Waorani

ETHNONYMS: Auca (pejorative in English and Spanish), Huaorani, Huaugrani, Schiripuno, Ssabela, Tihuakuna, Tipituni, Wagrani, Wao, Waodani, Waog, Waograni, Warani

Orientation

Identification. "Waorani" literally means "they are true people" and must not be confused with warani, "they are other Waorani." "Wao" is used to distinguish members of the tribe from other peoples or cowode, "nonhumans, barbarians." The noun may be inflected like a verb: waobo, "I am Wao," waomoni, "we are Wao," and so on.

Location. The traditional homeland of the Waorani encompassed over 20,000 square kilometers of tropical-moist and tropical-wet forest in the eastern foothills of the Ecuadoran Andes. It embraced the first parallel south and was bound on the north by the Río Napo and on the south by the Manderoyacu and Curaray rivers. From west to east it extended approximately between 76° and 77°30′ W. The elevation of the territory ranges from 245 meters to over 600 meters.

Demography. At the time of the first sustained peaceful contact in 1958, approximately 500 Waorani lived scattered over 20,000 square kilometers (.025 persons per square kilometer). By 1988 the population had grown to more than 950 and the land base had been reduced to 2,200 square kilometers (.43 persons per square kilometer). In 1983 the Ecuadoran government deeded to the tribe a "protectorate" one-tenth the size of the original Wao lands, and all but 90 of the tribe moved there. Those who remain outside the protectorate live on the lower Cononaco and upper Yasuní rivers.

Linguistic Affiliation. The Waorani call their language wao tededo. To date no known linguistic congeners have been found, leaving the language an unclassified isolate. Although at least four subdialects can be identified, Waorani from the various areas have no difficulty communicating with those from other areas.

History and Cultural Relations

Wao oral history says simply that the Waorani originated "downriver" and migrated into their present homeland "long ago." The lack of linguistic affiliation, archaeological data, and adequate historical references to them makes any precise statement of origins and movements impossible. Serologically, they have the same blood type and genetic markers as most indigenous groups in Amazonia. Their oral traditions make it clear that they have maintained extremely hostile relationships with all outside groups for many generations. The earliest reference to them, in the late 1600s, indicates that a peaceful contact with Europeans ended in violence seven years later. When European traders began plying the major Ecuadoran rivers in the 1700s, the Waorani developed only sporadic and tenuous trading relationships, often raiding the traders rather than trading peacefully. Rubber gatherers captured Wao slaves in the late nineteenth century, and Europeans and surrounding indigenous groups like the Lowland Quichua and Zaparoans conducted punitive raids on Wao settlements in reaction to the hostilities the Waorani directed toward outsiders.

Since the early 1940s petroleum exploration companies have conducted systematic activities in Wao territory, often punctuated by Wao spearing raids against company workers and retaliations against the Waorani. Until 1958 the Waorani did not enter into continuous relationships with any other peoples. In that year two missionary women succeeded in establishing peaceful contact with one small settlement on the Río Tewaeno, and in the ensuing two decades all the Waorani except for a roving band of a dozen were contacted. The hostilities waned, and the Waorani began to establish trading and marriage relationships with other peoples, the Lowland Quichua from Arajuno and Tena in particular. As a result of the end of hostilities, the traditional lands were entered by oil and timber companies and taken over by Ecuadoran colonists in the early 1980s. Yasuní National Park was established in the eastern end of the territory, and Waorani are permitted to remain there if they live a "traditional" lifestyle. Others must live in the small protectorate.

Settlements

Waorani traditionally settled on hilltops above small feeder streams in the hinterland, consciously avoiding the flood-plains of the major rivers where Zaparoans lived and traders traveled. A settlement typically included one or two thatched longhouses occupied by an older married man, his wives, their unmarried sons, and their married daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren. At times a brother of the senior male would live in the house, along with his wives and children. When the household became too large, usually over thirty people, one brother would build his house nearby, typically within an hour's walk. These neighborhood clusters of closely related kin provided mutual assistance and defense. Two or three days' walk from one neighborhood cluster were other neighborhood clusters of Waorani who were more distantly related and hostile. In 1958 there were four major groups of Waorani, each hostile to the other, living in small neighborhood clusters dispersed over 20,000 square kilometers. With the disappearance of the Zaparoans from the floodplains, the cessation of hostilities with the outside world (around 1900) and of internal revenge killings, and the influence of new ideas from surrounding cultures, Waorani began settling along the floodplains in the late 1970s and switched from extended-family longhouses to nuclear-family dwellings, although the smaller dwellings still tend to be built in tight clusters of extended families.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Tropical-forest horticulturists, the Waorani spend much of their energy clearing the forest and growing manioc, plantains, peach palms, maize, peanuts, sweet potatoes, and a number of minor cultigens. Once a garden matures, the women harvest the products on a daily basis, according to need. As they harvest, they take stalks and racemes from the freshly harvested plants and replant them in a nearby garden site that the men have just cleared, ensuring that as a garden is consumed, a new one is simultaneously prepared. Typically, a garden will be consumed in a few months, and the family then moves off to another settlement up to a day away where they have previously planted another garden that is now mature. They harvest and replant at that site and then move on to a third location. By the time they have harvested and planted at the third site, the first garden site is mature for consumption. This keeps the families moving every few months in a cycle of semipermanent sedentarism, which reduces their impact on a given area and facilitates defense from enemies. It also provides alternate sites where refuge can be taken following spearing raids. This slashand-mulch horticulture provides most of the carbohydrates; most of the protein is supplied through hunting and fishing. Monkeys and numerous species of birds are hunted or blowguns with poison darts, peccaries with spears. In addition to horticulture and hunting, the Waorani also continuously collect wild foods from the forest as they travel through it. Prior to intensive contact with Europeans, the Waorani were extremely healthy and well nourished.

Industrial Arts. Traditionally, the Waorani made whatever they needed from forest products. Pottery, wooden weapons and tools, baskets, hammocks, string bags, and nets were crafted for daily use. They did not manufacture their own stone tools, relying instead upon those they could find in the forest, left behind by past cultures. Canoes were not made until the 1950s.

Trade. Because there is almost no specialization in Wao culture, when people need something, they make it themselves. Some internal trading does occur, but until the spread of European influence, this was simply generalized reciprocity. Goods and services were not evaluated, and no form of currency existed. The important feature was the act of the exchange itself, which cemented social relationships. Until 1958 Waorani maintained no trading relationships with other peoples. Since then, however, they have entered into the market system of the external world, working for money as oil-company employees and purchasing many manufactured goods and some processed foods. Sale of artisanry for the tourist market has become important. Generalized reciprocity has begun to give way to the profit motive.

Division of Labor. Men are responsible for chopping the huge forest trees to clear garden sites, for providing meat, for protecting the family, and for engaging in warfare. Women perform most of the agricultural tasks (planting, weeding, and harvesting), prepare meals, and care for the children. Neither sex's role is given higher status than that of the other, they are considered equally valuable. Children begin limited participation in adult activities as soon as they are physically capable, and at marriage they are expected to carry out full adult responsibilities.

Land Tenure. The concept of land ownership by individuals or groups was unknown until the late twentieth century. Every individual had right of usufruct to any land that was not already under cultivation. When the protectorate was created in 1983, the tribe, as an entity, was given the land. Individuals may not own or sell any part of it, but all may use it. Once a garden is consumed it is abandoned and becomes available for anyone, although in most cases the land is allowed to fallow for at least eight years—until the softwoods mature—before it is cultivated again.

Kinship

A very loosely defined, Ego-based kindred exists, but its significance and role have been weak. The kindred is an opportunistic system manipulated by Ego. Fluidity characterizes the individual's choice of which kin relationships he or she may stress at a given point in life. Kinship is traced bilaterally, and the terminological system is Dravidian.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Bilateral cross-cousin marriage is prescribed, and marriages are arranged, often secretly. Polygyny was common prior to contact, and in a few cases, polyandry was practiced. Today monogamy has become dominant, and since the 1970s a few intermarriages with Lowland Quichua have occurred. Although divorce was rare, particularly in the face of a scarcity of eligible mates, it was an unceremonious matter; one of the spouses simply left to live elsewhere.

Domestic Unit. The extended household traditionally included several generations and tended toward uxorilocality. Within the household, every nuclear family maintained its own fire and hung its hammocks in one section of the dwelling. Women married to the same man also maintained their own fires and cooked separately. Since contact there has been a drift toward nuclear households.

Inheritance. Because Wao possessions were traditionally few and land was never owned, inheritance rules were never strictly defined.

Socialization. Children remain physically very near their mothers until they are 7 or 8 years old, at which time they begin to make forays into the forest with peers. Infants are carried continuously in a sling at the mother's breast and fed at the first sign of fussing. An older sibling often cares for younger siblings and always defers to them. Intersibling rivalry or conflict is almost unknown. Instruction is informal and usually mild. Parents are extremely permissive, punishing only when the child is in danger or endangers another. Even then, punishment is mild, with stinging netties being brushed lightly over the legs or body; traditionally, a child would never be struck.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. Within the concept of "Waorani" are several subclassifications. Warani, "others," are Waorani for whom no common ancestors can be traced, although common descent is thought possible. "Gerinani" are Waorani for whom there is a kin term and with whom marriages may not take place. "Arorani" are Waorani among whom marriages are arranged. The Waorani tend to be highly egalitarian; like men and women, the various age groups have nearly equal status. This egalitarianism is not extended to Warani.

Political Organization. Waorani are fiercely independent and individualistic. Communities are acephalous, and leadership is situationally defined. Until the Waorani needed to interact with the Ecuadoran government, no community-level organization existed. Now some individuals, women in particular, are acting as representatives of their communities. This aspect of the culture is in the process of dramatic change.

Social Control. Traditionally, peer pressure has been almost the only mechanism of social control. The threat of death by spearing might ultimately act as a deterrent, but that measure is so extreme as to have limited utility as a daily mechanism for minor problems. Today the threat of calling in the Ecuadoran military to apprehend offenders has replaced the threat of revenge spearing.

Conflict. A long history of revenge spearing raids has given the Waorani the highest documented rate of death by violence of any population on earth. At the time of contact four groups of Waorani were dispersed over their territory, each hostile to the other. The vendetta that motivated them permeated all aspects of Wao life and culture. Paradoxically, life on a daily level within the settlement was peaceful, almost to the point of being idyllic. Violence within the family and household was almost unheard of; even arguments were rare.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. Traditional Wao beliefs are like most of Wao culture—flexible, diffuse, and pragmatic. They explain some of the intangibles of life but with no great concern for consistency or harmony. Waengongi was the original creator of everything; he was not revered or feared until he became identified with the Christian God. Two types of terrestrial spirits exist: those manipulated by practitioners and animal embodiments of deceased Waorani. There was little expression of concern with religious matters on a daily basis, and religious beliefs had no connection with moral behavior until the introduction of Christianity in the 1960s.

Religious Practitioners. The menye waempo, "jaguar father," and his wife menye baada, "jaguar mother," can, under the influence of ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi ), send their "children" spirit jaguars to discover the location of herds of peccaries, report on the welfare of relatives living in other parts of the forest, predict impending spearing raids, and identify culprits responsible for disease or death. The spirit "fathers" and "mothers" of other animals (e.g., pumas, snakes, anacondas) can likewise send their "children" on missions. The ido, on the other hand, drinks ayahuasca to communicate with Wenae (Evil), a spirit that can be sent on missions of destruction and death. To the extent that any spirit "mother" or "father" is believable, he or she could receive some food gifts. Even to be accused of being an ido, however, means almost certain death to the accused.

Ceremonies. Except for the anahuasca ceremonies conducted in secret by practitioners, Wao life is devoid of any religious ceremonies. Community ceremonies were nonexistent until the introduction of Christianity.

Arts. Chanting and dancing were central foci of entertainment and socializing in precontact days. Nightly, the longhouse was filled with songs and yodels into the early morning hours as men sang to induce visions of successful hunting, women sang of the tasks of the day, or both sang of forest fruits and animals. During the palm season people traveled to distant parts of the forest several times a week to dance and celebrate. At this time, they all decorated themselves with bright featherwork and painted their bodies with dyes. Since contact, however, much of this has diminished or disappeared.

Medicine. Illness is caused either by a known agent (e.g., a fungus caused by walking in mud too long) or by the ido's spirit, or is ononki ("just happens"). If it is ido illness, the only one who can treat it is the one who caused it. If it is caused by one of the other two ways, anyone with herbal knowledge can treat it. The principle of association underlies all Wao assumptions and thinking: people become what they associate with. Thus, treatments are selected for their properties. A long vine is used to treat snakebite, aromatic plants will drive nausea away, and plants that fold up upon being touched will cause fever to fold and wilt away. Most Wao taboos can be explained by this principle of association. With the introduction of viral diseases carried by Europeans, much of the indigenous ethnopharmacology has proven ineffective and is being abandoned.

Death and Afterlife. At death the spirit that resides in the brain ascends to the heavens, the spirit that resides in the heart becomes a jaguar, and the body either rots or transforms into a bagai, a spirit animal that haunts the forest. The afterlife is patterned after life on this earth. Burial is accompanied by very little ritual.

Bibliography

Peeke, Catherine (1973). Preliminary Grammar of Auca. Norman, Okla.: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Yost, James A. (1981a). "People of the Forest: The Waorani." In Ecuador: In the Shadow of the Volcanoes. Quito: Ediciones Libri Mundi.

Yost, James A. (1981b). "Twenty Years of Contact: The Mechanisms of Change in Wao ('Auca') Culture." In Cultural Transformations and Ethnicity in Modern Ecuador, edited by Norman E. Whitten, Jr. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

JAMES A. YOST