trust of one nearby group of Yuqui. This 

 was often a nerve-racking endeavor. The 

 Yuqui men v\ ere fond of wrestUng and ap- 

 plying choke holds, an often serious game 

 of dominance. They also enjoyed pretend- 

 ing to shoot arrows at the missionaries at 

 close range, catching the arrow at the last 

 moment as it slid across the bow. One mis- 

 sionary was wounded in the hand when he 

 reached up to protect himself and caught 

 the tip of an arrow. 



Finally, in 1965, friendly contact was 

 achieved, and after anodier four years of 

 gradually lengthened periods of residence 

 at the missionary camp on the river, the 

 small Yuquf band made the decision to 

 give up their nomadic existence. Deci- 

 mated by skirmishes with settlers, they 

 numbered only forty-three. 



In the late 1970s, another band was 

 sighted as colonists began spreading far- 

 ther into Yuqui territory. Again, hostilities 

 resulted and unknown numbers of Yuqui 

 were killed. As before, the missionaries 

 set out to befriend this new group, and 

 with the assistance of the Yuqui who had 

 previously been pacified, the process 

 moved somewhat more quickly. On De- 

 cember 28, 1986, the new group, number- 

 ing twenty-three people, was brought to 

 the Chimore River camp. Nineteen more, 

 probably the last surviving in the wilder- 

 ness, were coaxed to follow in late Sep- 

 tember 1989. With the addition of the new 

 bands, as well as the natural increase as- 

 sisted by modem health care, in 1990 the 

 Yuqui population reached about 130. 



I met the first of the now sedentary 

 Yuqui in 1982, having become an anthro- 

 pologist following my stint in the Peace 

 Corps. I had recently begun fieldwork 

 with members of another lowland indige- 

 nous people known as the Siriono. The 

 group I was studying, first contacted in the 

 mid- 1930s, were settled in Ibiato, a com- 

 munity about 250 miles northeast of the 

 Chimore River camp {see "Territory 

 Folks," Natural History, March 1986). At 

 the time, no one knew much about the 

 Yuqui, but they were thought to be an iso- 

 lated contingent of Siriono. Curious about 

 this possibility, I spent enough time with 

 them to learn that they indeed came fi^om 

 the same ancestral group. But the Yuqui 

 and Siriono languages and cultures had di- 

 verged significantly during their years of 

 separation. 



Even for foragers, the Yuquf, like the 

 Siriono, had an unusually simple material 

 culture. As fo. est dwellers before contact, 

 they had no means of making fire, wore no 

 clothes, built no structures, and did not use 



watercraft. Their household goods con- 

 sisted of a hammock and a baby sling, 

 both made from twined tt^ee fiber, and a 

 few hastily made baskets that could read- 

 ily be discarded. The Yuquf did not adorn 

 their bodies with bright feathers or elabo- 

 rate painting. Their one concession to 

 style was for the women to pluck their 

 eyebrows and brow hair, giving them a 

 startling resemblance (from the perspec- 

 tive of outsiders) to aging, balding men. 



The Yuquf depended on palmwood 

 bows and two types of arrows to provide 

 most of their meat protein. Wild game was 

 supplemented by fish, which were taken 

 from forest ponds by hand or with bow 

 and arrow. Unlike other Amazonian peo- 

 ples, who, in addition to hunting and gath- 

 ering, practiced slash-and-bum agricul- 

 ture, the Yuqui planted no crops. 



By 1982 the Yuqui at the Chimore 

 River camp had been settled there for a 

 dozen years, but they continued to forage 

 for most of their food. Their farming ef- 

 forts were still rudimentary, consisting of 

 exploiting a few stands of plantains estab- 

 lished by the missionaries, and they pre- 

 ferred meat and fish to the suppUes of flour 

 and dried milk provided by the mission. 

 Unlike many other Amazonian groups, 

 their dietary taboos excluded httle, except 

 snakes and insects. Even here an excep- 

 tion was made for bee larvae, which the 

 Yuqui harvested along with honey. On 

 honey-gathering trips with the Yuquf into 

 the forest, I was always offered a slab of 

 comb containing not only honey and 

 pollen but also several cells of immature 

 bees, which the Yuquf called milk. (De- 

 spite all my intentions to experience Yuquf 

 life to the fullest, I could never develop a 

 taste for this treat: no matter how much the 

 Yuquf touted their delicate flavor, the lar- 

 vae reminded me of blackboard chalk.) 



Honey was an important part of the 



Yuquf diet, even though they had access to 

 refined sugar at the mission store. I was al- 

 ways amazed at the amount of effort the 

 Yuquf were willing to put into a honey 

 hunt, felling tree after U-ee until a good 

 supply was found. They would consume 

 enormous amounts of this sought-after 

 food in a single sitting, laughing at my in- 

 ability to tolerate so much of a good thing. 



Going after honey was only one aspect 

 of Yuquf foraging, which often combined 

 the search for animals, fruit, and honey 

 into a single expedition. While the men 

 did the hunting, women were far from 

 tagalongs: they were constantly on the 

 lookout for edible items and sometimes 

 spotted game before the hunters did. They 

 were expert trackers, capable of mimick- 

 ing animal calls to bring prey within 

 shooting range. 



One morning during my second visit to 

 the Yuqui in 1983, the young headman, 

 Leonardo, and his wife, Loida, came by 

 my house to invite me to go on a monkey 

 hunt and to fish for sdbalo, a large bony 

 fish found in oxbow lakes. Loida told me 

 that they had located several promising 

 bee trees along the trail we would follow. 

 Even if we didn't get any fish or game, 

 Loida assured me, we were certain to 

 come back with honey. Leonardo had his 

 .22 rifle, Loida carried his bow and several 

 arrows, and I took the ax. Most Yuquf men 

 now possess firearms, but ammunition is 

 expensive, making bow hunting, particu- 

 larly for fish, still a useful technology. 



After walking for almost two hours 

 through the forest, we heard a commotion 

 in the ttees overhead. Leonardo stopped 

 abruptly, holding up his hand. Loida put 

 down the bow and arrows and motioned 

 for me to do the same with the ax. Then 

 she showed me how to cup my hand and 

 press my mouth against the palm, making 

 a sharp sound with my lips. It sounded just 



A missionary tows a Yuqui-built canoe to the river for launching. 



Allyn Maclean Stearman 



8 Natural History 1/94 



