The Waorani

The word “Waorani,” according to the isolated tribe of Ecuador, means “people.”  However, to Ecuador’s more predominant indigenous peoples, the Waorani are considered “savages.”   They became more widely known when, in 1956, five American missionaries who had landed their plane close by were speared to death.  With no real form of writing or recorded history, the Waorani are renowned for their knowledge of the jungle and its creatures.  They are linguistically unique, in that their language bears no relationship to any other.  They are nomadic hunters and gatherers with an amazing sense of cooperation and reciprocity.  Sharing with fellow kinsmen is the most important value within the family unit among the Waorani people.  In their society, there is an average of four families who all live in the same hut; they live together in harmony.  The ideas of cooperation and reciprocity of the Waorani are closely knit with the idea that men and women share separate roles of equal importance.  While men do the hunting, women gather crops, garden, and cook; while men cut down trees, women take care of the children; and while men make poisonous darts using curare, women weave hammocks.  Men and women are socially equal in the Waorani society. 

Although there is harmony and cohesion within the Waorani within their group, they are hostile and intolerant to the intrusion of anyone from the outside world.  Spearing accounts for almost half of all the deaths in Waorani society.  They live and die by the spear, as it is the instrument in both defending themselves and harvesting the bounty of the forest.  The blowgun is used mainly for warfare and hunting howler monkeys.  Violence has permeated through out the Waorani way of life so much that they even employ the Harpy Eagle as a kind of alarm in warning them of an attack.  Children are taught at a very young age to always keep a spear sharpened for defense and to raid neighboring villages.  Chonta is a hardwood palm, which serves as the main component in making blowguns and spears.  Chonta also yields as a fruit that constitutes a main part of their diet.  Curare is a poison that comes from the bark of a special vine, used for the tips of blowgun darts.  Perhaps the reason for their strong use of violence is that they have been completely isolated for so long and any intruder could pose a threat to their ever so close-knit society.  Their own people are all they have any understanding or knowledge of and they knew of no other existence until just recently.  For example, they believe that the tools they found in the forest were put there by their creator, without considering the idea that maybe another human, besides themselves, left them there by accident.