Chief of the Arawakan Lokono Tells of His People and their Interactions with other Tribes

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My name has been forgotten by many, but the stories I lived are still whispered by the river and carried on the smoke of our fires. I was once a chief of the Lokono people—one of the Arawakan-speaking nations who lived along the rivers and shores of what you now call northern South America. I was born when the moon was high and the waters calm, on a morning when the fish came easily and the forest sang with birdcalls. My people believed that such a birth meant I was marked for leadership, but I didn’t know that yet. I was just a boy who loved to paddle canoes and chase crabs in the shallows.

Our village rested near the blackwater river that moved silently through the trees. We didn’t build walls. Our homes were open to the wind, built with thatched roofs and poles that leaned gently with the earth. We lived in harmony with the land, not because we were weak, but because we had learned its rhythms. Our grandparents told us that the land had a memory—and if you treated it badly, it would one day remember.

I learned young how to paddle by moonlight and walk through the forest without snapping a twig. I learned to weave nets from vine and to roast cassava so that its poison became food. But more importantly, I learned to listen. To the trees. To the elders. To the ones who knew when to speak and when to wait. Those who could listen—really listen—were the ones people trusted when things grew tense. That’s why, when I was still a young man, the elders chose me to become a voice for our people.

Being a chief wasn’t about shouting the loudest. It was about knowing when to speak softly and when to act quickly. I helped guide our village through floods, through dry seasons, and through days when strangers arrived by canoe—traders, sometimes friends, sometimes not. We were river people, and that meant we were connected to many others. The Baniwa upriver, the Lokono downriver, the Carib further out toward the wilds—we all shared trade routes, sacred lands, and sometimes, quarrels.

I made peace with a neighboring village by offering my sister in marriage to one of their sons. I also led warriors to defend our salt trails from a band of raiders who thought we’d gone soft. I did both with the same goal: to protect our way of life, to keep balance. Sometimes it meant giving. Sometimes it meant fighting. Leadership is knowing which is which.

One of my greatest responsibilities was passing on the knowledge we had carried for generations—how to make the dark earth, terra preta, from ash and bone and compost, so that our fields would feed our children’s children. How to watch the stars for planting time. How to speak the prayers to the spirit of the river, so it would bless our nets. These weren’t just traditions. They were survival. They were identity.

As I grew older, I taught my children to paddle where I had paddled, to gather fruit where I had once climbed, and to offer thanks to the land even when the harvest was thin. I did not want them to lead the same way I did. I wanted them to lead better. To listen deeper. To think beyond their own time.

Now I rest beneath the earth that once fed me. You won’t find my name in books or carved into stone, but I lived a life filled with meaning. I loved, I protected, I remembered, and I taught. That is the way of a chief—not to rule from above, but to carry the story of your people forward, like a canoe through the current.

And that is the story I offer to you.

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