The Contact Efforts of Pioneer Mission
The most significant efforts presently underway to make contact with the isolated peoples of the Alto Río Purús region are those of Pioneer Mission. The goal of these efforts is to make friendly and sustained contact with the Mashco and then begin evangelical work with this group.
Pioneer Mission is an established evangelical Protestant missionary organization active throughout the world, which has recently begun operating in Peru. Discussions with Scott Welsh, one of the members of the Pioneer Mission team working in the Purús region, and his wife Nicole, revealed that the team is especially interested in carrying out its evangelical work among isolated and previously uncontacted indigenous groups. Pioneer Mission is based in Pucallpa, Peru, but draws the majority of its funding from the United States.
Pioneer Mission carried out its first expedition to explore the Alto Purús region and search for the Mashco during July of 1998, at which time I was visiting the Sharanahua community of Gastabala to learn the Panoan language spoken there. The Pioneer expedition used Gastabala as a staging point, and their stays in the community allowed us several opportunities to discuss their plans and goals with the members of the expedition.
The expedition consisted of eight men: two Americans, a Canadian, and five Peruvians. Two of the Americans were members of Pioneer, Jason Estelle, the leader of the team, and Scott Welsh. The third American was Paul Johnson, uncle to Jason, and leader of this particular expedition. Paul Johnson is a not a member of Pioneer Mission, but is acting in a consultant and advisory role. He has had previous experience in Bolivia with early contact situations and evangelical work among previously uncontacted indigenous groups. Of the five Peruvians, two were Piro, two were Cashinahua, and one was Sharanahua. The two Piro were present to communicate with the Mashco in the event that an encounter occurred and that the Mashco speak a language closely related to Piro. The Cashinahua were present in case the Mashco speak a Panoan language, and the Sharanahua man was included in the expedition because of his knowledge of the territory into which the expedition was traveling.
Paul Johnson arrived in Gastabala directly from Pucallpa in a small plane belonging to South American Missions. The two Americans and the two Piro flew from Pucallpa to Puerto Esperanza by means of the military flight (Grupo Ocho) that flies approximately every two weeks, and then took a small boat to Gastabala. The two Cashinahua men are from the region, as is the Sharanahua man, who lives in Gastabala.
The expedition left from Gastabala on July 1, scheduled to return July 24. The expedition returned on July 16, however, after it failed to uncover any recent signs of Mashco activity. Indeed, they found only camp remains that that they estimated were several years old, consistent with the claim made by others in the region that the Mashco had not been active in the Dos Bocas region since the dry season of 1995. Nevertheless, the expedition members indicated that they were not disappointed by the outcome of the expedition but indicated that they were likely to return to the Purús to continue their search for the Mashco. They gave no specific date for the coming expedition, but one member of the expedition indicated they may return to the region as soon as September 1998.
I discussed some of the issues involved in making contact with a group like the Mashco with some of the members of the Pioneer Mission expedition. Scott Welsh and his wife Nicole, both expressed dismay at the current Mashco way of life, lacking in Christianity as it is, and with the living patterns of nomadic hunter-gatherers, which they believe must cause great suffering to the Mashco. They professed the belief that the intervention of Pioneer Mission would improve their lives substantially by bringing them the Word of God and the material benefits of modern civilization, which would allow the Mashco to adopt a different living pattern. Though never explicitly stated in these terms, the Pioneer Mission missionaries believe that the benefits that the Mashco would accrue from the work of Pioneer Mission outweigh whatever difficulties and problems that the Mashco may experience due to Pioneer Mission¹s efforts to seek them out and make contact with them. Paul Johnson, the leader of the expedition, and unofficial advisor to this Pioneer Mission team, justified the intervention of Pioneer Mission on other grounds. Paul made the point that it is inevitable that the Mashco will eventually have contact with outsiders, and it is preferable that Pioneer Mission (or some other group similarly concerned with the well-being of the Mashco) be the one to make such a contact, instead of someone who may be interested in exploiting them economically or harming them physically.
We did not have the opportunity to discuss the long-term plans of Pioneer Mission in any detail, or how Pioneer Mission would carry out its work with a group as nomadic as the Mashco, but the expedition members appeared optimistic about the eventual success of their mission.
Other Contact Efforts
Apart from the contact efforts of Pioneer Mission, the only other major effort to make contact with the isolated indigenous peoples of the Purús region, of which the author is aware, was one carried out in 1971 by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). The SIL expedition was led by Eugene Scott, who with his wife Marie has been working with the Sharanahua in the Purús region for several decades, and sought to make contact with a group which was very likely a Mashco one. The expedition had only one encounter with any Mashco, a group of several men, with wives and children, which they surprised on a small creek that drained into the Río B. The Mashco fled as soon as the expedition members showed themselves, leaving behind fourteen baskets and several sets of bows and arrows. The SIL team inspected the baskets, finding stone axes, fresh meat, and cutting tools made of peccary-teeth in them. They took photos of these abandoned items, but did not remove them from the site, not wishing to be seen as thieves. In addition, the SIL team left gifts of metal pots and machetes, in case the Mashco returned. After some days, the Mashco group did indeed return to recover their belongings which they had abandoned in their hasty withdrawal, and also took the gifts of metal pots and machetes left for them by the SIL, but no further contact occurred.
In conversations with me, Eugene Scott noted that the experiences of the 1971 expedition, and the stories he had heard of encounters with the Mashco by others in the following years, indicated that the Mashco are at this time not interested in contact with the outside world. The SIL has been aware of the Mashco presence for over 25 years, but since Eugene Scott¹s 1971 expedition, the SIL has chosen not to pursue an aggressive contact strategy with respect to the Mashco.