Toba (Guaicuruan) hunter-gatherers in the Bolivian Chaco

Time, place and memory

Bibliographic Data

ID18968240
AuthorsMarcela Mendoza (0000-0001-8163-8986, University of Oregon, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume4
Issue1
Pages51-79
Publication date2018-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHunter Gatherer Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1476-4253 • E-ISSN: 2056-3264
PublisherLiverpool University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3828/hgr.2018.4
OpenAlexW2992485368
LanguageEN
References cited13

Toba hunter-gatherers inhabited the dry savannas in the Manso plains of the Bolivian Chaco since precolonial times. Early on, Spaniards learned that these peoples (speakers of a language now classified as Guaicuruan) were trekking extensive ranges off the Andean foothills around Upper Pilcomayo River, but their social organisation was unknown, in part because Tobas (with mobility and organisational strength) were able to hold the expansion of the colonial frontier for centuries. Examining texts by missionaries, colonial administrators, army officers, travellers, linguists, ethnographers and oral traditions recorded in the field, snippets of information were retrieved about these people. Based on these data, I argue that three local groups or parcialidades were trekking the so-called Manso plains in the 1800s. Collectively, these groups may have included over eighty different bands on separate camps (tolderías or rancherías), amounting to 4000 people or more. One example of Toba enduring seasonal mobility is provided, at a time when their territories were occupied by Bolivian settlers, and indigenous peoples were being captured, and decimated by local militias and soldiers. This historical evidence is relevant because, since the mid-1900s, Tobas are not officially included among indigenous groups in the Bolivian lowlands

Archaeology · Cartography · Colonialism · Ethnography · Ethnology · Foothills · Frontier · Geography · Indigenous · African Studies and Ethnography · Ecology · History · Indigenous Cultures and History · Migration, Education, Indigenous Social Dynamics

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub