Akawaio - History and Cultural Relations

The territorial extension of the Akawaio was considerable. They dominated the Mazaruni and Cuyuni valleys, maintained a presence on the Demerara, and were reported as trading from Berbice. Laurence Keymis, writing in 1596, mentioned "Wacawaios" on the Demerara and "Wocowaios" in the Pomeroon area, Guyana. Major John Scott, in 1669, referred to "Occowyes" as one of the "great powerful nations that live in the uplands of Guiana." Throughout the colonial period, under the Dutch and then the British, there are constant references to them as traders and travelers and to small groups settled around the upriver posts. They were occasionally employed to police the forest near the plantations. To the west, they entered Venezuelan history under the nickname "Guaica" when, in mid-eighteenth-century Spanish Guayana, Capuchin missionaries began to settle them in mission villages.

Upon destruction of the Caroní Mission in 1817, the Guaica-Akawaio population fled eastward; groups were in contact with Anglican missionaries in British Guiana from 1831, when their enthusiasm for religious instruction was noted. Akawaio regularly visited the lowlands and were employed as guides, boatmen, carriers, hunters, forest workers, and woodcutters. The majority continued to live a customary life in the upper Mazaruni. Naturalist C. F. Appun entered the upper Mazaruni in 1864 followed by C. Barrington Brown, a geologist, in 1872 and 1875. First missionary visits were made by the Jesuit Fr. Cary-Elwes in 1917, 1919, and 1921. The Seventh-Day Adventists established their Kamarang River missions in Guyana after their ejection from Venezuela in 1931. Anglican and Wesleyan missions began in the 1950s. When in 1946 an "Upper Mazaruni Reserve" and a government station were created, with regular air contact, the Akawaio lost their autonomy and began to experience profound change. Today the upper Mazaruni is a subdistrict of the Guyanese ministerial region No. 7, known as Mazaruni-Potaro.

There is near identity in language, society, and culture between Akawaio and their Pemon neighbors, who have raided, traded, and intermarried with each other. The Caribs (Kari'ña) were traditional enemies, mutual hostilities being frequent in the eighteenth century, when Carib groups, retreating before the Spanish advance, ousted Akawaio from some of their lowland territories.