Centuries-Old Tradition of the Aymaras : Andes Indians Unique in Reed-Boat Building

Paulino Esteban’s knowledge of reed-boat building, a craft handed down in his family for centuries high up in the Andes on Lake Titicaca, has made him virtually indispensable to modern-day explorers like Thor Heyerdahl.

An Aymara Indian, Esteban was one of the key builders of the reed boat Ra II that Heyerdahl sailed across the Atlantic in 1970 from Morocco to Barbados in an attempt to prove that similar boats could have been used thousands of years before Columbus by Egyptians to reach the Western Hemisphere.

More recently Esteban built another reed boat for an attempt by a group of Spaniards to show that early Incas could also have sailed the Pacific.

He fashioned a 70-foot sailboat entirely from bulrushes called totora, which grow wild in his native Lake Titicaca, about three times the size of Rhode Island 12,500 feet up in Andes between Peru and Bolivia.

12-Ton Craft

The rough-hewn vessel, with the color and texture of golden straw, conjures visions of Inca mariners sailing into the Pacific--precisely what Heyerdahl theorizes and what five Spanish adventurers are attempting to help substantiate on their attempted 7,200-mile voyage to New Zealand from Peru.

The 12-ton craft is a giant version of the totora boats that have plied Titicaca for centuries and are still widely used on the lake.

Esteban said the ocean boat’s bow, rising 16 feet to blunt heavy seas, is the most noticeable departure from the traditional craft.

“I believe my forefathers sailed on the ocean,” the 59-year-old builder said. “The remains of reed boats have been found all along the shorelines.”

Builds From Memory

Although he has been building totora boats “purely from memory” since he was a boy, Esteban said he had neither seen nor heard of ocean-going reed craft until Heyerdahl summoned him in 1970 for Ra II.

“The system of design was so simple and yet so ingenious, I know of no other tribe or individual who would be able to duplicate it,” Heyerdahl said of Esteban and his crew in his book “The Ra Expeditions.”

Heyerdahl, a Norwegian anthropologist, recently returned to Peru,the cradle of his theories on ancient man’s migrations, and met with Esteban and the Spaniards at the seashore near Lima where the Pacific boat was being built.

Heyerdahl watched as Esteban and seven other Titicaca Indians wove and tied the thin reeds into bundles the size of telephone poles.

Last of Breed

The craftsmen later joined the bundles with ropes, converting the reeds into a massive hull that tapered toward the arching bow and stern. Other workers built a bamboo deck cabin and two masts.

“There are no more builders in the world like me. My name is in the history books,” Esteban said referring to his being mentioned in Heyerdahl’s writings.

The Spaniards, headed by Kitin Munoz, 29, sailed for New Zealand on June 29 from Lima. They are following the course charted in 1947 by Heyerdahl on his voyage from Peru to Polynesia on the balsa raft Kon-Tiki.

Heyerdahl’s voyages were aimed at demonstrating that Peruvian Indians could have colonized Pacific islands and that other ancient sailors spread their culture from the Middle East thousands of years ago.

Inca Methods Unchanged

After Ra I broke up on heavy seas in his first attempt in 1969 to sail from Morocco to South America, Heyerdahl sought out Estaban on Lake Titicaca. The Indians’ life style and their reliance on reed boats to travel and fish had changed little since early Inca times.

Esteban helped build Ra II from papyrus reeds in Morocco, and Heyerdahl sailed it in 1970 for 3,200 miles and 57 days to Barbados in the Caribbean.

Esteban was summoned again by Heyerdahl seven years later to build the Tigris, a ship made from a reeds that grow in the marshes of Iraq, where ancient Sumarians lived.

Heyerdahl sailed the Tigris 4,200 miles down the Persian Gulf in 1978 to Pakistan and across the Arabian Sea to Djibouti in northeast Africa. There he and his crew burned the craft to protest what they called “unhuman elements” in the world, because Tigris was barred from ports in North Yemen and Ethiopia.

Purpose of Trip

The intent of that expedition was to see how far the Sumarians could have gone in their early reed boats.

Esteban said the boat he built for the Spaniards should remain buoyant for the five months it takes it to reach New Zealand.

In Titicaca’s icy waters, the 10-foot totora boats become water-logged and rot in about a year.

Esteban said the Spaniards’ boat, called Uru after an ancient tribe that once lived on Lake Titicaca, would probably be his last ocean-going craft.

Heyerdahl Museum

He said he plans to retire on Suriqui, his home island on the Bolivian side of Titicaca, where he runs a museum of his work and Heyerdahl’s travels. He also weaves and sells model reed boats to tourists.

His sons, Fermin 22, and Porfirio, 12, helped build the Uru along with Esteban’s two brothers and three nephews.

But Esteban alone understands the construction of large boats. He worries that no one will continue building them and that even the knack of weaving the traditional lake boats may someday be forgotten.

“I want my children to learn this art,” he said. “But the Indians of Titicaca don’t want to. Everyone wants wooden boats now.”