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Hands Around the World |
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Hands Around the World |
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Indian Cultures from Around the World
The Maku Indians reside in the Northwestern part of the Brazilian Amazon close to the Peruvian border (Map). The Maku population is distributed within an area bordered to the north-west by the Guaviare river (one of the Colombian affluents of the Orinoco), to the north by the Negro River, to the south by the Japurá and to the south-east by the Uneiuxi (one of the Brazilian affluents of the Negro River). This lozenge adds up to a total of approximately 20 million hectares. Obviously, not all this area is occupied by Indians. The high level of spatial dispersion of the six Maku linguistic groups within this vast perimeter is due to the predominance of enormous areas of stunted forest and scrubland, a non-riverine type of forest, with extremely poor soil, little plant variation and a low concentration of game animals. The Maku occupy precisely the patches of terra firma forest where game is more abundant and the vegetation richer in species useful as foods or in the manufacture of artifacts.
The traditional Maku villages had a population varying between 25 and 30 inhabitants - about six domestic groups. The Maku domestic group comprises a husband, wife or wives, unmarried children and perhaps some adjoined family members, who may be close relatives, widows or unmarried adults, of the husband or the wife or wives. Generally, each domestic group possesses its own fire hearth, around which its members gather to sleep and eat. As for the houses, these amount to wall-less huts, able to shelter between one and four domestic groups (hearths), linked by close kinship ties, that may be equally patrilateral or matrilateral. A village of 25 inhabitants usually has about three houses. These are situated in a clearing, at the top of a hill, close to a non-navigable stream or creek. The swiddens are located around the houses or in nearby clearings (from 5 to 60 minutes walking time), which in the future come to mark past village sites. Each domestic group possesses on average two 50 x 50 m swiddens, always set in communal clearings.
In comparison with their Tukano and Arawak neighbors, the Maku possess a rudimentary material culture: canoes, ritual stools, ceramic pots, body painting and sacred male initiation flutes, among others, are all items copied from their neighbors. The items of Maku origin appear to be the aturá (a very resistant carrying basket) and the blow-pipe. In fact, the latter is an instrument used in competitive target shooting tournaments, especially among the Nadub. Other games enjoyed by the Maku are whistling spinning-top, made from cocopalm and the rod from caryota rufflepalm, hunting doves with stones.
Text from © Instituto Socioambiental. You can find their web site here: http://www.socioambiental.org/e/
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They are one of the last groups of nomadic tribal peoples in the Amazon. It is only a question of a decade or two before their traditional trekking lifestyle is eroded into the sedentary agricultural village life. This drastic cultural change is happening under the influence of the Western culture. They use long blowguns with darts dipped into the curare poison to hunt in the forest canopy, mostly for monkeys. The blowguns are made from the straight trunks of the Stilt Palm, sometimes inserting one tube inside another until the length can reach 8 feet. Their quivers are made of bark cloth with a protective flap to cover the darts.
Photos property of Hands Around the World.
Handmade bark cloth quiver filled with many blowgun darts.
Blowgun with quiver
Additional Information
Ethnologue: Language Family Index - Maku
The Use of Psychoactive Plants Among the Hupda-Maku
Maku vocabulary, 2, 3, 4
Hit by disease, deforestation and war, Colombia's last nomadic tribe faces extinction - AP
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