 While initially praised as a compelling account of Yanomami culture, in 1983 controversy broke out when an article in "American Anthropologist" accused the book of not being based on original ethnographic work, but instead being a patchwork made of previously published ethnographic accounts.Rebecca De Holmes, the author of the critique, stated that it was unlikely that Donner had spent any amount of time among the Yanomami.Particularly she criticized Donner for having plagiarized the biographical account of the Brazilian woman Helena Valero, who grew up as a captive among the Yanomami, without acknowledging having borrowed large parts of her life-story.