Matsigenka

The Matsigenka, also called Machiguenga, were an Arawak-speaking people of the high jungle on the eastern slopes of the Peruvian Andes, scattered through the Urubamba, Camisea, Picha, Timpía and Manu river basins. Their language belongs to the Campa branch of the Maipurean family and is close to Nomatsigenga.

They lived as hunter-gatherers and swidden farmers, growing manioc, maize and bananas and hunting peccary and monkeys, in small family bands under their own headmen. Residence was uxorilocal and kinship exogamy spread settlements across the forest. Their shamans dealt with spirits, and families wore handwoven cotton tunics called cushmas.

The dangerous Pongo de Mainique gorge on the Urubamba, gateway to their country, lay beyond the borders of the Inca Empire at the height of its expansion in the 1400s. Inca armies never subdued the Matsigenka valleys.