Recommended listening: Woven Songs of the Amazon: Healing Icaros of the Shipibo Shamans
Story
The roads reached across the landscape like sharp rays of sunlight. Built of water and earth, they radiated out from forest islands on the flooded savanna of Llanos de Moxos. Each forest island was home to a community, where some of the trees were cleared for houses, gardens and orchards. Some of the islands were naturally occurring, while others had been built centuries before by the inhabitants' ancestors. Connecting all of these islands were long and remarkably straight causeways and canals. It was the rainy season, and without the canals and causeways, it would have been much more difficult to cross the waterlogged terrain. The people of this land, ancestors of today's Baure and Moxos people, made extensive use of this network of paths to move around the Amazon and take full advantage of its rich resources.
In some parts of Moxos, the people built raised fields in order to grow crops with specially enriched soil. Here in the southeast Moxos, though, the soils were fertile enough to grow all of the crops the people needed. Maize fields circled the edges of a large lake not far from the settled forest islands. People also grew manioc, arrowroot, arracacha, peanut, sweet potato, squash, beans, chili peppers, tobacco, cacao, papaya and cotton. They used the cotton and bark to make their clothing, and the tobacco was smoked in special religious ceremonies. Since space to plant was limited on the islands themselves, people frequently made use of canals to go to the outer fields and harvest their crops. Regular feasting was an important part of the people's lives. Sometimes these feasts were confined to a single forest island, but there were many occasions when people travelled further afield in order to celebrate with eating, drinking, sacred flutes and dancing. The causeways and canals were essential for connecting the people of Moxos to their neighbours, and to other speakers of Arawakan languages throughout the wider Amazon.
The Arawakan trade network was one of the biggest and most important in the pre-colonial Americas. The Arawakan people had spread a few hundred years earlier from their homeland further north to the far reaches of the Amazon. Some of them went as far north as the Caribbean, while others came south to Bolivia. These latter migrants gave rise to the great mound-building culture of the Llanos de Moxos, building canals and causeways to connect their living spaces and to impose a divine sense of order on the landscape. While their political leadership was not completely centralized, there was social stratification in Moxos with chiefs ruling over small regions. Marriage alliances sent women along the watery paths that crisscrossed the landscape in every direction.
The movement of goods to lands beyond the Amazon was a crucial part of the Arawakan trade network's success. The people of the Andes mountains to the west coveted many goods from inside the rainforest. Many colourful birds made their home in the forest canopy: Parrots, macaws, toucans, and tanagers. Their vibrant feathers had a reputation that spanned almost all of South America. As areas in the Andes began to coalesce into highly stratified states, elites sought the feathers of these beautiful birds as exotic symbols of power. They wove them into tapestries and wore them on their heads in elaborate headdresses. But until the Arawakans spread their trade network to its southernmost extent, these feathers were hard to come by. Once they had settled in the area around the year 500, feathers began to appear across the Andes in nascent states like Wari and Tiwanaku. The Arawakan traders must have commanded vast areas of the rainforest, trapping hundreds of thousands of birds in order to meet Andean demand. Some scholars have argued that without access to this highly developed trade network in exotic goods, Wari and Tiwanaku might not have become as powerful as they did, since access to precious rainforest resources was crucial to expressing the prestige of elites. They expanded their own control of areas like the Peruvian coast in part by exporting Amazonian goods as middlemen. None of that would have been possible without the sophisticated trapping and export network established by the Arawakans in the southern Amazon.
For their part, the Arawakans imported goods from the Andes that helped elevated the status of their own leaders. Workable stone was exceedingly rare in the lowland savanna, so Arawakan leaders prized stone axes from the mountains. They also imported metals and textiles, adorning themselves in objects that symbolized their command of wide-ranging trade networks. Imported shells and local animals bones were also used to make jewellery. Like many Amazonian people, the people of Moxos wore labrets, long objects inserted into the skin above and below their lips. Early European conquistadors wrote that their labrets clicked together while people talked, imitating the sound of a bird's beak as they spoke. A few people even wore jaguar teeth necklaces, proof that they had survived an encounter with the jungle's fiercest predator. Skulls of jaguars lined special ceremonial halls in each village, and those who had successfully killed one were called camacoy and were said to be imbued with special powers.
Women as well as men could become shamans, known as tiharauqui. They might have visions of a jaguar or of a spirit in the water or forest. After a few days of fasting, their new status would be celebrated with a great feast. Women tiharauqui offered beer to the local spirits and led religious ceremonies. Unlike male shamans, they did not have to undergo excruciating fasts. They were expected to be able to detect thieves and warn the village of approaching jaguars. A tiharauqui was also the island's healer, who worked by drinking a narcotic beverage called marari and consulting with their familiar spirit about the cause of the disease. Pregnant women spent the end of their pregnancies in special magically protective huts beyond the village boundaries. Difficult labour was treated by tying toads to the woman and playing the flute and singing over her. After the birth, the toads were fed chicha and released back into the wetlands. If the woman gave birth to twins, the second twin was said to be the child of a spirit.
In this illustration, a woman is setting out on a journey. Her face is painted in urucú, a pigment made from the dried seeds of the achiote plant. Women were said to take great delight in painting their faces and those of their children. Her cotton clothing is covered in animal and geometric designs like the ones she imprints into the pottery she makes. Dressed to impress, she is perhaps on her way to a distant village for a ceremony or to visit the relatives she left behind when marrying. All around her are the sounds of birds and other animals who share the savanna with her people. She will follow the straight paths for many kilometres until she reaches her destination, where she will be welcomed with a boisterous feast and celebration. When she returns home, she may bring rare trade goods back with her, acquired from her relatives who live nearer to the Andes. As she cuts her way across the flooded landscape in her dugout canoe, she follows the paths laid out for her by her ancestors all those centuries ago.
In some parts of Moxos, the people built raised fields in order to grow crops with specially enriched soil. Here in the southeast Moxos, though, the soils were fertile enough to grow all of the crops the people needed. Maize fields circled the edges of a large lake not far from the settled forest islands. People also grew manioc, arrowroot, arracacha, peanut, sweet potato, squash, beans, chili peppers, tobacco, cacao, papaya and cotton. They used the cotton and bark to make their clothing, and the tobacco was smoked in special religious ceremonies. Since space to plant was limited on the islands themselves, people frequently made use of canals to go to the outer fields and harvest their crops. Regular feasting was an important part of the people's lives. Sometimes these feasts were confined to a single forest island, but there were many occasions when people travelled further afield in order to celebrate with eating, drinking, sacred flutes and dancing. The causeways and canals were essential for connecting the people of Moxos to their neighbours, and to other speakers of Arawakan languages throughout the wider Amazon.
The Arawakan trade network was one of the biggest and most important in the pre-colonial Americas. The Arawakan people had spread a few hundred years earlier from their homeland further north to the far reaches of the Amazon. Some of them went as far north as the Caribbean, while others came south to Bolivia. These latter migrants gave rise to the great mound-building culture of the Llanos de Moxos, building canals and causeways to connect their living spaces and to impose a divine sense of order on the landscape. While their political leadership was not completely centralized, there was social stratification in Moxos with chiefs ruling over small regions. Marriage alliances sent women along the watery paths that crisscrossed the landscape in every direction.
The movement of goods to lands beyond the Amazon was a crucial part of the Arawakan trade network's success. The people of the Andes mountains to the west coveted many goods from inside the rainforest. Many colourful birds made their home in the forest canopy: Parrots, macaws, toucans, and tanagers. Their vibrant feathers had a reputation that spanned almost all of South America. As areas in the Andes began to coalesce into highly stratified states, elites sought the feathers of these beautiful birds as exotic symbols of power. They wove them into tapestries and wore them on their heads in elaborate headdresses. But until the Arawakans spread their trade network to its southernmost extent, these feathers were hard to come by. Once they had settled in the area around the year 500, feathers began to appear across the Andes in nascent states like Wari and Tiwanaku. The Arawakan traders must have commanded vast areas of the rainforest, trapping hundreds of thousands of birds in order to meet Andean demand. Some scholars have argued that without access to this highly developed trade network in exotic goods, Wari and Tiwanaku might not have become as powerful as they did, since access to precious rainforest resources was crucial to expressing the prestige of elites. They expanded their own control of areas like the Peruvian coast in part by exporting Amazonian goods as middlemen. None of that would have been possible without the sophisticated trapping and export network established by the Arawakans in the southern Amazon.
For their part, the Arawakans imported goods from the Andes that helped elevated the status of their own leaders. Workable stone was exceedingly rare in the lowland savanna, so Arawakan leaders prized stone axes from the mountains. They also imported metals and textiles, adorning themselves in objects that symbolized their command of wide-ranging trade networks. Imported shells and local animals bones were also used to make jewellery. Like many Amazonian people, the people of Moxos wore labrets, long objects inserted into the skin above and below their lips. Early European conquistadors wrote that their labrets clicked together while people talked, imitating the sound of a bird's beak as they spoke. A few people even wore jaguar teeth necklaces, proof that they had survived an encounter with the jungle's fiercest predator. Skulls of jaguars lined special ceremonial halls in each village, and those who had successfully killed one were called camacoy and were said to be imbued with special powers.
Women as well as men could become shamans, known as tiharauqui. They might have visions of a jaguar or of a spirit in the water or forest. After a few days of fasting, their new status would be celebrated with a great feast. Women tiharauqui offered beer to the local spirits and led religious ceremonies. Unlike male shamans, they did not have to undergo excruciating fasts. They were expected to be able to detect thieves and warn the village of approaching jaguars. A tiharauqui was also the island's healer, who worked by drinking a narcotic beverage called marari and consulting with their familiar spirit about the cause of the disease. Pregnant women spent the end of their pregnancies in special magically protective huts beyond the village boundaries. Difficult labour was treated by tying toads to the woman and playing the flute and singing over her. After the birth, the toads were fed chicha and released back into the wetlands. If the woman gave birth to twins, the second twin was said to be the child of a spirit.
In this illustration, a woman is setting out on a journey. Her face is painted in urucú, a pigment made from the dried seeds of the achiote plant. Women were said to take great delight in painting their faces and those of their children. Her cotton clothing is covered in animal and geometric designs like the ones she imprints into the pottery she makes. Dressed to impress, she is perhaps on her way to a distant village for a ceremony or to visit the relatives she left behind when marrying. All around her are the sounds of birds and other animals who share the savanna with her people. She will follow the straight paths for many kilometres until she reaches her destination, where she will be welcomed with a boisterous feast and celebration. When she returns home, she may bring rare trade goods back with her, acquired from her relatives who live nearer to the Andes. As she cuts her way across the flooded landscape in her dugout canoe, she follows the paths laid out for her by her ancestors all those centuries ago.
Artist's Comments
I started reading 1491 by Charles Mann and was really excited to learn about the Llanos de Moxos and their mound-building civilization. Here is yet another example of the sophisticated monumental architecture of the Amazon, which I first explored in the very beginning of the series nearly five years ago. It really excites my imagination to learn all about the world of the pre-colonial Amazon. It really challenges our preconceptions about the Amazon as a "wilderness", and it helps connect the gap in knowledge between the Andes and Mesoamerica in my mind. I particularly enjoyed the scholarly arguments that the rise of Andean states was dependent on the Amazonian trade networks to supply goods that could enhance leaders' prestige and demonstrate their command over exotic ritual paraphernelia.
The image for this picture came into my head right away, but it took much longer to draw it. Figuring out the canoe and perspective was really hard! I'm grateful to my friend Sacha for helping me with some of that. The colours came out a little more psychedelic than I was originally expecting, but overall I'm happy with this one. Our new kitten Merlin made his Women of 1000 debut with this one, attempting to play with the coloured pencils while I drew and attack my arm while I was taking notes. He's a real cutie! This coming Valentine's Day will mark the fifth anniversary of when I started the Women of 1000 project. What a ride it's been so far! Thank you to all of you who have supported me along the way. ~ February 5, 2023
The image for this picture came into my head right away, but it took much longer to draw it. Figuring out the canoe and perspective was really hard! I'm grateful to my friend Sacha for helping me with some of that. The colours came out a little more psychedelic than I was originally expecting, but overall I'm happy with this one. Our new kitten Merlin made his Women of 1000 debut with this one, attempting to play with the coloured pencils while I drew and attack my arm while I was taking notes. He's a real cutie! This coming Valentine's Day will mark the fifth anniversary of when I started the Women of 1000 project. What a ride it's been so far! Thank you to all of you who have supported me along the way. ~ February 5, 2023
Resources
Want to learn more about the people of the Llanos de Moxos? Here are some recommended resources.
Visualizing the Past: Recreating Baures
This project from the University of Pennsylvania was immensely helpful in informing my illustration. Aside from the stunning video it opens with, there are lots of helpful pieces written by students about various aspect of life among the Baure people of the pre-Columbian past. In particular, I made extensive use of "Weaving the Baures Identity" by Siyona Ravi and "Decorating the Body: Hair, Piercings, and Body Art in the Amazon" by Lynn Oseguera.
"The Llanos de Mojos" by John H. Walker
If you want a general overview on this region of the Amazon, this article is a really great starting point. Walker has also published an entire book on the area called Island, River, and Field: Landscape Archaeology in the Llanos de Mojos. I haven't read it myself, but his article provided a very clear outline of the area's archaeology.
"Agency, Causeways, Canals, and the Landscapes of Everyday Life in the Bolivian Amazon" by Clark L. Erickson
This article really brings to life the importance of the causeways and canals in the Llanos de Moxos, both practical and ideological. It was fascinating to learn about how the canals were maintained, sometimes across many generations, and the way that the early Amazonian peoples used them to express an ideology of order on the landscape.
"The influence of Amazonia on state formation in the ancient Andes" by Darryl Wilkinson
I love articles like this. Wilkinson blew my mind with his arguments about how the Arawakan trade networks across the Amazon facilitated the growth of Andean states. Andean states like Wari and Tiwanaku relied on ostentatious displays of feather to demonstrate elite power. I love how Wilkinson points out that Andeanists often treat the Amazon as an open warehouse, when in reality there were huge and sophisticated trade networks and bird trapping territories necessary to supply the feathers that were in such high demand in the Andes. Learning about this feather trade network reminded me of the research I did for my picture of parrot-keepers in the Mimbres region. To understand more about the Arawakan trade networks, check out "The Arawakan Matrix" by Love Eriksen and Swintha Danielsen.
"Pre-Columbian landscape impact and agriculture in the Monumental Mound region of the Llanos de Moxos, lowland Bolivia" by Bronwen S. Whitney, Ruth Dickau, Francis E. Mayle, J. Daniel Soto, and José Iriarte
The radiocarbon dates provided in this article are what made me decide to set this illustration around Laguna San José. It's a very helpful article for understanding the general chronology of the mound-building cultures in the Llanos de Moxos. Some other articles I read were quite vague about the timeline so I really appreciated this one.
Grupo para los Llanos de Moxos
There is a huge number of scholars who study the Llanos de Moxos region, from geologists to anthropologists. This website is for researchers who work in this part of Bolivia. They have a great virtual library where you can browse for many more articles on the region. (Seriously, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of articles linked on this website!) There is so much more to read about the people of pre-colonial Llanos de Moxos, and their modern descendants, than I was able to put here.
Visualizing the Past: Recreating Baures
This project from the University of Pennsylvania was immensely helpful in informing my illustration. Aside from the stunning video it opens with, there are lots of helpful pieces written by students about various aspect of life among the Baure people of the pre-Columbian past. In particular, I made extensive use of "Weaving the Baures Identity" by Siyona Ravi and "Decorating the Body: Hair, Piercings, and Body Art in the Amazon" by Lynn Oseguera.
"The Llanos de Mojos" by John H. Walker
If you want a general overview on this region of the Amazon, this article is a really great starting point. Walker has also published an entire book on the area called Island, River, and Field: Landscape Archaeology in the Llanos de Mojos. I haven't read it myself, but his article provided a very clear outline of the area's archaeology.
"Agency, Causeways, Canals, and the Landscapes of Everyday Life in the Bolivian Amazon" by Clark L. Erickson
This article really brings to life the importance of the causeways and canals in the Llanos de Moxos, both practical and ideological. It was fascinating to learn about how the canals were maintained, sometimes across many generations, and the way that the early Amazonian peoples used them to express an ideology of order on the landscape.
"The influence of Amazonia on state formation in the ancient Andes" by Darryl Wilkinson
I love articles like this. Wilkinson blew my mind with his arguments about how the Arawakan trade networks across the Amazon facilitated the growth of Andean states. Andean states like Wari and Tiwanaku relied on ostentatious displays of feather to demonstrate elite power. I love how Wilkinson points out that Andeanists often treat the Amazon as an open warehouse, when in reality there were huge and sophisticated trade networks and bird trapping territories necessary to supply the feathers that were in such high demand in the Andes. Learning about this feather trade network reminded me of the research I did for my picture of parrot-keepers in the Mimbres region. To understand more about the Arawakan trade networks, check out "The Arawakan Matrix" by Love Eriksen and Swintha Danielsen.
"Pre-Columbian landscape impact and agriculture in the Monumental Mound region of the Llanos de Moxos, lowland Bolivia" by Bronwen S. Whitney, Ruth Dickau, Francis E. Mayle, J. Daniel Soto, and José Iriarte
The radiocarbon dates provided in this article are what made me decide to set this illustration around Laguna San José. It's a very helpful article for understanding the general chronology of the mound-building cultures in the Llanos de Moxos. Some other articles I read were quite vague about the timeline so I really appreciated this one.
Grupo para los Llanos de Moxos
There is a huge number of scholars who study the Llanos de Moxos region, from geologists to anthropologists. This website is for researchers who work in this part of Bolivia. They have a great virtual library where you can browse for many more articles on the region. (Seriously, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of articles linked on this website!) There is so much more to read about the people of pre-colonial Llanos de Moxos, and their modern descendants, than I was able to put here.