NOMADS OF THE LONG BOW — HOLMBERG 



9 



the north and who have been acculturated since 

 the days of the Jesuits. Whenever possible they 

 avoid clashes with the so-called Yanaigua, who 

 wander to the south and who occasionally raid 

 them, killing their men and stealing their women 



d children, 

 nalt is probable that the Siriono are of Guarani 

 origin, that they have gradually been pushed 

 northward into the sparsely inhabited forests they 

 now occupy, and that in the course of their migra- 

 tions they have lost much of their original culture. 

 There is no evidence, cultural or linguistic, how- 

 ever, to support the theory held by Nordenskiold 

 (1911, pp. 16-17) that they represent a sub- 

 stratum of culture which once existed widely in 

 the area they now occupy. The intangible as- 

 pects of Siriono history still await reconstruction. 



Our previous knowledge of the Siriono, which 

 is very scanty, dates from 1693, when they were 

 first seen for a few days by Father Cyprian Bar- 

 race. 3 At that time the Siriono were occupying 

 the deep forests in the southern part of the same 

 region which they inhabit today. After first con- 

 tact, and before their expulsion in 1767, the Jesuits 

 probably made several attempts to missionize 

 them. At any rate, in 1765 a few Siriono were 

 coaxed into the mission of Buena Vista and were 

 later transferred to the mission of Santa Rosa on 

 the Rio Guapore. So far as we know, no other 

 attempt was made to missionize them until com- 

 paratively recent times. Of these endeavors most 

 have failed, not so much because of warlikeness, 

 since this character has been falsely attributed to 

 the Siriono, but because of then sensitivity to 

 maltreatment and their adherence to nomadic life. 



In 1927, decimated by smallpox and influenza, 

 a small group of Siriono was settled at the Fran- 

 ciscan Mission of Santa Maria near the Rio San 

 Miguel. This venture did not result in success. 

 In 1941 I met many Indians in the forests between 

 Tibaera and Yaguaru who had formerly been 

 living in Santa Maria but who had reverted to a 

 nomadic existence because of what they regarded 

 as unsatisfactory conditions of life at the mission. 



8 All that is recorded of Father Barrace's contact with the Siriono is the 

 following: "It was not long before the holy man discovered another nation. 

 After traveling some days he found himself amidst a people called the Cirion- 

 ians. The instant these barbarians perceived the Father, they took up 

 their arrows and prepared to shoot both at him and at the converts in his 

 company, but Father Cyprian advanced up to them with so kind an aspect 

 that their arrows dropped from their hands. He made some stay with them; 

 and, by visiting their various settlements, discovered another nation called 

 the Guaraijanft" (Lettres edinantes . . . , 1781, vol. 8, p. 105). 



In 19.35 American evangelists founded a mission 

 for the Siriono at the site of an old Mojo mound 

 called Ibiato, some 60 miles east of Trinidad. 

 By 1940 this mission had a population of about 

 60 Indians, but it, also, could not be called a 

 successful undertaking, because of lack of funds 

 and trained personnel. The same may be said for 

 the Bolivian Government Indian School estab- 

 lished at Casarabe — 40 miles east of Trinidad — in 

 1937. However noble in its purpose, the function 

 of this school ultimately resulted in the personal 

 exploitation of the Indians by the staff, so that, 

 through maltreatment, disease, and death, the 

 number of Siriono was reduced from more than 

 300 in 1940 to less than 150 in 1945. 



Of the remaining Siriono who have abandoned 

 aboriginal life, a great many are living today under 

 patrones on cattle ranches and farms along the 

 Rio Blanco, Rio Grande, Rio Mamore, and Rio 

 San Miguel; others, who were captured as children 

 in the forests, are now acting as servants in the 

 villages of Magdalena, El Carmen, Huacaraje, and 

 Baures. As to the distribution of the Siriono 

 south and southwest of Guarayos, I have no in- 

 formation because I never visited this area and 

 the literature tells us nothing. However, the total 

 population of the Siriono today is probably about 

 two thousand. 



Alcide d'Orbigny, the great French scientist and 

 explorer, was the first writer of any importance to 

 mention the Siriono. In 1825 he had an oppor- 

 tunity to study a few captured Siriono at Bibosi, 

 a mission north of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Since 

 D'Orbigny's remarks on the Siriono were the first 

 of any significance ever to be published, I quote 

 them in extenso: 



Less numerous than the Guarayos, the Siriono live in 

 the heart of dark forests which separate the Rio Grande 

 from the Rio Pirdy, between Santa Cruz de la Sierra and 

 the Province of Moxos; from 17° to 18° south latitude and 

 about 68° longitude west of Paris. The Siriono inhabit a 

 large area although, according to many captives from this 

 tribe whom we have seen at the mission of Bibosi, near 

 Santa Cruz, their number hardly reaches 1,000 individuals. 



No historian has spoken of them; their name appears 

 only in some old Jesuit letters. According to the informa- 

 tion we obtained in the country, the Siriono are perhaps 

 the remains of the ancient Chiriguanos, having since the 

 conquest always inhabited the same forests. Attacked by 

 the Inca Yupanqui about the fifteenth century, they were 

 forced at the beginning of the sixteenth century to flee 

 from the Guaranis of Paraguay who captured their settle- 

 ments and, according to historians, annihilated them. Be 



