The Sirionó are an indigenous people of Bolivia. They primarily live in the forested northern and eastern parts of Beni and northwestern Santa Cruz departments of

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

."Sirionó."
''Encyclopædia Britannica.'' Retrieved 25 Nov 2013. They live between the San Martín, Negro Rivers, and the Machado River.Olson 337

Name

"Sirionó" comes from a neighboring language, in which ''síri'' means " tucum palm". Their autonym is Miá, meaning "the people." They are also known as the Chori, Ñiose, Qurungua, Tirinié, or Yande people. The Sirionós are tall and strong, although thin, due to the continuous movement and hardships of wildlife. Their complexion is dark, although somewhat lighter than that of the Guarayos, probably because of their life in the shade of the trees. Some are said to have almost white skin, brown hair and light eyes. Its aspect is rather Arauco than Guarani.

Language

The

Sirionó language Sirionó (Mbia Cheë; also written as Mbya, Siriono) is a Tupian (Tupi–Guarani, Subgroup II) language spoken by about 400 Sirionó people (50 are monolingual) and 120 Yuqui in eastern Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational Stat ...

is a Guarayú language of the Tupí-Guaraní language family, written in the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a 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 Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

. The language is taught in primary schools. A

whistled language Whistled speech is a form of speech surrogacy in which whistling is used to mimic speech. Speakers of more than 80 languages have been found to practice various degrees of whistled speech, most of them in rugged topography or dense forests, whe ...

has been observed among Sirionós."Sirionó."
''Ethnologue.'' Retrieved 25 Nov 2013.

History

Sirionó people originated in the

Gran Chaco The Gran Chaco or simply Chaco is a sparsely populated, hot and semiarid lowland tropical dry broadleaf forest natural region of the Río de la Plata basin, divided among eastern Bolivia, western Paraguay, northern Argentina, and a portion o ...

and moved north in the

Amazon rainforest The Amazon rainforest, also called the Amazon jungle or Amazonia, is a Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests, moist broadleaf tropical rainforest in the Amazon biome that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. This basin ...

. First contact with Spaniards was in the 1690s. Later Jesuits tried to missionize them and convince them to lead sedentary lives. Sirionó people died from diseases introduced by Europeans, and by the dawn of the 20th century, only 500 survived. They lived either in remote forests or worked as ranch or farm hands.

Culture

Sirionó traditionally were semi-nomadic and fished, hunted, gathered wild plants, and farmed. They cultivated

maize Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...

sweet potato The sweet potato or sweetpotato (''Ipomoea batatas'') is a dicotyledonous plant in the morning glory family, Convolvulaceae. Its sizeable, starchy, sweet-tasting tuberous roots are used as a root vegetable, which is a staple food in parts of ...

es, and sweet

cassava ''Manihot esculenta'', common name, commonly called cassava, manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America, from Brazil, Paraguay and parts of the Andes. Although ...

. They brewed beer from maize. Traditional Sirionó houses were often only temporary structures with wooden supports and palm leaf roofs that could house up to 120 people at a time. Families were

matrilineal Matrilineality, at times called matriliny, is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which people identify with their matriline, their mother's lineage, and which can involve the inheritan ...

and

matrilocal In social anthropology, matrilocal residence or matrilocality (also uxorilocal residence or uxorilocality) is the societal system in which a married couple resides with or near the wife's parents. Description Frequently, visiting marriage ...

, that is, young married couples would live in the wife's community.

Notes

References

*Holmberg, Alan 1950. Nomads of the Long Bow: The Siriono of Eastern Bolivia. Smithsonian Institution, Institute of Social Anthropology Publication No. 10. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. *Isaac, Barry L. 1977 The Siriono of Eastern Bolivia: A reexamination. Human Ecology 5(2): 17-154. * Olson, James Stuart
''The Indians of Central and South America: An Ethnohistorical Dictionary.''
Greenwood Publishing Group, 1991. . *Ryden, Stig. 1941. A Study of the Siriono Indians. Goteborg: Elanders Boktyckeri Aktiebolag. {{DEFAULTSORT:Siriono People Indigenous peoples in Bolivia Indigenous peoples of the Amazon Beni Department Santa Cruz Department (Bolivia)