The Macuna are a Tucanoan-speaking group of the eastern part of the Amazon basin, located around the confluence of the

Pira Paraná River The Pira Paraná River is a river of the Vaupés Department, Colombia. It is a tributary of the Apaporis River The Apaporis River is a river of the Vaupés Department, Colombia. It is a tributary of the Caquetá or Japurá River. In the last ...

and Apaporis river, in the Colombian

Vaupés Department Vaupés may refer to: * Vaupés River Vaupés River (Uaupés River) is a tributary of the Rio Negro in South America. It rises in the Guaviare Department of Colombia, flowing east through Guaviare and Vaupés Departments. It forms part of the int ...

and the

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

ian state of Amazonas. There are no reliable census data for the Macuna. The entire population was estimated at some 600 individuals in 1991 (compared with 400 in 1973), of which 450 lived in Colombia. Except of spoken accounts of a violent past with the southern neighbors, especially the Yauna and Tanimuka Indians, little is known about the early history of the Macuna. Their first mention are in the Portuguese accounts of the 18th century; as the commercial exploitation of rubber began in the Colombian Amazon in the late 19th century, contact with outsiders occurred more frequently, and with a negative effect. Men were taken away with force to work for the rubber patrons, a situation that lasted into the 1940s. The first Catholic mission was established in the area in the 1960s, though intermittent contact with missionaries has existed at least since the 18th century. The late 1970s and early 1980s brought a new boom into the region, with the growing of

coca Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. Coca is known worldwide for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine. The plant is grown as a cash crop in the Argentine Northwest, Bolivia, ...

leaves for illegal trade, which brought substantial quantities of trade goods and money for the indigenous people who working for the White patrons established in the area. By the mid-1980s the production of coca leaves ended as abruptly as it began, but shortly after gold has been discovered along the Taraira River, just a few days away from the Macuna territory. Thousands of White gold miners entered the territory, a majority through Macuna lands, a situation which the Macuna used as a new source of trade goods and money. Additionally, many young men of the group go to the gold fields for a few weeks or months to look for gold on their own or under the temporary employment of a White patron. Despite this, the Macuna essentially subsist on swidden-cultivation,

hunting Hunting is the 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, bone/tusks, horn/antler, ...

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 gathering of forest products. The staple is

manioc ''Manihot esculenta'', commonly called cassava (), manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America. Although a perennial plant, cassava is extensively cultivated ...

, but plantains, sweet potatoes, bananas and sugarcane are also cultivated. Meat comes from game such as

pacas A paca is a member of the genus ''Cuniculus'' of ground-dwelling, herbivorous rodents in South and Central America. It is the only genus in the family Cuniculidae. Pacas are large rodents with dots and stripes on their sides, short ears, and ...

tapir Tapirs ( ) are large, herbivorous mammals belonging to the family Tapiridae. They are similar in shape to a pig, with a short, prehensile nose trunk. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South and Central America, with one species inh ...

peccaries A peccary (also javelina or skunk pig) is a medium-sized, pig-like hoofed mammal of the family Tayassuidae (New World pigs). They are found throughout Central and South America, Trinidad in the Caribbean, and in the southwestern area of North ...

, large birds, monkeys and

caimans A caiman (also cayman as a variant spelling) is an alligatorid belonging to the subfamily Caimaninae, one of two primary lineages within the Alligatoridae family, the other being alligators. Caimans inhabit Mexico, Central and South America fr ...

. The fur trade, especially the skins of

jaguars The jaguar (''Panthera onca'') is a large cat species and the only living member of the genus ''Panthera'' native to the Americas. With a body length of up to and a weight of up to , it is the largest cat species in the Americas and the thi ...

ocelots The ocelot (''Leopardus pardalis'') is a medium-sized spotted wild cat that reaches at the shoulders and weighs between on average. It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. Two subspecies are recognized. It is native to the southwe ...

, and

otters Otters are carnivorous mammals in the subfamily Lutrinae. The 13 extant otter species are all semiaquatic, aquatic, or marine, with diets based on fish and invertebrates. Lutrinae is a branch of the Mustelidae family, which also includes weas ...

played an important role in the Macuna economy, until it was prohibited in the 1970s. In the 1990s the Colombian government created two Indian reservation encompassing most of the Macuna land, which provided them with enhanced control over their territory.

References

* {{authority control Indigenous peoples of the Amazon Indigenous peoples in Brazil Indigenous peoples in Colombia