L'Homme

Ethnic Transformation and Historical Discontinuity in Native

Amazonia and Guayana, 1500-1900
Neil L. Whitehead

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Whitehead Neil L. Ethnic Transformation and Historical Discontinuity in Native Amazonia and Guayana, 1500-1900. In:
L'Homme, 1993, tome 33 n°126-128. La remontée de l'Amazone. pp. 285-305;

doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/hom.1993.369641

https://www.persee.fr/doc/hom_0439-4216_1993_num_33_126_369641

Fichier pdf généré le 10/05/2018

 Neil L. Whitehead

Ethnic Transformation

and Historical Discontinuity

in Native Amazonia and Guayana, 1500-1900*

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1. Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to outline and discuss some of the hitherto
unknown or unappreciated complexities of the historical process in
Amazonia since the 16th century, thereby mapping one area of the new
frontiers and domains with which this section is concerned. This is not to
suggest that Amazonia is unique in this regard but rather reflects the under-
development of the historiography, colonial as well as native, of this area
general y. At the same time the dominance of ethnographic descriptions in the
theoretical modelling of social process amongst native Amazonians has engendered
a scholarly myopia as regards the use of the archaeological and historiographical
data. The consequences of this are clearly unsatisfactory (Roosevelt 1989;
Whitehead 1989) leading, on the one hand, to the substitution of glottochronology
and ceramic distribution for history (e.g. Lathrap 1970), and, on the other hand,
to the uncritical projection of ethnographic conclusions back into the past (e.g.
Hemming 1978, 1987a).
It is for these reasons that the nature of the historical transformation of
native Amazonia (i.e. phenomena ranging from the total extinction of some
ethnic formations to the endurance and invention of others) is discussed in relation
to the development of our understanding of these processes. The topical focus
for this discussion will be on problems of the temporality and interpretability

L'Homme 126-128, avr.-déc. 1993, XXXIII (2-4), pp. 285-305.

286 NEIL L. WHITEHEAD

of historical Amerindia, the nature of "contact" with particular reference to

disease, changes in native ecology and settlement, and finally regional trade
systems. A more descriptive summary of the characteristics of native Amazonia
and further discussion of the effects of European encroachment may be found
in Roosevelt (1980, 1987, 1991) and Whitehead (1988, 1989, 1990a, 1990b, 1992a,
1993a).

2. Epoch and Agency in Native Historiography

It is often assumed in "ethnohistorical" writing on native Amazonia that,

even where an initial complexity of social forms is acknowledged to have existed,
historical process has been essentially uniform in character (i.e. conquest - trade
- missions — slavery — incorporation) and unilineal in direction (i.e. a descent
from complex to simple). Moreover historical agency has been thought to have
rested essentially with the Europeans and their social successors so that the main
causes of social change are thought to be those emanating from the colonizers.
While it is undeniable that the consequences of European contact for native
Amazonia were ultimately fundamental it would be misleading to suppose that
they were either universal or simultaneous. Equally the differential survival
of different ethnic formations clearly implies, if it doesn't immediately
demonstrate, that in certain contexts native patterns of behaviour were determining
factors in historical outcomes. A further corollary of this line of reasoning
is that the native contribution to colonial and national histories may have been
more relevant and substantive than prevailing orthodoxy has allowed (cf. Bethell
1984-1986).
One example of the consequences of these shortcomings is the general lack
of appreciation of the importance of the phenomenon of "ethnic soldiering",
that is the use of native military alliances and levies in the context of the
establishment of European settlement (Whitehead 1990a, 1990b, 1992a). In terms of
historical motivation the Amerindian is merely seen as either intractably
warlike or unable to resist the offer of steel tools, and the often critical political
and military support of Amerindian leaders is ignored; despite the fact that the
political consent and active military assistance of some element of the indigenous
population was the sine qua non of colonial occupation throughout this region,
at least until the 18th century. Moreover the range of indigenous responses
to European encroachment was highly variable, though progressively less so as
the colonial political economy gradually supplanted the Amerindian one. In
sum the focus here is neither history from the Amerindian view or ethnohistory,
nor is it solely concerned with the role of the Amerindian in the formation of
colonial and modern state structures, but rather with the articulation existing
between these social spheres.
However, some have doubted whether such articulation may be said to exist
at all, arguing that native histories are essentially enigmatic to the western observer
Ethnic Transformation and Historical Discontinuity 287

since they respond to a cultural logic that is fundamentally impenetrable to

western modes of thought (e.g. Sahlins 1985; Taussig 1987). Equally the
practical influence of native groups on the development of colonial policies
is rarely acknowledged, despite the importance of native alliances, as mentioned
above, in actively patterning the initial occupation of the Americas. This process
was most obvious where, for example, indigenous categories, such as caniba
from the Taino, were initially adopted and applied wholesale by the Europeans
(see Hulme & Whitehead 1992). In areas such as Amazonia, where the vivacity
of the Amerindian political economy lasted into the 18th century (Neto 1988),
this was a continuing process, especially in the sphere of botanical, geographical,
zoological, and ethnic identification.
Overlaying these basic theoretical considerations are the particularities of
the historical process in Amazonia which naturally impart further complexities
to the analysis. In the region under discussion neither the Spanish nor Portuguese
managed an effective occupation until the 18th century, having first had to expel
colonial interlopers, principally the Dutch, French, Irish, and English, and defeat
their native allies (Hemming 1987b: 165; Lorimer 1989; Whitehead 1988). Once
again we see here the importance of the advent of European settlement in these
regions in underwriting the creation of new native elites, but more importantly
we are also alerted to the fact that fundamental changes were occurring in native
societies as well. This may sound a banal and obvious statement to make but
the possibility of internally driven change among these groups has been explicitly
questioned. For example, the florescence of military chieftains in the 16th
century has been thought to be related to the intractable and ancestral belligerency
of the Amazonians (Boer 1981), attitudes expressing the underlying cultural need
to occupy the supposedly desirable floodplain environment (Lathrap 1970; Morey
& Marwitt 1978), rather than the obvious changes in economic and political
circumstance with which they were faced.
The failure to appreciate indigenous political and ideological re-orientations
thus partly explains the way in which contemporary ethnography is seen as
implicitly historical, since such ethnography is thought to describe a state or
stage of social evolution at which these groups have arrived, rather than their
achieved historical circumstance. Thus, the unilineality of historical change
for the Amerindian can be seen to be a false analytical premise, since powerful
chieftaincies of the 16th century, such as the Guayano, Tapajos or Manoas
were reduced to virtual "bands" by the 18th century, while marginal ethnic
formations of the 16th century, such as the Aruan, Mundurucu or the Caribs,
produced regionally dominant chieftaincies in the 18th and 19th centuries (see
also Whitehead n.d.).
In similar vein, an assumed uniformity of historical process, apocryphally
evident in the titles of some of the more important histories of native Amazonia;
e.g. From Barter to Slavery (Marchant 1942), The Conquest of/The Defeat
of the Brazilian Indians (Hemming 1978, 1987a), De Maioria a Minoría (Neto
1988), actually distorts our understanding of the transformations that were
288 NEIL L. WHITEHEAD

taking place. The Portuguese picture we have of the European occupation

of the lower and mid- Amazon river in the 17th and 18th centuries obviously
only relates to certain phases and should not be allowed to stand as a cipher
for native history in the region as a whole. Comparison with other areas of
Amazonia, particularly Guayana (i.e. the region between the Orinoco and
Amazon), shows that, as in the early occupation of the Amazon itself, neither
slavery or warfare were preponderant modes of interaction with the Europeans,
while the missionaries were of negligible importance in some contexts (White-
head 1988; Lorimer 1989). Given that many Amerindian polities comprised
areas of multiple European occupation it is clear that any formulation of
regularities in historical process will have to include consideration of the dynamic
of these historical entities, as much as it will have to refer to the unfolding
of colonial settlement and its priorities.
The immediate practical consequence of this must be an integration of
European sources, for most historical writing still confines itself to monolingual
records, while, as has been suggested, the experience of the Amerindians was
far wider and more complex. So too the quality of these records is vastly
different, with the non-Iberian material often permitting a complexity of inference
not available from Spanish or Portuguese writings.
As a result of such considerations a preliminary temporal framework for
the understanding of native Amazonian history needs to distinguish the passage
of time according to endogenous, or native, criteria as well as according to
the timing of European occupation. Although the lack of basic historiographical
research on the Amerindians hampers the consistent achievement of this aim
across the half-millennium under discussion, in the initial phases the pre-eminent
importance of the nature of "first contact", and its demographic consequences,
provides a means for discriminating a number of historical trajectories, including
termination, among the then extant polities of mediaeval Amazonia.

3. Contact, Disease and Historical Trajectory

Having outlined some of the historiographical complexities inherent in the

study of Amazonia it is now salient to show how the understanding of these
complexities alters our definition and interpretations of the historical data, thus
revealing hitherto unknown facets of native Amazonia, such as the regional
systems of interaction and trade that will be discussed in 5.
In the history of Amazonia there is an intimate, almost isomorphic, link
between the process of contact between native and intrusive Amazonians and
the spread of Old World diseases. The stress here being on the fact of contact
being a temporally extended process, rather than a single instant or event that
ruptures the otherwise pristine Garden of Eden into which the Europeans at
first believed they had stumbled (Hemming 1978). The reason for stressing
this being the prevalent assumption that such an encounter universally and
Ethnic Transformation and Historical Discontinuity 289

inevitably represents a fundamental historical disjuncture, as in Sahlins's (1985)

account of Cook in Polynesia. That this was initially so in the case of Columbus
(and for Cook), as well as for the native parties concerned, seems
undeniable. However, to overprivilege the data derived from such situations,
and to assume that each new European encounter with a "unknown tribe"
represented a similar novelty for the Amerindians, and as such revealed a
situation uncontaminated by European influence, actually thoroughly disrupts
our notions of the historicity of indigenous societies: for it makes it seem
as if the conquistadors initiated history by introducing change into what had
otherwise been culturally "cold" or static situations (Hill 1988: 3-5; Lévi-Strauss
1968).
Such assumptions also carry over into the modern era and a particularly
good example of this is the case of the Yanömamo, who have become a symbol
of pristine savagery, an example of our "contemporary ancestors", even now
living in the "present past" and "acting out their untrammelled Hobbesian
destiny" (Chagnon 1983: 214; Service 1968). However, that the Yanomamo
have been encountered living in an extremely isolated situation does not justify
the assumption that they represent a pristine example of neolithic life-styles
or a people uncontaminated by western contact. Thus, to the fact that the
ancestral Yanömamo (Waikas, Guaharibos "blancos") appear in the historical
record from the mid-18th century on (Humboldt 1907, II: 459-463; Schomburgk
1841), must also be added the consideration that their staple (the banana plantain)
is probably of post-Columbian origin, and that they may have been migrating
away from direct contact along the Rio Negro in early historic times, as they
certainly were in the 19th century (Migliazza 1972). Similarly, in a case
reminiscent of the Tasaday controversy, the Akuriyo of Surinam were
encountered in this century using stone tools and therefore heralded as a Stone-
Age survival. Actually they had been known to the Dutch as long ago as the
17th century (Kloos 1977). It can be clearly seen, then, that the assumption
of unilineality in Amerindian historical trajectories is utterly misleading.
These considerations are particularly important when examining the role
of disease in Amazonian history since it is undoubtedly the case that
Amerindians died from African and European diseases before having physically
encountered any such a person at all. Nevertheless some of the more enthusiastic
exponents of epidemic history (Dobyns 1983; Ramenofsky 1987) impute far
too uniform a characteristic to the spread of epidemics, not allowing for the
way in which transmission rates are affected by diet, physical settings, social
practices and active native responses to epidemics (Coimbra 1988; Purdy
1988). Thus, although ultimate consequences may be said to have been uniform,
i.e. many Amerindians have died, it is not true to infer from this that the historical
processes producing this effect were themselves uniform. Population curves,
where available, tend to show a precipitate dive towards extinction, followed
by recovery; but since this was happening to diverse populations throughout
Amazonia, at various times from the 16th century onwards, this gives the gross
290 NEIL L. WHITEHEAD

impression of an instant demographic disaster. However, if we reject the

methodological assumption of uniformity, as we must in the face of the actual
diversity of Amerindian historical experience of disease (Whitehead 1988: 21-41),
then from the point of view of indigenous socio-political systems epidemics
represented a chronic not acute cause of decline, being experienced at different
times for different peoples.
In this context it is also worth noting that Europe was itself subject to
fearsome epidemics throughout the same period and earlier. Both bubonic plague
and malaria continued to cause death rates of up to 50% well into the 17th
century, being even higher in earlier periods. Similarly, influenza, often cited as
an exclusive Amerindian killer, in fact also caused a population loss of some
20% in England during the pandemic of 1556-1560, which also reached America
(McNeil 1977: 209). In short the generality, globally, of the experience of
epidemic disease between 1200 and 1700 should make us cautious in assigning
too much causal weight to demographic factors in explaining historical change;
especially since in writing on Amazonia almost any decrease in the population
of a given town or village tends to be automatically interpreted as due to an
epidemic, often without consideration of possible other causes.
Thus, just as ceramic and linguistic distributions are not in themselves real
historical entities but rather represent the aftermath of those entities, so too
showing the importance of the recurrent possibility of demographic collapse
does not alleviate us of the responsibility of seeking actual historical
explanations. An example of this faulty analysis is the argument that changes
in Amerindian settlement patterns along the Amazon between the first journeys
of the Spanish and the Portuguese reconnaissances of a century later were due
to epidemic disease. However, no evidence of disease or "fevers" appears
in the contemporary accounts of these expeditions and it seems entirely possible
that neither malaria nor yellow fever were established on the Amazon before
1650 (McNeil 1977: 212).
While, of course, the problems of evidence are particularly acute in trying
to recover demographic data, and one can never definitively rule out the presence
of epidemics, where microstudies have been made the vectors of disease
transmission suggest that missionary settlement was critical in creating stable pools
for reinfection (Golob 1982; Whitehead 1988). In the absence of this factor
death rates may well have been less dramatic, since, just as in the European
case, it is the density of settlement coupled with increasing interaction over
longer distances which permits the establishment of epidemic disease. For these
reasons also the Aztec and Inca situations cannot be taken as typical of
Amazonia, despite the existence of elite networks of exchange in the Amazon region
that could have functioned as very effective vectors for disease, as was the case
for the Inca, Huayna-Capac (Gamboa 1907: 169). Equally, the disappearance
of Caribbean populations and those of coastal Brazil involved the migration
of people as well as their physical destruction through disease (Sued-Badillo
1978: 156). Even in these situations where the "great dying" is more
Ethnic Transformation and Historical Discontinuity 291

adequately documented one may note the time lag between the arrival of the
European and the onset of the pandemics (Purdy 1988). In short, nowhere
has the onset of epidemics been automatic and to assume too strong an identity
between the process of contact and demographic change is to distort historical
process which, as in the Guayana region, shows that extensive contact may
take place for many decades before the eventual demographic preponderance
of Africans or Europeans produces epidemic disaster.
Moreover, uncertainties as to the absolute size of pre-Columbian
populations make calculation of these death rates extremely problematic since a baseline
for depopulation is required before such a calculation can be made. In
Amazonia this means that we are forced to rely, in advance of more extensive
archaeological and historical evidence, on notions of the carrying-capacity and
protein-availability of differing ecological zones in order to derive estimates
of populations ca. 1500. The results of such calculations are extremely
tentative statistically and perhaps even more suspect when not clearly separated from
social context, for the objects of historical analysis are not necessarily those
of statistical analysis. In the Amazonian case this is particularly true since
population estimates are made for modern groupings as they would have been
in the past (Hemming 1978: 492), without any demonstration that a given group
was extant in the past, or that there was a meaningful continuity between a
group thought to be ancestral to another, beyond apparent linguistic
identities. However, "environment" has also had an independently important
role to play in supplying quasi-historical explanations of cultural development
in Amazonia.

4. Environment, Ecology and Historical Transformations

Just as the mechanisms of ceramic, linguistic or epidemic distribution do

not of themselves provide the rules for the historical transformation of
Amazonian social groupings, so too, following the seminal critique by Roosevelt
(1980), there is no reason to believe, as Meggers (1971) would seem to imply,
that "nature" constrains "culture" to any greater degree than elsewhere in
the world, nor that ecological factors are any more important in determining
patterns of warfare and settlement than elsewhere, as has been the implication
of the work of Gross (1975) and Lathrap (1970). Nonetheless the extensive
anthropological discussion of the consequences of conflict over supposedly scarce
protein in the interriverine areas, especially as regards the origins and characters
of Amazonian warfare, certainly would make it appear that this was the
mechanism by which ceramic and linguistic distributions occurred, and which
continues to drive native warfare into the modern era, as in the case of the
Yanomamo (Harris 1984). However, the two central assumptions of this
argument, that indigenous social systems were restricted to particular ecological
zones and that certain ecological zones show an absolute poverty in relation
292 NEIL L. WHITEHEAD

to others, regardless of technology or economy, appear highly implausible

in the light of recent work on long term native management of the
environment (Balée & Gely 1989; Posey 1985; Roosevelt 1989) and on the vagaries
of the use of the concept of ecosystem in anthropological explanation (Moran
1988). It transpires that, somewhat perversely, much of the data that was
used to establish these assumptions was gathered in modern micro-ethnographic
situations, and there has already been occasion to comment more fully above
on the inappropriateness of naively projecting ethnographic data back into
the past on the assumption of the timeless character of Amazonian societies.
Nonetheless the importance of direct observation is demonstrated by the fact
that it is partly ethnographic and field projects that allow us to develop more
adequate models. Thus the congruence of the archaeological data (Roosevelt
1980, 1989, 1990) and historical data (Porro 1989; Roosevelt 1987; Whitehead
1988, 1989), data showing high population levels in riverine zones, as well
as the historical data suggesting extensive upland/interriverine connections
(Whitehead 1989, 1988: 53-55), meshes with recent ethnobotanical work
illustrating both the surviving diversity of resource gathering techniques in allegedly
unfavourable environments, and the degree to which human activity has
modified the Amazonian environment. Equally the simplistic distinction between
riverine and hinterland is undermined by work showing there is a far greater
diversity of agriculturally useful soils (Moran 1989) and by the distinct possibility
that direct access to the protein resources of the floodplains was more than
offset by regional trade systems traversing the intervening highlands (see §5).
In any case the conceptualization of Amerindian settlement patterns as
being of coastal-floodplain vs. upland-hinterland groups is itself very much
the product of colonization, in that European encroachment forced a general
re-orientation of social networks by incorporating the lower reaches of the
Amazon and Orinoco and their tributaries or the coastal rivers but tending
to seal off or interdict communication from the upper to lower sections of
these same rivers, as had been native practice before the establishment of
the European trading posts. An example of this process and an illustration
of how ancient social networks may have offset the resource differentials
between Amazonian environments is provided by the case of the Lokono (Arawak)
of Guyana. Before the establishment of permanent European trading posts
in the 17th century, Spanish records and early Dutch and English intelligence
indicate that Lokono clans were settled the whole length of the Corentyn and
Berbice rivers and up onto the Sipalwini savannas from where they
communicated with the Amazon basin proper (Lopez 1964; Navarrete 1864; Anonymous
1906). However, by the end of the 17th century the combined effects of the
Portuguese and Dutch occupation had encouraged an abandonment of the
upland areas and a concentration in the coastal zone, where close alliance
with the Dutch underwrote the political influence of larger or newly prominent
Lokono clans, such as the Schotje and Sabajo. As a result the notion that
the Lokono traditionally occupied the lower reaches of rivers and the Caribs
Ethnic Transformation and Historical Discontinuity 293

the middle and upper reaches became an orthodoxy in the ethnography of

the region; not for lack of attention to the historical record but for a lack
of historiographically disciplined anthropological awareness in relation to the
use of these early records.
In this light, we may therefore question whether conflict over riverine areas
has been an ancient motor of migration, just as we have already questioned
whether the migration of distinct linguistic groupings was in fact the
substance of pre-Columbian Amazonian history, as supposedly reflected in the
distribution of ethnically and linguistically exclusive ceramic
distributions. Attempts to show the historical basis of an ancient antagonism
between groups occupying different ecological zones have proved inconclusive
(Balée 1984), and in any case there are many situations where, prior to the
European settlement, conflict appears as much the product of a social symbiosis,
as it does of contrasting resource bases (Lévi-Strauss 1942). For example,
the fact that two ancient sites in the Amazon and Negro that were used to
collect and trade fish and salt were fortified (Caravajal 1934: 204; Simon
1861: 104) pointedly raises the possibility that the evidence as to warfare against
floodplain communities may have had less to do with territorial gain and
more to do with the capture of the products of that occupation, be it people
as slaves or protein as dried fish-flour. Thus the cost/benefit of floodplain
occupation cannot be understood solely in terms of supposed ecological potential
for population growth, but must also include an assessment of (i) actual political
priorities, (ii) regional trade systems, (iii) cultural preferences and (iv)
agricultural abilities (see Fritz 1922: 50; Roosevelt 1989, 1991). In this context
it would be much more appropriate to model the relation of riverine and
hinterland peoples as ranging between a positive symbiosis and a negative
parasitism, patterns of warfare then reflecting political relationships between
persons rather than an ecological contrast between the productivity of their
resource bases.
In fact these kind of interdependencies were very common, and modern
ethnographic observations of the relations between the Ye'cuana and Yanomamo
(Chagnon 1970), or Barasana and Maku (Hugh- Jones 1979) are very familiar
from the historic record, as with the trade of fish for manioc by the Caranes
to the Palikur on the lower Amazon {Lettres... 1781: 360), or the Guayquieri
and Guahibo on the middle Orinoco (Morey 1975: 195). Moreover, recent
work on so-called hunter-gatherers world-wide shows that these groups are
usually symbiotically linked with one or more settled agricultural-horticultural
group (Ingold et al. 1988).
Just as post- 1500 warfare and settlement patterns have been profoundly
affected by the colonial process, so too the colonial process itself has not
been limited to the social sphere but also extended to the biological, directly
resulting in the degradation or destruction of aboriginal flora and fauna. In
such a context, especially given the coastal or floodplain location of all early
colonial settlement, the conflict between the groups of the riverine and the
294 NEIL L. WHITEHEAD

hinterland areas looks even less plausible as a model for historical transformation
of native societies.
This is not to conclude that the environment is unimportant, indeed a recent
thorough review of the "protein hypothesis" (Ferguson 1989) indicates that
the hypothesis is not wrong in itself (i.e. game scarcity clearly creates social
tensions) but that it does not explain why and how warfare occurs. Indeed
in the post-Columbian situation avoidance and retreat have proved the more
common response to the tensions created by declining hunting and fishing
returns. But even if an equation between protein scarcity (or at least perceived
scarcity) and migration can be shown for the modern era it should be clear
that the historical transformation of Amazonian societies since 1500 means that
such a mechanism cannot be simply projected back into the past; the more
so when it is remembered that supposed linguistic and ceramic distributions
could have theoretically been achieved without any mass migration of groups
at all (Ammerman & Sforza 1973).
It will have become apparent that in the development of the historical
anthropology of Amazonia glottochronology, ceramic sedation and demographic
patterns have all functioned as a kind of proto-historical analysis. Certainly
the data from these studies will have to be integrated to form a proper historical
explanations of Amazonian civilization but, as is already apparent from other
areas of the world (Thomas 1989) such an integration will not be achieved on
the basis of current paradigms. Part of a new paradigm for Amazonia will
certainly have to emphasise the supra-local systems of interaction, as well as
the extensive populations that such systems incorporated. Accordingly the final
section will briefly examine the nature and decline of one such system that
operated in the Guayana region.

5. Regional Trade Systems and Historical Transformations

In the early part of this century three important, yet apparently neglected,
papers concerning the prehistory of Guayana were published. They laid a basis
for the understanding of the ancient trading networks of this region, especially
those between the great river basins of the Orinoco and Amazon (Goeje
1931-1932; Edmundson 1906; Rivet 1923). More recent work by Boomert
(1987), Myers (1981,1982) and Helms (1986, 1988) on the political and social
significance of elite long distance trade, as well as the more general
anthropological finding of a connection between the growth of external trade and/or
exchange of prestige goods (Ekholm 1977; Friedman & Rowlands 1977: 224;
Helms 1988) would suggest that evidence of such trade systems is also prima
facie evidence of elite political relations being practised at this level. Since
this kind of social complexity has been thought, on the basis of modern
ethnographic experience, to be unachievable within the Amazonian environment,
reaction to historical modelling of such complexity has been negative (White-
head 1991). Quite simply this has resulted from a failure to appreciate the
Ethnic Transformation and Historical Discontinuity 295

fact of historical change amongst these societies; but as we have seen there
are compelling reasons to now drop such perspectives.

5.1 Trade Systems

Although the earliest extensive descriptions of upland Guayana and the

riverine polities that surrounded it are from the end of the 16th century, the pattern
of European activity was sufficiently limited in this region for such data to
be nonetheless considered as informative of a more ancient situation. The
intelligence gathered by Walter Ralegh (1848) and his contemporaries (see Hakluyt
1927; Purchas 1906), thus describes a situation of fundamental re-orientation
and change within the Guayana polity initiated by the still distant Spanish
conquests in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and coastal Venezuela. Given the
ethnographic experience of the last century or so, such direct interaction between
far flung Amerindian groups is quite incredible, but then the extent and
thoroughness of European colonisation of the New World has still to be properly
appreciated. Thus, as Goeje (1931-1932) and Edmundson (1906) show, ancient
trade between the upper Ucayali, Vaupés, lower Orinoco and coastal Guayana,
was persistently practised. Moreover the geographical parameters of this trade
closely conform with the, albeit often confusing and misleading, information
conveyed concerning "El Dorado" and his city of Manoa. So too the
distribution of localities associated with El Dorado, once one escapes
ethnocentric readings of the various Amerindian accounts, are remarkably consistent
with both the ancient distribution of gold-working cultures, as well as the
geological distribution of gold-bearing areas themselves (Whitehead 1993b).
Gold objects (guanin), often in the form of eagles or crescents (calcuri),
were traded out of the Vaupés-Rio Negro region by the Manoas and circulated
eastwards, as far north as the Caribbean. Rivet (1923) has also suggested that
upland Guayana had its own indépendant tradition of gold-working, again of
calcuri', 2l conjecture that has recently received new empirical confirmation (White-
head 1990c).
Alongside this trade in gold in western Guayana was the exchange of jade
or "greenstones" (muyrakytas, takua) in the east (see Boomert 1987; Goeje
1931-1932). Exchange seems to have been most intense between Carib, Taruma,
and Tupi groups and the primary sources are replete with discussion of these
jade items and their possible medicinal value (AN-C14, XII f.288, 1721). The
importance of this trade to indigenous networks may be gauged from the fact
that it was continually monitored by the colonial authorities in Cayenne, in
order that they would be able to dominate the trade networks along which these
items travelled to and from the Amazon basin (AN-C14: III f.26-31, IV f.180,
VII f.255, XIII f.20, 37) and that the Portuguese and Dutch produced
counterfeit takua, "knowing the esteem the Indians have for them" (Labat 1724, 1:18).
Paralleling these economic alignments, ideological contrasts between the
westerly Arawakans and the easterly Tupi, Taruma and Carib, are also apparent;
296 NEIL L. WHITEHEAD

though these geographic parameters were not absolute. Female orientated cults
of the frog and water-boa (respectively being the image and origin of the takuas),
as well as the cult of the Amazons (woliyana), were prevalent in the east. Male
orientated cults of the sun, possibly directly derived from the Vaupés/sub-Andean
region, are more strongly attested to from groups in the west (Roosevelt 1991:
80-85; Roth 1915: 138, 254). Such beliefs in turn mirrored patterns of trade
and warfare within the Guayana region as a whole.
In bare outline then we can discern two relatively distinct trade systems, as
revealed by the circulation of their most valued items in jade and gold, covering
the whole of Guayana. Along these lines of economic activity would have also
flowed the information from which the events of political life were constructed.
Accordingly, we have also seen that these spheres of economic activity may be
broadly related to the distribution of linguistic-cultural groups, but, as not all
towns and villages participated in networks of trade to the same degree, they are
to be more precisely connected with certain pre-eminent ethnicpolitical groupings,
such as the Manoa or Carib. Métraux (1927) has already partially described part
of this Amazonian macropolity, but only from the Tupian perspective. In fact
such continent wide relationships are also found, for example, among the Lokono.
Both their mythology, and information recorded in the 18th century by the
Moravians in Surinam, indicate that Lokono political geography extended right
across the Guayana shield into Colombia and onto the Pacific coast; these regional
political relationships still being actively pursued in the 1 8th century (Staehelin
1913). More generally, as well as the widespread and continuing use of the supra-
vening ties of trade partnerships (bañare, pawanaton), there is also much evidence
to show that intimate and co-operative political relationships regularly took place
outside the line of linguistic groupings. For example, Gilij (1965, III: 45) suggests
that the origin myths of different groups along the Orinoco also expressed
kinship relations between those groups (as was the case for the "League of Iroquois"
in North America). Similar evidence, that a ranked multiethnic polity was once
operated by the Lokono, has been preserved in their extensive vocabulary for the
expression of different degrees of political hierarchy and ranking, both within
their own (Goeje 1928: 19) and between other ethnic groups (Staehelin 1913).
Perhaps significantly, in view of their differing orientation in ritual exchanges, there
is little or no trace of such terminologies among Carib or Tupi groups.
Complete though the destruction of Amerindian civilisations has
subsequently been, it was never so sudden or so thorough that all physical traces have
been swept away, as recent archaeological and historical work demonstrates
(Roosevelt 1991; Whitehead 1990c). Equally, the study of Amerindian history
from the European sources allows us to infer some of the parameters of native
political life during their centuries of interaction with the invaders. Many aspects
of past Amerindian life are still attested to by the modern ethnographic record,
but they are not observed in the same context, or being conducted for the same
purposes as was witnessed then. So, it is to a closer examination of the nature
of these historical transformations that we finally turn.
Ethnic Transformation and Historical Discontinuity 297

5.2 Transformations

With the arrival of the Europeans indigenous economic and political

relationships were obviously deeply disturbed and it therefore became possible, even
imperative, to practise new modes of leadership amongst the Amerindians. This
is a key reason why such groups as the Caribs and Mundurucu rose to dominance
in colonial times, for there is little evidence that they were of central significance
to the ancient status quo (Whitehead 1989, 1992a). The coastal and river trade
that the Europeans initiated put a potentially vast power into the hands of such
groups, which, in the case of the Caribs, by the late 17th century had been
used to such good effect that virtually all other groups had been excluded from
direct trade with the coast; despite the attempts of the Manoas to break the
Caribs' trading monopoly with the Dutch in Essequibo, echoing the conflicts
of the previous century. In the river basins of the Orinoco and Amazon, both
Portuguese and Spanish missionaries gave voluble testimony to the political
power of the Caribs and Manoas based on their trading dominance of the
Guayana region, derived from, although not, as these missionaries claimed,
created by the Dutch in order to further their territorial ambitions (Whitehead
1990b).
It should thus be emphasised that the growth in this hegemony of the coastal
or riverine groups engendered by the Europeans (see 4), not only disrupted
the traditional lines of allegiance that existed beyond the kin-group but changed
the economic basis of political authority, since European manufactures were
not achievable through Amerindian technologies. In such a situation
responsiveness to change, not preservation of tradition, became the axiom of Amerindian
political action. It should also be emphasised that this phenomenon represents
a second critical difference, alongside that concerning the political relevance
of language, between the ethnographic and historical modelling of Amerindian
political culture; that is the notion of dissidence, rebellion or dissatisfaction
with the prevailing social norm, a topic little discussed in modern
ethnography. Nonetheless it is quite clear from the historical sources that the
evolution of Amerindian societies has been consciously shaped by overt acts
of political radicalism, such as the emergence of cannibal and tiger cults in
eastern Guayana (Whitehead 1990a, 1993b) or the "conversion" to Catholicism
along the Orinoco, which ran contrary to Amerindian political tradition as it
then stood. Such cultural innovation should not merely be dismissed as a
"reaction" initiated by the colonial process for where these processes are still
observable today (Colson 1985),. they are critical to the validation of native
cultural autonomy (Brown 1991); even though they are often held to be less
"authentically" Amerindian, because it is assumed that the inevitable outcome
of outside influence is "deculturation". In fact there are reasons to argue
that such an assumption is in itself grossly ethnocentric, notwithstanding the
theoretical fallacies involved in the denial of native historical agency (see
2). Cultural interchange with the Europeans and Africans has been a central
298 NEIL L. WHITEHEAD

feature of Amerindian life for nearly half a millennium, and possibly even
longer. In such a context the social transformations that have occurred in
Amazonia should not be simply treated as a symptom of social collapse, as
has often been the case in the extant literature on the Amerindian. Rather,
in conjunction with the native political principle of the permeability of group
and linguistic boundaries, adaptiveness to ever changing historical circumstances
must be considered as fundamental to the operation of political power in
these societies as it is elsewhere, and a strong indication of the continuity
and vivacity of indigenous traditions, even into the 20th century.
A tentative exposition of this native political tradition might note that
in the absence of formally organised mechanisms for the collective expression
of political will, a tradition of individual prophetic and oracular leadership
permitted constant innovation and adaptation. Against the background of
the European colonisation, which, as for the Europeans themselves, induced
a general questioning of established ideological norms, those groups that proved
politically incapable of producing adequate responses to change, who were
true conservatives in their attitude to the status quo, were simply destroyed,
dispersed or enslaved by the Europeans. Where Amerindian responses were
more flexible and innovative, as was certainly the case with the Caribs, Caraïbes
(Kallipuna), Lokono, Manoas and certain Tupi groups, European conquest
was either delayed or never took place (Hulme & Whitehead 1992; Whitehead
1992a, 1993a). Certainly demographic factors underwrote and enhanced this
process but, for example, the close study of the manner and tactics of
missionary work strongly suggests that the political and economic status of the
missionary was also a clear indicator for the eventual conversion of a given group. In
the absence of this missionary infrastructure, as in the Dutch, French, and
British Guianas, an implicit system of ethnic ranking achieved the same
effect. By underwriting and promoting a strong identification of language
and political attitude the permeability of ethnic boundaries, which had helped
forestall European influence within the Amerindian polity through the practical
denial of the existence of those well defined ethnolinguistic groupings on which
colonial policy making relied, was fatally restricted. As a result European
political loyalties spread amongst the Amerindians, who then acted as the
slavers and evangelists of their own and neighbouring peoples (Whitehead
1990a, 1990b). It is in this sense that groups like the Caribs were a direct
product of the European presence, while others, such as the Manoas, Tarumas
and Tupians, seem to have maintained their aboriginal influence without
dissolving their ethnic identity; though other political and economic
transformations undoubtedly took place since, by the 18th century, Manoan
leadership was itself indistinguishable in its basic features from that of other Guayana
groups (for a typology of native reaction to external encroachment see White-
head 1992a).
Ethnic Transformation and Historical Discontinuity 299

6. Conclusion

This paper has been intended as an initial contribution to the theoretical

solution of the various problems posed by the urgent need to integrate the
archaeological, historical and ethnographic data relevant to Amazonia. It is
clear that it will not be possible simply to "add on" fragments of data from
the various disciplines as it becomes theoretically or empirically convenient to
do so; this much is already evident from other areas (cf. Thomas 1990) but
it remains open as to how this integration will be achieved and as to the eventual
results of such an exercise. It should be clear from the foregoing discussion
that historiographical problems (i.e. how we conceive and describe the past)
are at the forefront of this project and, while no complete answers are offered
here, it is intended that the critique of the various proto-histories that have
been developed to explain the Amazonian civilizations will facilitate that process.
However, until now at least, the credibility of the documentary record has
often been questioned. In fact the most recent archaeological excavations in
the Amazon area show that even the earliest and most problematic reports of
the Amerindians need to be re-evaluated since they have always told of the
civilizations of the Amazon and Orinoco that are only now emerging from the
archaeological finds (Roosevelt 1991; Whitehead 1990c). Clearly this does not
free us to use the historical sources in an undisciplined manner, but it does
mean that their general value has been greatly enhanced.
At the same time it is therefore necessary to ensure that our theoretical
modelling of Amerindian social dynamics is not limited by contemporary
ethnographic preoccupations and descriptions, since some groups can be traced in
considerable detail through 500 years of continuous cultural innovation. It
is only from an examination of this legacy and its origins that a proper
appreciation of the Native Americans can eventually be reached.

Department of Anthropology University of Wisconsin-Madison

* The author would like to acknowledge the financial support of the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation.

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RÉSUMÉ
Neil L. Whitehead, Transformations ethniques et discontinuités historiques en Amazonie
indigène et dans les Guy ânes, 1500-1900. — Cet article analyse les complexités,
habituellement négligées, de l'histoire indigène amazonienne. Il montre que, dans les théories
anthropologiques courantes, l'excessive focalisation sur les matériaux issus de l'ethnographie
contemporaine et sur les sériations céramiques a conduit à l'élaboration de schémas pseudo-historiques
censés rendre compte du développement culturel dans ces régions. L'auteur décrit avec
précision les transformations des sociétés indigènes entre 1500 et 1900, particulièrement en
référence à l'écologie, l'épidémiologie et ses réseaux d'échanges matériels.

RESUMEN
Neil L. Whitehead, Transformaciones étnicas y discontinuidades históricas en la Amazonia
y la Guayana indígena, 1500-1900. — Este artículo analiza las complejidades habitualmente
desconsideradas de la historia indígena amazónica. Quiere demostrar como en las teóricas
antropológicas corrientes, el exceso de focalización sobre materiales de origen etnográfico
contemporáneos y las sedaciones cerámicas ha conducido a la elaboración de esquemas pseudo-
históricos considerados como una demostración del desarrollo cultural en esas regiones. Mas
adelante el autor describe con precisión las transformaciones de las sociedades indígenas
entre los años 1500 y 1900, particularmente, en referencia a la ecología, la epidemiología
y las redes de intercambios materiales.