Yagua are an
indigenous people
There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...
in
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...
and northeastern
Peru
Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...
, numbering approximately 6,000.
[ Currently, they live near the ]Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...
, Napo, Putumayo and Yavari rivers and their tributaries. As of 2005, some Yagua have migrated northward to Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...
, near the town of Leticia.
Location
Currently the Yagua live in some 30 communities scattered throughout a section of the Peruvian and Colombian Amazon basin
The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributary, tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries ...
which can roughly be described as a rectangle 200 miles wide and 350 miles long (70,000 sq. miles) extending southward from the second
The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of U ...
to the fifth parallel and westward from the 70th to the 75th meridian west.
Language
The Yagua language is classified as a Peba-Yaguan language.[ The only closely related languages that have been documented are Peba and Yameo][Espinosa 1955] both of which are now extinct.
2000 Yagua people in Peru were monolingual
Monoglottism ( Greek μόνος ''monos'', "alone, solitary", + γλῶττα , "tongue, language") or, more commonly, monolingualism or unilingualism, is the condition of being able to speak only a single language, as opposed to multilingualism. ...
in 2000,[ and of these, 75% were women and 25% were men. The majority of the rest are bilingual in ]Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas
**Spanish cuisine
**Spanish history
**Spanish culture
...
to varying degrees.
Name
Yagua people are also known as Llagua, Nijyamïï Nikyejaada, Yahua, Yava, and Yegua.[
There are two possible etymologies for the term 'Yagua', both of which originate outside the Yagua language. First, the Quechua term ''yawar'' meaning 'blood' or 'the color of blood', is a likely possibility due to the Yagua custom of painting their faces with ]achiote
''Bixa orellana'', also known as achiote, is a shrub or small tree native to Central America. ''Bixa orellana'' is grown in many countries worldwide.
The plant is best known as the source of annatto, a natural orange-red condiment (also calle ...
, the blood red seeds of the annatto
Annatto ( or ) is an orange-red condiment and food coloring derived from the seeds of the achiote tree (''Bixa orellana''), native to tropics, tropical parts of the Americas. It is often used to impart a yellow to red-orange color to foods, but ...
plant (''Bixa orellana'').
During the pre-conquest
Conquest involves the annexation or control of another entity's territory through war or Coercion (international relations), coercion. Historically, conquests occurred frequently in the international system, and there were limited normative or ...
period, the Yaguas could have been in sporadic contact with the Incas
The Inca Empire, officially known as the Realm of the Four Parts (, ), was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco. The Inca civilisation rose fr ...
, as to this day there are far more Quechua (language spoken by the Inca) words in Yagua than there are Spanish words, another hypothesis points out that Spanish missionaries imposed Quechua as the common language, a customary practice during most of the colony. The term in Quechua would have been something like ''yawar runa'', 'the blood-red people', which could easily have been assimilated into Spanish as ''yagua''.
Second, the term ''yagua'' in Spanish means 'royal palm'. This term could have been applied to the Yaguas by the Spanish explorers because much of the native clothing is made of palm fiber. There is no data on whether a name resembling ''yagua'' was first used by the Quechuas of the area or the Spanish, therefore there is no principled way to distinguish between these two possible etymologies.
The only native term that might be thought of as a self-referent is ''nijyąąmíy'' 'people.' This word is often used in contrast with ''mááy'' 'white people' and ''munuñúmiy'' 'savages', 'enemies' or 'non-Yaguas'. However, ''nijyąąmíy'' is also the generic term for all human beings.
History
The third earliest documented European contact with the Yagua was probably made by the Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana
Francisco de Orellana (; 1511 – November 1546) was a Spanish explorer and conquistador. In one of the most improbably successful voyages in known history, Orellana managed to sail the length of the Amazon, arriving at the river's mouth on 24 A ...
in January 1542. While exploring in the area of modern-day Pebas, Orellana encountered a village called Aparia, and captured two chiefs named Aparia and Dirimara, as well as some others. These names could conceivably have come from the Yagua words ''(j)ápiiryá'' 'red macaw clan' and ''rimyurá'' 'shaman' respectively. The former could very well be a village name as well as a name applied to an individual; today clan names are still used by many Yaguas as family name
In many societies, a surname, family name, or last name is the mostly hereditary portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family. It is typically combined with a given name to form the full name of a person, although several give ...
s. The word for shaman might also be used to refer to an individual, especially one singled out as a 'chief'. Regular European contact began in 1686 with the establishment of a Jesuit
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
mission at San Joaquin de los Omagua, on an island in the Amazon river probably near what is now the mouth of the Ampiyacu River. Though this mission was established to serve the Cambeba
The Omagua people (also known as the Umana, Cambeba, and Kambeba) are an Indigenous peoples of Brazil, indigenous people in Brazil's Amazon Basin. Their territory, when first in contact with Spanish explorers in the 16th century, was on the Amazo ...
people, there was undoubtedly contact with the Yaguas as well. From the 17th century to the last half of the 19th century, contact with the Yaguas was mainly through the Jesuit and Franciscan
The Franciscans are a group of related organizations in the Catholic Church, founded or inspired by the Italian saint Francis of Assisi. They include three independent Religious institute, religious orders for men (the Order of Friars Minor bei ...
missionaries. In the early 18th century, Portuguese raiding parties attacked the Spanish missions throughout the Amazon region causing much geographic dispersion of the tribes that were in contact with the Spanish, and inflicting severe casualties.
The present extreme geographic dispersion of the Yagua, however, is due largely to the effects of the 'rubber boom' in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At that time Europeans arrived in large numbers from Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
and began to exploit the indigenous people to extract natural latex
Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latices are found in nature, but synthetic latices are common as well.
In nature, latex is found as a wikt:milky, milky fluid, which is present in 10% of all floweri ...
from the jungle. Many Yaguas died in conflicts with these Europeans, as well as by exposure to European diseases. Others were exploited as slave labor
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
. Still others fled to remote regions of the jungle. Ever since the rubber boom, the Yagua sense of unity and of common culture has declined.
Ethnographic descriptions of the Yagua are found in Fejos (1943) and P. Powlison (1985). The history and migrations of the Yagua are described in Chaumeil (1983).
Yagua mythology was often told at night when they were not conducive to sleep along with them not being preoccupied with other matters. Most of their stories started with "My deceased father (mother, grandfather, grandmother etc.) used to tell me," to make the stories more real.
Sociology
The tremendous distances between villages make it very difficult to have consistent interaction with Yaguas outside one's home village. All economic activity outside the village is with non-Yagua peoples, usually Spanish-speakers. Thus there is economic and social pressure
Peer pressure is a direct or indirect influence on peers, i.e., members of social groups with similar interests and experiences, or social statuses. Members of a peer group are more likely to influence a person's beliefs, values, religion and beh ...
to learn Spanish and assimilate to the general Peruvian culture. Villages are also characteristically quite small (2 to 30 families). This fact further limits the breadth of interaction with other Yaguas, and increases the tendency to want to reach out beyond one's village for social and economic advantages.
However, the Yagua culture and language do continue to be viable, especially in some of the larger and more isolated communities. Some children grow up speaking only Yagua, and native arts and crafts are a significant economic activity.
Notes
References
*Chaumeil, J. P. 1983. ''Historia y migraciones de los yagua.'' Lima: Peru.
*Fejos, Paul. 1943. ''Ethnology of the Yagua.'' Viking.
*Powlison, Paul. 1985. ''Yagua Mythology: Epic Tendencies in a New World Mythology.'' Dallas:
*Handbook of Amazonian languages, vol. 2, ed. by Desmond C. Derbyshire and Geoffrey Pullum
Geoffrey Keith Pullum (; born 8 March 1945) is a British and American linguist specialising in the study of English. Pullum has published over 300 articles and books on various topics in linguistics, including phonology, morphology, semantics ...
. The Hague: Mouton.
*Payne, Thomas E. 1993. ''The Twin Stories: Participant Coding in Yagua Narrative.'' Los Angeles: University of California Press.
External links
International Biopark
by Dan James Pantone, PhD
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yagua People
Ethnic groups in Peru
Indigenous peoples of the Amazon
Indigenous peoples in Colombia
Indigenous peoples in Peru