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Concept
Shuar
Summary
The Shuar, also known as Jivaro, are an indigenous ethnic group that inhabits the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazonia. They are famous for their hunting skills and their tradition of head shrinking, known as Tzantsa.
The Shuar language belongs to the Jivaroan linguistic family and is spoken by over 50,000 people in the region. The Shuar are known for their skill in warfare, both in defending their territories and in offensive actions against external enemies. Currently, many Shuar live in communities organized around agriculture and hunting, although there are also some who work in mining and the timber industry.
Shuar, in the Shuar language, means "people". The people who speak the Shuar language live in tropical rainforest between the upper mountains of the Andes, and in the tropical rainforests and savannas of the Amazonian lowlands, in Ecuador. Shuar live in various places — thus, the muraiya (hill) Shuar are people who live in the foothills of the Andes; the achu (swamp-palm) shuar (or Achuar) are people who live in the wetter lowlands east of the Andes (Ecuador).
Shuar refer to Spanish-Speakers as apach, and to non-Spanish and non-Shuar speakers as inkis. Europeans and European Americans used to refer to Shuar as "jívaros" or "jíbaros"; this word probably derives from the 16th century Spanish spelling of shuar (see Gnerre 1973), but has taken other meanings including "savage"; outside of Ecuador, jibaro has come to mean "rustic". The Shuar are popularly depicted in a wide variety of travelogue and adventure literature because of Western fascination with their former practice of shrinking human heads (tsantsa).
From the time of first contact with Europeans in the 16th century, to the formation of the Shuar Federation in the 1950s and 1960s, Shuar were semi-nomadic and lived in separate households dispersed in the rainforest, linked by the loosest of kin and political ties, and lacking corporate kin-groups or centralized or institutionalized political leadership.
Official source
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