ABSTRACT
Indians from Tumbichukue and Santa Rosa come to see what the ambulant traders have brought for sale. Some have to walk for as much as three hours over very bad paths, and do so only when driven by necessity. Indians from the reservations farther away prefer to go to Silvia or Belalcazar markets where the array of goods and the lower prices make the hard one-day journey more profitable. Most reservations have no resident traders and the Indians there must either wait for a small ambulant trader or must travel to a bigger centre. Low population density and historical developments may explain it to some extent. This area of Colombia, unlike the highlands of Peru, was never a mining area with centres big enough to absorb the agricultural output of peasants. Market places were organized in colonial towns and it was from there that traders moved out far into the rural areas.
