo towns at their lower courses such as Tamanco or

Requena. It is reasonable to assume that mentions of the Kapanawa Indians on

Tapiche or Buncuya rivers dating from the beginning of twentieth century refer to this

social formation.

In 1913 Father A. López reported that there had been two missionary

expeditions to the Capanaguas between 1908 and 1909. He described those Indians

as ―savages inhabiting the headwaters of the River Tapiche‖. Franciscans found it

impossible to settle permanently among the Capanaguas ―on account of it not suiting

a certain employer‖, despite the Indians‘ eagerness to construct house and chapel for

the Franciscans. On this occasion, however, majority of the native inhabitants had

been baptized. They were to be visited regularly by Requena missionaries from then

on (López 1913: 210). This account is possibly the first published report referring to

the contemporary Kapanawa. It also bears testimony to the fact that by the end of the

first decade of twentieth century, the Tapiche native population identified as

Kapanawa had begun to gather around the bosses.

Yet by 1924, López informed B. Izaguirre that the people connected with

Capanaguas could be found in a much larger area. They were said to occupy

highlands starting at the height of around four days of travel up the Maquìa River and

extending to the river‘s sources and further to the Tapiche River headwaters (Izaguirre

1922-29, 8: 176).

34

At that time, López maintained that the Kapanawas shared this territory with

some isolated Indians identified as possible Sensi, with whom evidently they did not

maintain permanent contact and who did not compose part of the population

gathered with patrones. About the same time, missionaries from Requena told G.

Tessmann that the Tapiche Kapanawa talked of the isolated Indians (Sensis according

to the Franciscans) whom they simply called Mananahuas, ―people of the forest‖

(actually ―of the highlands‖) living on an affluent of the Maquìa River (Tessmann

1999: 109). My Buncuya River informant reported that her father, a Kapanawa man

who came to the Buncuya with his parents to avoid the Shipibo-Konibo-Shetebo raids

in the first decades of the twentieth century, told her of two groups of ―uncontacted‖

Indians living in the headwaters of Buncuya. The man, a Shahuaibáquebo Kapanawa

talked of them as the Remo(-auca) and Cashibo and was able to communicate with

them.

German ethnographer Günter Tessmann during his visits to the Ucayali

between 1923-25 did not visit Kapanawa personally. However, he delegated Dr. H.

Bassler to the Upper Tapiche to gather information on the native population. The

River was thought to be their habitat for many generations, and because of local

toponymy, Tessmann suspected the Kapanawa had also lived on the Blanco River (this

Tapiche affluent has supposedly been calld Capanahua in the past). It appeared that

this ―tribe‖, never before very large, has been dispersed during the rubber boom and

decimated by raids organized by the ―neighboring tribes‖. By the 1920‘s, Tessmann

estimated their number at a few hundreds. All were already ―civilized‖ and lived with

a boss on the Upper Tapiche River, but the author did not exclude a possibility that

there were independent members of the ―tribe‖ in unexplored parts of the region.

Bassler brought with him several Kapanawa artifacts, among them a large

spiked club, drum made of a hollowed tree trunk and a feathered headdress. However,

he was left with the impression that despite their separation from national population,

they were ―under such an influence of civilization that it can be supposed they will

disappear within a short time‖. For reasons unknown, he compiled a Kapanawa word

list (estimated as very similar to Shipibo-Konibo by Tessmann) only from a

Kapanawa-speaking boss (Tessmann 1999: 91).

In context of the above affirmation, it is surprising to find an opinion stated

only a decade later by a Latvian geologist working for Brazilian government – V.

Oppenheim – that the Capanauas ―live in complete liberty and independence of the

civilized people. Of all the tribes of the ‗Panos‘ race that we met, the Capanauas left the

best impression of vitality‖ (Oppenheim 1936a: 10-11; see Oppenheim 1936b: 152).

35

Despite their ―development‖ by contact with ―civilization‖, the traveler reported that

they still maintained their customs (Oppenheim 1936b: 152).

Oppenheim found the Kapanawa Indians during his 1935 research expedition

that made its way from the Juruá to the Ucayali rivers through the Môa and Tapiche

rivers. The most elaborate description of this encounter is to be found in his

unpublished manuscript (1995). After crossing the five large rapids on the Upper

Tapiche River, Oppenheim‘s expedition saw a ―large group of naked Indians – men,

women and children – fishing off a sandbar‖ (op. cit.: 293). Upon noticing the

strangers, the group disappeared into the jungle. The Poyanawa man who

accompanied Oppenheim pursued these people and managed to communicate with

them ―in the Pano language‖ (op. cit.: 294). He understood them well and convinced

them to approach, which some of them did with distrust. They were completetly naked

and painted with red and black vertical stripes along their bodies, carrying bows and

bunches of long arrows. The man who presented himself as a tuchaua (chief) of this

group was named Picue and was accompanied by three wives. He maintained his

group was large but was unable to give any numbers. Oppenheim says they were the

Capanaua Indians and had their dwellings inland. They were ―rather well built and

light colored‖, and the facial tattoo was similar to that of a Poyanawa man, in that

lines were departing from corners of the mouth to the ears, but the cross-lines were

different (op. cit.: 295).6

The author was told that there were more Capanaua not too far downstream,

but beyond a certain point they did not venture for fear of the Mayu Indians‘ attacks.

He did find more Capanaua downriver, but does not give any more details (op. cit.).

Downriver from Ubuya River and Señor Vidal‘s house – an old Peruvian cauchero who

now was a trapper and traded skins with the Indians (op. cit.: 297) – Oppenheim only

mentions having met other ―groups of friendly Indians‖ who were the Cocamas and

Chamas in their canoes, along with wives, children and dogs (op. cit.: 299).

On another occasion (1936b: 152), Oppenheim noted that the Tapiche River

Capanauas painted their faces and bodies with blue and red paint, and ―partially‖

practiced funeral anthropophagy. Polygamy was also a norm. Hunting and fishing was

done by men with use of bows and harpoons, though many also possessed rifles. They

6 The Poyanawa man‘s tattoo was described as ―several broken lines from corners of his mouth to his

ears‖ (Oppenheim 1971: 162) – which differs from the figure presented for Poyanawa in Oppenheim

(1936c) (see Fig. 5). It was similar to tattoos of the Cashinaua – Indians living at that time in Republica –

where ―the lines were continuous and crossed by shorter vertical lines on their cheeks‖ (Oppenheim 1971:

162).

36

were very skilled in basketry and pottery, producing very large, painted clay pots.

When not hunting or fishing, the men were busy with ―unending feasts‖, to which

neighbors were called with the sound of drums and during which the massate or

chicha were consumed (Oppenheim 1936b: 152).

This ―quite numerous‖ ―tribe‖ was found by Oppenheim

on his descent down the Tapiche River, living from the Bombo

waterfalls down to the rio Capanaua identifiable as

contemporary Capanahua Stream7, left tributary of the Upper

Tapiche. His companion, an Poyanaua Indian, was able to

communicate with them without difficulty and Oppenheim

maintained the Capanaua language was the same as Poyanaua

(op. cit.).

Moreover, in the woods on the Ubuya River, Oppenheim

came upon ―a small group of rather wretched-looking Indians‖

huddled around a fire. They had their faces blackened with ashes and charcoal that

were the remains of a deseased relative, which they were bemoaning. They also mixed

these ashes with a beverage. They were the ―tribe of the Jaguar‖ - Punhamuma – a

naua people, once strong and numerous, but killed and enslaved by the Mayus, there

were only these few left, ―most of this group‖ being old (Oppenheim 1995: 298-99). In

Oppenheim (1936b: 152-153) we find the information that there were only three, and

elderly, Punhamumanaua Indians. They spoke a language partially intelligible to the

Poyanaua man and were survivors from the Blanco River‘s (right tributary of the

Tapiche) headwaters, from were they were pushed off by the Mayus speaking a

language not comprehensible to the Panoans from the Nawa group living on the

Tapiche.

It is not clear clear in what circumstances were the Rhemus/Nucuinis from

Jaquirana encountered by Oppenheim on Tapiche (op. cit.: 151).

After this visit, little has been written of the Tapiche population and the

Kapanawas. In 1955, Lucas Espinoza Perez located them on the Upper Tapiche and

estimated their number at 100 persons, evidently based on secondary sources. He

maintained they were ―totally independent‖, because the area was rarely frequented

by nationals, and were of ―escasa utilidad o ninguna para los trabajos en que se

7 Based on a sketch map made by Oppenheim, where a settlement called Fortaleza is at the mouth of rio

Capanaua (University of North Texas 2006). Currently, San Antonio de Fortazleza can be found at the

mouth of Capanahua Stream (e.g., Aquise 2007).

Figure 2. The Tapiche River Kapanawa according to Oppenheim 1936c: 314.

37

ocupan los distintos empresarios del paìs‖ (Espinoza Perez 1955: 585). I have not been

able to locate any subsequent published ethnographic source concerning the Tapiche

Kapanawa directly until today.

In the meantime, Betty and Eugene Loos established a SIL mission post on the

Buncuya River in November of 1954 (Loos 1968). This river is the affluent of the

Guanache River which in turn drains into the Lower Ucayali, and both run parallel to

the Tapiche. The couple worked with the Kapanawa population until 1983, with their

center of operations and an airstrip in a settlement called Aypena on the Upper

Buncuya. The Kapanawa of Buncuya and Tapiche rivers were raided by the Ucayali

Panoans‘ between nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The natives of the Tapiche

River were sometime later also pacified violently by rubber bosses with the help of

Shipibo Indians. They have in turn been later used to fight Indians identified as

Mayorunas on the Blanco River (Anonymous). Unfortunately, more exact data on

rubber boom on these two rivers and pacification of their population are not available

to me at this point.

The total number of people identified as Kapanawa on both rivers was

estimated at 400 by E. Loos for the year 1958 (Loos 1960), and most likely included

the Paënbáquebo dialect speakers estimated at 80 in 1969 (Loos 1969). The number

given for Kapanawa population in later years varied between ―not exceeding a

thousand‖ (D‘Ans 1973) and 800 (Uriarte 1976) to 350-500 (Ribeiro & Wise 1973).

The Ethnologue estimated a number of Kapanawa speakers for the year 2000 at 387

persons, and 400 people identified as Kapanawa (Gordon 2005).

It isn‘t entirely clear what the cultural situation was on the Tapiche River 18

years from Oppenheim‘s visit and his positive opinion of their vitality, but by 1969,

Loos characterized the Kapanawa population as ―one of the most acculturated‖ (Loos

1969: 3-4). An undated, anonymous report (most likely attributable to E. Loos)

presented a view of this group on a background of the accentuated ―white‖ or mestizo

presence. Men were working with the bosses as loggers and all Kapanawa were

immersed in the commodity culture, dressed and built houses in the regional mestizo

style, used manufactured implements and engines. All spoke Spanish, though some

only rustically. They were matrilocal and the basic social unit consisted of an extended

family‘s cluster (Anonymous). This situation was contrasted with the past, as the last

50 years were said to had been marked by the collapse of social organization,

abandonment of large communal huts and extensive fields, long and violent

borracherias or drinking feasts, drums whose sound invited the neighbors, war-clubs

used in fights between men and bows. Reportedly in the reaction to the ―white‖

presence, some migrated to the cities, others mixed and yet others opposed the

38

strangers. Only 20 years after Oppenheim published his drawings with a Tapiche

Kapanawa facial ornamentation, there was no mention of facial tattoos among

Buncuya Kapanawas in Loos‘ material. The only reference to tattoos concerns the wild

Indians identified as Remo from the Tapiche and Môa rivers headwaters (see Chapter

2). Nevertheless, during my visit to the Buncuya River, elderly Kapanawa descendants

described tattoos worn by their grandfathers‘ generation.

Based on the material gathered between 1955 and 1958, E. Loos presented the

Kapanawa population as divided between two moieties of unspecified name and

undetermined relation to the following patrilinear ―clans‖: pahenbaquebo or ‗sons of

drunkenness‘, nahinbaquebo ‗sons of the sloth‘, capabaquebo ‗sons of the squirrel‘,

binabaquebo ‗sons of the bee‘ (1960: 1). Among these were later included the hino

baquebo (Loos & Loos 2003: 9) that is, ‗sons of the jaguar‘. According to Loos, those

were the patrilinear descent groups with whom each individual identified more than

with any particular locality (Loos 1960: 24-25). The author did not find any taboos or

practices connected with these formations. Instead, he presented some evidence that

social interactions had been to some degree articulated on the basis of moiety

identities, such as when members of one of them invited the others for macana fights

and/or feasts (op. cit: 18-19).

During my short visit to the Kapanawa descendants on Buncuya River I have

come to gather some names referring to the parents‘ and ancestors‘ groups among

contemporary Buncuya River inhabitants. They were sometimes referred to as

generaciones and defined as ―the father‘s families‖. They were alternatively

designated with the native denomination composed out of an eponym – generally an

animal – and ending with either –báquebo or –bo suffix, or with the Peruvian Spanish

name ending with Quechua words –auca, or -runa meaning ―(savage) people‖. Upon

questioning, informants invoked an original locality from where a given family had

come or where it has been most numerous. Also, at times, the native or Spanish

designations were equated with a specific Peruvian surname connected with a descent

group. These names were shahuaibáquebo or guacamayoaucas (on the Tapiche and

Buncuya rivers); waninbo or ayubo/ayubáquebo or pijuayoruna (originally on the

Upper Tapiche, upriver from Limón Cocha community); inubáquebo (originally

downriver from ayubáquebu); capabáquebo/capabo or huayhuashiruna (originally

on the Upper Buncuya); naibáquebo or pelejoaucas connected with the

Huaninchi/Hunaninche family (originally on Tapiche with ayubáquebo);

binabáquebo/binabo (originally scattered between Lower Buncuya and Tapiche

rivers, without permanent settlements); niabáquebo/niabo or trompeterosaucas

connected with the Chumo surname (originally possibly Humaita River on Tapiche

39

and later also Upper Buncuya); and paënbáquebo or panarua (on the Lower Tapiche,

in Frontera Yarina). Loos (1968) maintained that this last group was originally living

on the uppermost Tapiche River, but in 1952 migrated downriver because of the

attacks by the forest Indians called Mayorunas.8

On the other hand, during the Looses‘ contact with the Buncuya and Tapiche

rivers communities, the name Kapanawa did not seem to be of much use for the native

inhabitants. They preferred to designate themselves as noquen caibo, or nuestros

paisanos – a term signifying ―all our relations‖. Wider connotation of this designation

seems however more of a social rather than genetic kind. In 1960 Loos reported that

the ―whites‖ and wild Indians were jointly designated as nawa in contrast to the gente

noble, or those who spoke Kapanawa (Loos 1060: 1). At the same time, Loos

maintained that those who dropped use of the language were disdained and not

considered gente noble, an evident Spanish equivalent of the noquen caibo category.

Therefore, it can be deduced the term designates all those living together and speaking

a common language – that is, the localized Kapanawa population as collectively

defined from the outside, and as internally differentiated from the strangers nahua.

Within this category, personal identities of the Buncuya and Tapiche native

inhabitants were concentrated on the patrilineal ―clans‖ listed above rather than a

general classification as Kapanawa.

Moreover, by 1998 the Looses‘ maintained that Kapanawa speakers have been

rejecting the name Kapanawa for its connotations of savagery (2003: 9), even though

it seems that external use of this name would correspond well with the native category

of noquen caibo. In fact, during my visit to the Buncuya communities in 2007, I found

that the local population rejects identification as Kapanawa entirely. The first

impression one gets is that the Kapanawa group disappeared from their former

location. Indeed, the last decade saw a decrease in population on the Buncuya River

and migration either to the mestizo towns downriver, or to the Tapiche River

communities. This movement is presented locally as motivated primarily by obstacles

in receiving medical help or schooling ever since the expulsion of SIL personnel from

Peru. Disappearance of the linguists is also given as an explanation of the heavy-felt

influx of mestizo workers onto the Kapanawa territories.

However, upon closer examination, another reason for this noticeable

disappearance of Kapanawa Indians becomes evident. In the village of Berea or Nueva

8 The Mayoruna were called Pisábo by Kapanawas according to my informant, who identified them with

the Matsés that used to come on Buncuya River to work with the bosses in logging industry. The Pisábo

were also the objects of raids in which her father took part on the upper Tapiche in twentieth century.

40

Aypena, near the former location of Aypena – site of the Looses‘ operations and the

SIL airstrip, we were told at first that there are no more Kapanawa. However, in

talking personally to all the village inhabitants I have gradually come to find that

virtually all of them had Kapanawa among their most immediate ascendant kin.

Although they recognized this descend from ―the Kapanawa‖ and their inheritance of

land from the ancient ones, the identification of the current generations with the

Kapanawa was not accepted. The ―Kapanawa‖ were presented as the ancient ones, or

the ―Indians‖ who lived on this territory in the past and left it to the contemporary

inhabitants, but with whom the latter had nothing to do (despite the actual

genealogical ties). The grandfathers were the ones who spoke the language, but since

they and the SIL missionaries are gone, there is no one to talk to in Kapanawa and

nobody to teach the language to the people and practice it. Therefore, even though

most understand it, they do not admit to speak it or be fluent in it.

Instead, the Buncuya inhabitants presented themselves as cruze de

Capanahuas and other people. The positive identification seemed thus mostly to be

that of a particular family or a surname, and many middle-aged people were able to

determine what generación or -báquebo or –aucas their parents or at least fathers

belonged to.

I have not been able to verify the situation on the Tapiche River. It was pointed

to me by Buncuya inhabitants as a place where Kapanawa identity was maintained

along with the language. According to information given to me by anthropologist

Isrrail Aquise Lizarbe who visited the Tapiche River in 2007, there were still people

who communicated in Kapanawa on a daily basis in communities Virgen de Fatima

and Limón Cocha. A linguist studying the Kapanawa language phonology, Jose A.

Elias Ulloa, after working in Limón Cocha, a community numbering some 100 people,

estimated that there were some 30 persons fluent in Kapanawa, the rest of the

population composed either by Kapanawa descendants who do not speak the language

or mestizo workers (personal communication, 2007). This information echoes with an

estimation of 30% of fluent speakers in the Kapanawa group given by the Looses in

1998 (Loos & Loos 2003: 10).

Although the above data, being result of only a short visit are yet to be

confirmed, I hope to indicate that identifications by members of what is considered an

ethnic group known as Capanahua/Kapanawa on Buncuya and Tapiche rivers are not

homogenous. They stand in contrast to the historical material hitherto presented. I

will return briefly to the issue of internal identifications, autohistory and social logics

in Panoan and other Amazonian societies in the conclusion to this thesis. At the

41

moment I propose to summarize the data available on the historical groups identified

as Kapanawa and analyze their interconnections.

1.3. Connections and identites.

In sorting through the mentions of the name Kapanawa, varied geographically

and historically as they are, one is constantly bound to ask if the Kapanawa

designation refers to an actual linguistic, social or cultural connection between the

groups described? Although the answer to this question has been positive in the past

(Steward & Métraux 1948, Grubb 1927 etc.), it has not been subject to any detailed

analysis since then. The case with such classifications is that they tend to continue

their independent life in the academic discourse taken as a priori facts without proper

justification. I would however like to come back to this basic question and try to

analyze the grounds on which such an identification was actually constructed.

1.3.1. Application of the name Kapanawa.

I would like to start by tracing particular uses of the name Kapanawa. Let us

first summarize the different cases of application of this denomination. In its first

instance, the seventeenth century Capanagua name refers to a category of people

living on the Ucayali, and apparently similar to those identified as Shipibo and

Shetebo. The name is evoked in connection with representatives of this/those

category/categories living among the Jesuit mission Indians, possibly as incorporated

captives, and their relation to the forest Panoans locally called Mayoruna. In contrast

to Mayoruna name, it is certainly of Panoan origin and therefore comes most

probably from the Ucayali inhabitants just mentioned. In various Panoan languages

(Shipibo-Konibo-Kapanawa, Amawaka, Kashibo), kapa/kapan indicates a squirrel (or

rather generally the Scirius species – Spanish ardilla; Peruvian Spanish huayhuashi;

Brazilian Portugese coatipuru).

In this early context, it seems to refer to a particular group or category of

people living on the Ucayali and maintaining social relations with the Shetebo and

Shipibo. This I assume by the way in which the Kapanawa population is included in a

more general, emically perceived category in its first documented usage that, I would

argue, indicates frames of social relations on the Lower Ucayali. This is my

interpretation, however. The –nawa suffix (‗stranger‘) might as well indicate that it

was a name used by the Ucayali Panoans in reference to a category of foreigners. I‘d

argue for my reading however – first because of the ambiguous nature of the term

42

nawa that can refer to ‗strangers‘ as well as to ‗ourselves‘ among the Panoans (and

does not exclude social relation – rather to the contrary) and secondly, because of its

specific mention along with the principal Ucayali populations rather than a specter,

foreign category. This is signaled by the name users‘ acquaintance with the

language/dialect spoken by the Kapanawas which indicates that its speakers had

closer relations with the seventeenth century‘s ancestors of Shetebo and Shipibo and

were conceived of as a (potentially) socially significant category of people. If one

accepts this population‘s language connection with modern Tapiche-Buncuya

Kapanawa (see below), estimated to has started its differentiation from the Ucayali-

based Chama group between the 15th and 16th centuries, than we can assume at least

that this social connection and reference to language invoked recent memory for those

who talked of the Kapanawas. The separation might have accounted for the shift from

the Kapa-bo, with the pluralizing suffix (as in one of the ingredient groups of modern

Kapanawa and as in Shipi-bo or Shete-bo denominations) to the Kapa-nawa, with its

externalizing suffix.

The subsequent seventeenth century‘s general references are marginal and of

uncertain origin, locating Kapanawa on the Lower Ucayali.

While in the above context the Kapanawa name could be interpreted as

referring to a group closely socially related to the Shipibo and Shetebo, after yet

another century it designated people socially distanced from the proto-Shipibo-

Konibo population. In the time between those early, seventeenth century mentions,

and the next documented use of the name late in the eighteenth century, Shetebo

along with Shipibo and to some extent Konibo, had recurrently participated in the

missionary projects and built their societies around the Manoa Missions throughout

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The absence of people identified as Kapanawa

from sources on these first Franciscan missions on the Ucayali suggests that people

identified by this name had been excluded from the privileged relations with

missionaries and did not participate in the construction of the Manoa societies (for

unknown reasons, perhaps the spatial distance from its centers of focus or preference

for the inland habitat could be accounted for). Throughout this period the name did

not seem to be connected with any particular, directly identifiable group neither by

Panoans from the Manoa Missions nor by the Marañón population (or these uses had

not been documented).

It is my hypothesis that during this period members of the population formerly

called Kapanawa had not been active in the intensifying Ucayali River and Marañón

Missions trade as a partners and became increasingly spatially and geographically

distanced to those Indians who gathered around the Manoa Missions. If, as I argued

43

above, the historical Kapa-bo/-nawa had actually maintained closer social relations

with the other Ucayali Panoans before, appearance of this new center of focus must

have further divided these populations. With the separation of the original, socially

close (hypothetical) Kapabo, their name has come to take on the significance of the

forest, inland people who stayed away from the existing riverine social or trading

networks and taken on the –nawa suffix. The presumed former allies and probable

affines became differentiated and a generic symbol of distance, difference and

hostility. In this sense it (hypothetically) reflected a point in Shetebo kinship history,

projected onto a particular territory. The formerly specific Kapanawa category from

the past became a specter marked by temporal and social distance from centers of

their social worlds. It was rather a memory than the people themselves that the name

invoked.

Therefore, when Father Girbal documented another case of the name‘s usage

(for the first time directly) by the Shetebo, they have enumerated this name along

many other categories of people connected with more or less well defined territories.

These names most probably referred to contemporary or past affines of the Shetebo.

The Kapanawa were therefore only one of the categories out of which the Shetebo built

their locally and temporarily centered society or kinship. People connected with these

categories were living among them as either captives‘ descendants or captives-turned-

kin themselves (that is to say strangers-turned-Shetebo). We may suppose that

because of the historical circumstances, these inland social clusters that Shetebo

referred to did not participate directly in the social relations of the Ucayali as social

entities and thus were not an equal, willing partner in establishing the riverine

societies. Instead, they have been an object of heavy raiding on the part of the Shetebo

and other riverine social units – Shipibo, Konibo etc. (and these had in turn been

object of attacks from the others), while survivors were incorporated into kinship or

social fabric on the river shores.

At the same time, categories became increasingly generalized with the

widening of the temporal and social gap separating Shetebo or other similar

constructs on the Ucayali from the social units inland. In this process, the

missionaries have possibly played a specific part. In classifying them as nations,

Fransciscans might have accelerated the Shetebo‘s already dynamically growing

division from the outside by generalizing the inland populations on the one hand, and

strengthening the fusions within by their own missions‘ focalizing influence, on the

other.

Alternatively, it is also possible that Kapanawa name in the nineteenth century

has come back to the Shetebo along with the Mayoruna name, through the population

44

of the Huallaga or Marañón rivers. The relations of trade between Ucayali groups and

these former Jesuit Missions had been maintained even before the restoration of

Manoa Missions. Girbal reports having encountered a large group of Konibo on its

way to the Omaguas on the Amazon to trade boats and bearded slaves said to be wild

Indians – Barbudos or Mayorunas.9 The Marañón – Upper Amazon population, an

outgrowth of the Jesuit missions, seems to have been applying Mayoruna and

Kapanawa names interchangeably to the general area south of the Lower Ucayali (as

indicated by Father Fritz‘ location of Kapanawa roughly on the Upper Tapiche against

its posterior connection with Mayorunas). It is not improbable therefore that the

name has come to be used by Shetebo or other Ucayali units as a loan from the

Marañón-Amazon, as the name Mayoruna, evidently of the Marañón provenience,

did. Such general names might have referred to peoples from territories into which

Shetebo ventured out only sporadically and did not maintain much contact with.

When Girbal was preparing to contact the Kapanawas or Indians of the ―Maquea‖, it

was probably not by accident that Requena had sent a translator named Ytaya from

Jeberos on the Amazon, to accompany him. This man must have been a captive

exactly from this general ―Maquea‖ area. The Cocama contacts with population of

Maquìa-Tapiche region seemed to be more common in the following years, as will be

seen below, and Shetebo might have relied on their identifications.

One has the impression that at this moment (late eighteenth century),

Kapanawa was only one of the names in use in the Sarayacu vicinity, despite H.

Unánue‘s affirmation that Girbal was looking explicitly for Kapanawas. The Indians

listed them among the groups such as Senti, Manahuas and ‗others‘. It is also highly

probable that the first expedition reported by Unánue was the one intended to reach

the Nianaga, or Nianaguas. Without access to Girbal‘s direct notes on the subject, we

9 I do not believe these slaves have actually been captured by Konibo on the Tapiche. There were many

other groups on the Ucayali said to be bearded, from the first Mayorunas or Barbudos between Huallaga

and Ucayali Rivers to the Indians identified as Chipeos and Casibos or Carapachos by Gil de Taboada

(1859:132) and Smyth & Lowe (1836:234), Amahuaca by Smyth and Lowe (1836:232) and Tessmann

(1999:93). It seems to me that Girbal‘s account interprets information gathered from Konibo in the light

of what the Father learned later after his coming back from the Ucayali. Therefore it isn‘t clear if Konibo

actually used the name Mayoruna or merely designated their slaves as the ‗bearded ones‘. Girbal is also

the one to use the Mayoruna name in listing groups of the Ucayali, which is not done by Dueñas at the

same time. I‘d argue that even if Konibo actually used the Mayoruna name because of their contacts with

the Marañón-Amazon Rivers‘ population, they did not venture out as far as Tapiche to capture their

slaves. There was no point in bringing them all the way to Pachitea only to later take them back to

Omaguas. There was enough inland population on the upper Ucayali.

45

cannot be sure however of how the name Kapanawa was used by him in context of

those early relations.

In any case, groups raided east of Ucayali had become generically called

Kapanawa. The name marked their distance along with particular location rather than

actual ethnic classification label. Kapanawa has come to mark the forest pole of

Shetebo-Shipibo socialization and as such had become increasingly generalized.

In the second decade of the nineteenth century, the name has been therefore

applied to a group encountered on these territories. They lived between the Maquìa

and Buncuya rivers and were also known (auto-identified?) as Busquipani.10 With

failure of this mission, the name had continued to be connected with this general area

in the sources until the end of the nineteenth century. During Castelnau‘s visit on the

Ucayali, it has still been connected with the Chunuya – Buncuya (Oquanacha) rivers

(probably by Father Plaza who might have participated in the 1817 effort to missionize

the Busquipani). The only mention of actual contacts with people living on this

territory comes from from P. Marcoy‘s account of Lower Ucayali. He does not,

however, mention the name Kapanawa at any moment. Instead, the natives living

between Ucayali and Tapiche are characterized as Amahuacas, Chacaya, Sensi and

Mayoruna (see below).

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, Ucayali had become

populated by the Peruvian population from the selva alta that pushed eastward, and

by the end of the century reached the contemporary Brazilian territories. It is at this

point that Kapanawa come to be reported in locations very distant from the original

context. Already existing as a generic name on the Lower Ucayali, the denomination

starts to be applied to the forest populations on the Javari River and in the remote

Breu River, tributary of the Upper Juruá.

It was not until the 1897 expedition of limits led by Gomes that the Kapanawa

name has been reported extensively on the Javari River. Members of the previous two

commissions have not mentioned this name in relation to the hostile natives with

which they came in contact with. By now I hope to have made it clear that the names

with which interfluvial populations were identified by visitors were of local

provenience, and I argue that the use of Kapanawa name (as well as Remo and earlier

Mayoruna) is directly linked to the appearance of the Peruvian population in this

area. It does not, therefore, indicate an actual connection with ethnic group currently

called Capanahua, but rather evidences the generic character of this denomination by

10 This name did not sound familiar to the Buncuya Kapanawa I‘ve talked to. Only one man laughed at

realizing similarity of -pani to paën, meaning ‗drunk‘.

46

the late nineteenth century, widely used by the people of the Lower Ucayali. By this

time, the territories said to be inhabited by the Kapanawas stretched from the Lower

Ucayali and its tributaries Maquia or Tapiche (and Blanco) rivers, to the Javari basin

– Gálvez River or even beyond the Jaquirana River to the Brazilian territory. At this

time, the name gradually replaced the Mayoruna name – formerly connected with

Guanache, Tapiche and Javari rivers – and pushed it further eastward.

It can be assumed that virtually all native inhabitants located on this wide

territory would had been identified as Kapanawa. At this time, between nineteenth

and twentieth century, the native population of Tapiche and Buncuya rivers (or its

parts) has been pacified. Since it inhabited territories attributed to the generic

Kapanawa, they have become denominated Kapanawa themselves. Their relation to

the Kapanawa name must have been ambiguous, and though it could have helped to

describe the heterogenic social situation in this population, it was not an accepted

identity at the time of Looses‘ permanence with them, and at least by the end of

twentieth century, they had understood it as a synonym of the wild, forest Indians. It

should not be surprising then, that the current Buncuya River inhabitants still reject

this identity, presenting the opposition in terms of past and their own present.

Even after the Kapanawa have been contacted and pacified, the name

continued to be used for uncontacted groups in other parts of the extensive region

denoted above. It has been interchangeably used along with the Remo or Mayoruna

denominations (and others of only local popularity), depending on the regional

preference or imagination. As late as 1960‘s, the Kapanawa name had been used in

reference to the natives of the Jaquirana River alongside with Mayoruna, and the

Mayorunas or wild Kapanawas are today known as Matses. At this very same time,

between 1967-1972, backwoods Indians have been identified as Kapanawa as far south

as the Inamapuya River, tributary of the Tamaya (SIL microfiche, n.d.). Although its

use on the Middle Ucayali has not been documented earlier, the material we have

gathered among its inhabitants (Shipibo as well as mestizos of regional provenience)

shows that the Kapanawa denomination has been in use by a few generations back.

This contemporary usage on the Middle Ucayali can effectively be seen as another

instantiation of the more general and historically rooted, riparian category. In some

parts, it has come to replace the Remo name on the Ucayali, being in turn changed for

the increasingly generalized Iskonawa dnomination name in yet other parts (see

Chapter 2).

Use of the Kapanawa name in the Juruá River basin seems to present another

issue. It is possible to imagine that Peruvians working in the Juruá-Purus regions,

after having spent some time in the Javari Basin (as for example Carlos Scharf,

47

famous rubber patron, did according to Granadino 1916) have equally transplanted

the name from the Lower Ucayali. One might also try to attribute its appearance on

the Jurua to the contacts maintained between Juruá and Upper Ucayali native

populations (e.g. Calavia 1995; Gow 1991). However, lack of other names from the

Ucayali-Javari denominations set, as well as its use reported even before the Peruvian

migration lead me to interpret its appearance in this region as a case based on native

homonymy. At its base one could identify the phenomenon of the same or

corresponding names for categories of people recurring in very remote locations

among Panoans. Once we take a look across different Panoan units, we discover that

the names of clans, local groups or other categories. Such pan-Panoan homonyms are

for example represented by the Ino-/Inu-, Runu-, and Shawa-, Awa-, Wari- or even

Isco- stems referring to animal or other eponyms, accompanied by locally

differentiated suffixes corresponding to groups or categories, such as -baquebo, -

vaken, -nawa, or -bo (as among the Buncuya-Tapiche Kapanawa, see above). I believe

that kapa has been one of the potential, more or less pan-Panoan identities referred to

by Panoans living in the area stretching between the Lower Ucayali, the Môa River,

and Upper Juruá and Purus rivers, and it was not originally connected with any

particular social unit on the Panoan continuum. I would be inclined to see this as the

possible reason for the Kapanawa name‘s use in the Juruá-Purus region, even if it did

become generically used in some situations (e.g. by Peruvians on the Breu River). As

far as I am aware, there is no group identified as Kapanawa in the Juruá-Purus region

today, neither have I come across mentions of Kapanawa as ancestors of any of these

groups11.

1.3.2. Language Affiliations.

Once a possibility that the different Kapanawa belonged to distant parts of the

Panoan continuum is accepted, the question of their actual affiliation arises. Having

indicated that the link between the name Kapanawa and those it referred to was a

loose one and indicated a social or spacial position to those who used it rather than

actual connections in which a ―history of‖ is interested, I now turn to an attempt to

organize the available data existing apart from the application of the name and

11 At this point I am unable to state if Xapanawa category found among Yaminawa from Iaco and Purus

Rivers (Calavia 1998) or Cadanahua among Yora from Serjali River (Lord 1996 in: Deleage 2005) do

reflect linguistic connection with kapa- stem.

48

propose some possible solutions to the general underdifferentiation of Kapanawa. In

other words, I try to answer who, if not ―Kapanawa‖, have the people called Kapanawa

actually been.

To answer this question, let me first consider the few linguistic data available.

This is the most convincing evidence of interconnections between groups of people

and in our perceptions are indications of ethnic units. It helps to clarify to some

degree the ―objective‖ history of the Ucayali-Juruá peoples and their diversity.

The Kapanawa has heretofore been classified solely based on the language as

spoken by on the Buncuya and Tapiche rivers in twentieth century. Although the

Buncuya-Tapiche Kapanawa is one of the Panoan languages that has generated the

most extensive literature, its relation to other Panoan languages within the Panoan

family hasn‘t so far been adequately analyzed, as demonstrated by the recent linguistic

classification proposed by David Fleck (2006; in prepartion). The result of his analysis

is striking: ―Shipibo and Kapanawa share 90% of their vocabulary and have fewer

phonological differences than American and British dialects of English‖ (Fleck

forthcoming). Therefore, they are to be considered dialectical variants of a single

language, and not separate languages as has been thought. According to Fleck, their

hypothetical separation could be estimated around the 16th century, and results of

glotochronological analysis by M. D‘Ans (1973), demonstrate 540 years of separation

(that is, from first decades of the 15th century). This connection has not been earlier

noted by other linguists. E. Loos himself maintained that the language he has studied

for so long was similar to Shipibo-Konibo, but also to Isconahua and Marubo,

situating them together in the Ucayali group of the Panoan family (e.g. Loos 2003).

The SIL publication Ethnologue estimates the Shipibo-Kapanawa lexical similarity

only between 50-60% (Gordon 2005). The case is interesting as even though the two

populations were closely related linguistically and thus suitable to be considered a

single ethnic category, they have been separated in the ethnic classifications because

of the historical and geographical factors that led Shipibo-Konibo to develop the

contemporary riverine based culture, while the Kapanawa had kept to the remote

interfluvial regions. Such ―ethnical‖ classifications were therefore an effect of social

relations rather than of the common ancestry evidenced by language. It indicates that

the categories used in reference to these groups had other meaning that was expected

of them by Western observers.

This connection between Shipibo and Kapanawa allows us to draw another

conclusion concerning linguistic connections and ―ethnic identity‖. It concerns the

Kapanawa as referring to an isolated group between Callerìa and Cashiboya rivers.

The complete lack of mutual intelligibility of the two Kapanawa men and a Shipibo

49

man, reported during one of the most rare direct encounters with these people,

indicates with a high probability that they did not speak the Buncuya-Tapiche

Kapanawa language. This is not entirely secure indication, however, if one takes into

account: first, the unreliability of such comments with their highly subjective

character; and secondly, the fact that (at least some) Kapanawa descendants from

Buncuya deny mutual intelligibility with Shipibo with whom they had contact. One

can assume however, that upon a prolonged contact, communication would have been

reached between Shipibo and Kapanawa.

Unfortunately, reliable linguistic data from the other Kapanawa groups,

whether in history or in another territory, has not, to my knowledge, been collected. A

significant exception to this is a list of words gathered by Father Tastevin on the Môa

River in Brazil from the language of the Nawa belonging to the Kapanawa clan (at this

point it is not available to me). Although more thorough comparison is yet to be

conducted, based on the preliminary analysis by David Fleck, the words appear to

belong to a Panoan language very different from the Kapanawa spoken on the Tapiche

and Buncuya (personal communication). Based on the location, Fleck tentatively

situated them in the Poyanawa subgroup of the Nawa group in the Panoan family –

along with Poyanawa, Nukini, Iskonawa and Remo from the Jaquirana River (Fleck

forthcoming). This casts well-grounded doubts on the fact that all Kapanawa actually

were objectively related as members of a singular ethnic group.

1.3.3. Affiliations based on cultural traits and territory.

Panoan

The prevalence (with only a few exceptions) of the Panoan populations in the

region under consideration, makes it highly probable that all or most of the people

called Kapanawa have belonged to the Panoan family. The ethnographic material on

the Kapanawa groups is almost nonexistent, and even for the Buncuya-Tapiche

population it is only partial. In contrast to the linguists‘ interest in their language, no

anthropologist has ever conducted research among the modern Kapanawa, which

could probably be accounted for by the assumption of their acculturation and

assimilation into the mestizo culture. Material on the other Kapanawa, including pre-

twentieth century Buncuya-Tapiche population, is scarce because of this name

bearers‘ actual remoteness and undefined character. What we know of them is too

generally true of the interfluvial Panoans to allow any secure identifications to be

made. Based on such descriptions, the various Kapanawa are indistinguishable

50

between themselves, but also from other populations in the region, be it various Remo

groups, or those that came to compose Panoan ethnic units such as Poyanawa,

Marubo, Nukini etc. In many instances we are left with little more than speculations

based on the geographical indications.

This said, let me consider separately the spaciotemporal clusters of Kapanawa

and their hypothetical connections with what we know about populations existing on

the same territories with confirmed ethnic identities and known languages.

Chama substrate on the Lower Ucayali River

It is tempting to link the first Kapanawa mentioned in seventeenth century

Jesuit sources with the contemporary Buncuya-Tapiche Kapanawa. First, the name is

the same. This, however, as I have tried to demonstrate, could not be a safe indication

of connections, and between the identification of the first Kapanawas and the

contemporary ones in the twentieth century there is the history of different uses of the

name itself. Secondly, there is the general geographic location, although the first

Kapanawa have not been located in any specific way other than on the Ucayali.

Finally, observation on the relatedness of Shipibo, Shetebo and Kapanawa

languages/dialects is parallel with the recent results of linguistic analysis, which

presents their contemporary referents as dialectical variants of one language.

Nevertheless, this link is not all that obvious. The twentieth century Kapanawa

have presented themselves as a set of various groups to which the primary

identification has been admitted. As I have argued, the general name was most

probably given to them by the outsiders who expected to find ―Kapanawas‖. The fact

that there exists a kapa- identity among other -bákëbu in this unit, does not make

them unique, as it could have been found in other Panoan groups as well. One may

suppose that this identity had been more widely shared between local groups on the

Lower Ucayali territory. The seventeenth century Kapanawa may had belonged to the

same dialect and identity continuum as the ancestors of the contemporary Kapanawa,

but do not have to be linearly connected. By this I mean to say that these historical

Kapanawas, as well ancestors of the contemporary ones, belonged to a wider chain of

relations and of linguistic connections out of which the Chama units of riverine

character developed on the Ucayali and the Kapanawa or proto-Kapanawa as

backwoods communities on the Maquìa, Buncuya and Tapiche rivers.

Nawas or Yaminawas on the Upper Juruá River

51

The Nawa called Kapanawa or Sipinawa on the right bank of Upper Juruá are

not mentioned in the sources after the 1920‘s. In subsequent decades this territory has

been inhabited by the indigenous population designated as Yaminawa. The data

collected by D. Montagner in 1977 (1981: 64) suggest that their progenitors have lived

between the Valparaiso and Humaita rivers at least since the 1920‘s. Some of them

have been from the Ouro de Preto Stream on the Tarauacá River12 and must have

come to the area previous to this date, although it is not entirely clear whether all of

them actually did. They have been living and working with the rubber patrons and in

subsequent years (1950-70‘s) dispersed into various parts of the Upper Juruá,

including Upper Juruá Mirim or Tejo rivers. Montagner noted that some were

identified as Yamináua, while some were said to be Arara (or Tuxináwa) or

Yamináua mixed with Arara or brancos (op. cit.: 66). The Arara identity was also

reported among the Poyanáwa by Montagner (op. cit.: 20). Its presence in the

location might possibly be traced to the Araraua captives brought from Liberdade

River to live with Cuyanawas or Poyanawas on the Lower Môa River before 1920

(Tastevin 1920: 133).

I have not been able to find any further information on this small Yamináua

population visited by D. Montagner and their linguistic or genetic connections with

other populations known as Yaminawa in Peru or Brazil are unknown to me.

On the other hand, the Kapanawa clan descendant of the Nawas interviewed

by Tastevin referred to a location that was likely connected with the territory just

discussed. It has been inhabiting a territory attributed to the generic Nawas, and the

Kapanawa identity seems to have been more widespread among Panoan social units

between Juruá and Purus rivers. It is possibly to this historical population, including

their Kapanawa segment of Cruzeiro do Sul location to which the Nawas of the Môa

River currently refer. For a few years the Nawa name has been connected with a Môa

population claiming indigenous provenience from an unspecified Panoan group. Their

ancestors told them about having had lived in longhouses located where contemporary

city buildings stand and generally recounted a migration from the east, or from the

Lower Môa (Montagner 2002). As this population occupies the Upper Môa, it is likely

to be traced to the same Nawa migrants of whom one had met with Tastevin and

recalled a Kapanawa identity of her father.

12 A stream with this name actually drains into the Muru River, Taraucá‘s right affluent. This

identification of the informant‘s original habitat is not certain to me. Another (Ouro) Preto Stream is

located upriver on the upper Juruá (see also reference to Delvair‘s mention of the Preto Stream on the

Juruá in Sáez 1995).

52

Matses, Marubo and others on the Javari River

It is difficult to say who the Capananas from Jaquirana were. The custom of

deforming heads in infancy echoes a similar trait among the historical Shipibo-

Konibo. This, in connection with information on the linguistic proximity of modern

Kapanawa and Shipibo-Konibo could suggest that they have in fact been ancestors of

contemporary Kapanawa. There is no mention in the sources of these practices among

the Buncuya-Tapiche Kapanawa to confirm this. Other traits of the Capanana such as

anthropophagy or longhouses cannot be attributed to one particular group.

Geographically, Capanana territory corresponds closely to that designated as

inhabited by the Mayu Indians in the first decades of the twentieth century. The Mayu

mentions have most often been read as referring to the Matses ancestors, as the

Gálvez seems to have been part of their habitat for the better part of twentieth century.

The most ancient recollections of the Matses (Romanoff 1984, Matlock 2002) locate

their groups in the Gálvez River area approximately in the first decade of twentieth

century. A little more than two decades after Gomes‘ report, Capanauá were located

on the other side of the Jaquirana River. The (proto-)Matses groups have also

occupied the other bank of the Jaquirana and they apparently moved between the two

sides at least since the early twentieth century. Some of them have also occupied the

Lobo Stream (right affluent of the Jaquirana) identified as Capanaua habitat by

Carvalho, since the inception of twentieth century, and then around 1920 and by the

1960‘s (Matlock 2002: 112, 141-42). On the other hand, location on the right side of

the Jaquirana attributed to the Capanaua might correspond with the early twentieth

century habitat of one of the proto-Marubo groups, speaking a divergent language and

called Inonáwavo (Ruedas 2001).

Instead, by inception of the twentieth century, the name was popular in this

river‘s basin in reference to natives who inhabited this territory before the rubber

industry. In this, it either replaced or was interchangeably used with Mayoruna name.

This population‘s identity cannot be determined securely. The presence of Matses

ancestors on the Blanco this early is not confirmed by their histories. Neither did I

find convincing evidence that any of the formative segments of the Buncuya-Tapiche

Kapanawa actually occupied this largest tributary of Tapiche River. The possible

reference to Kapanawa on the Blanco is a case of the relocation of ―some 30 families‖

from the Umaita [Humaita] River on the Upper Tapiche to an unknown location that

could either be Middle Tapiche or Blanco River by a one of the rubber bosses to fight

53

the Mayoruna (Izaguirre 1922-29, 12: 429).13 Even if this mention refers to Blanco

River, it is of later character. When S. Romanoff reports that in 1930‘s the Kapanawa,

along with their patron, moved to the Tapiche River [from the Choba Stream, Gálvez

River or the Blanco River] as an effect of Matses raids (Romanoff 1984: 45), he might

be referring to the same, relocated group as one mentioned by López.

Because of my argument in this thesis, I do not find toponymy connected with

Kapanawa sufficient proof of actual Buncuya-Tapiche Kapanawa presence on this

river (Tessmann 1999[1930]: 91). Also, the ―Kapanawa family‖ working on the Blanco

River when Nueva Capanahua was established on the Blanco some 20 years ago and

gave its name to the settlement (Aquise 2007) seems more likely to have either been

emigrant from the Buncuya or Tapiche rivers or was not Kapanawa but e.g. Matses,

whose relatives are said to have lived on this river (Matlock 2002: 113). It is worth

remembering that Matses have even in the 1960‘s been called ―wild Kapanawa‖.

On the other hand, a decade after the reported traces of Kapanawa on the

Blanco River, native inhabitants of its upper course, actually possible to identify, had

been called Remo by locals (see Chapter 2). Another identifiable segment, originally

coming from the area between the Blanco and Chobayacu Stream (tributary of

Jaquirana) and raided by Matses at the inception of the early twentieth century, was

not Panoan-speaking at all, and is known as Mayú and could be connected with the

Morike-Mayoruna of Tessmann‘s (Fleck 2007). About this time, yet another social

unit was identified as coming from the Blanco River sources. It was called

Punhamumanaua (―tribu da onça‖) on the uppermost Tapiche River and was said to

speak a language that was Panoan, but not readily understandable to the Nawa

Panoan speakers from Tapiche or Môa (such as Kapanawa or Poyanawa). It was

characteized as ―a mixture of the ‗Pano‘ language with an unknown dialect‖

Oppenheim 1936b: 152. As we will see, the Remo of the Blanco River have proved to

be speaking a language very divergent from other units in the Nawa group, forming its

own separate subgroup.

1.4. Conlusions.

Throughout this chapter, I have tried to determine if the name Kapanawa can

stand for an ethnic category grouping social entities reported in different times and

13 The Kapanawa name for the Mayoruna whom they ―conquested‖ for the patrons (and identifiable with

contemporary Matses) seems to have been Pisabo (Krokoszyński field notes).

54

places based on their internal connections such as language, cultural traits or

geographical proximity. Analysis of the historical and contemporary material that has

been used as basis for such classifications shows that in the Kapanawa case, the

denomination cannot be used as a secure indication of internal links and of identities

on the Panoan continuum. The sources and material analyzed here force me to

consider the Kapanawa name as a denomination without steady ethnic reference. It

points to general social connection rather then any objective internal links between

different Kapanawa groups. Such Kapanawa history is a story of the application of this

name or the general Kapanawa category and not of an objective entity within the

Panoan family.

This chapter shows that various social units have been called Kapanawa. Some

of these can be safely identified as other from Kapanawa on the Buncuya and Tapiche

rivers. The Môa River Kapanawa spoke a language divergent from the modern

Kapanawa. The ―savage Kapanawa‖ from the 1960‘s on the Jaquirana River are

currently known as Matses, and are a group that has little in common with the

Tapiche and Buncuya population. Isolated Kapanawa from Sierra del Divisor do not

speak a language that is readily intelligible to a Shipibo, as one would expect from the

modern Kapanawa which is one of the Chama dialects. Although material on the other

Kapanawa is not available, their appearance in very remote locations, as well as

specific context of eastbound Peruvian colonization makes it little probable that the

denomination refers to actual ethnic reality rather than composing a generic category.

My hypothesis has been that on the Peruvian territory, a local kapa-bo or -

nawa identity from the context of the 16-seventeenth century Ucayali social relations

has been transformed into a more general category connected with a particular

territory somewhere by the end of eighteenth century. In time, and with the borrowing

of the name by new inhabitants of eastern parts of Peru throughout the nineteenth

century, this use has been increasingly more generic and ceased to be connected with

a particular territory, instead referring to a social position of a backwoods native. In

this manner, by the inception of the twentieth century it has come to designate not

only the population that has come to be known as Kapanawa in the official discourse

and literature. It has also been applied to other groups from the general area or in

remote locations, but of similar social position in relation to the populations of the

river banks. I argue that modern Kapanawa are only one of the groups that have been

subsumed under this social category with its implication of savagery, and their link

with other Kapanawa or in fact even the original seventeenth century Capanagua, is

not obvious. Furthermore, the Kapanawa name has been rejected by the Buncuya and

55

Tapiche population themselves in favor of internal classifications or ―mestizo‖

identities.

To make it explicit: the early sources indicate that the knowledge of exactly

who was Kapanawa and where they lived was very limited. The name would have been

readily applied to any group conforming to two basic requirements: 1. the general

geographical area, 2. the social distance from the naming subjects – the interfluvial

habitat and lack of sustained contact. Possible third one was some cultural or

linguistic link with known representatives (tattoos, piercings, anthropophagy etc.).

If in Peru the confusion of ethnonyms and proliferation of groups called

Kapanawa can be attributed to an underdifferentiation stemming from the

increasingly generalized use of the external Kapanawa category, the reverse seems to

be true for Brazil. The Kapanawa identities found east of the Upper Juruá River are

appearing dispersed among numerous other names. I have argued that they present

cases of a local use of the category found across the larger Panoan continuum, without

one ethnic referent. Descriptions of the ―ethnic‖ situation in an early historical contact

phase (nineteenth-twentieth century) in the Juruá-Purus area are comparable with

those produced after the initial contacts with Franciscans on the Ucayali River

between eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In both cases, missionaries or early

observers reproduced long lists of names recovered from local indigenous

populations, and their descriptions leave an impression of chaos produced by

numerous little groups, where Kapanawa is only one among many other

parcialidades, naciones or tribus. In contrast to the Ucayali, on the Juruá and Purus

rivers these classifications of internal character did not evolve into larger ethnic labels

and instead had been subsumed under other, generic denominations such as Nawa or

Yaminawa. While the impossibility to link the various Kapanawa in Peru stems from

the underdifferentiation on the part of external observers, in Brazil it can be attributed

to the character of indigenous internal identifications and its overdifferentiation.

These cases of Kapanawa identities do not belong to the level analyzable in occidental

ethnic terms, and the diverse Kapanawa people do not have to be directly connected

with each other, with modern Kapanawa of the Buncuya and Tapiche rivers (as proven

by the linguistic data from Môa Kapanawa/Nawa) or with any other Kapanawa

historically identified.

I would argue that on another level of analysis, those internal categories do

reflect characteristics of the Panoan social organization and the general Amazonian

Amerindian sociologics. As this is not the direct subject of this thesis, I will return

briefly to this subject in the conclusion. At this moment I would like to stress that the

historical Kapanawa identifications, just like contemporary uses of this name, cannot

56

function as guides to the ethnic composition of the Ucayali-Juruá region. They do not

denote connections that can compose data for objective ethnographical or linguistic

classifications.

57

Map 3. Kapanawa denomination usage.

58

Chapter 2. The Remo

2.1. Introduction.

Historical mentions of the name Remo as designating groups of people in the

Ucayali River basin reach the seventeenth century. Taking into consideration accounts

written by early Occidental observers, it could have been assumed that the Remos

were a large, little known group that has become extinct by the twentieth century. The

territory associated with them extended on the eastern bank of the Ucayali River over

a vast area contained between the contemporary Amawaka Indians to the south and

the Matses to the north. It was only natural for ethnographers and linguists to

consider the Remo (Remu, Rhemu, Rheno, ReMôauca) a single ethnic-linguistic unit

or a tribe (e.g., Tessmann 1930; Steward & Métraux 1948; Whiton et al 1964;

Loukotka 1968; Erikson 1994). Entering the ethnographic literature as such, they have

more recently been classified among such groups as Kapanawa, Marubo, Katukina,

Poyanawa and Sensi in the ―Pano medianos‖ category (Erikson 1992, 1993, 1994), as a

―missing link‖ between the Juruá-Purus Panoans (e.g., Amawaka) and the Mayoruna

Panoans (e.g., Matses) (Erikson 1999: 50).

However, in the majority of cases the only link between all Remos was

denomination itself. The only other common characteristic was their interfluvial

habitat with the spatial and social distance from the Peruvian riverine Indians and

mestizos. For this reason, they were all subject to intensive slave-hunting. People

thought to be Remo have been contacted by Euro-American observers only a few

times at different places and only for short periods of time, so that their descriptions

are vague and scarce.

To verify this hypothesis, an analysis of all the historical, ethnographic and

linguistic information available on groups denominated Remo has been undertaken,

and the results were presented in Krokoszyński & Fleck forthcoming.

The linguistic data available for the Remos is composed by three wordlists

gathered within short periods of time (early twentieth century) from groups living

59

close to each other, and the material on Iskonawa and Nukini languages. This material

allows comparisons to be made independent of the denomination.

The present chapter presents the historical data available on the groups called

Remo (including contemporary groups considered their descendants – Iskonawa and

Nukini) in the context were this denomination appeared the historical (section 2.2). It

then proceeds to consider the actual identity of the groups named Remo. It discusses

the phenomenon of the popularity and wide extension in the Ucayali basin of the term

Remo, first documented in reference to a seventeenth-century group, inhabiting some

600 km from where it has been used most recently.

2.2. The Remo sources and contexts

2.2.1. Remos of the Ucayali between the seventeenth and nineteenth

centuries

Tamaya River (1682-1690)

The seventeenth century marks the appearance of the Remo name in the

written sources, the fact attributable to penetration of the Upper Ucayali by the

Jesuits. The earliest mention of the name Remo is to be found in a general description

of then little known territories of Ucayale in 1682. That year, the Jesuit missionary

Lorenzo Lucero, who established what later became the Jesuit Maynas mission center

Santiago de Laguna or La Laguna de La Gran Cocama on the Lower Huallaga River,

came into contact with some Manamabobo Indians reported to be a ―forest‖ section of

the Chipeo, earlier inhabiting the Pachitea River (Maroni 1988: 291). It was

presumably from these Indians that the information on the Upper Ucayali River

groups came from. Those groups, living some 30 days from the Laguna were the

Cambas, Remos, Manamobobos, Cunivas and Piros (Chantre y Herrera 1901: 282).

This name was not reported by the members of the Father Manuel Biedma‘s

expedition that in 1685 established the first Franciscan mission among the Konibos,

denominated San Miguel near the confluence of the Pachitea and Ucayali rivers.

Between January and July of 1686 the mission was claimed for the Jesuit order by a

young German priest named Heinrich Richter. As he went to reduce one of the

Cunivos’ groups denominated Turcaguanes living downriver from Santissima

60

Trinidad de los Cunivos14 he found their village abandoned because of a raid on their

neighbors, the Remos (Maroni 1988: 290-91).

Four years later, in 1690, Richter tried to contact and reduce presumably the

same Remo group. They lived so close to the former Turcaguanes’ village that one

could hear the sound of Remo drums from it. At this time, they numbered more than

600 warriors and spoke a language very similar to Cunivos. Maroni suggests they, like

the Amenguacas, were hostile towards Richter‘s outnumbered expedition (Maroni

1988: 296). Based on this mention, Steward & Métraux (1948: 565) calculated the

number of Remos in 1690 at 3,000. According to Grohs (1974: 74), the Remos visited

by Richter were located south of the Imiria River (a left affluent of the Tamaya River).

The Manoa (or Cunshabatay) River missions (eighteenth century)

The name disappeared from documents for the next century. Although the

Franciscans made several attempts at establishing missions among the Shetebos,

Shipibos (or Callisecas) from the Cunshabatay and Aguaytìa rivers, none did succeed

for long, and the efforts ceased for many years after killing of all the missionaries in

1766 or 1767 (Ortiz 1984: 88). What is interesting in our context, the name Remo did

not enter any of the accounts for this period that we are aware of. The only exemption

is a peculiar reference made by Juan de Velasco who in 1770 considered them a

branch of the Campas, without specifying any location (in: Markham 1859: 180).

Sarayacu mission (late eighteenth – early nineteenth century)

The Remos reappeared in the sources some 100 years later, in connection with

the last and successful restoration of Franciscans‘ Manoa missions. In 1790, the Head

of the Franciscan Ocopa Convent, Manuel Sobreviela initiated an expedition that was

continued by Father Narciso Girbal y Barceló. Descending the Huallaga and Marañón

rivers and ascending the Ucayali, Girbal reached a Shetebo Indians‘ village on a

Sarayacu Stream. Upon his first, short visit in the area, the Shetebo enumerated the

different names of groups that inhabited the Ucayali River basin. Apart from the few

14 Main village of the Jesuit upper Ucayali mission. Most probably it was located at the same or near

location as San Miguel, (although it was supposedly renamed San Francisco Javier by the Jesuits

according to Biedma (Biedma et al. 1989: 236)). Ortiz estimates that San Miguel was located 8 to 10

leagues (24-30 miles) upriver from the mouth of Pachitea River, on the right bank of Ucayali (Ortiz 1984:

41, 50).

61

whose members Girbal met personally (Shipibos, Panos or Setebos, Amahuacas,

Cocamas and Mayorunas), he was told in general terms of other ―nations‖ living in

the mountainous regions away from the river banks. He wrote down that east of the

Ucayali River lived campas, capanahuas, remus, diabus, hormigas, nianaguas,

suabus, binabus, isnaguas and trompeteros (Izaguirre 1922-29, 8: 161).

Upon his return to the Ucayali River in 1791, Father Girbal was accompanied

by Father Buenaventura Marqués and Friar Juan Dueñas. The Sarayacu mission was

then officially established. After a few months spent on the Ucayali, young Friar

Dueñas presented a very similar list of names of backwoods parcialidades or naciones

east of the Ucayali, offering variations of Girbal‘s denominations, specifying that

Nianaguas lived 12 leagues (58 km) east from Sarayacu15 and complementing the list

with Ysacnaguas, Aguanaguas, Sinabus, Sentis and Chuntis. Apart from those,

presumably living closer to Sarayacu, he listed Remos, Casibos, Campas, Amaguacas,

Amages, Comabos, Ruanaguas, Pichobos further up the Ucayali (Izaguirre 1922-29,

8: 242). He also noted that many slaves living among the Pano came from Nianagua,

Remo, Mayoruna or Barbudo, Panatagua, Amaguaca and Chipeo groups (Izaguirre

1922-29, 8: 249).

Juan Dueñas also reported that the Piro Indians were on their way down the

Ucayali to visit Sarayacu when he was leaving the Ucayali in 1792 (Izaguirre 1922-29,

8: 241), and some time later Girbal wrote that the Piros who came from the Tarapoto

province lived in the vicinity of Sarayacu. Some Remo Indians – presumably captives

– were said to live with them (Izaguirre 1922-29, 8: 225).

In 1794 Girbal specified that the group called Remo lived on the Callerìa and

Abujao rivers, while the Tamaya River was inhabited by the Amawakas (Izaguirre

1922-29, 8: 308-309).

Remos as an independent group between Canchahuaya Hills and

the Tamaya River (1794-1859)

The latter, vast use seems to have been most common in subsequent mentions

of the Remos. They were reported from the Canchahuaya Hills to the Abuján (Abujao)

River by a Franciscan Pablo Alonso Carvallo in 1819 (in: Maw 1829: 469) and

Jerónimo de Leceta in 1837 (Izaguirre 1922-29, 9). Carvallo maintained that the

15 They were to be visited by fathers Girbal and Marquez in 1792 (Fuentes 1861: 162-63). This territory

corresponds with the later Remo locations.

62

Remos were very similar to Sensi16 and that the two spoke very closely related

languages.

Similarity between the two groups was noted by several other authors at that

time. It was affirmed by Smyth and Lowe who descended the Ucayali between 1834

and 1835, and by Pedro Beltrán, who accompanied them. Much of their information

surely came from father Manuel Plaza, but it is likely that they also made some

observations in Sarayacu. They remarked that the languages of the two groups were

not very different from those of the nineteenth century Pano group living in Sarayacu.

Also their customs, material culture and adornments were almost identical, the tattoos

of Sensis and Remos being analogous. Smyth and Lowe located Remos south of the

Sensis (Senci), i.e. in the Sierra del Divisor. Reportedly, these Remos rarely came to

the Ucayali banks and were hostile to strangers invading their territory, including the

Franciscans (Smyth and Lowe 1836: 230-231; Beltrán 1907: 60, also in: Izaguirre

1922-29, 9).

A few years later, Sarayacu was visited by Francis de Castelnau‘s expedition.

Laurent Saint Cricq (alias Paul Marcoy), a French graphic who accompanied

Castelnau, on descending the Ucayali between 1846 and 1847 found out that the Remo

were living on the Abujao River. The expedition encountered a Konibo party coming

back from a ―hunt‖ on the Remo Indians made on this river (Marcoy 2001, 2: 204).

Castelnau himself was told that the Cassibouya (Cashiboya) River was inhabited by

the cannibal Rimbos, whom he identified as the Remos mentioned by missionaries

(Castelnau 1850-59, 4: 364). The territory pointed to Castelnau later on the route as

the Remo habitat were also the Canchahuaya Hills (op. cit.: 367). It was noted by the

traveler on a general note, that some 20 leagues (around 90 km) east from the Ucayali

lived the Jawabus, Pitsobus, Remus, and Sensis (op. cit.: 377).

In 1846, Father Juan Cimini, who traveled up the Ucayali River with Manuel

Plaza, wrote a report on the condition of Manoa Missions, where he mentioned the

Remos from the Callerìa River in his enumeration of the area groups (Ortiz 1984:

169).

Shortly afterwards, between 1852 and 1855, the Remos were also mentioned by

an American painter George Catlin, although he did not specify the location of the

16 The name Sensi/Senci/Senti referred to at least three groups living in the northern part of Sierra del

Divisor, gathered in a mission on the Chunuya Stream between 1811 and 1822, when it was abandoned by

the missionary (Amich 1988: 255-56). Some Indians had left the mission previously, among them a group

called Runubú that retreated to the Sierra del Divisor. This area was later associated with the Remo

denomination.

63

Remos village he portrayed, other than as the general zone of Yucayali and pampas.

He contrasted them with the Shipibo and Shetebo or ―Canoe Indians‖, comparing the

latter to North American Winnebago from the Woodlands and Remos to Sioux and

Assiniboine from the Plains (Catlin 1959: 180).

Father Fernando Pallarés, upon being elected the Prefect of the Ocopa

Missions, realized a series of expeditions on the Ucayali River between the years 1853-

54, visiting all groups inhabiting the area between Sarayacu and the Tambo River.

Based on his travels, he wrote that the Remo occupied territory from the mountains of

Caschibo-hiya (Cashiboya) Hills to the Ahuanchumia creek (an affluent of the

Tamaya River). They were a ―pacific nation‖ and found themselves on the brink of

extinction due to continuous fights with the Indians from the Ucayali River (Izaguirre

1922-29, 9: 202).

By 1859, Father Vicente Calvo had been aware of the presence of the Remos

and Amahuacas on the Upper Tamaya (Izaguirre 1922-29, 9: 240). During his journey

on that river in 1859 he was told that the Remo Indians lived on the right affluents of

the Tamaya River, such as Aguanchumìa and Inunapuya (Inamapuya) (Izaguirre

1922-29, 9: 241). Shortly afterwards Father Antonio Majoral, who ascended the

Tamaya in 1867, reported that the river was inhabited by the Amuehuacas (Amich

1988: 373), and between 1876-78 the Franciscans tried to attract different groups

called the Amuehuaques to the Upper Tamaya‘s mission San Pedro de Huaitzaya

(Amich 1988: 422-27). It seems that the two names functioned in a similar way and

were possibly applied interchangeably to the same groups in the general area.

Apart from those two denominations, Pallarés and Calvo also learned of the

Sacayas who inhabited another affluent of the Tamaya River (Amich 1988: 334). This

name later reappeared as a Remo subgroup (e.g., Grubb 1927, Rivet and Tastevin

1921; Métraux 1948), or in connection with a group ―similar to the Remos‖, living

between the Tamaya and Juruá River (Hassel 1905: 51).

Remos as captives and co-residents on the banks of the Ucayali

(1792-1928)

Apart from reporting the interfluvial habitat of the independent groups known

as Remos, travelers on the Ucayali in the nineteenth century often found people

identified as Remos living on the banks of the Ucayali together with other groups.

They were either slaves, liberated captives, or captives‘ offspring and families living

64

among the riverine Indians, and their provenience seems to have been that of the

backwoods, in all cases.

Juan Dueñas reported Remo slaves living with Shetebo already in 1791-1792,

and at the same time Girbal reported there were Remos living with Piro in the vicinity

of Sarayacu (Izaguirre 1922-29, 8: 225). Pedro Beltrán noted that Remos were the

most numerous among the Sarayacu Pano‘s captives (Beltrán 1907: 60). They were

found by Manuel Plaza in 1843 at the mouth of the Pachitea, in Sta. Rita de Masisea

together with the families of Shipibos, Conibos and Amahuacas (Ortiz 1984: 163). In

1846 Saint-Cricq found a Remo captive living with a Shetebo family (living downriver

from canal de Yanayacu). His group lived between the Apujau (Abujao) and Huatpua

rivers (the Ucayali‘s tributaries downriver from the Tamaya River), where as a boy he

was captured by the Konibos. The French traveler also reported many settlements

located between Tierra Blanca and the mouth of the Ucayali populated by captives

liberated from the riverine Panoans, among them Remos (Marcoy 2001, 2: 273-76,

525). Father Juan Cimini who traveled the river at the same time, found its banks

populated with the Conibos, Shipibos, Sensis and some Remos (Ortiz 1984: 169). In

1851, an American Navy Lieutenant Lewis Herndon visited a village composed of

Remos and some Shipebos, living on the left bank of the Ucayali, downriver from

Tierra Blanca (Herndon 1853: 202). Also F. L. Galt noted that Remos and Amahuacas

were mostly to be found as slaves on the Ucayali (Galt 1878: 310). As late as in 1928,

Polish research expedition‘s leader, Mieczysław Lepecki, documented the use of the

name Remo on the banks of the Lower Ucayali, as he was told that among inhabitants

of Monte Caramelo village (located two days‘ journey by boat upriver from the mouth

of the Marañón River) were remnants of Pano and Remo Indians, who according to

his informants had occupied lands of the Lower Ucayali in the past (Lepecki 1931: 53,

55).

San Miguel de Cayaría mission (Callería and Abujao rivers) (1859-

1870)

At the time when the banks of the Ucayali were populated by the Indians

captured east of the Ucayali, the interior was still occupied by groups denominated

Remo. However, the first documented, direct contact with an independent group

labeled Remo took place in the 1860s. In 1859, a Franciscan Father Vincente Calvo

was looking for a place for a settlement that would provide repose to travelers on the

route from the Huallaga River to Sarayacu through the Pachitea River, and protect the

65

persecuted populations identified as Remos and Amawakas on the Tamaya (Izaguirre

1922-29, 9: 242). Not having found an appropriate place for establishing a mission on

the Tamaya River, Calvo was on his way back to Sarayacu. When he stopped at the

mouth of the Callerìa River he was told by a Shipibo man that the banks of the Upper

Callerìa were at that time also populated by many Indians called Remo. Antonio

Raimondi was later told (between 1859-62) by people who came to the Callerìa from

Sarayacu, that upon ascending the river for two weeks, they found its banks populated

by the Remos (op. cit.: 243).17 Calvo arranged for the settling of a village at one day of

rowing up the Callerìa, possibly at the same or nearby location of the current Shipibo

community of the same name. It was eventually established next year, and became the

San Miguel de Cayarìa mission.

Although Pallarés reported some Remos already at the moment of establishing

the Cayarìa mission along with Shipibos, Konibos and Sarayacu Christians,

information on their provenience is lacking (Izaguirre 1922-29, 9: 214-15).

Nevertheless, by 1862, Father Ignacio Sans had found a group of Indians on the

Piyuya Stream (left affluent of the Callerìa) and baptized some of them. He was

informed that further up the river lived a group called Isis baquebu (or Hisisbaquebo)

and other groups, whom he assumed to be Remo subgroups as well. The missionary

had convinced some of these Indians to descend the river to live in a village

denominated Schunumaná, halfway between the Piyuya Stream and Callerìa mission

(Amich 1988: 418). However, Sans did not seem satisfied with the results, as in his

1868 letter, when he was preparing for an expedition to reduce the Hisisbaquebo, he

was hoping it would go better than the one he had made to the Remos. By this time,

five Hisisbaquebo Indians had lived with Sans for over a year (Amich 1988: 374-375).

The results of this expedition are unknown. However, between 1868-1870, in a village

named Pamaya, there were more than 170 Remos gathered with Friar Manuel Vargas

(Amich 1988: 336).

Very little is actually known of the Callerìa Remos. Although the general

information presented by Father Pallarés seems to be based on the Carvallo-Lezeta

account, and possibly his own explorations of the Ucayali, his report was written or

added-to (possibly by Father Calvo or Martorell) after the establishment of Callerìa

mission and does present some original descriptions that could only have come

through Remos directly contacted on the Callerìa. According to this report, although

themselves pacific, Remos had reached the brink of extinction because of violent

17 Information on Calvo‘s expedition on Tamaya and Callerìa in 1859 comes from by Antonio Raimondi,

who visited Callerìa between 1859-1862 and had known V. Calvo personally (Raimondi 1942: 4).

66

encounters with the Ucayali Indians. They spoke a language related to Pano (Izaguirre

1922-29, 9: 202). Like Carvallo and Smyth, Pallarés implied similarity of beliefs of

Remos and Sensis, whom he had personally visited on the Upper Maquìa in 1854

(Izaguirre 1922-29, 9: 212).18

It was observed that they had their nostril flares, nasal septa, lips, and chins

perforated. They wore silver pendants hanging from the septum piercing, and in the

lower lips they inserted sticks that were replaced with silver adornments on festive

occasions. Remo mothers tattooed their children‘s faces and arms (Izaguirre 1922-29,

9: 208). This account also suggests they practiced funeral anthropophagy and

maintains that their language was closely related to that of Cappa-nahuas (op. cit:

202). Raimondi, who most likely based his information on the data gathered from the

Franciscans, makes very similar remarks about Remos (Raimondi 1942: 92), later

repeated by many other authors (e.g., Ernst 1872).

Another account that most likely also refers to the Callerìa mission‘s Remos

comes from a paper first published in 1874 by Francisco Sagols, a Franciscan monk

who spent some time in the Ucayali missions. While repeating Carvallo‘s basic data

and situating Remos between the Abujao River and Canchahuaya Hills, he also

provided an original observation that Remos perforated their lips in childhood, and

later adorned them with macaw feathers, which according to the priest, gave them

―most ridiculous appearance‖. He maintained they were characterized by their

physical features or wide and round faces and flat noses (Sagols 1901: 364). This

seeming immediacy suggest that the observation was based on direct contact with, or

a second-hand description of the Indians called Remos, and the only contact with

them at that time was through the Callerìa mission.

This period was marked by the intensive influx of the nationals in the area and

the weakening of the Fransciscans‘ hitherto undisputed authority on the Ucayali. In

1863, they were obliged to leave Sarayacu, moving their centers of operations to the

Callerìa and Cashiboya missions. Shipibo and Konibo were at this point engaging in

trade and work relations with the newcomers. Because of the fresh demand for slaves,

Shipibo habitants of the Callerìa were eager to take advantage of Remos presence on

the river.

In a 1868 letter to the Loreto Prefect, Father Vincente Calvo complained that

due to slave-hunting flourishing on the Ucayali, there were very few Remos left of

those that came to the Callerìa mission, and there was none left on the Poyuya

(Piyuya) and Utuquinìa rivers, and only a few on the Abujao River ―where they were

18 This last information is to be found in Castelnau 1850-59, 4: 387.

67

most numerous‖ before. This fate, reported Calvo, they shared with other groups such

as Puinahuas, Capanahuas, Senchis or Amahuacas (and Sacayas). According to

Calvo, the slave trade had intensified in the last decade, so that there was hardly a

month when there was not any Shipibo-Konibo slave raid going up or down the

Ucayali in search of backwoods groups (Ortiz 1984: 520).

Father Pallarés mentioned a frustrated attempt of a Shipibo raid on the Remos

gathered upriver from the Callerìa mission already in 1864 (Amich 1988: 419).

Nevertheless, some time between Sans‘ 1868 letter and Galt‘s 1870 visit on the

Ucayali, Shipibo from Cayarìa mission raided Remos gathered in Pamaya village

with Father Manuel Vargas (Amich 1988: 336, Izaguirre 1922-29, 9: 215, 244). This

attack ultimately frustrated Franciscan attempts at reducing groups associated with

the Remo denomination in the area. Those Remos who managed to escape Shipibo

raids were said to have retired deeper ―into the Piyuya‖ (Ordinaire 1988: 150), or the

Ucayali-Juruá rivers divide. According to an American surgeon F. L. Galt, in 1870

their remnants were to be found around the Callerìa and Cashiboya, mostly as slaves

(1878: 310). His account also suggests that apart from the Shipibo violence, diseases

also played some part in the failure of the mission or disappearance of the Remos, a

fact that was not mentioned in the Franciscans‘ relations.

At this date, among the visitors to the Ucayali who had left mentions of Remo

presence on the Callerìa were: Antonio Raimondi, who traveled in the Loreto Province

between 1859-1862, and has left the most detailed notes (Raimondi 1942 (1962)); the

Loreto Prefect, Benito Arana who participated in a steamship expedition to the

Pachitea river in 1867 (Matorela 2004: 19); an unknown steamship commander of a

Hydrographic Commission in 1871 (op. cit.); the above mentioned F. L. Galt (Galt

1878: 310; Steward and Métraux 1948: 565); finally, Olivier Ordinaire who traveled

through the zone around 1882 and had only found a little captive Remo girl living with

a colonist (Ordinaire 1988: 150).

Canchahuaya Hills – the Tamaya River zone after the Callería

mission (1901-2007)

After the failure of Callerìa mission, direct contacts with Remos in this area

ceased and subsequent information again is merely composed of mentions of the

name along with the general location or information copied from earlier sources.

Nevertheless, although there are no sources on Remos in the Canchahuaya-Tamaya

68

zone from the end of the nineteenth century and they are very scarce in the twentieth

century, the name was still locally associated with this region.

It was documented by José Antonio Sotomayor in 1901, who wrote of the

Remos inhabiting the Abujao and Callarìa rivers, persecuted by other tribes. He seems

to repeat Pallarés-Raimondi‘s information on face tattoos, face perforations and

mortuary cannibalism. Original observations of unknown provenience were that they

cremated their dead relative‘s bones, mixing the ashes with water, and that they were

monogamous. Also, he added that they were expert at using different plants applied in

sorcery against their enemies, which makes one believe his account is a mixture of

earlier sources, the actual, direct observations or second-hand relations, and of the

local riverine discourse on the backwoods‘ neighbors (Sotomayor 1901: 174).

In 1905, Jorge M. Von Hassel located the Remos on the Tamaya River and

calculated their number at 800 to 1000. According to his account, they were remnants

of a much larger group that had been reduced through wars and assimilation into such

neighboring groups as Amahuacas, Capanahuas, Yuminahuas, Yuras and Conibos.

Although these Remos themselves were little warlike, there were some fights between

them and the nationals or other groups triggered by the continuous raids for women

and children on both sides.

Von Hassel‘s information is sketchy, but his account provides some original

observations that did not come from earlier sources, and again situates Remos on the

Tamaya River, south from the previously mentioned locations. The Indians described

lived in large houses inhabited by a couple of families, used clubs and bows, cultivated

maize, manioc and bananas. Their language was similar to Amahuaca, being its

dialect or ―corrupted‖ by it (Hassel 1905: 50). Amahuacas were, according to von

Hassel, a large tribe of six or seven thousand heads, divided into various subgroups

living between the headwaters of the Tamaya and Acre rivers (op. cit.: 34). Not far

from the Remos, between the Tamaya and Juruá River lived a smaller tribe similar to

Remos, the Sacuyas (op. cit.: 51).

Castello Branco, based on unspecified sources, located Remus on the Upper

Juruá Mirim, Minas and Triunfo rivers, that is between the former and Abujao and

Tamaya rivers in Peru. These Indians, he maintained, ―communicatated‖ with

Anauacas (Branco 1950: 10). As this last information echoes the note made in Von

Hassel‘s report, which was available to Branco, we may suppose that it reflects the

former‘s data.

Among the authors mentioning Remos in the early twentieth century was also

Augusto Martìnez, who in 1912 enumerated this group among others living on the

Ucayali (Martìnez 1912 in: Matorela 2004: 20).

69

Remos were also mentioned in a similar location, neighbored by the Campas,

at the feet of ―Contamana mountains‖, on the Upper Paraná da Viuva or Rio do Moura

and the Upper Juruá Mirim River (whose headwaters approximate those of the

Abujao River) by Constant Tastevin, a French priest, based on information gathered in

the Juruá basin between 1908 and 1914 (Tastevin 1919: 146; 1920: 133; Rivet &

Tastevin 1921: 471).19 Compiling the available sources mentioning Remos in different

places, Rivet and Tastevin were probably the first to assume that all Remos composed

a single ethnic and linguistic unit.

Between 1923-1925, a German ethnographer Günter Tessmann met a few

Indians identified as Remos living in Shanaya near Contamana. Although they had not

provided him with much information on their provenience or ethnography of their

group, he copied their tattoos (Tessmann 1999: 319, 194) (see Fig. 6). All the

information on the Remos in his work seems to come from Father Leuque‘s Rìo

Blanco‘s Indians (see below).

In 1927, Kenneth Grubb of the World-wide Evangelization Crusade gathered

all the then available written sources. In doing so, he had followed the interpretation

of Rivet and Tastevin, assuming that all the mentions of the Remos referred to a single

unit. In thus synthesizing, he updated Rivet and Tastevin‘s information of the Remos

on the right affluents of the Ucayali (to Utuquinìa River) and in the Sierra del Divisor

(or ―Contamana hills‖), with Carvalho‘s account of the Remos on the Upper Javari and

its tributary the Batã River. Also, he reported them on the Rìo Blanco (an affluent of

the Tapiche River – most likely based on the information published by Izaguirre, see

below) and on the Gálvez River. He also maintained that the Mananagua20 and the

Sakuya were subtribes of the Remos (Grubb 1927: 84).

Yet around 1948, César Dìaz Castañeda maintained that the Tamaya River

zone was inhabited by the Remos ‗from the old Pauas (sic! Pano?) race‘. They did not

19 At the same time, it is the only source documenting the name Remo on the Brazilian side in this

location (considering that Kenneth Grubb copied Tastevin‘s information). It seems possible that the

denomination came to the Juruá River with Peruvian rubber workers in early twentieth century, and it

wasn‘t in much use in Brazil subsequently.

20 Rivet and Tastevin report the name‘s placement on the right bank of Ucayali on a map elaborated by

Father Samuel Fritz, a 17th century missionary working in the area (Rivet & Tastevin 1921: 465). This

denomination was also reported in the early twentieth century by the Maquìa River Kapanawa to Father

López as referring to the isolated Indians living in the Sierra del Divisor in the Maquìa River headwaters

(Izaguirre 1922-29, 8: 282-83). Tessmann identified this locally used name with the Sensi remnants

(1999: 109).

70

have any relations with whites and little was known of them. The note that their word

for ‗toads‘ was Maya-nahuas, points to their Panoan linguistic affiliation. Reportedly,

they maintained that these animals were the ―mayas‖ who were annihilated by the

flood and lived crying in the marshes. Provenience of this peculiar information is left

unknown. Further yet in the Tamaya headwaters were reported the Amawakas (Ortiz

1984: 460).

The intriguing reference by Castañeda is the last published source we have

been able to find that leaves any original information on the Indians identified as

Remos in this general location in the twentieth century. However, the name seems to

have permeated in the area. The Shipibo-Konibo had regularly raided the area‘s

isolated groups at least until the 1950‘s, denominating them Remos and Amawaka. In

1961 the SAM missionary Clifford Russell along with one of the recently contacted

Iskonawa Indians visited an elderly woman in San Francisco de Yarinacocha, who had

been captured from the Remos by the Konibos in her childhood (1900-10). The

woman did not understand Iskonawa, but would recall denominations Awanahua and

Shawanahua used by her people (Whiton et al.: 109). Warren R. DeBoer in 1971 found

evidence of raiding Indians called Amawaka and Remo by Konibo as recent as from

the 1930‘s in genealogies of San Francisco, Iparìa and Sonochenea communities

(DeBoer 1986: 234) on the Upper Ucayali.

Apart from that, the South American Mission personnel learned there were

cases of people captured on the Inamapuya River (right tributary of the Tamaya) by

Shipibo in the 1920‘s and 1940‘s, and there were rumors that eight or nine backwoods

Indians were captured on Piyuya in the 1950‘s and taken to Yarinacocha (Whiton et al.

1964: 88). This area was hitherto considered the Remo territory. In fact, the author

was told that in the first years after contact with the Iskonawa Indians on the Utquinìa

River (see below), local Shipibo used to call them Rëmubu. This denomination was

also sporadically mentioned in the Shipibo-Konibo communities downriver on the

Ucayali in recollections of the grandfathers‘ fights with the Remos or Remonahua

(Krokoszyński et al. 2007).

Currently, the isolated groups in this area are locally denominated either (wild)

Iskonawa (where the acquaintance with members of this now Callerìa-located group is

stronger) or Kapanawa. The latter use is more common on the Middle Ucayali,

possibly as the effect of the raids organized by the Shipibo-Konibo on Kapanawas from

the Maquìa, Buncuya and Tapiche rivers as late as in the first decades of the twentieth

century (op. cit.). Signs of backwoods Indians thought to be Kapanawa were also

found on the Inamapuya river (an affluent of the Tamaya River) between 1967-1972

(SIL microfiche, n.d.).

71

2.2.2. Remos of the Javari River area at the end of the nineteenth and

beginning of the twentieth century

Although the denomination Remo continued to be connected with the

Canchahuaya – Tamaya zone, from the very end of the nineteenth century it also

started to appear at a new location, which was the Javari basin. Among the sources

referring to this area, the most important, reporting direct contact with Indians called

Remo, are: a. Remos living in the Rìo Blanco (an affluent of the Tapiche River whose

headwaters approximate the Upper Javari River) mission with Fathers Agustin López

and Enrique Leuque; b. Remu from the Batã (also Batan, Bathan) River, visited by

João Braulino de Carvalho; and c. Rïmo contacted by a few Kapanawa Indians in the

Môa and Tapiche rivers‘ headwaters. In these locations, wordlists were recovered and

provide the most reliable evidence that these groups did not belong to a single unit.

The Javari – Curuça rivers (1897)

Augusto da Cunha Gomes, head of the Peruvian-Brazilian boundary

commission of 1897 was the first to document the use of this name (Rhemus) in

reference to Indians living on the ―middle Javary‖, by which he meant the Jaquirana

River (Javari‘s upper course) from Gálvez to the Batã (Bathan or Paysandú) River,

and on the southern bank of the Batã River. Their villages were also reported in the

Jaquirana-Curuça River divide, where they avoided contact with whites (Gomes 1898:

252).

It is not clear whether Gomes had personally met any of the Rhemus. His

information seems to be based on their neighbors‘ description (including one

Capanana (Kapanawa?)21 woman). These Remos tattooed their bodies, most of all

women. Men perforated their lower lips, earlobes and nostrils, ornamenting them

with macaw and other birds‘ feathers. They wore necklaces and belts made of shells

and ―a kind of hard and odorous wood‖. They did not practice anthropophagy (as their

neighbors, the Capanana were said to) and married little girls with the approval of the

Tuchana, or the ―chief‖. Men went naked, and women wore breechclouts hanging

21 The Capananas habitat was the other bank of Jaquirana, and their identification with modern

Kapanawa is uncertain.

72

from their belts only after giving birth. According to the account, they were less robust

and darker than their enemies from the other bank of the Batã River, the Capananas

(op. cit.: 253-54).

Santa María de los Remos mission (Blanco River) (1911-13 )

In his November of 1911 letter to Marìa Candamo, a Franciscan monk Agustìn

López wrote that on July twentieth of 1910 he went on a journey on the Blanco River,

the Tapiche River‘s largest, right affluent. In its upper course, approximating the

Upper Jaquiarna, he found a village of backwoods Indians. He identified them as

Remo and did not note their auto-denomination. The group numbered around one

hundred people in total, divided into at least two local groups. According to López,

they had originally lived on the Blanco River, but for some time moved to the

Jaquirana River to escape the rubber workers‘ abuses, only to find more persecutions

in the new location. Some of them were captured and went to work as rubber

gatherers on the Cururá (Curuça?) River. Managing to escape, they returned to the

Blanco River decimated (López 1913: 210). They showed Father López their scars as

the evidence of maltreatment from the rubber workers (op. cit.; see also Izaguirre

1922-29, 12: 431-32). B. Izaguirre, who most likely received information in this respect

from Father López, also adds that these Indians had always lived in war with

Kapanawas (whom López visited briefly on the Tapiche). After three months spent

among the Remo, López went back to Requena, from where in 1911 he sent a French

priest Enrique Leuque Larunda (a.k.a. Henri Philippe or Enrique Philips Leuque) to

the new mission, denominated Santa Marìa de los Remos (Salvador 1972).

Leuque found it after five days of ascending the Blanco River from

Capanagua, a rubber-gatherers‘ village. By the time of his arrival, the Remos had

divided into groups gathered around two curacas, Roque Luceiro and José Cuchirana,

who had left to Jaquirana with his people, only to come back at the news of the

missionary‘s arrival (see Izaguirre 1922-29 12: 248). By 1913, Leuque wrote to López

that the Indians were increasingly coming under the influence of local patrons and he

was losing his authority among them (Salvador 1972: 78-83). In December of 1913, the

missionary was attacked by ―various groups‖ of Indians he thought were instigated by

the patrones and was hurt, but managed to escape at night (Salvador 1972: 83-85; see

also Ortiz 1986: 249-251).

When López visited this group, he noted that men removed all facial hair and

perforated their earlobes, upper lips and nostrils. On festive occasions feathers or

73

palm pines that gave them ―a cat look‖ were put in the lip perforations. They wore

shell pendants hanging from their nose partitions (Tessmann – whose informant was

Leuque – said feathers were inserted instead) and shells were used as earrings. Both

sexes were tattooed on the faces and bodies, especially women. They also used

necklaces, wristbands and ankle-bands made of shells, monkey teeth or weaved from

cotton by women. The Indians also made headdresses of leaves and macaw feathers

(Izaguirre 1922-29, 12: 244-46).

According to the information given to Tessman, men had also their penises

tattooed, and while hunting or cultivating tied them in the upwards position to a belt.

Women tied a gourd that covered their genitals. Their house was built on an oval plan,

and all slept in hammocks. Communication between the houses was maintained by

means of drums (Tessmann 1999: 319). The dead were cremated, their ashes mixed

with chicha (maize beverage) and consumed during a feast with all the relatives and

friends present, dancing and wailing to the beat of dundúri or manguare (hallowed

tree trunk drums) (Izaguirre 1922-29, 12: 245-47). Leuque told Tessmann that part of

the corpse was first consumed by the closest relatives, and the ashes were saved

during a month of mourning, after which the chicha or feast was prepared (Tessmann

1999: 319).

We have not been able to find any subsequent mentions of this group after

Leuque‘s leave, and its fate is unknown. However, the name itself has stayed in the

discourse on isolated groups in the Tapiche-Jaquirana River area, as is testified by the

Kapanawas‘ testimonies or the more recent use of the term by the local population

(mestizos from the Requena area and Matses from the Gálvez River) (see below).

The Batã River (1918-21)

Shortly after the failure of the Blanco River mission, Indians called Remo were

reported at another location. According to a story told in the 1970‘s to J. Melatti and

D. Montagner, their informant‘s father Raimundo de Souza Luzeiro raised a Remo

child that had been captured by the Peruvians. When the boy grew up, went back to

his people and after some time, before 1918-1921, brought some 80 Remos to live and

work in Luzeiro‘s rubber estate, located on the Batã River in Brazil (a right affluent of

the Jaquirana River).

According to Luzeiro‘s daughter, there were some 300 Remos living with her

family on the Batã before the epidemic of 1918 (or 1921, according to the son). The

disease had decimated them and Remos went back to Peru. She remembered that they

74

had many perforations in their lips and at least one in their noses. Lived in a large

rounded hut with two doors. Their dead were cremated and their ashes mixed with the

maize beverage, while all their property, crops and animals were destroyed or killed.

Among them were also a few blue-eyed and light-skinned women said to be

―daughters of the Peruvians‖ (Melatti & Montagner 2005: 10-11). The short list of

Remo words recalled by Mrs. Maria Luzeiro was gathered by J. Melatti and D.

Montagner.

The Batã River (1926)

In 1926, a few years after the Peruvian Remos had left the Luzeiros, Brazilian

medic João Braulino de Carvalho visited the Batã river. Working with the joint

boundary commission on Javari, he has left a report on the Indians he called Remus,

and who referred to themselves as Nucuiny (which he translated as ‗good people‘).

Carvalho was told that they had sometime in the past lived in a large village on the

Batã river. However, in 1926 they were reduced or dispersed to two settlements called

Contas, and San Pablo (whose exact locations are unknown), and some families lived

in the Jaquirana-Ipixuna divide (Carvalho 1931: 252).

They were monogamous, used bows, and lived with their leader in large

longhouses with two or three doors, divided into nuclear families‘ sections (op. cit.:

253). The Nucuiny also cremated their dead and shared the ashes between the

relatives to be consumed in chicha (op. cit.: 254).

They were all tattooed, and Carvalho was convinced that the name Remo was

given to them on the Jaquirana because of the similarity between the designs tattooed

on their faces (around the mouth, see e.g., Matses and Poyanawa on Fig. 1) and the

paddles used by the caucheros. Their tattoos were composed of circles around the

mouth, and some designs on the arms, neck and face. Women‘s tattoos were mostly

applied on chests (op. cit.: 252). Carvalho has also recovered a list of Remu-Nucuini

words.22

22 Carvalho‘s informacion on the Remu – Nucuiny was later copied by J. Lima Figueirêdo in his 1939

publication.

75

Môa, Tapiche and Buncuya rivers (1930’s)

Some time after Carvalho visited Rhemus on the Batã River, the Kapanawa

from the Tapiche and Buncuya rivers in the 1930‘s had contact with a group they

designated as Rïmo in the headwaters of the Tapiche and Môa rivers.

In 1972 a Summer Institute of Linguistics missionary Dick Montag interviewed

Teobaldo Chumo Tuanama (?) living in Contaya on Tapiche. He was told that this 40-

some year old Kapanawa man had been taken to Brazil ―at about age 2 and stayed for

about 10 years‖, living with four families of Remos on the Môa River. Although the

man did not remember many words, and supposedly gave Kapanawa instead, Montag

did gather some data that unfortunately were not available to us (Montag 1972).

One year later, another SIL missionary, Eugene Loos, while working on the

Buncuya River, found two 60-year old men (Ernesto Baquinahua and Manuel Chumo)

who maintained that they had gone from Tapiche to the Môa River in the 1930‘s to

gather rubber along with nine other Kapanawa and their wives. There they found a

group of 27 Indians they called Remos and spent almost a year living with them in

―cordial relationships‖, gathering rubber and hunting for hides. According to Ernesto

Baquinahua, those Indians did not use ―canoes or paddles or clothes and did not work

rubber‖ (Loos 1973-74, see also Loos 1976 and Ribeiro & Wise 1978: 168-169).

Apparently, the three interviews refer to the same events. This would signify,

that some of the Kapanawa stayed with Rïmo for up to ten years. Our informant, an

elderly Buncuya River Kapanawa recalled a man living with the Remos (or

Remobákëbu) for around two years, moving between Tapiche and Maquìa rivers‘

headwaters.

The Kapanawa Indians also had other experiences with people they called

Remo. For example, in the 1970‘s there was an 80-year old woman said to be half-

Remo, and a relative of Teobaldo, living on the Tapiche (Montag 1972). The contact

would thus have taken place around 1890. It is worth mentioning, that Victor

Oppenheim in 1936 reported having met Panoan Indians called Rhemu living on the

Tapiche. They were said to have come from Jaquirana, denominated themselves

Nucuini and wore tattoos ―identical‖ to those of Nucuini living on the Ramon

(Ramao) stream (see below), although the Latvian geologist doubted they belonged to

the same group (Oppenehiem 1936b: 151). Evidently, the relations between Indians

living on the Tapiche and those denominated Remo were more common in the past.

76

A Buncuya informant also told us that her father had a direct contact with two

friendly interior groups living in the area in the 1920‘s or 1930‘s. The names he used

were Remo or ReMôauca and Kashibo. Its members had their nostrils and earlobes

pierced and were ―painted‖, and the Kapanawa man was able to communicate with

them.

2.2.3. Remos and other isolated groups between the Buncuya and Yavarí

Mirim rivers (twentieth–twenty-first century)

From the beginning of the twentieth century, the name Remo functioned in the

Gálvez – Javari rivers region on the background of many other denominations

brought by outsiders from different parts of the Peruvian Montaña and the general

underdifferentiation of interior groups. Avencio Villarejo who visited Javari and

Jaquirana in the same year that Oppenheim crossed from the Môa to Tapiche River

(1936), reported that the zone was depopulated of the white settlers for fear of the

Pisahuas (or Pisabos/Pichabos) who together with the Marubos had ―dominated‖

Remos and Mayorunas (Villarejo 1959: 147). Earlier, there were the denominations

Sachavaca, Pisavos, Huacamayos-auca and even Hamuacas (Fuentes 1908: 149),

Cahuapanas (Izagurre 1922-29, 12: 196) or Rêmo and Chamicuro (Melatti 1981: 18)

reported between the Tapiche and Jaquirana.23 There were also Mayo, Pecanoyus

(López 1913: 210), and in later years Grillos or Capishto, Cumala, Shapajas and

Pinshes (Villarejo 2002: 128). As has been demonstrated in previous chapter, also the

name Kapanawa was applied indiscriminately (e.g., Fields 1963 in reference to the

Matses). In this denominational plethora, by the second half of the twentieth century,

some authors still assumed Remo to be a specific group that was either extinct, or

gone to Brazil.

In the second half of the twentieth century, application of the name Remo was

documented in different sources in reference to uncontacted groups living in the area

between the Tapiche and Yavarì Mirim rivers. Luis Uriarte recorded reports of the

Marubo Indians on the Tamshiyacu Stream, an area formerly supposedly shared with

a Rêmo group (1976: 46). Ribeiro and Wise doubted existence of any Remos in Peru,

and were inclined to think they had left to the Môa River, most likely referring to the

SIL data mentioned above (1978: 168).

23 Some Peruvian-influenced proto-Marubo identified these two backwoods groups on Tamchiaco stream

in early twentieth century.

77

The name has endured, and native and mestizo local population still use it

today. Most recently, it has been documented among local populations in connection

with the unknown groups from the Tapiche and Blanco rivers (Aguirre y Villasante

2003: Aquise 2007; Krogh 2006), Gálvez and Yavarì Mirim rivers (Kanatari 1988

[vol. 4]; Allen 1994; Matlock 2002, Krogh 2006). The author has also found its use

among the Buncuya River Kapanawa in reference to the uncontacted Indians on the

Upper Buncuya and, sporadically, among the Shipibo-Konibo on the Middle Ucayali

(Krokoszynski et al. 2007). Most often, it is accompanied by other names of similar

character, such as Kapanawa, Isconahua, Kashibo, Kampa, Mayoruna, Mayu, or

Yaminawa from among the already existing, and Barba Negras, Boca Negra, or Pelo

Largo from those elaborated locally.

2.2.4. Nukini of the Môa River

One of the groups that in the ethnographical literature are sometimes

connected with the historical Remos are the Nukini or Nucuini (the former being the

current official Brazilian name, the latter being used in the literature) from the Môa

River (an affluent of the Juruá River in Brazil). While it is possible to connect their

ancestors with people described in the past, they were rarely (if ever) called Remo by

Brazilians and do not identify themselves as Remo. Although we trace their

connection with the other Remos to the ambiguity of historical sources, we also

present indications that they could have been among the groups denominated Remo

in the past, as well.

The first historical mention possibly referring to Nukini ancestors comes from

1911, when a SPI (Serviço de Proteção ao Indio) inspector Máximo Linhares (1913 in:

Correia 2005b, Montagner 2002, Rivet and Tastevin 1921) found a group of 80

Indians called Inocu-inins living in the rubber estate called Gibraltar on the Upper

Môa River. Linhares learned that earlier they had for some time been forced to work

in Peru, but managed to flee to Brazil. At that time they were divided into two groups,

gathered around a ―Peruvian‖ from the Xáxá-Baca who recently pretended to be their

leader, and a second one called Purivavô or Evaristo who had formerly been the leader

of all. The inspector maintained that the term inocu-inins signified ‗poisonous and

odorous jaguar‘.

Father Constant Tastevin maintained that the Upper Môa River was inhabited

by the Nukuinis living in utmost misery, having been deprived of their fields

subsequent to the influx of rubber workers on the river (Tastevin 1919: 146, 149), with

78

their ―remnants‖, roaming between the Singarú and Môa rivers (1920: 133). In 1921

he identified the Nukuini with Inukuini, or the group mentioned by Linhares (Rivet &

Tastevin 1921: 469). By 1924, he managed to gather a wordlist from a Nukuini man,

whose people were also called Tsitsaya-nawa (‗men which are tattooed‘) (Tastevin

1924: 425). It is important to note that Tastevin never connected Nukuini with Remo,

whom he located to the southwest as a separate group (see above).

In 1936 Victor Oppenheim found ten to fifteen families of Indians who referred

to themselves as Nucuini, on the border with Peru, on the the Upper Ramon Stream

(left tributary of the Upper Môa approximating the Tapiche River headwaters)

(Oppenheim 1936b, 1971). He found out that they were survivals from the Paraná da

Republica (or the Novo Recreio River) migrating from an epidemic, had had previous

contacts with nationals, used manufactured tools. They lived in a large longhouse and

were able to communicate with Panoan Indians accompanying Oppenheim, identified

as Kashinawa from República estate24 and especially with a Poyanawa man. Their

tattoos – which the account suggests were worn mostly by women and the more aged

men – were of a distinct kind, and more elaborated than those of either Poyanawa or

Kashinawa. Apparently there were still other ―isolated groups of the tribe‖ that still

practiced funerary cannibalism (Oppenheim 1971: 167). Contemporary Nukini

maintain that yet another group around this time inhabited the Upper Ramon Stream

(Montagner 2002: 99-100).

When traveling further through the Tapiche River, Oppenheim met other

Indians autodenominated Nucuini (and with ―identical‖ tattoos25). They had come

from Jaquirana, and were called Rhemus by the local population. Oppenheim

suspected that despite the autodenomination, they belonged to a group distinct from

the Ramon Stream Nucuini, assuming these were the same Rhemus whom the

Nucuini chief told him they fought at the headwaters of the Tapiche River.

24 During Oppenheim‘s visit to this estate the Indians working for the boss were called Cashinaua, and

their old campgrounds were located on the upper Azul River, a tributary of Môa (Oppenheim 1971: 162,

156). This is surprising, as the estate is connected with the contemporary Nukini in their oral histories.

25 Tattoos of several groups met by Oppenheim were reproduced in his another 1936 paper (1936c, see

also Erikson 1994, 1999). Among them, the three Nucuini, Rhemu, Capanauá and Punhamumanauá

tattoos are of similar type, contrasting with Poyanauá and Mayu designs. It is interesting to note the

striking similarity of Tessmann‘s Remo woman‘s design (Tessmann 1999: 319, 194) to Oppenheim‘s

Rhemu tattoo (see Fig. 5). When Delvair Montagner visited Môa in 1977, she saw an elderly woman

(originally from a Jaquirana River group) tattooed in the manner described by Oppenheim for Ramon‘s

Nucuini (Montagner 1977).

79

We were not able to locate subsequent mentions of the Nucuini Indians until

the 1970‘s, when Brazilian anthropologists and FUNAI workers reported a small group

known as Nukini, living mostly in the rubber estate República, and families from the

different Môa groups scattered in different estates (Montagner 1977: 2). D. Montagner

also mentioned alternative versions of the name by which Nukini were known, namely

Kuinin and Shinkin-shiá (the latter being applied to them by the Nawa) (Montagner

2002).

Recently, another group, called Nawa, has been identified among the Môa

River families who trace their descent to native ancestors (Montagner 2002). The

Nukini and Nawa families present their history as one of families or groups of

originally heterogeneous locations coming to live together in the shiringales (rubber

estates) from the Môa‘s different tributaries (especially from the Azul River – Novo

Recreio Stream divide) in the early twentieth century, some willingly, others forced by

rubber bosses (Aguiar 2004; Montagner 1977, 2002).

The Nukini recalled having had hostile and violent contacts with people they

designated as Kapanawa, Shipibo (the rubber gatherers), Poyanawa, Mayo (from the

Javari River) and Kapatxo (from the Môa Mountains) (Montagner 1977: 39).

Among the Nukini, contemporary situation seems to be perceived as a result of

mixing various groups or families. Identity of these units and their mutual

connections are in many cases unknown. Among the reported Nukini ancestors, such

groups of unknown status were the Pãrivakevô, of the Tapiche River origin, and the

Ronobakevô from the Jaquirana River (who were persecuted by the Peruvians and

made to collect rubber), among others (Montagner 1977: 37). Contemporary Nukini

recall the following names thought to be descent groups or ―clans‖: Inubakëvu,

Panabakëvu, Itsãbakëvu and Shãnumbakëvu (Correia 2005b) or inuvakebo,

vunavakebo, itsavakebo, among others (Lima 1994: 24).

2.2.5. Iskonawa of the Utuquinía and Callería rivers

Another contemporary group linked to historical Remos were the 25 or 27

Iskobákebu or Iskonawa (Isconahua) Indians who in 1959 came into contact with

South American Mission members in the headwaters of the Utuquinìa River (see

Map). Because this area was, as has been demonstrated, associated with the name

Remo, it was only natural to assume they were descendants of the Callerìa-Abujao

River Remos from the nineteenth century. The author was told that the local Shipibo

80

had in fact initially called them Rëmubu, which was later found insulting by the

Iskonawa.

Variants of the denomination Iskonawa were sporadically noted by other

authors in different locations. In 1905 Peruvian rubber ―baron‖ C. Scharff had contact

with Iscunahua Indians on the Rio de las Piedras (affluent of the Madre de Dios

River) (Granadino 1916: 349, 356), and in 1925 the Isku-naua were documented

among the Katukina on the Gregorio River by Tastevin (1925: 415). Currently,

Iskonawa are reported as one of the Gregorio River Yawanawa descent groups (e.g.,

Calavia 2001), the Iskonáwavo name appears in reference to several segments of

Marubo lineage (Ruedas 2001), and Iscodahua are reported as one of the Yora (of the

Serjali river) lineage groups (Mary Ann Lord 1996 in: Deleage 2005: 36). It is not

possible to connect any of these sources with the small group found on the Upper

Utuquinìa. It is not clear whether Villarejo was referring to the newly contacted group

in 1959, when he spelled it Isacnahuas, had documented use of this name for the

Sierra del Divisor group prior to that date, or simply copied Dueñas‘ information on

the Ysacnaguas (Villarejo 1959). Indians living in the area corresponding exactly with

the Iskonawa habitat have been identified as Remo by Tastevin (e.g., 1919, 1924) and

as Amahuacos/Amauachos by Oppenheim (1936b).

Although the small group was initially to be taken to a SAM location in

Contamana, the idea was opposed by the Shipibo and Iskonawa were transferred to

the Callerìa River (Matorela 2004: 32-33), where they were found by the Whiton

expedition, and where their remnants live today.

The Iskonawa lived in typical Panoan malocas (longhouses). They had their

nostrils, ears and nose partitions perforated, and wore oropendola feathers, palm

spine whiskers and shell pendants in them. Previous to the contact with SAM, they

had also applied tattoos around the lips and on the cheeks, and the living Iskonawa

remember some older members who wore them. The tattoo was applied to a young

man during a feast (Krokoszyński field data, see Fig. 5). They cremated the dead, but

did not practice anthropophagy. On festive occasions they used drums made of

hollowed tree trunks, which were also used for communication, and hunted with bows

and arrows (for more detailed ethnographic information, see Małkin 1962; Whitton et

al. 1964; Momsen 1964; Arbaiza et al. 1995; Matorela 2004; Brabec & Pérez 2006).

Stories told by the Callerìa River Iskonawa (Matorela 2004; Brabec & Pérez

2006; Krokoszyński field data) as well as their close linguistic affiliation with

Poyanawa and Nukini suggest their previous association with the Brazilian area to the

east or south-east of where they met with SAM. Initially, they reported relations with

groups called Runu-, Jawan-, Awa-, Wari-, Yawa-, Nai- bakëbo. In the period

81

preceding the encounter with SAM, they maintained the closest relations with Inu,

Tsinu and Isubënë (Whiton et al. 1964: 102) and fought with Indians called

Michinahua and/or Pimisnahua (op. cit: 100). Years later, they recalled mostly the

friendly Ahuabaquebo (Ribeiro y Wise 1978: 131) or Awabakabu, and hostile Puatima

and Isisnahua (Braun 1973, 1975). According to Braun (1975), the Iskonawa group

was earlier ideally organized in two intermarrying units, but their names are not

mentioned. Today, the few elderly Iskonawa who came to Callerìa in their teens or

twenties recount Awanawa as their allies and Puátima (or Puahunibu), Isisnahua and

Variawa (Bwarinawa) as enemies. They also maintain their people fought with the

Kashinawa, and recall a distinct group designated as Isukuru-hunibu. Among their

own kin they recount persons identified as Awabákëbu, Inubákëbu, Tsinubákëbu,

Isubënë, Puátima and Isisnawa. Apart from this, three of the living Iskonawa from

the original group identify themselves as the Yaminawa, and also include the

Brashicos (―Brazilians‖) among their ancestors (as a proof of this pointing to curly

hair). Indeed, the informants expressed to us that previously to the contact with SAM

they lived intermixed with other people, and intermarried just as they do now with the

Shipibo or mestizos (Krokoszyński field data).

2.3. The Remo connections and identities

3.3.1. Application of the name Remo.

Among different applications of the name Remo throughout documented

history, one can identify three major ones. Firstly, it is its generic, widest application

that sets boundaries for this thesis, including the earliest as well as the most recent

mentions of Remo. The denomination has been applied indiscriminately by the

riverine populations to all socially and spatially distanced people of the interfluvial

zone between the Ucayali and Juruá or Javari rivers. It is impossible to draw any

strong conclusions about connections between all those underdifferentiated groups.

Secondly, it refers to specific, localized groups, visited at a certain time or reported in

a set location by a particular person. These concrete Remo groups can be identified by

adding the visitor‘s name or the location. Of these, some reports do not allow for any

comparisons with any other groups. Others leave indications that allow to draw

certain conclusions as to their connections with other groups and are thus the most

significant. Finally, apart from groups that were documented as Remo, it has been

used to those that are known by other names, but have been assumed to be Remo

descendants.

82

The provenience of this denomination will have to remain obscure. Possibly it

could be traced to one of the local groups denomination, to a generic description of

people connected by a cultural or linguistic feature26 or to insults applied by the

Panoans to their neighbors. The name Remo has however taken on different meanings

as it was applied by other people at different places. The homophony of this name with

a Spanish word for a paddle has in the early twentieth century led nationals and some

ethnographers to believe (and possibly to apply the name to new groups accordingly)

that the name referred to the similarity of certain kind of a regionally popular motif of

a native tattoo (of the type applied by the Matses, Marubo or Poyanawa) to the shape

of a tool commonly used in the Peruvian selva (e.g., Carvalho 1931; DeBoer 1986;

Erikson 1994). It is also possible that contemporary popularity of this denomination

among the Matses in reference to uncontacted groups is due to the similarity of the

name Remo to a traditional designation Dëmushbo, referring to the whiskers worn by

an enemy group27

When it was reported for the first time in the seventeenth century, the Cunibo

denomination Remo referred to a rather large group (or a set of groups) living on the

Tamaya River. It virtually disappeared from sources for over a century with the failure

of the Jesuit missions on the Upper Ucayali River. It must have been in use locally

however, although gradually changing its point of reference. Reappearing at the end of

the eighteenth century, it had already moved north towards the Sierra del Divisor. At

this point, it was presented as one of many group names in the Setebo perspective.

Gradually, mentions of the other groups disappeared from the documents and were

substituted by the vast-reaching Remo denomination. Throughout the nineteenth

century, all the groups living east of the Ucayali River, between the Canchahuaya Hills

and the Abujao or Tamaya rivers came to be called by this name by the riverine

Indians and the incoming nationals. One or a few of these many groups were

contacted by the Franciscans and for a long time the name was to be associated with

the Callerìa River. In this period, the little known backwoods population became an

object of intensive slave-hunting. While it had been practiced at least since the first

26 Some of the many names reported by Setebo in early 1800‘s might have referred to local groups

denominations (they do correspond with contemporary names of descent groups among different Pano),

others possibly composed generic labels.

27 Harriet Fields maintained that Demushbo was a name applied by them to Remo (Fields 1963 in:

Erikson 1994: 15), and the equation of Nëmushbo and ReMôauca was also cited by Krogh (2006) (see

Krokoszyński and Fleck forthcoming for further details on the Matses use of this name).

83

documents on the riverine Panoans from the seventeenth century, there are

indications that it intensified with the arrival of colonists.

At the end of the nineteenth century, when various authors repeated

secondary, classic information on the Remos in the Sierra del Divisor, and the Callerìa

River Remos, or the only Remos actually contacted were now only a memory, the

name reappeared again in the Javari basin. Although it had never before been

reported in this area, it was there that it was mostly to be found throughout the

twentieth century.28 As has been demonstrated, in this area it was applied to

linguistically differing groups. It is therefore reasonable to assume that it was not the

people called Remo that migrated to the Javari basin, but the name itself. While it is

not clear what caused the previous denomination extension by the end of the

eighteenth century, it is quite evident that by the end of the nineteenth century it was

brought to the Javari basin by the Peruvian rubber gatherers. Augusto da Cunha

Gomes who visited the Javari River in 1897, reported that the majority of the

Jaquirana River population was at that time composed of Quechua-speaking rubber

workers from Peru (Gomes 1898: 248; see also Matlock 2002: 106).

Kapanawa from the Tapiche and Buncuya rivers used the name at least until

the 1930‘s, but the use of its Quechua variant Remo-auca indicates that rather than

referring to their own set of denominations, Kapanawa borrowed it – along with such

designations as Kashibo, Mayoruna, etc. – from the nationals or other riverine groups

with whom they came into contact since the early twentieth century, such as Kokama

or Shipibo. Here, the denomination is still being used in reference to backwoods

groups of the Upper Buncuya and Tapiche rivers.

Additionally, Carvalho‘s mention of the Remu auto-denomination Nucuiny on

the Jaquiran River gave rise to confusion among ethnographers and linguists.

Although the author himself did not connect the Remu he described with any other

group, this was done by other authors in twentieth century, who assumed that this

auto-denomination signified that Carvalho‘s Remu (and by extension other Remos as

well) were the same as Inokuinins or Nukuini from Môa reported by Linhares (1913)

and Tastevin (1921). In this way, the contemporary Nukini have at times been referred

to as descendants or survivors of the Remo.

At the same time, also Iskonawa contacted in Peru in the 1959 on the ―Remo‖

territory have been described as Remo descendants.

28 See for example the enumeration of historical and contemporary groups of the Javari or Juruá in

Marcoy 1867: 99.

84

Moreover, by the end of the twentieth century, the name Remo was borrowed

from the mestizos or other groups by the Peruvian Matses contacted in the 1960‘s in

the Gálvez River basin. There too, it is still being reused in reference to uncontacted

groups of the area, also farthest north among the Remo name applications – on the

Yavarì Mirim River (an affluent of the Javari River).

2.3.2. Language Affiliations.

Remo as Panoans of the Nawa group.

The linguistic data recovered among groups called Remo, as well as comments

on intelligibility made by various historical observers indicate that all these Remos

were Panoan of the Nawa group29. While this seems to be generally true, with the

generic use of the name in history one has to take under consideration a possibility

that there were non-Panoans among groups identified as Remo. Although Juan de

Velasco‘s classification designating Remo along with Amawaka as a branch of the

(Arawakan) Campas (1981[1770]:546) does not seem reliable (Krokoszyński & Fleck

forthcoming), a group living on the general Remo territory (between the Upper

Jaquirana and Blanco rivers) was recently discovered to have spoken non-Panoan

language of possible Arawakan affiliation (Fleck 2007).

Remo in the Chama subgroup.

The earliest sources associate Remo language (-es) with other languages from

the the Chama subgroup of the Nawa group in the Mainline branch of the Panoan

family, i.e., Shipibo, Konibo, Kapanawa, Shetebo, and Pano or Sensi (tentatively

included in this category). This would indicate that the (southerly) Remo identified in

seventeenth and nineteenth century had been of a different linguistic affiliation than

the (mostly northerly) Remo in twentieth century, as none of the documented Remo

languages did belong to the Chama subgroup (Krokoszyński & Fleck forthcoming).

Remo as a Blanco River subgroup.

Henri Leuque has left the first, random list of words from the Remo language,

published in Izaguirre 1922-29 (13: 538-540). The Remo language documented by

29 See Table 1 with lexical comparisons, reproduced from Krokoszyński & Fleck (forthcoming).

85

him on the Blanco River was the first Remo language ever recorded. Remo of the

Blanco River turns out to be the most divergent of the documented Remo languages.

Fleck (forthcoming) places it in the Nawa group, but as differs significantly from the

languages in other Nawa subgroups, it is classified in its own, separate subgroup.

Remo in the Poyanawa subgroup.

Language documented by Carvalho among the Nucuiny on the Batã River

(Remo of the Jaquirana River) was placed in the Poyanawa subgroup by D. Fleck.

It composes of Poyanawa, modern Nukini, and Iskonawa languages.

Iskonawa ―is most similar to Poyanawa, but also similar to Kapanawa and

Yaminawa/Amawaka. It is not same as or particularly similar to Remo languages or

Nukini‖ (Fleck personal communication), and can be described as ―intermediate

between Poyanawa, Chama and Kashinawa subgroups (Fleck forthcoming).

Nukini language is quite different from Carvalhos‘ Remu-Nucuiny language

(and from the Blanco River Remo). According to Fleck, it seems most similar to

(though not the same as) Iskonawa.

Although these langueges do resemble each other, they are three separate

languages. To this group might as well belong the Kapanawa of the Môa River and/or

Nawa language(s) recorded by Tastevin (op. cit.).

Remo in the Kashinawa subgroup.

The Kapanawa rubber workers who gave information on the Remo from the

Môa-Tapiche River headwaters to E. Loos recalled a language (Remo of the Môa

River) thet more than any other Panoan language, resembles Amawaka. It is quite

different from Poyanawa subgroup‘s languages and although ―it is not strikingly

similar to Yaminawa or Kashinawa, it can be tentatively placed it in the Kashinawa

subgroup‖ (op. cit.).

2.3.3. Affiliations based on cultural traits and territory.

Although in many cases the Remo descriptions are more elaborate than those

of Kapanawa, they do present a similar problem in referring traits that were more

common among Panoans and their non-Panoans neighbors. Such traits are facial and

corporal tattoos, as well as facial piercings, reported for almost all historical Remo

since the nineteenth century. This however cannot prove their actual ethnic or

86

linguistic connections. As we have seen, the five groups assumed to be Remo were

generally very similar culturally, wore tattoos and perforated their faces – and still

proved to speak divergent languages, more similar to those of other Panoan groups

than to each other. Furthermore, these traits have not been characteric of the Remo

groups (see Fig. 5) or even of the Panoans generally, as they have been found for

example among Arawakan groups of the Upper Ucayali. Finally, the material culture

seems to be easily borrowed between neighobring groups that are not related

genetically and is subject to change over generations (Krokoszyński & Fleck

forthcoming).

The Tamaya River

Little could be said of the actual identity

of the first Remo and their relations with other

people called Remo between the seventeenth

and twentieth century. The language note

suggests that the first Remos were closely

related to the Konibo, while their territory was

in later times associated with the Amawaka

Indians, which says equally little of actual

affiliation. The Amawaka name has also been

generically used between the Ucayali and Juruá

rivers. As we have seen, this last name has also

moved to other parts of the Montaña along with

Peruvian settlers. Thus, the Amawakas were to

be found for example in the Maquìa-Tapiche

rivers region according to Marcoy (nineteenth

century) or on the Javari according to Fuentes

(early twentieth century).

As the proto-Konibo groups had at this

point been divided into separate sections, it is possible that the name Remo was

actually applied to a unit that wasn‘t more distant linguistically or ethnically from any

of the groups that came to compose the Konibo. In any case, the social and

geographical distance between them did not seem to be very large. It is also true of the

units called Amawaka (see for example Fig. 4, with an 18-nineteenth century

Amawaka dressed in cushma – usually connected with the riverine populations).

Figure 4. Amahuaca in Gil de Taboada 1859 [1796]: 141.

87

Saraycu

In this early, eighteenth-nineteenth century context, the name Remo referred

to: a. captives living among the mission Indians; b. at least initially, to one of many

parcialidades or naciones living east of the Ucayali River and Sarayacu mission, or to

a group concentrated on the Callerìa and Abujao rivers; c. generally to natives of the

vast mountainous complex east of the Ucayali River (Sierra del Divisor), called

Cordillera de los Remus by Girbal in 1794 (op. cit.: 304-306). In the same general area

have also been identified the Nianaguas, and later Sensi, Busquipani, and other

groups. Their actual identity cannot be determined.

Callería River

The nineteenth century Remos from the Callerìa River could be identified as

Panoan, basing on the denominations used by them and of the Franciscans

commentaries on their language. They have been said to be closely related

linguistically and culturally to the enigmatic nineteenth century Panoan Sensi from

the Upper Maquìa River, of whom little is known. If the relation between Sensi and

Remo noted by several observers is to be taken into account, then we may consider

these Remo groups between Sarayacu and Callerìa rivers as belonging to the Chama

subgroup of the Nawa group, as the nineteenth century Sensi most probably had been

(Krokoszyński & Fleck forthcoming).

A tenuous connection between these Remos and contemporary Iskonawa could

be made based on the geographical location. Furthermore, the name Isis baquebu (or

Hisisbaquebo) recorded among them by Father Sans in 1860‘s does echo with a name

recalled by the Iskonawa Indians as one of their enemies or kin a century later.

Jaquirana River

The geographic data could point to a connection between Gomes‘ Rhemu from

the Jaquirana River with the proto-Marubo groups, as some of them were (at least

before 1888) gathered around a leader named Txoki on the Javari River (in Brazil, its

upper course is also called Jaquirana) (Ruedas 2001: 721). Moreover, before 1920, one

of the proto-Marubo groups (Inonáwavo, speaking a divergent language) lived on the

right side of Jaquirana and in the Jaquirana-Pardo rivers divide (op. cit.: 721-22).

Additionally, the Marubo are said to have worn necklaces made of Astrocaryum palm

(tucum, huicungo or chambira) that corresponds with odorous wood mentioned by

88

Gomes (D. Fleck, pers. communication). Therefore, although there are no indications

that Marubo ancestors practiced face perforations, one could imagine that some of the

proto-Marubo groups might have been labeled Remo by the locals on the Javari in the

early twentieth century (the majority being Peruvian workers).

Tapiche – Blanco River

As we have seen, this was the first Remo language ever recorded and it has

proven to be the most divergent among the other Nawa subgroup Panoan languages.

Another language of possible Arawakan affiliation (Mayu/Morike, see Fleck 2007) has

been identified in the area. Additionally, the Punhamumanaua found on Tapiche

River by Oppenheim in 1936 had come from the Blanco River‘s headwaters, where

Remo were located by López. The lingistic results from the latter and notes on

intelligibility of the former (with other Panoans on the Tapiche) might suggest that

Leuque‘s Remo lanuage was actually related with the Punhamumanaua, but this will

probably never be confirmed.

Batã River

Proximity of the Batã River and the documented migrations of the Blanco to

the Jaquirana River leave some possibility that Remos working for the Luzeiro family

on the Batã were connected with the Indians living with Father Leuque on the Blanco

River. The former have been said to come from and eventually go back to Peru.

Additionally, there is some possibility that the Blanco Remos‘ leader, named Roque

Luceiro, was actually the Remo child raised by Raimundo Luzeiro, who would have

given him his name.

The link between the Blanco River Remo and the Remo working for Luzeiros is

tenous. The few words that Maria Luzeiro recalled from the Batã Remo language were

kindly made available to us by Prof. Julio C. Melatti. Unfortunately, the short list does

not allow any reliable conclusions other than that the language also belongs to the

Nawa group of the Panoan family.

On the other hand, Carvalho had gathered his Remu vocabulary from an

Indian called Lourenço in San Pablo and from Mr. Luzeiro at the mouth of Batã River.

This information indicates that the Remo (Nucuiny) of the Jaquirana had actually

been connected with Luzeiros before the Brazilian medic‘s visit. They could not have

89

been the same as those from the Blanco River. As we recall, the Blanco River Remo

and this Jaquirana language documented by Carvalho are separate languages,

belonging to different subgroups of the Nawa group.

Relation between Remos described by the Luzeiros and those visited on the

Batã by Carvalho is not entirely certain, however. The former were said to had left

Batã and gone back to Peru by early 1920‘s, and were replaced by the Indians

identified as Marubo from the Curuça River (Melatti & Montagner 2005: 11).

Therefore, they could not have been the same as those met by Carvalho in 1926. This

could mean that Indians identified by Luzeiros as Marubo had in fact been the

Nucuiny found by Carvalho (which would not exclude the possibility of them joining

other proto-Marubo groups later on).

Although this problem will probably never be solved, we may suggest the

following possibilities:

a. there was one group identified as Remo working with the Luzeiros, and it

was the Nucuiny (found by Carvalho), who had come from Peru and later divided,

some moving to the Ipixuna-Jaquirana rivers divide (Carvalho), others back to Peru

(Luzeiros);

b. there were (at least two) different groups called Remo subsequently

gathering around the Luzeiros, and Peruvian Remo had left before the Nucuiny came;

c. there were different groups called Remo subsequently gathering around the

Luzeiros, and Peruvian Remo had left before the Nucuiny came, with the latter being

alternatively called Marubo;

d. there were (at least two) different groups called Remo (who spoke separate

languages) working with Luzeiros at the same time and had separated before 1926, to

be replaced by Indians called Marubo.

Môa-Tapiche

Very little information is available on the Môa-Tapiche rivers Remo group.

Apart from the Rïmo wordlists recovered from Kapanawa by E. Loos, the only data

that seems to pertain to this group is to be found in the Kapanawa-Spanish dictionary

published by the Looses. According to it, Remos wore tattoos from mouth to ears that

made them look ―like jaguars‖ and the Remo language sounded to Kapanawa ―as if a

condor was singing‖ (Loos & Loos 2003: 373, 312). Their language is the third Remo

90

language documented and in the already mentioned analysis has been identified as

most similar to Amawaka.

Isolated groups

It is very probable that of the large native population that has been identified

as Remo, some parts were extinguished by the heavy slave-hunting in the area. Others

possibly came to contribute to neighboring, known Panoan ethnic units (such as

Amawaka, Marubo, Nukini, Poyanawa, Kapanawa).

Still other parts remain isolated and unknown until today. Recent research

done by anthropologists in the area confirms that the extensive territory of highland

zone contained between the sources of the Buncuya, Tapiche, Môa, Abujao, Callerìa,

Cashiboya and Maquìa rivers is still occupied by the native population of unknown

number and affiliation, in distinct locations denominated generically Remo (-auca),

Kapanawa, Iskonawa or Nawa (Aguirre & Villasante 2003; Aquise 2007; Arbaiza et al.

1995; Brabec & Pérez 2006; Matorela 2004; Montagner 1981, 2002; Krogh 2006;

Krokoszynski et al. 2007; Ricardo & Ricardo 2006; see also Correia 2005a and

Oliveira 1987 in: Nogueira 1991). This area possibly forms part of a larger area

stretching along the Peruvian border with Brazil from the Upper Juruá River (Zarzar

2000) to the south, to the Yavarì Mirim River to the north-east, where indications of

uncontacted groups have also been recently gathered (Krogh 2006). Also possible is

the connection of this larger area with the Javari Valley Reserve in Brazil – where the

existence of a number of uncontacted groups has been documented (e.g., Melatti 1981)

– through the Upper Jaquirana River. At present, the Peruvian native organization

AIDESEP makes efforts to protect this area by creating national reserves (―Tapiche-

Yaquerana‖, ―Maquìa-Callerìa‖ and ―Yavarì Mirim‖) and reinforcing the existing ones

(―Isconahua‖).

Nukini

Oppenheim‘s Nucuini, as well as Linhares‘ Inocu-inins might with much

probability be identified as ancestors of the modern Nuikini. None of these authors

did mention the name Remo in connection with those groups, but they have been

associated with Remos by various authors. Connection between the contemporary

91

Nukini and Remos in the literature could be traced to a mistaken interpretation of

Carvalho‘s data or ambiguity of the situation described by Oppenheim. The first was

presented by Č. Loukotka, who assumed that Carvalho‘s Remu-Nucuiny and

Tastevin‘s Nukuini spoke the same language, ignoring actual differences in linguistic

data (Loukotka 1968: 170). Similarly, S. Sussekind de Mendoça assumed that

Carvalho‘s Remus and Nukini from the Môa River belonged to the same group (1991:

272). D. Montagner, on the other hand, in 1977 interpreted Oppenheim‘s mention of

the Rhemus found on Tapiche as Nukini relatives who had gone to Peru (Montagner

1977: 39). With these links, and with Ribeiro‘s and Wise‘s unsubstantiated Remo

migration hypothesis it was only natural to assume that Nukini and Iskonawa were the

last Remos (the former taking refuge in Brazil) (Erikson 1994: 15).

In the process, Nukini were also connected with the Iskonawa. The linguistic

analysis shows that the two groups also speak separate languages.

Apart from this identification made quite recently in the literature, there is

little to confirm that Nukini were called Remo in Brazil. Delvair Montagner denies

having ever heard the name Remo in reference to the Nukini or Nawa on the Môa

River (personal communication), and she cites only one local man who recalled the

name at all (Montagner 2002: 113).

However, from the Peruvian perspective, Nukini were perfectly suited to be

identified as Remo, occupying the general area where the Remos were expected. One

of the strongest indications that the Môa Nukini were at times identified as Remo

comes from the information gathered by Dick Montag in 1972. This author was told

that around 1964, Francisco Cordeiro (Bolota), who at that time owned the República

estate on the Môa, while visiting the Tapiche River, maintained that ―he worked with

Remos on the Môa River‖ in the place called Shiringa Alta (Montag 1972). These

Indians could only have been the Nukini or the Nawa. Furthermore, because the

territory exploited by the Nukini ancestors in its widest extended far into Peru (their

relatives were also living in Peru) (Aguiar 2004, Montagner 1977, 2002), it overlapped

with the areas associated by the Peruvians with the name Remo. It is very likely that in

cases of contact with the Peruvians (including the Shipibo or Kapanawa) – the Nukini

were labeled Remo.

Iskonawa

Iskonawa were identified as Remo descendants on the geographic argument

and on the local denomination by the first outside visitors (Kensinger 1961, Małkin

1962, Momsen 1964, Whiton et al. 1964). All the groups that had been enumerated by

92

them were interpreted as composing the ―Remo Tribe‖ (Momsen 1964: 62) or

―Association‖ (Whiton et al. 1964). The analysis of the sources led Whiton et al. to

assume that the ―Remo tribe‖ was divided into the southern (Iskonawa) and northern

branch (in which Carvalho‘s group was included according to the Tessmann‘s data)

(Whitton et al. 1964).

Some authors later doubted such identification. Loos did not equate Iskonawa

and the Rïmo contacted by Kapanawa linguistically (e.g., 1976), and Ribeiro and Wise

maintained that the Remos were Iskonawa‘s enemies (1978: 131). In 1975, Robert

Braun hesitated in identifying them with historical Remos and assumed they had

migrated from the south-east and was inclined to connect them with the Sharanahua

and Kashinawa Indians. Oppenheim‘s (1936b) location of Amahuacos or Amauachos

corresponded with the Iskonawa habitat only 20 years later. Current data show that

the Iskonawa language is distinct from the three documented Remo languages, as well

as from the Nukini.

As has been demonstrated, the Iskonawa or Nukini could not be identified

with with any other group known as Remo on which linguistic material is available, at

the same time being culturally close to all other groups in the general area. Because of

their geographic position, they were denominated Remo from the outside, whether

locally or by the scientists from the distance. It is therefore reasonable to assume that

their ancestors were among groups identified as Remo in the past.

2.4. Conclusions.

In this chapter I have set out to determine if the Remo name has actually

referred to a discernible ethnic category. Analysis of the historical material available

on Remo groups leads to a conclusion that, as in the Kapanawa case, a history of this

―ethnic group‖ can only be traced to specific uses of the name itself. Remo are

primarily a Peruvian phenomenon, as are almost exclusively connected with the

Peruvian territory. Their appearence in very distant locations and periods could

effectively be attributed to the category‘s distribution by the Peruvian population.

Therefore, I assumed that application of the name Remo must have been highly

unspecific throughout the three ages of its usage in the Ucayali basin and it was not

migrations or the vast habitat of one ethnic group that explain the phenomenon of

Remos‘ extension.

In analysing available Remo material, I have come to a conclusion that even if

the name Remo actually did refer to a specific group contacted by Father Richter at

the end of the seventeenth century, it has become a generic label that did not refer to

93

ethnographic or linguistic reality. It was appearing in new locations, moving

progressively in the northeastern direction, in the twentieth century following the

Peruvian colonists as far from its first usage as the Javari River region. This resulted

in the great territorial extension of the name Remo, with its extremes ranging over

some 600 km which separate the Tamaya River and Yavarì Mirim River.

As its provenience was Peruvian, in Brazil, where its use in Brazil was only

marginal, it seems to have been a borrowing from the Peruvians. Contrary to the

Kapanawa name, which was identified among other Panoan groups between the Juruá

and Purus rivers, Remo did not find similar native referent. It did not appear on the

local level but was brought by outsiders.

This interpretation of Remo history is strongly supported by the linguistic

material which is only partially available for the Kapanawa. There are 3 wordlists

available from the groups more recently, in the twentieth century, identified as Remo.

Without the above interpretation, they would be (and have been) taken to belong to a

single Remo language, traceble to the seventeenth century Tamaya River group.

Additionally, their connection with languages of the Iskonawa and Nukini, assumed to

be Remo descendants, was not scrutinized.

However, all of these five languages proved to belong to distinct Panoan

languages which do not compose a category by themselves, but instead are more

closely related to other Panoan languages. The Jaquirana River Remo could be

classified together with Nukini, Poyanawa and Iskonawa, although they are all clearly

distinct languages. The Blanco River Remo is divergent from all other Panoan

languages in the Nawa subgroup. The Môa River Remo most closely approximates

Amawaka. Furthermore, although actual linguistic data on historical Remo is not

available, the comments on connections between languages mentioned in the sources

indicate that the language or languages spoken by people identified as Remo more to

the south in seventeenth and nineteenth centuries were distinct from those

documented in twentieth century in the northerly parts of the name‘s extension. These

early Remo languages have belonged or had been closer to the Chama subgoup of the

Nawa group in the Panoan family.

Linguistically, there is therefore nothing to justify classifying all Remo other

than belonging to the Nawa group of the Panoan family. Similarily, I have

demonstrated that there are no cultural traits that could distinguish the Remo from

other Panoans or other groups in their vicinity. Neither are there characteristics that

group them together and would justify speaking of the Remo as distinct entity of

cultural, ethnic or social character.

94

This material demonstrates that the only thing that connects the various Remo

groups is their interfluvial position, implying distance from the river shores and its

populations. On the one hand, this gap explains why so little is actually known of these

Indians, and why they have been easily confused. On the other, it justifies their

instrumental, violent treatment by the riverine native or mestizo populations, and

with it the generalizing attitude towards ―wild Indians‖.

95

Map 4. Remo denomination usage.

96

Table 1. Results of lexical comparisons (from: Krokoszyński & Fleck forthcoming). ============================================================

Languages compareda Clear matchesb All matchesc Lexical items compared ————————————————————————————————— Remo Jaquirana - Remo Môa 46% 54% 26 Remo Jaquirana - Remo Blanco 38% 38% 13 Remo Môa - Remo Blanco 29% 43% 35 Remo Jaquirana - Iskonawa 61% 70% 99 Remo Môa - Iskonawa 43% 47% 104 Remo Blanco - Iskonawa 34% 41% 126 Remo Jaquirana - Nukini 60% 70% 81 Remo Môa - Nukini 47% 54% 57 Remo Blanco - Nukini 49% 59% 56 Remo Jaquirana - Poyanawa 59% 70% 81 Remo Môa - Poyanawa 42% 49% 78 Remo Blanco - Poyanawa 42% 49% 77 Remo Jaquirana - Amawaka (S) 50% 57% 28 Remo Môa - Amawaka (S) 65% 70% 40 Remo Blanco - Amawaka (S) 43% 45% 49 Remo Jaquirana - Shipibo (S)d 48% 52% 25 Remo Môa - Shipibo (S) 53% 53% 45 Remo Blanco - Shipibo (S) 29% 38% 48 Iskonawa - Nukini 70% 176 Poyanawa - Iskonawa (S) 76% 119 Poyanawa - Nukini 66% 181 ============================================================ a ―(S)‖ indicates that only items in the Swadesh (1952) 200 list were considered; where no ―(S)‖ all possible lexical comparisons were made. b Clear matches are those where there is two lexical items are identical semantically and phonologically (allowing for author‘s different orthographies and possible mistranscription of sounds not in their native language) c This column includes clear matches plus cases were the two lexical items compared were not identical, but similar enough that they could possibly differ due to gross transcription errors or a misunderstanding with respect to the meaning of the term. d Comparisons with Kapanawa were almost identical to comparison with Shipibo.

97

Figure 5. Panoan tattoos and facial ornamentations (reconstructions by Ł. Krokoszyński).

98

Figure 6. Panoan tattoos and facial ornamentations (cont.).

99

Conclusion

Confronted with the problems of identifying contemporary interfluvial groups

on the territory corresponding with that of the historical Kapanawa and Remos – such

as the absence of reliable information and the variety of more or less random names

applied to such populations by local Peruvian population (Krokoszyński et al. 2007) –

I was led to consider a possibility that the names Kapanawa and Remo found in

historical sources, as well in present-day reality did not necessarily refer to the actual

ethnic or linguistic situation, but rather pertained to the riverine discourse on social

difference in Peru.

This thesis is an attempt at situating indigenous groups on this vast territory in

the scheme of assumingly objective ―history of‖ the region with its discourse of

relatedness by common descent to find out if such entities as Kapanawa and Remo

ever existed as imagined in the literature. It confronts the ethnographic discourses of

―Kapanawa‖ and ―Remo‖ in their own terms.

To find out if these names did refer to specific ethnic groups or linguistic units

in the past, I have set out to reach to the source of these identifications in the

literature and specify, as much as possible, what they referred to, who used them and

to determine to what degree we can still use these names in the manner that we used

to. This was accomplished by focusing on the historical contexts in which the names

have been documented, and by looking for clues as to who was using such categories

and how they fitted in their social worlds. Simultaneously, I have organized,

systematized and analyzed all the available cultural, historical and linguistic data

available on any of these groups-names to answer the questions: did Kapanawa and

Remo compose actual groups or a foreign category projected on the interfluvial

indigenous populations? If the latter was true, what social and ethnic situation could

there be found instead?

100

1. Kapanawa and Remo.

I have demonstrated that uses of the two names have been highly unspecific

throughout the three ages of Occidental history in the area. They were mostly names

applied by the riverine people to the distanced groups inhabiting interfluvial areas

east of the Ucayali. The general conclusion is that Remo and Kapanawa names refer to

various units – identifiable as ethno-linguistic – rather than denoting actual ethnic or

linguistic reality, historically or contemporarily.

1.1. Ethnic situation – what was the ethnic-linguistic affilitation of groups named Kapanawa and Remo?

Kapanawa and Remo have been composed by units of diverse linguistic

affiliation. Neither all Remo, nor all Kapanawa spoke dialects of a single language.

What‘s more, their languages could not even be categorized together based on genetic

relation.

It is impossible to state with confidence that the Kapanawa people

mentioned in seventeenth century were direct ancestors of those in nineteenth

century, or of the contemporary Kapanawa. Furthermore, there is little probability

that the isolated groups contemporarily called Kapanawa in the Sierra del Divisor are

directly related to the other Kapanawa and thus form yet another unit or units. At this

point, results of preliminary linguistic analysis show that the Kapanawa can be

identified as speaking at least 2 separate languages:

1. twentieth century population of the Buncuya-Tapiche rivers,

officially denominated Kapanawa;

2. the nineteenth-twentieth centuries group, inhabiting Upper Juruá

river at the location of the Cruzeiro do Sul town;

Additionally, we can name at least four other contexts in which groups have

been called Kapanawa, but whose connection with the contemporary Buncuya-

Tapiche population is uncertain if not little possible:

(3.) Kapanawa from Lower Ucayali in the seventeenth century;

(4.) the Busquipanis from the Buncuya River in early nineteenth

century;

(5.) early twentieth century Juruá-Purus Kapanawa;

(6.) twenty-first century Kapanawa from Sierra del Divisor.

101

Referents of the Remo name have been highly varied throughout the three

centuries of the name‘s usage. There is nothing to suggest that populations called

Remo on the Upper Ucayali in seventeenth century have migrated into the Middle

Ucayali (Sierra del Divisor) and further into Javari valley, where data of a more

substantial character from Remo groups has been gathered, or that all those

populations have been directly related genetically and/or linguistically (that is, to a

larger extent than with other neighboring Panoans). We can securely state that there

were the following, divergent ethnic and linguistic units at different points

characterized as Remo:

1. Nukini population gathered on the Môa river throughout first half of

the twentieth century;

2. Iskonawa, a group originally located on the Upper Utiquinìa in the

1950‘s;

3. population living in the headwaters of the Môa and Tapiche rivers

around the 1930-40‘s

4. population inhabiting the banks of Lower Batã River and between

the Jaquirana and Ipixuna rivers in the 1920‘s

5. population gathered on the Blanco river of the Tapiche in the 1910‘s

Additionally, there are indications that unrelated with the above were also:

(6.) populations inhabiting between the current town of Contamana

and the Lower Tamaya river before twentieth century. This vast

population could probably be separated into further, divergent units of

an unknowable number.

Furthermore, affiliation of contemporary isolated people called Remo remains

unknown. These are:

(7.) people designated as Remo(-auca) in the Buncuya, Tapiche and

Blanco headwaters;

(8.) the presumed isolated population of the Yavarì-Mirim valley.

Analysis of the Remo material shows that it did not refer to ethnic or linguistic

reality, but instead was indistinctively applied to at least five or six divergent

populations in the twentieth century alone. There is reason to believe that the

situation has been similar before twentieth century. Remo category subsumed people

speaking unrelated languages, and inhabiting very distant areas. Up to this point, this

fact has not been noted by any author, linguist or ethnographer. Use of the name

Remo as referring to a discrete ethnic and linguistic unit is thus unsustainable.

Furthermore, while it is plausible that the different groups designated either

Kapanawa or Remo have been connected in various ways by relations of alliance, war

102

or trade, there is no evidence that would support the hypothesis that all groups

subsumed under a single name formed a political or social organization at any point.

According to a proposition presented by Philippe Erikson, who divided the

Panoans into eight principal culture-linguistic categories, Remo and Kapanawa have

been classified in the Middle Panoans ensemble (mediens, medianos, Medianeros)

(1992, 1993, 1994, 1999; see also Lima 2000). Based on cultural and linguistic

similarities on which material was available to the author, they (Remo read as

Iskonawa and Nukini) were grouped in this category together with Marubo, Katukina-

Pano (from the Campinas and Gregorio rivers, as well from the vicinity of Feijó, also

known as Shanenawa) and Poyanawa, as well as the historical Sensi (Erikson 1999).

Editors of the Guìa Etnografìca additionally employ the name Southern Mayoruna in

reference to the southerly conglomerate of Northern Panoans or Mayorunas (Santos &

Barclay 1994: xxiii) (see Table 2, 3). What follows from this thesis, placing Remo and

Kapanawa as single units within the Middle Panoans category is problematic. It is

however true also of other populations categorized within this aggregation.

First of the arguments that this classification has been based on was linguistic.

However, it referred to notes on mutual intelligibility between different Middle

Panoans rather than sustained linguistic analysis. Recent linguistic investigation

conducted by D. Fleck (forthcoming), shows that the category is unsustainable

linguistically, and that groups included in this category do not belong to a coherent

and distinct class within the Panoan family. People designated as Pano Medianos

speak languages whose diversity reaches the level of subgroup within the Panoan

family. The languages they speak are dispersed between other subgroups of the Nawa

group. Buncuya-Tapiche Kapanawa, as well as possibly the seventeenth-nineteenth

century Remo and Sensi languages, belong to the Chama subgroup (Central Panoans

in Erikson‘s classification); Remo of the Môa and Shanenawa (Katukina from Feijó)

languages belong to the Kashinawa subgroup (Southern Panoans for Erikson).

Additionally, the remaing Middle Panoans form three separate and mutually

unconnected units within more general Nawa group: Iskonawa, Poyanawa, Nukini,

Remo of the Javari, possibly Kapanawa and Nawa of the Môa river languages compose

the Poyanawa subgroup; Marubo and Katukina-Pano of the Gregorio and Campinas

rivers belong to the Marubo subgroup; and the Rio Blanco Remo language forms a

subgroup on its own (see Table 4).

Secondly, the scarce data concerning cultural traits linking the Middle

Panoans, such as facial tattoos, wooden drums, adornments, anthropophagy and light

skin color (Erikson 1994, 1999) are not exclusive to this category and also

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characteristize other parts of the Panoan continuum. Thirdly, there seems to be little

information that headhunting and wife stealing bounded these groups into any larger

network of trade and violent exchanges (red de intercambios y comunicación

guerrera) that would include all of them as a distinct socio-political unit (Erikson

1994:13-17).

The only basis on which the Middle Panoans category could be maintained is

the common general geographic location and interfluvial habitat. Otherwise, it does

not seem sustainable.

Results of this analysis – which would have been considerably weaker without

the linguistic analysis that accompanied the historical study (Krokoszyński & Fleck

forthcoming) – rearrange the knowledge on the Panoan continuum and its history.

1.2. Ethnonymic histories – Where do the names come from?

If Remo or Kapanawa names cannot be characterized as actual ethno-linguistic

units, and most certainly, they are not internal identifications as well, the conclusion

is that they are external classifications. We are forced to face the fact that the most

important common feature of all these different groups is their position in the river-

oriented social system of the Ucayali valley. While their referents have been varying,

the context of their application has been steady – the names have been gathered in the

riverine populations. It is reasonable to assume that these categories were therefore

part of a particular riverine perspective as generic labels connected with specific,

social contexts and meanings. Therefore, apart from the sheer ignorance about the

isolated backwoods groups, such denominations seem to be a product of intersection

between Occidental and Amerindian imaginations of – and projections on – interior,

marginal or ―savage‖ groups.

Similarily, in discussing the history of Yaminawa people in the Juruá-Purus

rivers region, O. Calavia Sáez (1995) realizes that despite the frequent allusions to

these Indians in historical sources, in speaking of historical Yaminawa he is actually

constantly talking about the generic Others. They had occupied tracts of no-man‘s

land where Amahuaca and Kashinawa located their Others. This Other was the enemy

and the one to be attacked, annihilated or captured. Simultaneously, in the Kashinawa

perspective, these Others were also inventors of the indigenous culture, undisputed

masters of the forest. For the whites, they were a version of the European Northerners

– tall, strong, brave, knowledgeable, of light complexion, and with light or red hair

and beards.

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This interpretation fits well with the nineteenth and twentieth century

application of the Remo and Kapanawa names on the Lower Ucayali. Apparently, it

has not been applied to ethnic groups, but to a particular type of territory and its

inhabitants with a specific social position. For the indigenous riverine Shipibo-Konibo

and later also mestizo population, the name referred to uncontacted Indians living in

the headwaters of the main river‘s tributaries.

They have been seen as potential captives to be incorporated and ‗civilized‘.

Izaguirre noted that it was a custom of the Shipibo-Konibo to:

hacer prisoneros, traerlos a sus tierras y casarlos con mujeres de su familia para

aumentar su nación. Con esta polìtica, que a ciertas luces no parece muy acertada,

crece de contado su población, y a las dos generaciones ya son todos unos (Izaguirre

1922-29, 8:286).

Friar Dueñas reported that those captives he saw among Indians on the

Ucayali were treated with love and affection, married and absorbed into the

conquerors‘ population (Dueñas 1792: 181). One may add that the traditional captive

status among the riverine Panoans was seemingly of ambiguous nature, as Saint-Cricq

noticed that although captives were relatively free (and intermarried with their

captors), they still maintained the status of the ―Other‖ and sometimes joined with

other captives, forming separate settlements on the Ucayali (Marcoy 2001, 2: 474-76;

see also Santos-Granero‘s 2005 argument on the permanence of captive status among

the Konibo).

At the same time, prisoners from interfluvia were also sold, and the predatory

raids organized earlier by large groups of proto-Shipibo-Konibo have been composed

into the initial national economy throughout nineteenth century, and have intensified

with the influx of nationals in the area in mid-nineteenth century. As we have seen,

they have been the cause of Callerìa river Remo mission‘s demise. In a more recent

past, they have played especially important role during the rubber boom, when

Shipibo-Konibo pacified inland indigenous populations for Peruvian rubber bosses.

Such raids have for example forced the proto-Kapanawa to migrate inland on the

Buncuya and Tapiche rivers. The Shipibo-Konibo have later also been responsible for

conquering the Tapiche proto-Kapanawa population at the inception of twentieth

century. It is these experiences, by the way, that might account for the popularity of

the name Kapanawa in riverine populations in twentieth century as far upriver as the

mouth of Aguaytìa river (where it has for the most part replaced the nineteenth

century Remo denomination).

The pattern of incorporating captives into captors‘ society has been maintained

well into the twentieth century, although as judged from information I have gathered

on the Middle Ucayali and from available sources, in majority of cases it did not affect

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eastern bank of the river and the captives were brought from the western margin, and

designated as Kashibo. The practice is reported by contemporary Shipibo-Konibo for

as late as the 1960‘s, and the captive newcomers are said to have become ―Shipibo like

all others‖. Also during my fieldwork at the inception of twenty-first century, the

riverine Indians have been stimulated by the thought of ―taming‖ and ―civilizing‖ or

―conquering‖ the isolated population of Sierra del Divisor (for a detailed study of

Konibo raiding, see DeBoer 1986). Also the Kapanawa, who have in twentieth century

helped to ―conquer‖ (that is, ―fight‖ or ―tame‖) some Matses (whom they called

Pisabo) were voicing their willingness to ―civilize‖ the isolated Remoaucas of Sierra

del Divisor.

Additionally, At that time, on some occasions, the Remo and Kapanawa have

also been described as anthropophagous (Castelnau 1850-59, 4: 364; Gil de Taboada

1859: 136).

This mixture of disdain and fear towards people with whom one has specific

type of (sporadic) relations brings the usage of Remo and Kapanawa names by

riverine Panoans closer to a relative category documented among the Arawakan

Matsigenka from the Urubamba. According to K. Świerk, the kogapakori term

indicates the position of enemy or potential enemy in relation to ego. It expresses

disdain and fear on the part of the speaker and does not refer to a specific group of

people. It can thus be used to refer to a wide range of strangers, which includes the

actually unrelated and hostile Panoan Nahua–Yora, the closely related Arawakan

Nanti, but also other Matsigenka when these are suspected of having hostile

intentions or being malevolent sorcerers (Świerk 2006: 200-204; 2008).

As the people designated Kogapakori, these called Remo and Kapanawa

evidently do not compose ethnic category. The character of these designations in

indigenous discourse is generic and relational, and has a connotation of savagery or

barbarism. These names seem to mark social position rather than concrete group or

ethnic-linguistic affiliation. This seems confirmed by the fact that the Iskonawa

resented being called Remo by the Shipibo-Konibo and Kapanawa rejected the

Kapanawa identification.

According to the argument presented by Peter Gow (1991, 1993), in the

imageries of the various contemporary riverine Ucayali basin groups, the interfluvial

or isolated Indians function as a pole that helps to define their own social life on a

continuum between the savage (―wild Indians‖) and the excessively civilized

(represented by ―the gringos‖) poles. In this interpretation, historiacally all the

Kapanawa or Remos, as well as Amawaka or Kashibo, would have stand as a sign for

―the wild Indian‖ or the woodlands, savage pole, marked by antisociality, isolation and

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the lack of ―civilization‖ for the riverine Panoan units, as they do today. In such a

context, the actual identity of the distantiated and little known groups would have

been less important for the riverine population than the role they played in the

imagery used to define social worlds on the river banks.

This has also been true of nationals. As demonstrated by ethnohistorian M. H.

Baqueiro Paraìso in her analysis of historical native-colonial relations in eastern Brazil

(1998), such local denominations functioned also in colonists‘ discourse as political

categories of native groups and depended on the character of current relations. The

generic denominations such as Botocudos (savage, cannibalistic) or Naknenuk

(tamed, civilizable) had been projected on various unrelated groups.

Evidently, these relational names have been interpreted according to their own

notions of connections between human groups encoded in categories of ―tribe‖,

―nation‖ or ―ethnic group‖ – as designating genetically related units – by the

Occidental observers who had been describing ethnic situation in the region. In this

way, unconnected populations sharing common territory, general cultural

characteristic, or just a generic label, would have been assumed to compose a single

unit, as in the Remo or Kapanawa case. This understanding might have also to some

degree entered into the local discourse on the Ucayali.

The case of Remo and Kapanawa denominations evokes other examples known

in contemporary literature. Similar, generic usage has been noted by a number of

scholars among Panoan groups, but obviously it also has a more general import. In the

Panoan context, among denominations that were in use among outside observers,

with the referent changing, one could note the vast, underdifferentiated usage of the

already mentioned Yaminawa, as well as Mayoruna, Marubo, Amawaka, Kashibo,

Iskonawa, but also Katukina, or Kulina names (the last two refer to other linguistic

families).

Remo and Kapanawa have also entered into ethnographic discourse in a

particular point in its history. Names had been treated as indications of ethnic and

cultural affiliations of groups. First ethnographres brought together various mentions

of a name in the historical sources and drew conclusion to the large extension of a

particular ―ethnic group‖. This practice was employed by earliest modern

ethnographers in Western Amazonia – P. Rivet and C. Tastevin (1921), K. Grubb

(1927), G. Tessmann 1930, and it was brought to its fullest in the monumental work of

J. Steward and A. Métraux (1948), and it also had been true of the works done by

linguists.

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The other side of this literary treatment of sources led to an

overdifferentiation. According to M. d‘Ans:

Hechas por eruditos desde su gabinete de trabajo, las primeras clasificaciones de

lenguas sudamericanas se limitaron a la simple enumeración, dentro de un cuadro de

divisiones geográficas, de todas las lenguas de las cuales se podìa hacer mención; pero,

cuya importancia relativa y grado de parentesco resaltaban cada vez menos, a medida

que el inventario se ampliaba (d‘Ans 1970:14).

Among classifications of this type d‘Ans enumerates those of R.P. W. Schmidt,

Č. Loukotka and P. Rivet, or Mason and McQuown. Results of such an ―atomistic‖

strategy were lists giving 114 (Loukotka), 108 (Rivet-Loukotka) or 55 (McQuown)

Panoan languages, while more recent analysis presents 30 known lanuages, 17 of

which are in use (Fleck forthcoming).

This approach of matching names with ethnic or linguistic reality could be

described as ahistorical in that it does not take into account the historical

circumstances in which these names have been used and recorded (Kairski 1999). It

has led to great misconceptions in ethnohistory, such as theories of extensions or

migrations of indigenous groups. One of the examples is the Mayoruna case, a name

that had been reported for the first time on the Huallaga river (affluent of the

Marañón river) in seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century it had been reported

as far as on the right bank of the Amazon and Javari rivers, and finally stayed with a

contemporary group of the Gálvez river (Matsés). Most recently, it has come to

designate the linguistic group, to which the latter belong, extending into the Brazilian

territory of the Javari valley (Erikson 1994; Fleck forthcoming). Appearance of this

name in different locations and periods has been interpreted as migration of

Mayoruna population and led to theories of their migratory routes across the Ucayali

river (e.g., Espinoza 1955; Gross 1974; Matlock 2002).

My own methodological position in analysing historical sources throughout the

present thesis can be identified as ―historic in the weak sense‖ (Kairski 1999). M.

Kairski characterizes it by its skepticism towards the historic evidence. Its historicity is

found in historization of the processes of data gathering. I presume that the names

have been recorded by external observers who unintentionally projected their own

social meanings on the material.30 Secondly, they have been used in specific, locally

and temporarily specific situations. Thirdly, I assume that the structure of indigenous

30 The cultural and social conditions that influence ethnographic writing have been the focus of debates in

anthropology (mostly in the U.S.) in the 1980‘s. An attempt at this type of analysis of ethnographies has

been undertaken in my B.A. thesis on the basis of Sioux/Lakota material (Krokoszyński 2001).

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social units has been dynamic and capable of transforming, so that referents of

denominations changed in time.

This attitude can be connected with the wider tendencies of the last decades,

characterized as ―anthropologization‖ of history (as a new perspective to be included

in analyzing history) and its complementary movement of ―historization‖ of

anthropology (as interest in the visions of history of the people in study and their

active participation in it). Thus, for example, Meyer and Klein maintain that in the last

thirty years, scholarship in Native American oral literature has effected a quiet

revolution in source criticism (Meyer & Klein 1998:189) and postulate:

innovations in the collection, encoding, and reinterpretation of oral texts should force

us to renovate the foundations of historical scholarship and imagine new forms of

postcolonial source criticism. Here, the rapprochement of history and anthropology

both returns us to our earliest scholarly origins and opens out onto new directions of

travel (op. cit.).

A similar dynamic is noted within Amazonian studies, as has been observed by

E. Viveiros de Castro, in that historians begin to work in Amazonia, and

ethnographers gather historical material. The historical evidence is reinterpreted with

the use of ethnografic knowledge and reevaluated as source of information. On the

other hand, there is a notable increase in studies of indigenous oral histories,

interactions between indigenous societies and Western social structures, or between

the local and global dynamics (Viveiros de Castro 1996).

To conclude, Remo and Kapanawa names do not conform to the most basic

Occidental conception of a substantial, genetically related ethnic group. The basis on

which these identities have been based are to be found in the riverine, culturally and

socially biased imagery. So far, they have been thought to stand for ethnic units. The

present thesis shows that Remo and Kapanawa are, just as O. Calavia Sáez writes of

the Yaminawa, a phantom of the riverine (‗civilized‘) Indians and the nationals or

white visitors: ―it takes a human and political form to the degree in which the center of

the forrest – its logical niche – is occupied‖ (Calavia 1995: nn).

Nevertheless, however phantomic the character of such denominations, they

still did refer to actual people of whom little is actually known. In this thesis, I have

attempted to reach to their affiliations and identities. As could be expected, actual

affiliations are quite independent from these names, and number of other ethnic

groups of the ―natural‖ type replace the generic, external classifications on the Panoan

ethnic map. A new picture of the objective, classifiable ethnic situation emerges.

The problems do not end here, however. So far, I have operated within the

Occidental discourse on groups and ethnic-linguistic relatedness based in a specific

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vision of history. Similar clarity cannot be found so easily in the Panoan

identifications and practices. Throughout this thesis, I have asked for the

compatibility of names with the ethnic composition of Amerindian groups. The Remo

and Kapanawa were found to be composed of varied units. These identifications were

not based on genetic relations and do not correspond to Occidental view of of an

ethnic group, category implying common descent, language and culture. They have

not been based on the social practice of those groups either – the social work that

resulted in such classifications has been done elsewhere.

Here, I will turn towards the internal identifications, allowing myself to further

the considerations included in this thesis with yet another reflexion. Its suggestion has

been included in the Introduction. In addition, throughout this thesis, I have paid

much attention to the indigenous autoidentifications and autohistories. At this point, I

would like to consider if the Panoan realities actually allow us to use the conception of

a ―group‖ with particularly envisioned origin (with which I have analyzed the

presented material) and historical process. An answer to this question could be

approached through the insight into the ways of conceptualizing group‘s history, and

through the analysis of the actual social practice.

2. Panoan identities and social reality.

2.1. What are Panoan ethnic groups?

As we recall from the presented material, the lists of denominations gathered

by early observers became longer and the picture became more pointillistic once those

designated with more general names have been contacted directly and the local

situation has been described in more detail (Kapanawa, Iskonawa or Nukini

examples). The problem affects the etnohistorical analysis as the danger of

overdiffirentiation mentioned earlier.

These atomistic, named units are called ‗sections‘ by P. Erikson, and they

appear to form the most important reference point for Panoan identies, and have been

actualized in denomination or tattoo. They are thought of as entering into mutual

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alliances that are always tainted with some degree of hostility, and this pattern might

explain the Panoans‘ concern with and the need for the ‗Other‘ (Erikson 1986:186).

But where do they come from? From an ahistorical perspective, this

atomization of contemporary Panoan units has been presented and explained as

referring to ‗clans‘, ‗descent groups‘ or ‗moieties‘ within the assumedly natural larger

entity of an ‗ethnic group‘ or a ‗tribe‘. As such, they function as elements of social

organization in a homogenous group.

Alternatively, some authors argue that ethnic groups as known today are but

an effect of contact with the national society. According to P. Erikson, the Matìs (as

well as Matses) earlier perceived themselves as a set of named groups as distinct from

each other as e.g., from Korubo (Erikson 1994:26-27). G. Townsley found it extremely

difficult to know who, precisely, the Yaminawa were, and maintained that names such

as Yaminawa or Sharanawa ―were of relatively recent invention and had become

accepted ethnic labels only as a result of non-native immigration to the area‖, which

corresponds with the material presented in this thesis. However, all Yaminawa ―also

answered to a variety of other nahua names‖ (in: Lagrou 1998:132 [n.70]). This would

imply that the objectively and naturally related groups realized their connectedness

only with the appearance of non-natives. The heterogenity expressed by Panoans

themselves is thus reduced to mythology, as ―objectively‖ false, and the differences are

assumed to be ―subjectively‖ emphasized between groups of essentially the same

origin.

It is a fact however, that the Panoan histories actually underline this very

heterogenity, and present it as quite recent, or as the primary historical situation.

Some of the observers of Panoan social formations currently known as ethnic groups

have been left confused by these narrations and autoidentities that went with it.

Edilene Coffaci de Lima (1994) points to Tastevin‘s difficulties in determining actual

Katukina identity after one of his last visits on the Juruá River. Getting to know them

close-up, he eventually described the society as panos de toda raça, composed of a

variety of groups whose number – in all Tastevin‘s different publications – reached

twenty one (Lima 1994: 21). Similar observation has been made concerning the

autohistory of Marinawa population (one of the units denominated Yaminawa),

presented as ―a mixture of a number of tribes that were dying out and got together to

form the group that now exists‖ – where number of ―tribal names‖ was twenty five

(Scott in: Erikson 1986: 186). The vision of voluntary mixing of survivors was also

noted among the Yawanawa (Calavia 2001; Gil and Naveira 1999). Moreover, violence

on the part of indigenous neighbors or the nationals is given as reasons for joining

with members of other groups or forming new alliances by Iskonawa (Krokoszyński

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field data), Nukini (Montagner 1977, 2002), Marubo (Ruedas 2001) or Amawaka

(Dole 1998). Indeed, until recently, the Katukina or Marubo have not identified

themselves with these names, but instead with denominations refering to different

units, whom the oldest members thought to be different ‗peoples‘ (Lima 2002:12-13;

Ruedas 2001).

Such voluntary associations were not always the prevailing pattern, and some

units have been composed to a large degree by members of other groups which have

been incorporated violently. This could be said of the Matses, among whom 45 % of

population in the 1970‘s had one or both parents captive and could be described as an

amalgamation of groups (Romanoff 1984:44, 69-70). Apparently, the Shetebo or

Shipibo-Konibo have been incorporating large numbers of captives from interfluvial

groups on both sides of the Ucayali until quite recently, as has already been noted (cf.

Steward and Métraux 1948: 582-83).

To sum it up, Panoans themselves present all of their social units that we know

today and define as ethnic groups – as recent, twentieth-century amalgamates.

Potentially, these processes could illustrate the theory of groups already sharing

common affilition coming to live together because of a new situation, such as non-

native presence, and begin to actualize common identity of a new, ‗tribal‘ kind.

However, there are many groupings – violent and voluntary alike – that prove to be

composed, to some degree out of an interethnic substrate. Such situations of mixing

have most often been presented by Occidental observers as a result of some sort of

recent catastrophe which forced parts of diverse natural groupings to split or to gather

with other groups or their survivors. For example, J. Matlock (2002) explained the

wars in the Javari valley - that eventually led to developement of the large Matses

population - through the presence of nationals in the area. Evidently, the idea of a

group composed out of heterogeneous elements is not easily acceptable to us, and

such mixed entities would have been perceived as spurious and secondary in relation

to authentic and natural groups, with their assumedly objectively classifiable genetic

affiliations. Nevertheless, while disruptions produced by the rubber boom or other

factors have been an important factor in those rearrangements, the indigenous

responses followed the preexisting patterns of social organization (Ruedas 2001).

What if we were to consider that those situations described as anormal were actually

the default, or the natural, situations among Panoans, or at least were perceived as

such by their participants? What if mixing was actually indispensible on all levels of

social experience? What if even the groups which we could perceive as closely related

linguistically or culturally, as among the various units on the Yaminawa dialect

continuum, for the Panoans were considered strangers to one another, and their living

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together would have been perceived as mixing of different kinds of people? The

mixing itself would than be the natural, and the preferred social situation among

Panoans, one desirable and emphasized.

2.2. Are there ‘groups’ among Panoans?

F. Santos-Granero and F. Barclay (1994) argue that what appears to have

played the most important role in intra-Panoan relations was the immediate social

level of interactions, or the direct, mundane alliances and scissions. Indeed, the

fluidity of the Panoan social organization contributed to the intermixing of groups and

to constant changing of marital alliances. The situation would have been facilitated by

many cultural, linguistic and structural similarities (and subtle differences) existing

between various Panoan units (e.g., Erikson 1986). Among those common traits could

most importantly be included the practice of denominating or the seemingly common

pattern of organizing social interactions in the lines of categories of ―peoples‖ living

together and intermarrying. Intriguingly, the same denominations of sections or

categories of people are found within the different contemporary Panoan groups, as

we have seen in the cases of Iskonawa or Kapanawa (see Map 6).

The flexibility of this organization based on relational categories allowed for

transforming levels of denomination reference. As demonstrated in reference to the

processes of ethnosociogenesis among Carib groups in eastern Guiana, in the new

historical and social contexts, the names change referents, so that ‗lineages‘ become

‗clans‘, and ‗clans‘ local groups; parts of local groups become ‗clans‘ and ‗lineages‘ (see

Chapuis 2006) and any of the former could e.g. become a generic name and so on.

Also the specific forms taken by the units are capable of changing, so that e.g., the

alternative generation descent principle can be abandoned in favor of an adjacent

generation descent (Ruedas 2001: 704-706).

The basic structural relation of ―mixing‖ would have taken on different forms

and employ different levels of identification – marital sections, local groups, clans,

descendants of captives or other. It would also be ―natural‖ for them to incorporate

even the people who did not share the language and ethnic affiliation as another

category of people that composes local community.

If this practice would have been in function for a long time, speaking of

deepened genetic relations within one unit would have turned extremely problematic,

as it does not seem to interest Panoans (or Amazonians generally) to any larger degree

and they have formed their communities in spite of it. Language or cultural

transformations, or the interchanges that go with this mixing are thus only

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consequences of the process of forming new groupings. It is as if Panoans (as well as

other Amazonians) focused on the assimilations in their perceptions of history and

the social practice (Gow 2002), in contrast to Occidental custom of tracing

dissimilations and focusing on homogenous vision of the past.

These facts would make identification of ‗sections‘ quite difficult. It appears

that the names and the otherness have no steady, substantial referent in this structure.

It is relational and always present within the community, it‘s importance laying in the

immediate, named category of otherness. All the groups are seen as constructed out of

(and against) divergent identities.

What this might imply is that Panoans have to their disposition a common pool

of names and identities that are used to designate categories of people historically

composing or imagined to be composing current communities. The vision of Panoan

socio-logics I draw here is reminiscent of O. Calavia Sáez‘ conclusions concerning the

Yaminawa:

―é uma visão nominalista da etnologia Pano, que de um lado irrealiza algumas

unidades étnicas a que a bibliografia atribui certa solidez, e de outro propõe como

estrutural um aspecto atomizado que essa mesma bibliografia costuma ver como

produto de um desastre histórico, o boom da borracha‖ (Calavia 1995).

Furthermore, it seems possible to imagine that within that structure, former

‗section‘ names like -baquebos are likely to be replaced with new designations as they

change in time. Currently, surnames of the Occidental provenience and/or with local

categories – such as comunidades could play the same role of categorizing people into

categories to be intermixed. What‘s left is actually reminicent of the ex-Cocama

phenomenon described by P. Gow (2003) – where names evidence mixing of people

that came to live together and make the community. Whereas absorbing actual groups

of people is a possibility, the names might not refer to actual, clear-cut groups. Rather,

they are marking a memory of particular people ‗of certain kind‘ who have formed

contemporary groupings (they may be interpreted as ‗survivors‘). They are referring to

categories of people, and not actual ‗groups‘.

2.3. The givens and the visions of history.

The larger socio-logics which appear to emerge from the Amazonian material

on different levels, have been conceived through an Amerindian idiom of a ‗body‘

which is socially constructed (Seeger, Da Matta & Viveiros de Castro 1979). The

attempts to grasp the Amazonian social practice have been formulated through the

conceptions of consubstantiality and perspectivism/multinaturalism, which revolve

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around the conception of sociality (or a social ‗body‘) as fabricated through continuous

actions of people, by either predatory or familiarizing acts of the Amazonians (Fausto

2000; Viveiros de Castro 1998; Vilaça 2002).

Similar conclusions could be drawn from the way Panoans present themselves

and their history, and there is nothing to stop us from assuming that these logics have

actually played an important role in Amazonian history. Their interpretation of past

(and of kinship) is different from our own conception of what groups of people are

made of. To understand the basis of this model it seems important to realize the

difference in Amerindian and Occidental perceptions of human action in time. This

divergence can best be explained by the basic difference in assigning the given and the

‗invented‘ within the realm of human experience (Wagner 1975)31 – and thus of

conceiving what can be an object of activities, and what composes the ‗history‘. To

make things short: while the body and with it kinship (as genetic relations), are

categorized as the givens, or ‗natural‘, ‗objective‘ and thus indifferent to human actions

in our society – these very same facts of social life seem to be marked quite differently

among indigenous Amazonians. To come closer to an apprehension of the Amerindian

practice, one may imagine a symmetrical inversion of our polarization. Thus, in these

societies, the body, kinship and intimacy are a sphere to be more or less consciously

invented and constructed. Symmetrically, ‗the given‘ in these societies may be

conceived as abstract identity, otherness, and lack of intimacy. These poles were

characterized as affinity and consanguinity in Amazonist literature (Viveiros de Castro

2001). The aim of human actions, and therefore the stuff of history, is kinship

produced from alterity (Gow 1991, Vilaça 2002).

We might say than that Panoans focus on the processes of associations in

dialectically describing their history, and this practice differs from our linear

conception of a group stemming from a common source and undergoing differention.

It would not only apply to practices of describing the past, but affected the direction of

social processes in a very concrete way. As a pattern that they project on the past in

constituting their present as composed or mixed, it is likely to shape their current

social decisions as well. They do not seem to perceive themselves as bounded natural

units. It cannot be said that they are units open to alterity or that they are natural

units that need the Other. Alterity is not constituent for them – it does not produce, it

is given. They are by default the Others who need the proximity, and are on their way

31 I owe to Filip Rogalski the idea of applying Roy Wagner’s argument in the context of Amerindian sociality. Our

conversations on the subject, as well as our seminar on the mestizaje in Amazonia and Siberia helped me to shape many

of the ideas contained in this section.

115

to becoming ‗kin‘. The Otherness needs to be transformed into body and into the Self.

The social ‗body‘ has to be produced from and against its spacial and temporal

surroundings, as the ancestors or future generations are equally strangers (see, e.g.

Calavia 2005, Gow 1991).

The Panoan categories represent the vision of the social world as composed

against differing identities and initial, given, alterity. Of the process of constructing

that which we refer to as biology, nature, or ―body‖ out of different, initially hostile

constituents. The names – whether in the form of sections, surnames, or names given

to captives – are phantoms that remind that the body, kinship and peaceful living

have to be worked out. They are identities dispersed between social formations and

transformed into localized social bodies. They are the background of identity and

alterity out of which Panoans managed to form their concrete, present bodies. A

habitus of this body can, and in fact, should change. The assimilation with nationals

can therefore be seen as a consequence of Amazonian logic of created and transformed

bodies.

To effectively imagine this social process one can visualize a social implosion

and contrast it with the explosion or the ―big boom‖ and the differentiating from the

common stem, which structures our narrations of the past. However, both have equal

relation to reality or facts, and they refer to different, equally real aspects of the world

we live in, namely associations and dissociations. Both are different ways of

interpretating the chain of actions or particular moments into a ―history‖ – a

discourse about the past and about the present. Furthemore, the processes they refer

to usually happen at the same time. None of these discourses is more priviledged, as

our natural or objective sphere is equally ‗invented‘ (Wagner 1975).

Because it is not the direct subject of this thesis, I merely point out the issue as

indication for further elaboration. What it shows is that whereas Remo and Kapanawa

did not compose an ethnic group in the sense accepted by Occidental science, the

material on social practices and autohistories demonstrates that this category is also

problematic in reference to contemporary ‗ethnic groups‘. Their origins are imagined

as heterogenous, while we would tend to see them as homogenous. The indigenous

identifications seem to work against our notions of group identity and ethnic group.

While ethnology has been identifying groups as basic and natural units, it proves

productive to historicize and sociologize this attitude, and consider seriously the

potential of indigenous autohistories for shaping or expressing the current social

decisions.

116

Table 2. Classification of Panoan groups according to Santos and Barclay (1994) and Erikson (1994)*.

macro-

conjunto

conglomerados

regionales conjuntos locales grupos locales

pano

pano

septentrionales

Mayoruna septentrionales

Matsés

Matìs

Korubo

Kulina-Pano*

otros grupos

mayoruna*

Mayoruna meridionales

Capanahua

Marubo

Remo (= Nucuini,

Isconahua*)

Catukina-pano*

Poyanahua*

pano

meridionales

Amahuaca

Cotinahua

Shanwo

Shimanahua

Indowo

Rondowo

Cashinahua

pano del Purús

Yaminahua

Sharanahua

Mastanahua

Marinahua

Parquenahua

pano

occidentales Uni

of the Middle

Aguaytìa

of the Upper

Zúngaruyacu

cacataibo pano

sud-orientales

from Beni

from the Upper Madeira

pano

centrales

Shipibo/Setebo/Conibo fom the Lower Ucayali

Shipibo/ Conibo from the Upper Ucayali

117

Table 3. Classification of the Panoan bloc according to Erikson (1999).

bloque subconjuntos groups

Panos

1. Shipibos/Conibos

2. Panos meridionales

Chacobos

Pacaguaras

Karipunas

Kaxararis

3. Yaminahuas

Sharinahuas

Marinahuas

Mastanahuas

Morunawas

Parquenahuas (Yoras/Nawas)

4. Amahuacas ―subgroups‖ with diverse dialects, denominated –nawa

or –bo

5. Cashinahuas

6. Cashibos/Unis 3 dialectal groups (e.g. Cacataibo)

7. Pano Medianeros

Marubos

Capanahuas

Katukina-pano (Waninawas, Kamanawas, Iauanawas)

Remos (Isconahuas)

Poyanawas

(+Sensi)

8. Mayorunas

Matsés

Matìs

Korubos

Kulinas-Panos

other ―Mayu‖ groups

118

Map 5. Distribution of the contemporary Panoan units (from Erikson 1992: 242).

119

Table 4. Panoan linguistic classification according to D. Fleck (forthcoming). [* obsolete; † extinct; Middle Panoans]. branch group subgroup language dialect

MAYORUNA

MAYO

Matses

Peruvian Matses

Brazilian Matses

†Paud Usunkid

*Kulina of the Curuçá River

*Kapishtana

*Mawi

*Chema

*Demushbo

Korubo Korubo

*Chankueshbo

MATIS

Matis

†Mayoruna of the Jandiatuba

River

†Mayoruna of the Amazon

River

†Settled Mayoruna of the

Amazon River

†Wild Mayoruna of the

Amazon River

†MAYORUNA

OF TABATINGA †Mayoruna of Tabatinga

MAINLINE

KASHARARI Kasharari

KASHIBO

Kashibo (Tessmann‘s

―Kaschinõ‖)

Kakataibo

Rubo

†Nokaman

NAWA

Bolivian

Chakobo/Pakawara 2 dialects of 1 language

†Karipuna (may be a dialect

of Chakobo/Pakawara)

Madre de Dios

†Atsawaka/†Yamiaka 2 dialects of 1 language

†Arazaire

Marubo

Marubo of the Javari basin

Katukina

†Kulina of São Paulo de

Olivença

Poyanawa

*Poyanawa

*Iskonawa (intermediate

between subgroups Chama,

Poyanawa, and Kashinawa)

120

*Nukini

†Remo of the Jaquirana

River

†Nawa (of the Môa River) -

tentative

†Kapanawa of Cruzeiro do

Sul - tentative

Chama

Shipibo-Konibo-Kapanawa

Shipibo

Konibo (currently fused

with Shipibo)

*Kapanawa of the

Tapiche River

*Pahenbakebo (closer to

Kapanawa)

*Pano †Pano

*Shetebo

†Sensi - tentative

Kashinawa

Kashinawa

Yaminawa

large dialect complex

e.g. Katukina from Feijó -

Shanenawa

Amawaka (intermediate

between this subgroup and

Chama subgroup)

[at least 3 dialects]

†Remo of the Môa River

(similar to Amawaka)

†Remo of the

Blanco River †Remo of the Blanco River

unclassifiable †Kanamari

121

Map 6. Some ‗sections‘ in the Nawa group of Panoan family.

122

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