“I have come to give you some good news, a word of truth; at last, the land which is yours is yours.”
President of Colombia, Virgilio Barco, following the return of 6,000,000 hectares of the Colombian Amazon to the Huitotos in April 1988. Quoted by Ghillean T. Prance F.L.S., Director of the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, in his Foreword to Vine of the Soul — Medicine Men, their Plants and Rituals in the Colombian Amazonia by Richard Evans Schultes F.M.L.S.
The region termed “the Putumayo” consisting principally of the area drained by two tributaries of the Iça or Putumayo River, the Igara-paraná and the Cara-paraná, lies far from the main stream of the Amazon, and is rarely visited by any vessels save those belonging to the Peruvian Amazon Company. The only other craft that penetrate that district are steamers of the Peruvian government sent occasionally from Iquitos. Brazilian vessels may ascend the Japura, known in Peru and Colombia as the Caquetá, until they draw near to the mouth of the Cahuinari, a river which flows into the Japura, flowing in a north-easterly direction largely parallel with the Igara-paraná, which empties into the Putumayo after a south-easterly course. The region drained by these three waterways, the Caraparaná, the Igara-paraná, and the Cahuinari, represents the area in part of which the operations of the Peruvian Amazon Company are carried on. It is impossible to say what the Indian population of the region may be. Generally speaking, the upper and middle courses of these rivers are, or were, the most populous regions. This is accounted for by the far greater absence of insect pests due to the higher nature of the ground which rises at La Chorrera to a level of about 600 feet above the sea, with neighbouring heights fully 1,000 feet above sea level. The lower course of the Igara-paraná, as well as of the Putumayo itself, below the junction of the Igara-paraná down to the Amazon, is through a thick forest region of lower elevation, subject largely to annual overflow from the flooded rivers. Mosquitoes and sand flies and the swampy soil doubtless account for the restriction of the Indians to those higher and drier levels which begin after the Igara-paraná has been ascended for about 100 miles of its course. In this more elevated region there are no mosquitoes, and far fewer insect plagues, while permanent habitations and the cultivation of the soil are more easily secured in the regions liable to annual inundation.119
119 Blue Book p. 25. Casement’s introduction to his report to Sir Edward Grey — 17 March 1911 — gives a good geographical overview of the Putumayo region.