2 INDIAN COMMUNITIES OF BOLIVIA 



region, though they came in search of gold, many of them soon 

 abandoned the quest for such treasure and settled down, appro- 

 priating land and people alike to form their great rural estates. 



Distribution of the Population 



Though constituting only about one-third of the territory of 

 Bolivia, the plateau area contains some three-fourths of the 

 population. In the five upland departments. La Paz, Oruro, 

 Potosi, Cochabamba, and Chuqulsaca, are located all of the large 

 cities and most of the towns of the republic. Here, too, are found 

 nearly all of the white and mixed races and all of the civilized 

 Indians, the Quechuas and the Aymaras, who are the agricul- 

 turalists of the country. 



Yet large tracts of the highlands are utterly unfit for cultivation 

 or for human habitation. The lofty mountain regions (above 

 14,000 feet) are thinly peopled, as are also great expanses on the 

 altiplano where deposits of salt, borax, and other mineral sub- 

 stances are located in an almost absolute desert. This has 

 crowded the inhabitants into certain closely restricted areas, in 

 which sufficient soil exists to render agriculture possible. Some of 

 the high valleys from 8,000 to 12,000 feet above sea level and 

 selected spots about Lake Titicaca show from 40 to 100 persons 

 per square mile, being In many cases made up almost entirely of 

 rural inhabitants.^ These thickly settled centers of population 

 are usually far separated from each other. They are divided one 

 from the other by high ridges. Insurmountable ranges, almost 

 impassable torrents, or on the altiplano by extensive semi-desert 

 wastes. About the shores of Lake Titicaca great Irregularity of 

 the coast line has contributed to the Isolation of the Individual 

 settlements located there. 



Attachment to the Soil 



With compactly settled districts such as these, dependent from 

 the very earliest times upon agriculture, there could but result a 



2 Isaiah Bowman: The Distribution of Population in Bolivia, Bull. Geogr. Soc. 

 of Philadelphia, Vol. 7. 1909. PP. 74-93- 



