Kabixi

Kabixi belongs to the upper Guaporé country, where rivers and forested uplands connect the southern Amazon basin with the South American interior. Indigenous communities combined farming, fishing, hunting and gathering according to local conditions. Canoes travelled between settlements along waterways, and paths joined neighbouring catchments. Exchange and kinship linked communities with different languages and traditions.

Portuguese and Spanish expansion gradually brought the interior into competing colonial claims. During the eighteenth century, mining and growing settlements in the wider Mato Grosso region increased demand for food, labour and transport. Rivers became important supply routes, while forts and boundaries expressed imperial ambitions. Indigenous people responded in different ways to displacement, coercion and new trade relationships; older regional networks continued alongside these changes.