Written by Egon Schaden

South American forest Indian

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Alternate titles: Amazonian Indians; Rainforest Indians
Written by Egon Schaden

South American forest Indian, indigenous inhabitants of the tropical forests of South America.

The tribal cultures of South America are so various that they cannot be adequately summarized in a brief space. The mosaic is baffling in its complexity: the cultures have interpenetrated one another as a result of constant migratory movements and through intertribal relations, leading to the obliteration of formerly significant differences, and to new cultural systems made up of elements of heterogeneous origin. Hundreds of languages, in very irregular geographic distribution, with innumerable dialects, are or have been spoken in the tropical area of South America. Thus, only the broadest generalizations can be made; one can mention certain cultural manifestations that are present in a great number of groups, even though varying in their actual expression, and illustrate them with specific examples—but always with the qualification that in a neighbouring tribe or group a distinctly contrasting idea or institution may exist.

The innumerable native peoples differ in their patterns of adaptation to their natural environment. Whether they live in the rainforest, in the gallery forests lining the rivers, in the arid savannas, or in the swamps, however, they share a common cultural background; they often combine hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plant foods with rudimentary farming. Most are relatively sedentary, but some are nomadic or seminomadic. Greater differences are sometimes found among neighbouring groups living in the same forest than between some forest and savanna peoples. And some tribes, when migrating to open areas, maintain to a great extent the forest characteristics of their culture.

On the banks of the great rivers and in zones between the forest and the savanna live tribes who gain their subsistence from farming and fishing. Hunters and gatherers, almost all of whom also practice some farming, have settled near the heads of rivers, in open land, or in gallery forests.

Tribes speaking related languages are scattered over a large part of the continent. The tribes of the Arawak and the Carib linguistic families are most numerous in the Guianas (French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, and the adjacent regions of Venezuela and Brazil) as well as in other parts of the northern Amazon, but the former have representatives as far south as the Chaco and the latter as far south as the upper Xingu. The Tupí tribes extend to the south of the Amazon valley.

The Ge family includes groups most of which are located in the semi-arid lands of central Brazil. In the extreme northwest of Brazil and in the jungles of eastern Peru and Bolivia live the Pano tribes. The Jívaro of Ecuador are famous headhunters. They cut off the enemy’s head, separate the soft part from the skull, and, with the help of hot sand, reduce it to the size of a fist without altering the physiognomy. They attribute great magical power to these trophies, or tsantsa.

Traditional culture patterns

A characteristic feature of the tropical forest cultures is their combination of farming with hunting, fishing, and gathering. Before the arrival of Europeans, the Indians of the tropical forest had no domestic animals except the dog. As is typical of most farmer-foragers, these people did not write or erect stone buildings as did the Indians of Middle America, form states with centralized political organizations, or have castes of warriors or priests. Their utensils and instruments were almost all of vegetable or animal origin, since in large sections of the area stones for making axes, arrowheads, and other objects were quite scarce. One finds evidence of metalwork only in the regions near the Andean civilizations, although objects of copper and other metals occasionally found their way across the continent, through channels of trade.

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