Kanisian

The Kanisian are the Canichana, an Amazonian people of the Beni department of Bolivia, whose villages lay on the Mamoré and Machupo rivers. Their language is considered an isolate.

In 1693 the Jesuit Augustín Zapata was the first to enter their land. In 1695 the Canichana gathered on the Mamoré asking for a mission, and in 1696 Lorenzo Legarda founded San Pedro with twelve hundred of them. Gathered in the Jesuit reduction, they took up farming, woodworking and jewelry making.