Qualla: Nauta

Nauta: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ArticleAmazon, CC BY 4.0. Manuel Pacaya led his people out of the mission. That is where Nauta begins. In the late 1820s, a Kokama leader at the Jesuit reduction at Laguna on the Huallaga River had had enough of the mistreatment his community endured from the authorities. He gathered a group of families, built a raft, and floated downriver in search of a place to start again. They camped where the Maranon and Ucayali rivers meet, and while clearing their campsite they found a large abandoned pottery jar - a mauta in their language. They named the place after it. A bureaucratic transcription turned mauta into nauta, which in Spanish means sailor or navigator. The name stuck. The town remains.

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Image: ArticleAmazon | CC BY 4.0

Nauta: The Founding Document

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Juantext01, CC0. Manuel Pacaya approached Damian Najar, the Subprefect of Maynas then based in Moyobamba, to request formal authorization for the settlement. On December 17, 1829, Najar wrote to the Governor of Misiones and to Father Mariano, the priest at San Regis, authorizing Pacaya to establi...

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Image: Juantext01 | CC0

Nauta: The Steamboat Arrives

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Maurice Chédel, CC BY 3.0. Through the 1830s and 40s, Nauta grew as a river trading post. Its position at the confluence of the Maranon and Ucayali - the two rivers whose joining creates the Amazon proper - made it a natural hub. Small watercraft from Brazilian Amazonian villages, from upriver Peruvian set...

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Image: Maurice Chédel | CC BY 3.0

Nauta: Lagoon of Stories

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bettyreategui, CC BY-SA 4.0. At the center of Nauta sits Lake Sapi Sapi - a shallow freshwater lagoon where yellow-spotted river turtles sun themselves on fallen logs, arrau turtles surface briefly to breathe, and pirarucu, the giant Amazonian fish that can exceed three meters in length, prowl the deeper cha...

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Image: Bettyreategui | CC BY-SA 4.0

Nauta: Gateway to Pacaya-Samiria

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bettyreategui, CC BY-SA 4.0. Nauta is the primary access point to the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, one of the largest protected areas in Peru and one of the most biologically rich wetlands on Earth. The reserve covers more than two million hectares between the Maranon and Ucayali, a seasonally flooded fo...

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Image: Bettyreategui | CC BY-SA 4.0

Nauta: A Language Worth Saving

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ArticleAmazon, CC BY 4.0. The Kokama language - Kukama-Kukamiria in its older form - is the mother tongue of the people who founded Nauta. For most of the twentieth century, it was in steep decline. Schools taught only Spanish. Children were punished for speaking their home language. By the early 2000s, f...

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Image: ArticleAmazon | CC BY 4.0