Indigenous Ecuador

Ecuador is a fantastic place because it has so many indigenous tribes. There are more than twenty different tribes in the three different regions of Ecuador, which are the Coast, the Highlands, and the Amazon. The different tribes did not inter-mix much because the Ecuadorian landscape is so tough; it was hard to get around. The Amazon is thick with rainforest and rivers, the Highlands have steep mountains and cold temperatures and the Coast is far away from the other areas and also has thick tropical forests and steep hills! Each tribe has its own traditions, language, and way of dressing.
The tribes of the Coast are the Awa-Kwailer, Chaci, Tsachila, Afroecuatoriano, and the Epera. The Awa-Kwailer settled in southwestern Columbia and northwestern Ecuador. The area is a thick with tropical rainforest and steep eroded hills. The Awa’s have 7,000 people total; 5,000 people in Columbia and 2,000 in Ecuador. The Spanish named the Awa-Kwailer tribe. Their language is called the Awapi. Their tribal name,” Awa-Kwailer “means “Mountain People”. They have traditional doctors that were called “curanderos”. If the curanderos could not help the injured or sick people and they died, they would have a funeral, and they believed they were “freeing” the person. They included the deceased’s food, tools, and clothing in the grave so that he or she could fulfill their duties after death. There are many more coastal people in Ecuador too.
The Chaci people live on the Coast. They originally came from the province of Imbabura in the Highlands, but they fled to the Coast in face of Inka and Spanish conquests. Their territory borders the Cayapa, Santiago, Onzole, and the Canende Rivers. There are about 600 Chaci’s living in 28 communities. The Chaci people have a similar language to the Awa-Kwailer and the Tsachila tribes. Their common name is the “Chaci”, but their traditional name is the “Cayapas”. The Chaci people traditionally base their living on hunting, gathering, and fishing. Today they are engaged in agriculture, growing coffee and cacao for both household consumption and export. They are also known for their fabrication of canoes and their traditional basket weaving.
The Tsachila are another tribe in the Coastal area. These Tsachila people are located in the forested foot of the Western Andes Mountains. They used to be called the “Colorado” because of their way of combing and coloring each other’s hair. They combed their hair with a seed called the “achiote”, which is a really big, spiny, round seed. “Tsachila” means “true people” or “true world”. The Tsachila speak Tsafiqui that is related to the Awa-Kwailer and the Chaci languages. These people had a hard life, but a very interesting culture. These people became a tourist curiosity because of their traditional red body paint. In the 1950’s the government built roads through the Tsachila’s territory and then the whites began to colonize their region. Even though they have been exposed to western civilization, they still remain isolated from the national culture and economy and they keep their traditional ways.
The last two coastal tribes are the Afroecutoriano and the Espera tribes. These two tribes are the least studied tribes in the Coastal area. The Afroecuatoriano tribe is located on the province of Esmeraldas and in the valley of Chota. There are approximately 500,000 people in that tribe. Their beginning in Ecuador goes back to the 1550’s when a slave ship wrecked off the coast. The Espera is one of the smallest groups in the coast. They live in the northwest area of Ecuador. There are only about 150 people living in that tribe. There are lots of other tribes in the Highlands and the Amazon areas.
The Ecudaorian Highlands tribes are Otavalo, Cayambe, Cotopaxi, Salasaco, Chumbarazo, Canar, and Saraguro. The most well known tribe is the Otavalo . They are located north of the capital of Quito in the Andean Highlands. Their village is surrounded by volcanoes. Their language is Quichua. There are 50,000 people residing in the town of Otovalo, where their famous market takes place. The famous market has the same name as the people – Otavalo. The market has an abundant amount of different kinds of handicrafts, foods and animals. There are two parts of the market, one for the tourists and one for the traditional things they make. Tourists mostly visit the food and animal section of the market. The Otovalo people have a deep tradition in weaving; it goes back to pre Inka times. The many crafts they create are: wool woven sweaters, hammocks, woven tapestries that depict scenes from the Ecuadorian countryside, purses, jewelry, and clothing. They also buy and sell chickens, pigs, vegetables, loom parts, dye, and yarns. The Otovalos pride themselves and have proven themselves to be successful, profitable and intelligent people. After many, many years they still continue making a good livelihood from crafting skills, while maintaining their ethnic identity.
The Cayambe and the Chimborazo tribes also live along the volcanoes. The Cayambe are found in the towns Pichincha, Imbura, Napo, Cayambe, Otovalo, Ibarra, Pedro Moncayo, and Chaco. There are 168 communities and 450,000 people. Most of the Highlands tribes share the Quichua language. The Chimborazo tribe has 250,000 people, of that 4,040 are purely indigenous people. They are noted for their five distinctive ways of dress: cachas, lictos, coltas, calpis, and polucates. Many of the traditional Highlands women wore colorful, puffy, knee length skirts, felt fedora hats and colorful shawls.
The Canar people live in the southern central part of Ecuador, just north of Cuenca. While most indigenous tribes thought of the Spanish conquistadors in the 1530’s as the enemy, the Canars considered the Spanish invaders as liberators, perhaps because the Canars were enslaved by the Inkas. In the 1950’s the Canar tribe started manufacturing Panama hats. Panama hats were a good economic addition to the Canar livelihood, however they lost a lot of their land to white traders wanting property in the area.
The last tribes of the Highlands, and the least amount of information available, are Cotopaxi, Saraguro and the Salasaca. The Saraguro tribe is located in the Andean Mountains near the Zamora River in the upper Amazon basin. They raise cattle. The Salasca tribe is located northwest of Ecuador. They came from Bolivia to Ecuador. There are only about 150 people in this small tribe. There was no detailed information available on the Cotopaxi tribe.
There are seven tribes in the Amazonian area: Cofan, Sionas and Secoyas, Quichuas Amazonicas, Huaorani, Shuar, Achuar, and Zapara. The Cofan tribe is located along the Sinangue, Durino, Dureno and Berjon Rivers. The Cofan tribe has 800 people. Their language is A’lngae. Their warriors use a whole different variety of weapons, such as: spears, hardwood swords, bow and arrows, and slings. The people wear different types of jewelry in their noses and ears such as feathers, flowers, and other natural materials. The tribe did a lot of trading, embarking on long and dangerous voyages down the river and tributaries to the main Amazon River. They were in search of cloth, salt and sea shell beads in exchange for stone, adzes (a kind of rock) and knives. In 1536 the Spanish arrived in their area. Until 1950 they remained isolated from western society, then four years later in 1954, the American missionaries arrived. They had a small tribe, but big history.
The Sionas and the Secoyas are located in the northeastern Amazon area and are near the Cofans. There are around 1,000 people between the two tribes. Their language is similar to the Tucanas language. Sionas and Secoyas were originally two separate groups that had similar cultures and similar language. In the beginning of the 20th century, the two tribes merged together. By the 1970’s they were all one ethnic group. But in the 1980’s their territory was devastated by oil exploration. Soon after that in November of 1995 they sued Texaco for more than one billion dollars for environmental abuses and for dumping more than 3,000 gallons of oil a day into their lagoons. After that they became two separate groups again.
Quichuas Amazonicas is a very large tribe. They live in the province of Pastaza. That tribe speaks Quichua. There are 70,000 people. The Quichuas Amazonicas are divided into two subgroups of 30,000 and 40,000 people each. Today there is the Napo Quichuas Runa that live on the Upper Napo River and the other subgroup is the Canelos Quichuas. The Quichua language was the trade language before the Spanish conquest and is still used today. The Quichuas were introduced into Amazonian region from the Andean Mountains in the 17th century by Catholic missionaries.
The Huaorani territory extends from the Napo River into the north to the Curaray River located in the south. Most of the Huaorani people live in the communities of Tona, Empari, Payuno, Cononaco, and Yasuni. The remainder of the people are located in the basins of the Cononaco and Shiripuno Rivers. There are approximately 13,000 individuals in the tribe. The people use to be known as the “Pejorative” people, it means “warring savages”. Now they are sometimes called the “Achuas Quichua”, the word means “savages”. The Huaorani tribe is unfortunately well known for spearing five North American Summer Institute of Linguistics missionaries in 1956. Among all of Ecuador’s indigenous groups, this group remains the most isolated from western civilization.
The Shuar people are located in the southeastern part of Ecuador between the Pastaza and Maranon Rivers. They are east of the present city of Cuenca along the contested border with Peru. Their region is a rocky 25,000 square miles along the lower eastern slopes of the Andes. In that whole area there is 40,000 people. In Shuar language, “shuar” means “people”. They are the second largest and most studied Amazonian group. Many of the people outside their tribe have used the term “jibaro” or “jivaro” for their name. Jibaro and jivaro have no meaning to the Shuar tribe. The Shuar people rejected both names because it’s a term foreign to their culture and has a historic negative association with savages and head hunting.
The tribe related to the Shuar is the Achuar tribe. The Shuar and the Achuar tribes did share the same area, customs and spoke similar languages. They live along the Corrientes, Pastaza, and the Maranon Rivers. Their territory has the most wealthy oil reserves. Along with the oil reserves, their homeland contains some of the highest biodiversity on earth. The Achuar use to live in the Amazon rainforests of northern Peru. The Achuar speak Achuar. There are 11,000 people and 77 ancestral communities. They remained isolated from civilization until the 1970’s when oil exploration started in their territory. An Achuar had to be born in the rainforest to be considered part of the Achuar tribe. They believe that when someone dies, the person’s lungs turn into butterflies and their shadow becomes a deer, their heart becomes a bird and their soul becomes an owl.
The last group in Ecuador is the Zapara tribe. The tribe started forming 500 years ago. In their own language their name means “person of the forest”. There are 200,000 people in 39 different groups. They are often called Zaparos, which refers to a type of basket. There is the least amount of recorded information on this tribe.
Ecuador is full of many tribes with rich cultural and mythical histories. These people live simple and hard lives, but are obviously successful as they have survived for many centuries.