THE JIBAROS OF THE MARANON RIVER.

The word "Jibaro" comes from its ethnic root "Shuar,"meaning "Rustic." They are the distinct peoples of the Maranon River and its tributaries.
The Maranon River is the principal or mainstream source of the Amazon River, arising about 160 km to the North East of Lima, Peru, and flowing through a deeply eroded Andean Valley in a North West direction, along the Eastern base of the Andean Cordillera, and after running a while it makes a great bend to the North East, and cuts through the Jungle Andes, until at the dark canyon named Pongo of Manseriche it flows into the flat Amazon basin.
Jibaros are scattered over a vast territory and are of similar appearance physically; each small cluster speak a single language with specific words , and their customs, and beliefs are closely interrelated in all of them. They symbolize the strength of such traditional values as living simply, and properly caring for homeland and family. They are hard-working, independent, and prudently wise.
The principal groups are : -Shuar, -Achuar, -Humabisa, -Aguaruna. A group of Achuar speakers identified as Shiwiar people, lives along the Corrientes River, shared by Peru and Ecuador, next to Quechua speakers.
The Jibaro people are famous for their head-hunting raids and shrinking the heads from these raids as a way of identification. These head-hunting occurs every other year in one particular neighborhood, and usually only attack one homestead per raid, killing the men, spearing the older woman to death, and taking younger women as their brides. This is part of its natural heritage.
The Jibaro engage in hunting activities, that usually involve both man and his wife hunting with a blow gun and poisoned dart, dabbed with the poisonous plant extract, "curare," which stops the heart beat of the animal, making its soul depart in a natural way. This way of killing the animal protect them from the punishment that the forces of nature do, when an animal is killed in an unnatural way without a reason. Jibaro usually hunt for monkeys and birds, but they do not rely on hunting as their primary food source.
They place more emphasis on gardening, than they do on hunting. This is due to the unpredictable nature of the forces of hunting in the Amazonian Region, where the Jibaro call home. The ritualistic approach to gardening as root to everything that exist in the unseen world sprouted in the Jibaros' idea of the world in which everyone and everything co-exist.
The Jibaro's world view is built upon the idea that both animate and inanimate objects hold souls that cannot be seen by the physical eyes. These souls in everything contain power that need to be harnessed and contained within one's self. The way of doing it is part of their rituals and the understanding how they work in the unseen world.
Jibaros belief that a person is not born with an "arutam," a protective spirit, that comes to them at night through spirit visions. It is thought that the spirit protect them from injury, disease and death, in the three planes of the existence making the human strong and able to take control of its post in the 3 realms. Such a strong soul must be acquired, and in certain traditional way, and not all are able to harness it. The acquisition of this type of strong soul is considered to be so important to an adult male's survival as a force of energy that a boy's parent do not expect him to live past puberty without that strong spirit inside him. This trade-in mechanism is a very important feature because, when a person has acquired the degree of the "arutam"force for 4 or 5 years, it tends to leave its sleeping possessor to wander nightly through the forest in the unseen world. While the soul is drifting through trees, another Jibaro, will "steal"it. It is highly desirable to obtain a new soul before the old one begins nocturnal wanderings without purpose. This need encourages the individual to participate in a kind of battle every year, in which the killer becomes in possession of the soul of the killed one becoming more powerful, and so on. The one who was killed is returning to the world of the living later on and become engaged in the same perpetual training to maintain the level of force needed to perform its duty as guardians of nature.
The Jivaro god, Tsungi, is the god of shamanism, and the Jibaro goddess, Nungui, refers to mother earth. She is described as being a short and large woman, dressed in black dress. If Nungui dances in a woman's garden, this will produce a productive garden during the harvest season, meaning a powerful descendant cluster. Living deep underground, she emerges at night to dance in the garden. Women sing to Nungui to ask her to protect the garden, and they carefully weed the garden daily to appease her.
The Jibaro god anf goddess are deeply tied to nature. They are the ones that symbolize the origins of man and animal, the occurrence of natural events and its relationship to each other that exist in daily life. Their beliefs support their behavior as it is dominated by a series of battles among the forces of the unseen world and an essential duality of where people are the victims. The Jibaros are the warriors of the living in the unseen world and the keepers of the posts in which the 3 worlds interact. The ones who are being killed are just choosing to go to the death world and acquire more knowledge needed in order to be alive and holding enough power in the vessel that are assigned to them at the point of birth. Among the deities are spirits that are known to provide wisdom and protection to the person they are tied to. They assist shamans in healing or bewitching people. It is believed that unreasonable sickness and death are caused by attacks on one's spirit by malevolent forces acting in shamans overpowered by them. Some commonly seen animals, that their souls help to assist shamans in healing or cursing, are the anaconda, "pangi," and the giant butterfly "wampang."
The healing shaman will hold "ayahuasca ceremonies" and perform different rituals to counteract the work done by witchcraft. They have a reliable, elaborate system of horticultural development that helps to identify the root and nature of the negative force. The manifestation of it in its ritualistic way is like gardening. They find the entrance the malignant forces used to gain control of the soul blocking the planting of a new garden and the taboos developed by the individual in connection with the doors, that makes the soul of the individual wanders instead of grow. Much like similar rituals associated with hunting are these involving the creation of a new garden and the encouragement needed to make it grow through various ritual songs, chants , and dances. The garden is regarded as a place of great spiritual significance. Like being inside of a temple, and that temple being treated as one receiving sanctuary.
Only shaman and patient drink the tea made from ayahuasca and participate in the ritual singing and chanting while the shaman perform different actions to the body of the individual to heal from the witchcraft performed on it. Under the influence of it, shaman encounter the first being, Tensak, in a form of a spiritual dart that is cast out to curse or heal a person. This being exists in a higher plane of existence, and being perceived in shaman state of mind. Then a sensation of leaving the body is perceived and the shaman will see the soul of the beasts of the jungle. Anacondas and jaguars throughout the jungles of the world which roll over and over through the forest as they fight between themselves. Sometimes caymans appear on the scene. Sometimes the intruding objects to be sucked out of the patient's body have the appearance of snakes of various classes, like a coiled snake being seen in a patient's abdomen compromising its energy. Panthers and jaguars also make its appearance symbolizing the strength of the patient in overcoming the sickness.
The shaman is forbidden to charge by any means the performance of its act of healing since he is only the representation of the force of healing, and the power does not belong to him it is only transmitted. If the shaman accept payment then the healing is transformed in a negative force enhancing in power and since sickness comes from a negative source it become more powerful, and ended up killing the soul and the body. In the same way the incorrect use of ayahuasca, for the purpose of feeling drunk or flying without purpose, is also punished by the spirit of healing, depending on the weight of the infraction.
The Jibaro have practicing these ceremonies for hundreds of years, keeping them close to their roots.
Prior colonization, Jibaroan people were not living into a structure of clearly bounded polities or ethnic groups. Instead, they lived in widely separated household groups with very little consciousness of any sort of communal or political unity, shifting locations, separating themselves, or being exterminated.
The Jibaro people were, because of their specific way of living, the only group of people known to have revolted against the forces of the European invaders successfully and deny all attempts by them to conquer the Jibaros. In 1599 the Jivaro led a raid on 2 European settlements, enraged by taxes on gold, and killing 25,000 people in the process, and laid waste to the settlement of Logrono, killing its governor by pouring molten gold down his throat until his bowels burst. The type of ritual performed during the killing was on behalf of the powers of earth. All remaining invaders were killed mercilessly since the same attitude they performed to the Andean people, receiving back what they did first, they did not kill the young women because of respect to its matriarcal way of life, and were forced to join their clans. When provoked, the Jibaros join themselves and attack in full force, since they consider themselves the guardians of nature, each one in its own specific post.
The principal force that unify every small unit is the accepted polygonal matrilocal household, thus, the female offspring of a mother remain living in or near the mother's house, thereby forming a cluster of matrilocal-organized and autonomous household speaking the same type of words.