Eseejja

The Ese Ejja, whose autonym means 'the people', are a Tacanan-speaking people of the south-western Amazon, spread along the Beni and Madre de Dios rivers of Bolivia and into eastern Peru, where neighbours also call them Chama.

Their traditions recall Inca raiders reaching the Beni in the days of the early Inca ruler Sinchi Roca, and the first Europeans followed in 1567 with the Maldonado expedition up the Alto Madre de Dios. A 1770 expedition found them at the headwaters of the Madre de Dios.

Ese Ejja society is split into two patrilineal, exogamous halves that exchange women under cross-cousin marriage rules, the new couple living with the wife's family. They live by slash-and-burn farming, fishing, hunting and gathering, and their mythology centres on Edosiquiana, mistress of all wild animals, whom hunters must respect because the animals are her kin.