A BRIEF BACKGROUND ON

THE KALLAWAYA INDIANS OF BOLIVIA

By
Lorenzo Fritz-Francisco

La Paz, Bolivia
2008 (Revised 2019)
 THE KALLAWAYA NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBE

The Kallawaya are Native Americans who once serviced Inka (Inca) royalty as medicinal doctors.
They are historically known throughout the world as expert herbalists and naturalists. Their
original native language was Pukina (Puquina), which is now only spoken in secret. Pukina was
undoubtedly spoken at Tiwanaku and was the prevalent language around Sacred Lake Titikaka at
Spanish arrival in the 16th century. All members of this ethnic group also speak a dialect of
Quechua related to that spoken around Cuzco, Peru and is nearly the same as a dialect common to
Cochabamba, Bolivia. The tribe occupies the beautiful Andean valleys northeast of Lake Titikaka
within close proximity to myriad Amazonian medicinal resources to the east.

Kallawaya origins are shrouded in mystery and confusion. Spanish chroniclers and historians often
misunderstood ethnic relationships and lumped distinct peoples under the same cultural
classification based on one or more languages that they spoke or based on territories they occupied.
In Bolivia, for example, there are at least 48 different ethnic groups that speak dialects of Aymara
as their principal tongue; their histories, traditions, economies and material culture are all distinct.
Thus, Aymara is a language, not a culture. Archaeological evidence is sadly lacking in Bolivia
although it has been suggested that the Kallawaya are descendants of the prehistoric Mollo culture
(circa A.D. 1000-1500) who occupied large sections of what is today the Plurinational State of
Bolivia. There is also evidence that the Kallawaya were related to the prehistoric and colonial
Pukina-speaking Colla culture from west and north of sacred Lake Titikaka who were once
formidable enemies of the Inka.

Kallawaya settlements are found in the poorly accessible Apolobamba Mountain Range, which is
the northernmost part of the Eastern Andean Cordillera where it joins with the Western Andean
Cordillera to continue northward to Colombia and Venezuela as a single spine of mountains. Most
members live in or near villages, or pueblos; many live in small, extended family communities
that may be comprised of two to several hamlets. The majority maintain single “farm” houses near
their fields. They raise crops and tend sheep, cattle and camelids. Huarizos, which are mixed bred
llamas and alpacas are especially common in the region.

The Kallawaya are historically known throughout the world as expert herbalists and naturalists. At
the turn of the 19th century, for example, following the deaths of over 20,000 people, Kallawaya
shamans and healers successfully treated thousands of Panama Canal workers suffering from
malaria and yellow fever using herbal remedies such as bark of the quinine tree (derived from the
Pukina word, qina). In the 19th and early-20th centuries, Kallawaya shamans were sent to Europe
to treat royalty afflicted with various illnesses and until about two generations ago were well-
known traveling healers throughout most of the Andes. As itinerant medicine men the Kallawaya
traded healing herbs and spiritual stone amulets with scores of different Andean ethnic groups.
Modern hospitals, clinics and Bolivian medical personnel among the tribe, introduced by Bolivia´s
new Marxist-oriented socialist government, are rapidly reducing the traditional belief in, and
support of, Kallawaya shamanism.

Kallawaya woman in traditional 20th-century dress.

Photo by Yoshi Shimuzu