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The Vision Seekers: Matses Indians of Peru
| Article
# : |
18539 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1991 |
3,281 Words |
| Author
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Peter Gorman
Peter Gorman, a free-lance writer and collector for the
American Museum of Natural History, has researched and
written
extensively about the peoples of the Amazon. |
The Matses grow easily tired of guests and have many ways to tell them that it is time to leave. They may stop inviting a visitor to their homes or fail to acknowledge his presence in the puebla. Or they may show an inordinate interest in, or even steal, a guest's possessions. They may simply point arrows and spears at the unwelcome visitor, or they may point down river and suggest a trip together. The Matses pile into their canoes while the guest climbs into his. Then, when the visitor leaves, they simply remain behind.
The Matses want to be left alone.
They live in the Amazon jungle deep in the lowland rain forest of northeastern Peru. They are a nomadic society of hunters and gatherers, a primitive people whose ability to survive is dependent on their physical knowledge of the jungle and their system of beliefs, which is based on communication with plants and animals and on relations with a spirit world.
A branch of the Mayoruna tribe, the Matses Indians revere the jaguar's strength and hunting prowess. Their faces reflect this: Many adults are branded with a blue hash-mark tattoo that starts near their ears, cuts across the face like a cat's grin, and circles the mouth. Long palm splinters are embedded in their lips or noses to represent the jaguar's whiskers; the women, the bearers of the tribe, wear long reeds from their lips to represent prey hanging from the jaguar's mouth. The Matses believe that to look like the jaguar is to act like the jaguar.
The first known contact between the Matses and non-Indian groups occurred during the rubber boom of the late nineteenth century, when rubber tappers and skin traders arrived in Matses territories in such numbers that the tribe was nearly exterminated through a combination of diseases for which they had no immunities, warfare at the hands of the new arrivals, and enslavement to larger tribes.
In response to this encroachment, the Matses embarked (in the early 1920s) on what became a fifty-year campaign against other river communities, raiding them and stealing their women, guns, and metal tools. This was often accompanied by cannibal acts; the Matses are one of the few tribes to have actually practiced cannibalism in recent years.
The government of Peru attempted to halt the riding by building a road through Matses territory, but in 1973 war broke out after a scout patrol for the road builders was
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