Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Ignacio de Zamucos, traveled to the Salt Lakes of Echoi in the company
of a number of neophytes—some of whom, we may suppose, were de-
scendants of the several hundred “Zamucos Indians” relocated to San-
tiago by the priests after the abandonment of San Ignacio in 1745. The
Franciscan wrote a letter to the governor reporting his discovery of—and
claim to—the great salt deposits in the heart of the land occupied by
Ayoreo-speaking people, near what he describes as the ruins of San Igna-
cio de Zamucos.
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The strangely shaped mountain he describes is Cerro
San Miguel, which is also the landmark noted on Jesuit maps with the
Ayoreoized word
Yoibide
:
The salt Lake is distant from santiago by some 60 leagues to the south, beginning six
leagues from the estancia of san Joaquin. . . . One emerges from the point of a palm
savannah, where a mountain is found, very tall, a quadrilateral in shape from south to
north, where various fires may always be seen. from the base of this Mountain, looking
west from the palmar the salt Lake can be seen at a distance of 10 leagues. It is about
a league and a half long, and a quarter in width. Two arroyos leave from this, one from
the south, and another from the north. The salt is very beautiful and clean, colored
white and pink. from this Mountain . . . the salt Lake to the west can be very clearly
seen, and to the north all of the Mountains of the province are seen, like those of san
Jose with its salt Lake, as well as those of san Juan and santiago. finally, it should be
noted that according to the signs and paths there are many people who come here to
collect salt, and in part of the mountain there are various cuts in the trees that mark
the direction of the road, and that in the direction of santiago, there is a wide trail
opened.
Salt was a centrally important commodity along the Chiquitania colo-
nial frontier. It was traded between missions, used to cure beef shipped
to the silver mines at Potosi, and often served as a frontier currency by
which missions could purchase goods and pay taxes. The inhabitants of
Santiago, for instance, used salt from the Salinas to buy supplies from
the neighboring missions of Santo Corazon and San Juan. Chiquitano
Indians made regular trips to the Salinas to mine salt, with each salt lake
assigned to a different mission town in the last decades of the eighteenth
century. A colonial tribunal prohibited Native salt gathering in 1792,
stating that the Salinas did not belong to the Indians, and reserving it for
commercial exploitation by the Crown. Although this met with severe
opposition by the Indians, who “laid around crying” and claimed they
had used it since “before the expulsion of the Jesuits,” the order appar-
ently stood.
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