Tsimanes

The Tsimané, also called Chimane, are a riverine forest people of the Bolivian Beni, scattered from the Quiquibey to the headwaters of the Maniquí. Their language, Tsimané or Mosetén, is a linguistic isolate with mutually intelligible Santa Ana and Covendo dialects. They live in villages of twenty to thirty families, farming bananas and manioc while following the fish runs upriver with their temporary huts, and eating game and wild fruit.

Their first recorded contact with outsiders came in 1693, when Jesuits founded the San Borja mission. Franciscans took up the work later but brought epidemics that brought the Tsimané to the brink of extinction, and many families dispersed deeper into the forest.