Baure

The Baure are an Arawakan people of the flooded savannas of the Beni, in northern Bolivia, where their chief town, Baures, stands in the Iténez province. Their language belongs to the Southern Arawakan branch and is closest to the Moxo tongues.

They were farming villagers of the Moxos lowlands when the Jesuit Cipriano Barace first contacted them around 1690. Nine reductions were built for their clans, beginning with Baures, founded in 1708 by Lorenzo Legarda; the missions introduced cattle, weaving and writing and grew to hold some sixteen thousand Baure by 1740.

The Hungarian Jesuit Francisco Eder left their fullest contemporary description after fifteen years at the San Martín reduction, publishing his account in 1770. After the Jesuit expulsion of 1767 the reductions declined under disease and repeated Portuguese attacks, and many Baure withdrew into the forest.