Hunting and Hunting Magic among the Amahuaca of the Peruvian Montana

The Amahuaca Indians inhabit the heavily forested region between the Ucayali and upper Jurua and Puriis rivers in Eastern Peru. At its greatest extent their territory encompassed perhaps 20,000 square miles (see map in Carneiro 1962:29), but today it has diminished to about a quarter of that size. The population of the Amahuaca, estimated at 6,000 to 9,000 around 1900 (von Hassel 1905:31), is today no more than about 500. Population density, formerly something like one person per two or three square miles, had diminished at the time of field work in 1960-61 to roughly one person for every eight or ten square miles. Amahuaca settlements are small. About fifteen persons, occupying three or four houses, form the average community. Settlements are located on or near small streams, usually several hours' walking distance apart. Each community is completely autonomous economically as well as politically. Indeed, the same might almost be said of each nuclear or extended family within a community. There are no headmen or shamans, no kin groups larger than the extended family, and very little ceremonialism. All told, Amahuaca social organization is exceedingly simple. Feuding among Amahuaca communities is very common, and sometimes they fight with their traditional enemies, the Yaminahua. The result is that an Amahuaca settlement is often on the alert against the possibility of attack. Subsistence is divided almost equally between hunting and horticulture. To be more precise, I would say that about 50 per cent of the food consumed by the Amahuaca is derived from horticulture and 40 per cent from hunting, with the rest coming from fishing and gathering. Although hunting is thus not quite half of subsistence, it nevertheless plays a very important role in determining the small size of Amahuaca local groups, their location, and the frequency with which they are moved, which is about once every year or two.