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Waorani: From Warfare to Peacefulness
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15807 |
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CULTURE
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1 / 1989 |
5,492 Words |
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Clay and Carole Robarchek
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The Waorani, living at the headwaters of the Amazon in eastern Ecuador, were until quite recently the most warlike society known to anthropology, with a homicide rate exceeding 60 percent as a result of warfare and raiding. In a notably violent part of the world, the Waorani, called Auca (savage) by surrounding peoples, were among the most feared.
Although the Waorani numbered fewer than one thousand people and possessed no firearms, their viciously barbed nine-foot hardwood spears and fearsome reputation allowed them to maintain control over a vast territory. The drove out or killed all who intruded or attempted to settle in the approximately eight thousand square miles of deep valleys and dense tropical rainforest that they regarded as their own. Living in extended family bands in widely dispersed settlements, they also raided each other constantly. Blood feuds and vendettas arising from past killings and quarrels over marriage arrangements or accusations of sorcery were a way of life, even among closely related bands. Fully 40 percent of deaths were the result of intragroup raiding.
The Ecuadorian Oriente, the region east of the Andes, is inhabited by some of the most warlike people in the world, including the famous Jivaro. Nevertheless, its riches--especially the gold in its rivers--have, since Inca times, attracted would-be conquerors from the mountains to the west. Missions were established following the Spanish conquest, and the haciendas that came later enslaved entire tribes and uncounted thousands of Indians died. During the rubber boom of the late nineteenth century, the region and its people were ruthlessly exploited; thousands more were enslaved and many others died of cholera and other introduced diseases. Most recently, the prospect of oil has brought outsiders into the Oriente in ever-increasing numbers.
Because of the difficult access to the region and the hostility of the environment, the Oriente has been one of the last areas on earth to penetrated and occupied by the worldwide industrial culture. Most Waorani over the age of forty grew to adulthood clearing the forests for their gardens with stone axes, without ever having seen an outsider, a horse, or even a dog. Only within the last twenty-five years have they been drawn into the modern world. Even today, some small bands still resist contact, killing all intruders and fleeing deeper into their evershrinking forest refuge.
The Waorani first came to the attention of the world beyond the borders of Ecuador in 1956, when five young American missionaries, seeking to make contact with them, landed their small plane on a sandbar in the Curaray River and were speared to death. The story made headlines around the world and set in motion a chain of events that would eventually lead most Waorani to abandon their traditional hostility to all outsiders and their incessant warfare among themselves.
Peaceful contacts were begun in 1958 by two Protestant missionary women: Elizabeth Elliot, the wife of one of the missionaries killed in 1956, and Rachael Saint, the sister of another. While occasional spearings of missionaries and oil exploration workers still occur (and shootings of Waorani by oil workers are rumored), most of the Waorani have now abandoned their resistance to the outside world. Now settled on the fraction of their traditional homeland that has been designated as a reserve and seeking to shed their savage image, they have
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