The first documented reference known about the Baniwa mentions their alliance with the Caverre (a Piapoco group of the Guaviare river), at the beginning of the 18^th Century, against Karib warriors engaged in obtaining slaves for the Spaniards. The Baniwa are also mentioned in Portuguese sources of the same period as having been brought as slaves, probably by the Manao people of the middle Rio Negro, from the upper Rio Negro to the Fort of Barra at the mouth of the river. There are records in the Public Archives of Belém do Pará that indicate that the Baniwa were captured in great numbers between the years 1740 and 1755, and sent to Belém. It is also possible that they may have absorbed renegades from other indigenous peoples into their population during the wars for the capture of slaves in the first half of the 18^th Century.

With the intensification of colonization on the Rio Negro, in the second half of the 18^th Century, sicknesses introduced by the Whites began to spread death among the Baniwa. Although it is impossible to estimate losses, the records mention several major epidemics of measles and smallpox in the 1740s and 1780s. Their effects, coupled with the generally deteriorating living conditions and supplies of merchandise guaranteed by the Whites led many Baniwa to leave their homelands and descend the Rio Negro to settle in the newly-founded colonial towns of the lower Rio Negro. There they worked for the Whites in agriculture, in the Royal Service and in the gathering of forest products. When it was not possible to convince those Baniwa who wished to remain on their lands, to descend, the Portuguese military – at times allied with other Arawakan peoples, such as the Baré – resorted to force. There are various cases on record of “descents” in the 1780s which basically consisted of armed attacks on Baniwa villages, which the Indians resisted, and which earned them the reputation of being "warlike".

The Indians’ stays in colonial towns were more often than not temporary as many saw what they had gotten into and quickly withdrew. Colonial towns of the late 18th cnetury were chronically plagued by diseases and suffered from depopulation and frequent desertions of Indians descended from the upper regions. The Baniwa, who never seemed to have been settled anywhere else than on the lower Rio Negro, were among those who often deserted. Those who stayed were assimilated into the white, or caboclo, population.

By the end of the 18th century, the Portuguese and Spanish colonies had fallen into a period of disorganization which enabled native peoples to recover, in part, from the losses they had suffered and to reorganize. The Baniwa had barely survived by the end of the 18th century but, with the disorganization of the colonies, they returned to their homelands on the Içana and sought to rebuild their society. But the respite was brief for, by the 1830s, traders and merchants began to work permanently on the upper Rio Negro. Many of these were caboclos who lived for long periods of time in Indian villages and served as useful allies to the military at the forts of São Gabriel and Marabitanas in corraling Indian labor for the Royal Service, commercial industry and extraction of forest products, or to work as domestic servants in elite family households of Manaus. Whatever business the military needed done, traders could be engaged to do it for them in return for protection of their trade. Numerous cases may be found in the records of military who conducted their own trade or became full-time traders once they’d left military service. The naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, for example mentions cases of former soldiers turned merchants on the Içana who continued to receive the sponsorship and protection of the military commander at Marabitanas to take Baniwa Indians to work for him in gathering salsaparilla.

Through their skillful manipulation of the threat of force, distribution of trade goods and cachaça, and manipulation of local chiefs, the merchants and military maintained an oppressive system of labor exploitation in operation for years, doing what they could to increase production and revenues and, at the same time, their own wealth. Indigenist policy of the state government in Manaus in the early 1850s seemed to grant legitimacy to this system, for the records amply testify to the unchecked abuses of authority by local officials on the upper Rio Negro.

The Baniwa bore a great deal of the brunt of this system although, where they could, they kept their distance from the Whites. Growing popular resistance to white domination among Indians of the upper Rio Negro culminated in a series of millenarian movements among the Baniwa, Tukano, and Warekena from 1857 on.

The first movement was led by Venancio Anizetto Kamiko, a Baniwa of the Dzauinai phratry, from the upper Guainia, the most famous of all the prophets from the mid-19^th Century until his death in 1903. According to the written sources, he organized large festivals among the communities of the Içana in which he preached, in the presence of a cross. He suffered from catalepsy and, during his attacks, he said that he died and went to heaven where he communicated with God, who gave him orders to pardon the debts of the Indians to the white merchants. He attracted a large following who believed in his powers and that he was an emissary of God. Then came the moment when he prophesied the destruction of the world by a great fire from wich only the Baniwa of the Içana who danced in circles, day and night, singing the music of the rituals of initiation, would be saved. According to the narratives that the Baniwa and other peoples of the upper Rio Negro tell even today, Kamiko preached the strict observance of fasts, cerimonial chants, and the total avoidance of social and economic relations with the Whites (especially, the military), as the means to obtain salvation in the promised paradise. The narratives also relate that he preached against witchcraft and sorcery in Baniwa communities, for he sought to implant a new moral order amongst his followers.

Other prophetic leaders, disciples of Kamiko – such as Alexandre, who preached more on the Uaupés river -, spoke of the inversion of the existing socio-economic order, after which the the Whites would serve the Indians in compensation for the time that the Indians had been dominated by the Whites. All narratives relating to this time are clear in affirming that the messiahs set their power and knowledge against the repression of the Whites and that the key to indigenous survival was to be found in autonomy in relation to the devastating influences of contact.

With the military repression of these movements, the messiahs and their followers had no choice but to retreat into inaccessible areas of refuge; many refused to obey the military’s orders to return to riverine settlements, or only did so with reluctance. The messiahs, however, continued to have great influence throughout the latter half of the 19th century, practicing their cures and providing counsel to the Indians who came to visit them from throughout the region.

By the 1870s, the rubber boom had reached the upper Rio Negro, introducing a more intense system of labor exploitation than the Baniwa had known before. Local bosses working for large export firms gained control over the lands and resources of vast areas of the region which they exploited with their armies of rubber-gatherers. The Içana and its tributaries came under the control of a Spanish-born merchant, Germano Garrido y Otero, who, with his brothers and sons literally controlled the region for over 50 years. Garrido set up a sort of feudal system in the region, with hundreds of Baniwa at his service. With considerable skill, he placed his sons and allies as “Delegates of the Indians” in strategic villages, manipulated social relations of compadrio and marriage with the Indians, maintained a regular supply of goods and controlled commerce on the Içana, and held in permanent debt a sufficient number of Indians to serve as examples to others.

While the Baniwa remember Garrido as the most influential patrão of this time, they also remember the terror and persecution from the military at the Fort of Cucuy who, at the turn of the century, hunted the Indians of the Içana and Uaupés to serve as rowers, invaded longhouses, stole commercial products from the Indians, cheated Indian laborers, and conducted trade in contraband as well. Like the Colombian patrões of the Uaupés at this time, these military were feared, as evidenced by reports of whole villages seeking refuge in inaccessible areas, or taking to immediate flight at the appearance of the white man.

While the creation of S.P.I. posts from 1919 on, and Salesian missions from 1914 on, helped to control the situation in the region, they had minimal effects, at least initially, on the Içana. Testimony of Baniwa experiences with patrões from the 1930s on confirms that the extractivist regime continued in operation, intensifying during the Second World War, and that Baniwa life-histories in large measure were defined by their work for patrões.

Baniwa narratives about this time are full of episodes of violence, flight and terror that marked their lives. Nevertheless, in the 1920s and 30s, another prophetic figure, the son of Kamiko called Uétsu (of the Adzanene sib), arose, and, like his father, waged a campaign against witches in Baniwa communities in order to re-establish moral order and happiness. Narratives tell how Uétsu had powers just like those of his father, led a great movement with festivals, and consolidated a group of disciples who considered him like a "king". He communicated with the souls of the dead and with God, who advised him about events that were about to happen. He was eventually killed by his enemies; but, the descendants of his disciples continue even today to visit his tomb to ask for his protection from witchcraft and evil omens.

Shortly after the death of Uétsu, in the late 1940s, the North American evangelist Sophie Muller, of the New Tribes Mission, began her work of evangelizing the Kuripako of Colombia, extending this to the Içana in 1949-50. Initially at least, Baniwa conversion to evangelism had all the makings of a millenarian movement - many Baniwa considered Muller a messiah and flocked to hear her message and convert to the new faith. At about the same time, Salesian priests began working on the Içana, producing a division between evangelical, or crente, and Catholic communities which has lasted until the present day.

Over the last two decades, Baniwa communities have confronted a new level of white penetration, representing the interests of national security and corporate mining. Beginning with the announcement in the 1970s that the Northern Perimeter highway would cut through their lands, followed soon after by the building of airstrips and, since 1986, the implantation of the Northern Channel Project, top-level government commissions from Brasília have visited the area with frequency, introducing a qualitatively different dimension of government interest in, and control over, the Baniwas’ future. Official indigenist policy of assimilation, supported at least initially by the Salesians and until the present day by the military, has also put a new strain on Baniwa defense of their territory and culture. In the 1980s, gold-panners, followed by mining companies, often with the protection of the Federal Police have invaded Baniwa territory, causing disruption and various instances of violence.

In the face of these recent invasions, the Baniwa initially re-affirmed their historical stance of autonomy from the Whites, seeking control over their mineral resources and the removal of all gold-panners from their lands. The constant pressure exercised by mining companies - such as Paranapanema and GOLDMAZON - supported by repression from Federal Police agents produced grave internal divisions among Baniwa communities: some took the side of the companies, others against. At the same time, the Northern Channel Project threatened to diminish drastically both the size of Baniwa territory and their capacity to impede the invasions.

In view of these circumstances, various leaders emerged to organize the resistance in a more effective way. The active participation of these leaders in the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the upper Rio Negro (F.O.I.R.N.), founded in 1988 - a pan-indigenous political organization - and in party politics, and the recent creation of various local associations of Baniwa communities – such as the Indigenous Organization of the Içana Basin (OIBI) and the Association of Indigenous Communities of the Aiari River (ACIRA) -, represents a new configuration of political articulations that is defining the specific and concrete demands of Baniwa communities (for more on the process of demarcation of Indigenous Lands and the creation of the FOIRN, see the section on “Demarcation of Indigenous Lands and Indigenous Organizations” in the Northwest Amazon entry) .