The Mashco
The vast majority of the information concerning isolated indigenous groups in the Alto Purús region concerns a group dubbed "the Mashco" by the people of that region. Very little is known about this group, but circumstantial evidence suggests that this group may be similar to, or the same as, an isolated group encountered in the Río de las Piedras region, known as the "Mashco-Piro". There is no evidence that the Mashco of the Purús region are related to the so-called 'Mashco' peoples of the Alto Madre de Dios region, such as the Amarakaeri and Toyoeri, who are Harakmbet-language speakers. It should be noted that 'Mashco' is a Quechua word, with the pejorative meaning of 'savage', which has been applied liberally to various isolated indigenous groups in the Departamento de Madre de Dios, which the Purús borders. I employ the name 'Mashco' in this report for one simple reason: it is the one used in the Alto Purús region. Nonetheless, an alternate name for this group should be adopted once more is known about the Mashco, and their self-denomination is ascertained.
Stories regarding the Mashco are plentiful in the Alto Purús region, and date back at least to the 1960s. I will, however, mostly restrict my attention to three direct contact stories dating from the 1990s and three stories of encounters with Mashco camps dating from the same period, so that a better picture of the present-day state of affairs with respect to this group may be obtained.
I encountered three recent stories of sightings of the Mashco themselves which I consider reliable, dating from 1993, 1994 and 1995. By casting a wider net one could probably find more such stories. Stories regarding abandoned Mashco camps are numerous in the region. It is notable that no stories of sightings of Mashco in the Purús region date from any later than the dry season of 1995. I return this interesting point below.
These recent stories contain a number of common elements that suggest that the various encounters were with the same group, or groups that bore substantial similarities to one another. Physical descriptions of the Mashco themselves, descriptions of their camps and of the behavior of the Mashco during the encounters, and the locations of the Mashco and their camps are very similar in the different accounts.
In all the recent stories I gathered, the physical descriptions of the Mashco mention long hair, worn either loose or tied in a ponytail, by both men and women. Neither the men nor the women wore any clothing - apparently not even a penis-cord (for men) or waist cord (for women). Neither did the Mashco seem to use achiote or huito body pigments. Indeed, the stories are unanimous in the lack of any sign of body ornamentation on the Mashco. Another common feature of these stories is that the Mashco are described as being very tall. Although it seems unlikely that the Mashcos are a race of rainforest giants, it is interesting to note that Eugene Scott, a Summer Institute of Linguistics fieldworker now working with the Sharanahua, encountered a Mashco footprint during a 1971 expedition to search for the Mashco that was both longer and wider than his own shoe-clad foot.
There are also features common to all stories of encounters with Mashco camps. The Mashco apparently employ a very distinctive type of shelter, dissimilar in both materials and construction from those built by any of the other indigenous groups in the area. Further below I describe in detail the shelters in two Mashco camps that I personally examined, which appeared identical to descriptions of Mashco shelters I had heard in the accounts of encounters with Mashco camps.
Stories regarding recently abandoned Mashco camps all mention the vast quantities of animal remains found in them, and the apparent lack of any remains of vegetable matter. All the natives who had seen such camps expressed how impressed they were at the Mashco¹s apparent hunting prowess, leading many of them to claim that the Mashco ate nothing but meat. Although it is exceedingly improbable that the Mashco consume no plant matter, it is noteworthy that no remains of plantains or yuca have been reported in any Mashco camp. This last fact supports the belief held by many people in the Alto Purús region that the Mashco do not practice agriculture.
Another common feature in the stories we heard about the Mashco is the lack of violence or aggression on the part of the Mashco during their encounters with outsiders. The number of encounters between Mashco and mestizos or acculturated indigenous individuals in the last several decades is upward of ten, but in none of these encounters did the Mashco display any belligerence. In each encounter, the Mashco response was to retreat from the encounter without threatening or attacking the outsiders involved.
Evidence regarding the language spoken by the Mashco is understandably sparse. A story of an encounter in the dry season of 1994 between two Amahuaca men and two Mashco men strongly suggests that the Mashco do not speak Amahuaca. The two Amahuaca men were traveling up the Río A, a southern tributary of the Río Purús, searching for turtle eggs. This river is too shallow to navigate by boat during the dry season, and the men had walked far upriver when a pair of Mashco men stepped out of the forest into the shallow river, some 30 meters or so upriver from the two Amahuaca. The Mashco men only then noticed the presence of the two Amahuacas. One man carried a recently killed peccary over his shoulder, the other carried a basket. The Amahuaca men immediately began calling out in their own language to the two Mashco, urging them to draw nearer, and promising them gifts if they did so. The Mashco men stood listening to the Amahuacas, and watching them, for many minutes. Finally the Mashco men turned around and slowly walked up the rivercourse, apparently unconcerned by the Amahuaca men to their rear. The Amahuacas, on the other hand, quickly retreated downriver, and did not return for the remainder of that dry season. At no time during this encounter did the Mashco men speak, although according to the Amahuacas, they seemed to be listen intently for several minutes before deciding to continue along their way. It seems very likely that the Mashco men simply did not understand what the Amahuacas were saying, and eventually decided to ignore them.
There is also evidence that the Mashco do not speak a Harakmbet language. In 1971, a Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) expedition to the Río B encountered three Mashco men on a small tributary. One member of the SIL team was an Amarakaeri man who was present for the express reason of communicating with the Mashco if by any chance they spoke a Harakmbet language. During the expedition¹s single brief encounter with the Mashco, the Amarakaeri man spoke to them, attempting to communicate the friendly intentions of the SIL team. The Mashco gave no sign of understanding him, however, and promptly fled. The reaction of the Mashco strongly suggests that they did not understand him, though it is possible, of course, that the unexpected and apparently frightening nature of the encounter with outsiders overrode any verbal response to the Amarakaeri man.
It should be noted that Piro attempting to contact the Mashco-Piro on the Río de las Piedras claim that the Mashco-Piro speak a language closely related to Piro. Independent verification of this claim is lacking, and inconsistencies in the stories told by the Piro in question make their claim of the degree of similarity between the two languages suspect, but it is certainly plausible the Mashco-Piro, and in turn the Mashco, speak an Arawakan language.
The evidence presented above, although sparse, suggests that the Mashco are not a Panoan group. The Panoan groups of southeastern Peru have characteristically displayed substantial aggressiveness and an inclination towards violence in early contact situations. They have also frequently participated in the theft of manufactured items from those who possess them. The Mashco, on the other hand, are conspicuously non-violent, and no theft of manufactured items has ever been ascribed to them. The Panoan groups also traditionally employ body decoration of a kind not noted in encounters with the Mashco, including nose-discs, headdresses, ornaments worn around the neck and chest, decorated waist-cords, penis-cords, and pigments worn on the skin. In none of the encounters with the Mashco did the outsiders notice any type of body adornment on the Mashco.
Geographical Distribution of Mashco Activity in the upper Río Purús Region
All encounters with the Mashco have taken place in either August or September, the height of the dry season, and within 20 kilometers of the Dos Bocas region (the confluence of the Río B and Río C). The explanation given for these facts by the people of the Alto Purús region is that the Mashco are drawn to the Dos Bocas by the vast numbers of turtle eggs laid there during the late dry season. While it is certainly plausible that the Mashco would wish to take advantage of this resource, it should be noted that August and September are precisely those months in which large numbers of people come from downriver settlements to harvest turtle eggs and fish in the Dos Bocas region. The fact that the Mashco are seen at this time of year, then, may be simply due to the vastly greater number of observers at this time of the year. Similarly, the fact that Dos Bocas is the destination for the downriver peoples may also account for the concentration of sightings in that region. Indeed, the discovery of two Mashco camps in 1998 on the Quebrada E (discussed below) suggests that Mashco activity in the Purús region may be more widespread than previously thought.
Interestingly, Mashco activity in the Dos Bocas region apparently ceased abruptly after the dry season of 1995. L.B., a resident of Puerto Esperanza who was involved in the last encounter with the Mashco on the Alto Purús of which I am aware, told me that he had seen Mashco camps in the Dos Bocas region every dry season for the past several decades. Nevertheless, he saw no signs of Mashco activity in the Dos Bocas region in either 1996 or 1997. Neither were we able to locate any other stories of encounters with the Mashco in the Dos Bocas region during those years. The expedition made in July of 1998 by Pioneer Mission, an evangelical missionary organization, to search for the Mashco only turned up camp remains that they estimated to be several years old. Of course, if Mashco activity in that region is restricted to August and September, activity for the 1998 dry season would not yet have begun, and the Pioneer Mission expedition would not yet expect to find signs of Mashco activity for the 1998 dry season in the Dos Bocas area.
Recent Mashco Activity in the Upper Purús Region
The most recent signs of Mashco activity in the upper Purús region are a pair of camps found on the Quebrada E, very distant from the Dos Bocas region. The downrivermost of these camps was discovered in February of 1998 by a group of Sharanahua men from the community of Gastabala who had come to this little-frequented region to cut timber for sale in Puerto Esperanza. The discovery of the camp both surprised and alarmed them, since they had not believed that the Mashco traveled so close to their own community. The men who saw the camp estimated that it was many months old, but considerably less than a year old. It is reasonable to conclude that the camp was built in the late dry season - between July and September of 1997. I personally visited this camp in July of 1998, by which time the shelters had deteriorated considerably.
The second camp was located by myself and Eusebio, a Sharanahua man from Gastabala, only a few kilometers upriver of the first. This camp had not been spotted by the Sharanahua woodcutters in February 1998. The nine shelters in this camp were in slightly better condition than those in the downriver camp, suggesting that they had been built at a later date than those in the other camp.
Both camps were situated in stands of caña brava, in which the cane had been bent or pushed aside to make small gaps for the shelters. The shelters were of two types. The first consisted of three to five yarina palm fronds stuck stem-first into the ground some four to ten centimeters deep, in a straight line, one to four centimeters apart, so that the frond-tips bent over and fanned out to cover a small patch of ground. Such a shelter is unlikely to be sufficient for more than a single person. The second kind used the yarina palm fronds to create a domed shelter consisting of eight to twelve fronds placed in a rough circle of one and a half to two and a half meters in diameter. These larger shelters could easily house two or three adults and a few small children. In neither case, however, do the shelters offer much protection against rain or wind, since the fronds are not packed at all densely.
Traces of fire were found in three of the shelters of the downriver camp, but no traces of fire were found in the upriver camp. The wood used in the fires was of a weak kind, easily broken by hand. No traces of metal cutting tools were evident on the firewood, the palm fronds, or the cane in the campsite. By chance, we came across a yarina palm that had served as the source for the fronds in the camp, and were able to examine the manner in which the yarina frond had been cut from the main trunk. A small, not-very-sharp tool had been run around the circumference of each frond stalk and then the stalk had been broken at that point. There were no signs of a clean cut, as one would obtain from a knife or machete.
From the size and number of the shelters, I estimate that the downriver camp housed approximately 30 adults, and the smaller upriver one about 15. The Mashco camps of the Quebrada E were located considerably closer to the settled populations of the Alto Purús region than any other sign of Mashco activity previously encountered. The disappearance of signs of Mashco activity in the Dos Bocas region, and its reappearance much further downriver suggests that Mashco movement patterns may be in flux at this time.
At this point any hypotheses about the reason for a change in Mashco movement patterns are frankly speculative, but it is interesting to note that this change coincides with intrusions by outsiders into the traditional territory of the Mashco-Piro on the Río de las Piedras. The first intrusion was founding of a Piro settlement in 1994 on the middle Río de las Piedras by individuals who came from the lower Urubamba valley. One of the aims of the settlers is to make contact with the Mashco-Piro, and these Piro have on many occasions made attempts to track down Mashco-Piro groups or induce these groups to reveal themselves by leaving gifts for them in likely locations. The second intrusion, and the one most likely to have affected the Mashco, was the initiation of oil exploration activity by Mobil in the upper Río de las Piedras region in the summer of 1996. Both these events took place in territory thought to be frequented by the Mashco-Piro, and it is certainly plausible that the Mashco have changed their migratory patterns in response to these intrusions into their traditional territory.
Conclusions
Any conclusions we draw from the stories and evidence presented above are necessarily tentative. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to conclude that the Mashco are either a substantially nomadic or entirely nomadic group that probably does not practice agriculture. The Mashco seem only to spend part of the year in the Purús region, suggesting a wide area for their movements. The Mashco appear very disinclined to be belligerent or violent, but they display a strong desire to avoid interactions with outsiders. Indeed, the evidence suggests that the Mashco possess no metal tools, pointing to a lack of any substantial contact with outsiders for a lengthy period. It is probable that the Mashco are not a Panoan language-speaking group, making Arawakan the likely language family for geographical reasons if nothing else.
The Deños
In recent years, traces of another previously unknown indigenous group have appeared on the upper Río D, a major tributary of the upper Río Purús, culminating in a series of direct encounters between this group and the Cashinahua living in Puerto Rey, the uprivermost community on the Río D, during July and August of 1996. In the following I choose to refer to this group, for the sake convenience, as Deños, which in Spanish means "those who live on the D." This name should not be taken as an indication, however, that the Río D is the sole or even principal territory occupied by this group.
The information we gathered about these encounters came from two Cashinahua men living in communities further downriver from Puerto Rey on the Río D. Both claim to know the residents of Puerto Rey well, and one of them is apparently closely related to one of the Cashinahua participants in the ultimate and most dramatic encounter. Nevertheless, their stories were vague at many points, and no doubt a great deal more could be learned by interviewing the residents of Puerto Rey who were directly involved in the encounters.
In approximately 1992, the residents of Puerto Rey began to encounter signs that unknown peoples were active in the territory upriver of their community. These signs consisted of rough trails made by people traveling through areas of thick vegetation, footprints, and remains of human hunting activity, such as plucked feathers. These signs of human activity drew closer to Puerto Rey in the years that followed, but no sightings were made of the people responsible for those signs. Our informants indicated that the Deños were active near Puerto Rey principally during the dry season months (roughly May to September), and they speculated that the newcomers were drawn to the region in search of turtle eggs.
Then, in the early months of the dry season of 1996, the intensity of the activity of these unknown people increased. The gardens of the residents of Puerto Rey that lay furthest upriver of the community began to be raided for produce, principally yuca and plantains, and the perpetrators of these raids were occasionally spotted at a distance in the gardens or in the forest near the gardens.
The residents of Puerto Rey apparently became worried about the developing situation, being both unsure of the friendliness of the newcomers and displeased with the theft of produce from their gardens, and so they began attempting to make contact with them. In an unspecified number of incidents, residents of Puerto Rey called out to the newcomers in Cashinahua, but they received no response, and the unknown people disappeared from sight.
The two final, and most intense, encounters occurred in either July or August of 1996. Apparently a group of four or five of the men from the unknown group emerged from the forest onto a beach near a single Cashinahua house or shelter far upriver from Puerto Rey, at the same time as some residents from the community were there. The Cashinahua spied on the men briefly, who were apparently unaware they were being watched, before the Cashinahua called out to the newcomers in Cashinahua. The men on the beach looked to the source of the sound and then promptly fled back into the forest.
After a short while the Cashinahua men followed those who had fled and determined that they had left an easy-to-follow trail during their hasty escape. The Cashinahuas resolved to follow the newcomers, but returned to Puerto Rey to gather together more people for the party and also to arm themselves with shotguns.
The following day the party from Puerto Rey returned to where they had last seen the Deños and followed their trail for several hours, eventually coming out onto another beach. On the opposite bank of the river, and several hundred meters upriver, lay a camp on a large beach, with a fire and a number of men, women, and children. Our informants said that there were many people, perhaps as many as thirty. The actual number was probably far fewer.
The Deños quickly became aware of the arrival of the Cashinahua and jumped to their feet in agitation. The men of the group grabbed their bows and arrows and advanced towards the Cashinahua, making aggressive and threatening motions. The Cashinahua began calling out to the Deños, and according to our informants, the men of the unknown group acted as if they were trying to understand what the Cashinahua men were saying.
At this point both informants became vague about the events that unfolded, but apparently the Cashinahua men became fearful for their own safety and fired their shotguns into the air, according to the two informants. The Deños immediately fled into the forest behind them, doing so in such haste that they left many of their possessions behind them in the camp.
The Cashinahua men approached the camp after a wait which convinced them that the others were not about to return, and inspected the abandoned items. The informants mentioned two discoveries which caught the attention of the Cashinahua men. The first consisted of a set of manufactured items, a battered metal pot, a few machete fragments, some old cans, and a number of odd items like buttons and spent cartridge shells. The second was a hammock. The notable fact about the hammock was that it was identical in style to a distinctive hammock made not only by the Cashinahua, but also by the nearby Sharanahua and Yaminahua, which the latter call a OEpadi¹. There were also other less unusual items scattered about, such as arrows and baskets.
No sign was seen of the Deños on the D for the remainder of the dry season of 1996 nor in 1997, but signs of activity have returned to the region upriver of Puerto Rey during this past dry season, that of 1998, and the residents of Puerto Rey are apparently alarmed by this.
One other story concerning the Deños circulates in the Alto Purús region, though the source for this story is the Sharanahua residents of Santa Margarita, a community situated on the Río Purús itself. During the dry season of 1996 the outlying gardens of Santa Margarita were raided on several occasions by unknown individuals. The Sharanahua of Santa Margarita now attribute these thefts to the same unknown group that was active near Puerto Rey at the same time. Although the geographical proximity of Puerto Rey and Santa Margarita make this plausible, the thieves were never spotted, nor did they leave any distinguishing traces which might serve as evidence to support this theory.
Conclusions
Few conclusions can be drawn from the sparse evidence in these stories. Given the lack of response of the Deños to the efforts by the Cashinahua to communicate with them, especially during the last encounter, it is probably safe to say that the Deños are not Cashinahuas. More than this we cannot say, since Cashinahua and the other Panoan languages in the region, such as Yaminahua, Sharanahua, and especially Amahuaca, share a low level of mutual intelligibility. Nevertheless, the presence of the padi-like hammock supports guesses that the Deños are a Panoan people, a notion that is plausible on geographical grounds alone. It is possible, of course, that the hammock was a stolen one and not manufactured by the Deños themselves.
The presence of modern manufactured items among the possessions abandoned during the final encounter on the D in 1996 suggest that the Deños have come into contact with individuals who possess such things. Given the location of the area of Curanjeño activity near Puerto Rey, such contact could have taken place in a fairly large area in the vicinity of the Brazil/Peruvian border. Investigations in this region would probably uncover evidence of other activity by uncontacted peoples in that region.
It is also apparent from the 1996 encounters on the D that the Deños appear uninterested in direct contact with outsiders. Their willingness to steal food from chacras, however, and their interest in modern manufactured goods suggest that such contact is likely in the relatively near future.