Amahuaca

In 1960-1961, anthropologists Robert Carneiro (AMNH curator) and Gertrude Dole filmed the Amahuaca Indians, who inhabit a remote area of Peru, as documentation for their field work. The film documents the daily life of the inhabitants of Chumichinia, an island in the Ucayali River, whose way of life has not been significantly changed by outside contact except for the addition of modern clothing to their traditional costume. The planting and tending of maize, pottery making, baking of corn bread, spinning, weaving and dying of cloth, construction of a thatch dwelling, and the collection of fish roe from the river are shown. A variety of domesticated animals appear: a peccary, an ocelot, dogs, fowl, and a puppy nursed by an Indian woman. The second part, set in Varadero on the upper Inuya River (a tributary of the Urubamba River), opens with men and boys fishing with bows and arrows, but the main portion deals with the maize harvest celebration: particularly displayed is the traditional attire, including body painting, tooth staining, and as part of the festivities the men play a spear-throwing game. Scenes of bead making, basket weaving, throwing of pottery, and weapon making, as well as a demonstration of how the traditional woven skirt is worn, are interspersed.