The Yanesha' or Amuesha people are an
ethnic group
An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
of the
Peruvian Amazon rainforest
Peruvian Amazonia ( es, Amazonía del Perú) is the area of the Amazon rainforest included within the country of Peru, from east of the Andes to the borders with Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil and Bolivia. This region comprises 60% of the country ...
. Presently, the most recent
census count puts their
population
Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...
at over 7,000 distributed among 48 communities located in
Puerto Inca Province
The Puerto Inca Province is the largest of eleven Provinces of Peru, provinces of the Huánuco Region in Peru. The capital of this province is the city of Puerto Inca.
Boundaries
*North: Ucayali Region
*East: Ucayali Region
*South: Pasco Region
*W ...
(
Huánuco
Huánuco (; qu, Wanuku) is a city in central Peru. It had a population of 196,627 as of 2017 and in 2015 it had a population of 175,068. It is the capital of the Huánuco Region and the Huánuco District. It is the seat of the diocese of Huán ...
),
Chanchamayo Province
Chanchamayo (in hispanicized spelling) or Chanchamayu (Quechua language, Quechua ''chanchay'' to walk and leap about, to walk quickly and confused, ''chancha chancha'' to walk quickly and irregularly, ''shancha'' a kind of bird, ''mayu'' river)Dic ...
(
Junín) and
Oxapampa Province
The Oxapampa Province ( es, Provincia de Oxapampa) is the largest of three Provinces of Peru, provinces that make up the Pasco Region in Peru. The capital of the Oxapampa province is the city of Oxapampa. The province is located on the eastern s ...
(
Pasco). They are a relatively small group, making up barely 2.91% of
indigenous
Indigenous may refer to:
*Indigenous peoples
*Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention
*Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band
*Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...
inhabitants located in the Peruvian Amazon. Their communities are situated in altitudes ranging from 200 to 1600 meters above
sea level
Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardised g ...
and can also be found along the shores of various
river
A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...
s including the
Pichis,
Palcazu,
Pachitea,
Huancabamba,
Cacazú,
Chorobamba, and the
Yurinaqui Rivers.
Name
The Yanesha' are also known as Amage, Amagues, Amaje, Amajo, Amoishe, Amueixa, Amuese, Amuesha, Amuetamo, Lorenzo, and Omage.
["Yanesha."]
''Ethnologue.'' Retrieved 4 Feb 2012.
Language
The Yanesha people speak
Yanesha', a language belonging to the
Maipurean
Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient indigenous peoples in South America. Branch ...
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in hist ...
,
[ that also includes ]Asháninka
The Asháninka or Asháninca are an indigenous people living in the rainforests of Peru and in the State of Acre, Brazil. Their ancestral lands are in the forests of Junín, Pasco, Huánuco and part of Ucayali in Peru.
Population
The Ashá ...
, Yine, and others. A dictionary and grammar have been published in Yanesha', which is written in the Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
.[
]
History
The tribe's first contact with non-native people came through friar
A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century; the term distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the ol ...
s who, in the second half of the 16th century, made an incursion into the region. However, it was not until the 18th century that missionaries (this time Franciscan
The Franciscans are a group of related Mendicant orders, mendicant Christianity, Christian Catholic religious order, religious orders within the Catholic Church. Founded in 1209 by Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi, these orders include t ...
s) managed to establish steady relations with the Yanesha' and other ethnic groups living nearby. Father Francisco de San José founded various missions around Cerro de la Sal
The Cerro de la Sal or Cerro de Sal, (''Mountain of Salt'') is located in Villa Rica District of Oxapampa Province in Pasco Department, Peru. The Cerro de la Sal was an important source of salt for the pre-Columbian indigenous people of the ...
(Villa Rica District) and Quimiri (La Merced, Junin
LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States.
La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment Music
* La (musical note), or A, the sixth note
* "L.A.", a song by Elliott Smith on Figure 8 ( ...
) to convert the indigenous populations to Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
. However, in 1742, indigenous people commanded by Juan Santos Atahualpa
Juan Santos Atahualpa Apu-Inca Huayna Capac (c. 1710 – c. 1756) was the messianic leader of a successful indigenous rebellion in the Amazon Basin and Andean foothills against the Viceroyalty of Peru in the Spanish Empire. The rebellion began i ...
rebelled against the Spaniards and destroyed a number of missions, effectively cutting off outside contact for several decades.
It's not known for sure the population of the Yanesha' people at this time but they had certainly already begun to die off from European diseases. During the 19th century, the area inhabited by the Yanesha' and other groups was reexplored by expeditions looking to establish routes to the lower Amazon and to colonize
Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...
the area.
The arrival of westerners represented for the Yanesha' the loss of land and a dramatic change of living customs ensued; they were grouped into towns and their extensive territories became the property of colonists. With this situation, they were compelled to group together and became the first ethnic group to form a professional organization: the Amuesha Congress. This later became the Yanesha' Federation. The Law of Indigenous Communities ( sp: ''La Ley de Comunidades Indígenas''), promulgated in 1974, partly repaired the situation of dispossession by granting some land to Yanesha' groups.
The Yanesha' people once lived through hunting
Hunting is the human activity, human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to harvest food (i.e. meat) and useful animal products (fur/hide (skin), hide, ...
, fishing
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs. Fishing techniques inclu ...
, and subsistence agriculture
Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements, with little or no su ...
; in modern times, the emphasis is on agricultural diversification
In the agricultural context, diversification can be regarded as the re-allocation of some of a farm's productive resources, such as land, capital, farm equipment and labour to other products and, particularly in richer countries, to non-farming act ...
and cultivation of cash crops like coffee
Coffee is a drink prepared from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulant, stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is the most popular hot drink in the world.
S ...
and annatto
Annatto ( or ) is an orange-red condiment and food coloring derived from the seeds of the achiote tree (''Bixa orellana''), native to tropical America. It is often used to impart a yellow or orange color to foods, but sometimes also for its flav ...
. Hunting became much rarer after the Yanesha' people began raising animals for consumption. In addition, groups have begun exploiting Cat's claw. The marketing of ceramic craft
A craft or trade is a pastime or an occupation that requires particular skills and knowledge of skilled work. In a historical sense, particularly the Middle Ages and earlier, the term is usually applied to people occupied in small scale prod ...
s has also become a source of income.
In 1988, a territory of over 34,774 hectare
The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...
s was set up in Palcazu District
Palcazu District is one of eight districts of the province Oxapampa in Peru. Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática
The Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática (INEI) ("National Institute of Statistics and Informatics") i ...
as the Yanesha' Communal Reservation (''Reserva Communal Yanesha) with the purpose of protecting important fauna
Fauna is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is ''flora'', and for fungi, it is '' funga''. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively referred to as '' biota''. Zoo ...
that serves as sustenance to Yanesha' communities in the area.
Notes
External links
Yanesha' art
National Museum of the American Indian
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yanesha People
Ethnic groups in Peru
Indigenous peoples in Peru
Indigenous peoples of the Amazon