Things from the whites among the ‘Indians’: The way and the reason of their exchange and use in Chiquitos (16th to 19th centuries)

Abstract

When Europeans arrived in America, they brought a particular series of glass and metal objects with them that both attracted and fascinated the natives. As a result, these things became their principal mean of connection and exchange. In Chiquitos (today, eastern Bolivia), the fascination caused by knives, needles, fishhooks and beads lasted long after the first contacts, though in contexts that varied as the relations between indigenous peoples and whites changed. This article is, firstly, a history of the relationship built up over the 16th to 19th centuries between natives and whites through these objects. It is also a description of the different forms of traffic in which the above-mentioned objects were involved. Finally, it is an investigation of the foundations of this ongoing captivation and curious obsession in indigenous society with white material culture for the understanding of which classic, instrumentalist, technological and economic explanations do not seem to be adequate.