Awa

The Awa, also called Cuaiquer or Kwaiker and historically linked to the Sindagua, are an indigenous people of the very wet forests on the western slope of the Andes, straddling the border of southern Colombia and northern Ecuador from the Telembí River in Nariño down to the provinces of Carchi, Imbabura, Sucumbíos and Esmeraldas. They speak Awa Pit, a language of the Barbacoan family.

Their gold-bearing lands drew Spanish raids from the sixteenth century, and the conquistadors called them barbacoas after their raised stilt houses. In 1590 the governor of Popayán raised a force to subdue the Sindagua but his expedition was destroyed, and the survivors withdrew deeper into the mountain forests.

Traditionally organized in small extended-family groups, the Awa farmed rotating plots without burning, grew maize, beans and plantains, and hunted and fished between the fields and the rivers.