Recommended listening: Andean flute music
Story
In the Gulf of Guayaquil, a woman holds her daughter's hand as she gazes wistfully across the water. Just a few years before, strangers came to shore on sailboats. All sorts of people pass through Guayaquil, but these men had come from so far across the ocean it was hard to fathom. Their world was one of islands and volcanoes, ships and sails, but they came with curiosity to learn more about the world of Guayaquil. Here on the coast of modern-day Ecuador, the Cañari came down from the mountains to trade and fish. Boats went up and down the coast as far north as Mexico. The powerful Wari and Tiwanaku who dwelled in the high mountains of the Andes looked to the Cañari and other coastal peoples to provide them with precious resources. The fashion of the Cañari reflected these influences, with Andean patterns appearing in coastal Ecuadorian figurines.
But these sailors, the ones who the woman in this illustration got to know, came from Polynesia. The great explorers of the Pacific crossed an entire ocean to reach Guayaquil, and when they arrived, they were not disappointed. Ecuador was full of resources they wanted to take back home to their islands to help them flourish, for at this time the Polynesians were still founding new communities all over the Pacific. Most places they went had never seen humans before, but in Guayaquil they found farmers and fishermen eager to exchange knowledge.
How do we know that the Polynesians had been to Guayaquil by the year 1000? The answer lies with the humble sweet potato, a staple crop native to the Americas. Archaeologists have carbon dated a sweet potato in the Cook Islands to the year 1000, meaning that it must have come from the Americas to Polynesia sometime before then. Ecuador is the likeliest candidate as the source of the sweet potato for several reasons. The Polynesian word for sweet potato is kumara, a loan word from the Cañari cumal. Additionally, the coastal peoples of Ecuador were the only ones in the Americas to use sails in their boats, a skill they likely learned from Polynesian visitors. Genetic research suggests that the lineage of sweet potato in Polynesia ultimately comes from South America. All in all, the case is compelling for contact between Polynesians and the Cañari many hundreds of years before Europeans would ever come to either of their shores.
For this illustration, I have chosen to explore this exciting historical exchange through personal relationships. While the Polynesian sailors were learning how to farm the sweet potato and teaching the Cañari how to make sails, who is to say they might not have gotten to know the locals? Imagined here is a Cañari woman with her daughter, the child of a Polynesian sailor who has since returned to the Cook Islands. Genetic analysis is unlikely ever to confirm whether or not there was intermixing between Cañari and Polynesian populations; mitochondrial DNA is passed through the mother, and only sons inherit Y chromosomes, so a daughter of a Cañari woman and Polynesian man would be nearly invisible in the archaeological or genetic record. However, there's no reason to suspect it didn't happen on a small scale, so here we have a little girl carrying a sweet potato in one hand as she drags her mother along the beach. Her mother's thoughts are elsewhere, far across the endless expanse of ocean. A sailing ship and a little girl are all that remains of the remarkable visitors, but she will hold the memory in her heart forever.
But these sailors, the ones who the woman in this illustration got to know, came from Polynesia. The great explorers of the Pacific crossed an entire ocean to reach Guayaquil, and when they arrived, they were not disappointed. Ecuador was full of resources they wanted to take back home to their islands to help them flourish, for at this time the Polynesians were still founding new communities all over the Pacific. Most places they went had never seen humans before, but in Guayaquil they found farmers and fishermen eager to exchange knowledge.
How do we know that the Polynesians had been to Guayaquil by the year 1000? The answer lies with the humble sweet potato, a staple crop native to the Americas. Archaeologists have carbon dated a sweet potato in the Cook Islands to the year 1000, meaning that it must have come from the Americas to Polynesia sometime before then. Ecuador is the likeliest candidate as the source of the sweet potato for several reasons. The Polynesian word for sweet potato is kumara, a loan word from the Cañari cumal. Additionally, the coastal peoples of Ecuador were the only ones in the Americas to use sails in their boats, a skill they likely learned from Polynesian visitors. Genetic research suggests that the lineage of sweet potato in Polynesia ultimately comes from South America. All in all, the case is compelling for contact between Polynesians and the Cañari many hundreds of years before Europeans would ever come to either of their shores.
For this illustration, I have chosen to explore this exciting historical exchange through personal relationships. While the Polynesian sailors were learning how to farm the sweet potato and teaching the Cañari how to make sails, who is to say they might not have gotten to know the locals? Imagined here is a Cañari woman with her daughter, the child of a Polynesian sailor who has since returned to the Cook Islands. Genetic analysis is unlikely ever to confirm whether or not there was intermixing between Cañari and Polynesian populations; mitochondrial DNA is passed through the mother, and only sons inherit Y chromosomes, so a daughter of a Cañari woman and Polynesian man would be nearly invisible in the archaeological or genetic record. However, there's no reason to suspect it didn't happen on a small scale, so here we have a little girl carrying a sweet potato in one hand as she drags her mother along the beach. Her mother's thoughts are elsewhere, far across the endless expanse of ocean. A sailing ship and a little girl are all that remains of the remarkable visitors, but she will hold the memory in her heart forever.
Artist's Comments
I'm proud to present to you the 30th entry in my Women of 1000 series! It feels great to have reached this milestone. And I couldn't have done it without all of the people who support me by looking at the pictures and leaving comments, so thank you all! I've been interested in doing one that shows South American and Polynesian people interacting ever since I learned about the sweet potato's travels a few years ago, but it took me awhile to pin it down to this. Of course, this is one of the more speculative ones in the series, but we know that encounters between these people did happen around this time, so I wanted to imagine one version of how that might have played out. When I found an article with photos of Ecuadorian statues, I really fell in love with the unusual clothing and wanted to draw that too!
This picture was challenging because of the poses and backgrounds, but I like how it came out. I hope you enjoyed learning about just how far Indigenous people travelled long before Europeans ever made contact with them. ~ March 29, 2020
This picture was challenging because of the poses and backgrounds, but I like how it came out. I hope you enjoyed learning about just how far Indigenous people travelled long before Europeans ever made contact with them. ~ March 29, 2020
Resources
Want to learn more about the Cañari and their relationship with Polynesia? Here are some recommended resources.
"Kumara in the Ecuadorian Gulf of Guayaquil?" by Richard Scaglion
This chapter from the 2005 book The Sweet Potato in Oceania: A Reappraisal provides a lot of compelling evidence linking Polynesia to the Gulf of Guayaquil. Scaglion focuses on the linguistic, historical, and archaeological evidence for contact.
"Historical collections reveal patterns of diffusion of sweet potato in Oceania obscured by modern plant movements and recombination" by Caroline Roullier, Laure Benoit, Doyle Mackey, and Vincent Lebot
These authors take a more data-driven approach to the question, analyzing DNA of sweet potato variants. They conclude that their findings "provide strong genetic support, previously lacking" for the idea that sweet potatoes were first introduced to Polynesia in pre-Columbian times.
"Beyond Kon-Tiki: Did Polynesians Sail to South America?" by Andrew Lawler
This magazine article from Science gives a great overview of the debate around Polynesian contact in South America. Of particular importance here is the analysis of how one archaeologist, Thor Heyerdahl, cast a shadow on this issue for generations of scholars. Heyerdahl popularized the idea of contact between Polynesia and South America when he sailed a recreated ancient Polynesian craft, the Kon-Tiki, from Peru to French Polynesia. However, Heyerdahl espoused racist beliefs, arguing that advanced Middle Easterners had come to bestow knowledge on the backwards people of South America and Polynesia. It is only recently that a large number of scholars has started re-examining the evidence, reframing it as part of a story of the ingenuity of internationally connected Indigenous people in Oceania and South America. This article also highlights interesting cultural links between the Mapuche of Chile and Polynesians.
"Ancient Cultural Contacts between Ecuador, West Mexico, and the American Southwest: Clothing Similarities" by Patricia Rieff Anawalt
Anawalt combines archaeological, manuscript, and ethnographic sources to demonstrate a stunning continuity in clothing design across thousands of years between coastal Ecuador and the Purépecha of West Mexico. Her photographs of figurines from Ecuador and Mexico informed my designs of the clothing in this illustration. She delves into more detail about Purépecha fashion in her book Indian Clothing Before Cortés: Mesoamerican Costumes from the Codices. (Note that she uses the outdated term Tarascan to refer to the Purépecha, who reject that name for themselves.)
Cañar Chronicles
Judy Blankenship, a photographer, runs this blog about her life living in the province of Cañar in modern-day Ecuador. You can see some of her photographs of modern Cañari women, from her exhibit Los Cañaris Hoy. Blankenship helps run the Cañari Women's Education Foundation, which provides scholarships to Cañari women. There are lots of distinguished graduates doing incredible work - you can read some of their stories here.
"Kumara in the Ecuadorian Gulf of Guayaquil?" by Richard Scaglion
This chapter from the 2005 book The Sweet Potato in Oceania: A Reappraisal provides a lot of compelling evidence linking Polynesia to the Gulf of Guayaquil. Scaglion focuses on the linguistic, historical, and archaeological evidence for contact.
"Historical collections reveal patterns of diffusion of sweet potato in Oceania obscured by modern plant movements and recombination" by Caroline Roullier, Laure Benoit, Doyle Mackey, and Vincent Lebot
These authors take a more data-driven approach to the question, analyzing DNA of sweet potato variants. They conclude that their findings "provide strong genetic support, previously lacking" for the idea that sweet potatoes were first introduced to Polynesia in pre-Columbian times.
"Beyond Kon-Tiki: Did Polynesians Sail to South America?" by Andrew Lawler
This magazine article from Science gives a great overview of the debate around Polynesian contact in South America. Of particular importance here is the analysis of how one archaeologist, Thor Heyerdahl, cast a shadow on this issue for generations of scholars. Heyerdahl popularized the idea of contact between Polynesia and South America when he sailed a recreated ancient Polynesian craft, the Kon-Tiki, from Peru to French Polynesia. However, Heyerdahl espoused racist beliefs, arguing that advanced Middle Easterners had come to bestow knowledge on the backwards people of South America and Polynesia. It is only recently that a large number of scholars has started re-examining the evidence, reframing it as part of a story of the ingenuity of internationally connected Indigenous people in Oceania and South America. This article also highlights interesting cultural links between the Mapuche of Chile and Polynesians.
"Ancient Cultural Contacts between Ecuador, West Mexico, and the American Southwest: Clothing Similarities" by Patricia Rieff Anawalt
Anawalt combines archaeological, manuscript, and ethnographic sources to demonstrate a stunning continuity in clothing design across thousands of years between coastal Ecuador and the Purépecha of West Mexico. Her photographs of figurines from Ecuador and Mexico informed my designs of the clothing in this illustration. She delves into more detail about Purépecha fashion in her book Indian Clothing Before Cortés: Mesoamerican Costumes from the Codices. (Note that she uses the outdated term Tarascan to refer to the Purépecha, who reject that name for themselves.)
Cañar Chronicles
Judy Blankenship, a photographer, runs this blog about her life living in the province of Cañar in modern-day Ecuador. You can see some of her photographs of modern Cañari women, from her exhibit Los Cañaris Hoy. Blankenship helps run the Cañari Women's Education Foundation, which provides scholarships to Cañari women. There are lots of distinguished graduates doing incredible work - you can read some of their stories here.