GEOGRAPHICAL AND CULTURAL SETTINGS

The aboriginal populations of the western fringe of the Amazon Basin live in close proximity to one of the most spectacular breaks in natural features in the continent. For centuries they also lived on the edges of two great hegemonic empires, first that of the Inka and then that of the Spanish crown. Until recently the combination of these two factors seemed sufficient reason to justify including all such groups in a single “montaña society” category exemplifying a distinctive “cultural zone.” The postulate of a homogeneous region inhabited by homogeneous societies is, however, largely fallacious. It arises from a perspective based on the high cultures of the Andes that long determined a biased view of the lowlands. Geographically, ethnographically, and even historically, the western sub-Andean fringe is by no means a uniform whole.

Landscape

Nowadays the term montaña refers in a general way to the eastern slopes and foothills of the Andes. It thus encompasses several clearly differentiated ecological zones, stretching from the so-called ceja de montaña (’brow of the mountain’), a fringe of dense, mist-cladden, low-growing forest ranging in altitude from 3,500 to 2,800 meters, down through the cloud forest to the high tropical rainforest of the Amazonian plains. The cultural and geographical area loosely designated by the term montaña extends from the headwaters of the Caquetá, in southern Colombia, to the headwaters of the Mamore (one of the major tributaries of the Madeira) in southern Bolivia.

From the sources of the Caquetá to the upper Napo, the standout features of the montaña are its breadth and relatively gentle relief. The undulating plateau, with its southwesterly inclination, is broken up by U-shaped valleys such as the Sibundoy, San Miguel (formerly Sucumbios), and Baeza valleys. These cut so far back into the cordillera (which is very narrow in the area) that their headwaters lie hardly more than 60 kilometers from the Pacific coast. Farther south the slopes of the western cordillera become steeper, dropping into sunken but fairly wide and fertile valleys such as those of the Zamora and the Upano rivers, running from north to south and cut off from the Amazon plain by bleak secondary chains like the Cutucù and the Cordillera del Condor. At latitude 4° South, there is a further transition. The Andes suddenly lose altitude and subside into a tangle of hills and valleys running in varied directions.