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.
Learning is unstructured, spontaneous, and situational. Young girls learn by example from their mothers in tending the garden, gathering crops, and weaving the hammocks. Young boys, at eight or ten years old are permitted to use blowguns, as hunting prepares them for manhood. Also, children are taught the different calls of various creatures inhabiting the rainforest as a hunting strategy. The Waorani people require vast hunting grounds for their survival. They are a nomadic people, as they move on after using up the fertile soil for their gardens and after hunting most of the game, primarily monkeys and pigs, in the general area. Despite their almost total isolation, technology does seep into Waorani society, as the steel axe, for example, found its way inside. It was the steel axe that pulled them into the modern age, and eventually, they learned to adapt.
The Waorani basically have an animist view on their little world, where the natural world is brought to life. All the living things of the forest have spirits; plants and animals are animated at a supernatural level. The snake, to them, is “the most evil force in the Huaorani cosmology” Wikipedia: Huaorani). Seen to the Waorani as a sacred animal is the python: “They believe that when one dies he walks a trail to the afterlife which has a large python in waiting. Those among the dead who cannot escape the python, fail to enter the domain of dead spirits and return to Earth to become animals, often termites” (Wikipedia: Huaorani). The jaguar is the most important, powerful, and respected predator of the forest, as it is with the Arara of Brazil.
The jaguar represents the embodiment of a dead ancestor. Like many cultures with a defined religion, the Waorani have a creation myth, not dissimilar from any other. According to the Waorani myth:
[T]he Huaorani were the descendants of a mating between a jaguar and an eagle. Elders become shamans by metaphorically adopting ‘jaguar sons’ whose spirits communicate medical and spiritual knowledge. A jaguar shaman is able, they claim, ‘to become a jaguar, and so to travel great distances telepathically and communicate with other Huaorani.’ (Wikipedia: Huaoroni)
Other evidence of religion within the Waorani society includes songs sung by the people to inspire hope for a fruitful harvest. One such act is a kind of divinity employing ancient chants to predict the outcome and answer questions about the uncertainties of tomorrow: Where should I hunt and garden; Will there be enough resources to sustain my family? Ritualistic acts and religion are intertwined with a part of the Waorani’s violent way of life. Everything that is hunted, their spirits must be appeased. For example, “To counterbalance the offense of hunting, a shaman demonstrates respect through the ritual preparation of the poison, curare, used in blow darts” (Wikipedia: Huaorani). While this ritual is being performed, they sing hunter songs in hope of a successful hunt. If the hunt is indeed a success, then the hunter immediately marks the hunting ground with darts sticking out of the land and trees so that future hunters may have the same fortune. When the hunter returns to the village with his kill, it would be distributed among everyone, no matter how small the portions.
The remaining Waorani live traditionally, but being aware of an outside world, they are at the top of a slippery slope, which leads to the loss of most of their culture, exposure to Western diseases to which they have no resistance and, for any survivors, a life that will end in bewilderment on a reservation. Today, their population is a mere 600, as almost 85% of this remaining Waorani society has been moved to a reservation where they are increasingly influenced by modern Western civilization. (Warren) Upon leaving their hunting and gardening grounds, they set fire to their hut and land to move on to the next and build anew. It is a sort of spiritual cleansing of the old in order to begin fresh a new life in their home, the forest.
