The Jivaro: People of the Sacred Waterfalls

by Michael Harner and HARNER M J.

Book Overview

Only one tribe of American Indians is known ever to have successfully revolted against the empire of Spain and to have thwarted all subsequent attempts by the Spaniards to reconquer them: the Jivaro (hee'-va-ro), the untsuri suarii of eastern Ecuador. From 1599 onward they remained unconquered in their forest fastness east of the Andes, despite the fact that they were known to occupy one of the richest placer gold deposit regions in all of South America...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520050657
• ISBN13: 9780520050655
• Release Date: September 1984
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 239 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

A "sexy" classic..

Harner's Jivaro is a very interesting book. I cannot attest to the ethnographic veracity of the text as some other reviewers, but I can speak to what I thought about the book. This book is one of the most fascinating ethnographies I have read. It is very "sexy": violence, drugs, death, decapitation, shrunken heads...edgy stuff. What utterly fascinated me was the description of how this state of affairs came about. Harner claims that head-hunting raids didn't take place, or at least not with the frequency as reported in this book until the introduction of firearms by the Spanish. At this point rival tibes were better able to kill each other, and violence increased. I found it all very interesting, and would recommend it.

classic ethnography

This is a classic ethnography of the Shuar, the one that established the standard for all subsequent descriptions of the Shuar. I have done extensive field work with a Shuar related group and was impressed on how accurate Harner's account was, even though the group I worked with was separate in both time and space from the untsuri shuar. This is a must read for anyone interested in the ethnography of lowland South America.