| Witoto group of tribes | 15,000 |
| Boro group | 15,000 |
| Dukaiya or Okaina group | 2,000 |
| Muenane group | 2,000 |
| Nonuya group | 1,000 |
| Resigero group | 1,000 |
| Andoke group | 10,000 |
| Menimehe group | 15,000 |
| Karahone group | 25,000 |
making a total of eighty-six thousand, or well under a hundred thousand. Koch-Grünberg estimates the Witoto-language group as comprising at least twenty thousand souls,[52] and a Peruvian official estimate gives thirty thousand as the supposed total, reduced within the last decade to some ten thousand.[53] It is practically impossible to obtain any reliable figure. Koch-Grünberg gives six thousand as his estimate of the number of the Miranha. I am inclined to think in this case the number is insufficient, and should place it at from fifteen to twenty thousand.
All the tribes north of the Japura have a mortal antipathy to all those south of that river, and think they are savages. The light-coloured tribes, as I have mentioned, invariably despise the darker races, and consider them of a lower grade than themselves, as, it will be seen, is actually the case. The Maku, a tribe of small dark people, are universally regarded and treated as slaves; the Witoto, smaller and darker than the adjacent Boro, are physically inferior, and far less particular in their ways and in the observance of tribal customs. The Andoke, sometimes called the white Indians on account of their fairer skins,[54] are the tyrants and bullies of all their neighbours; and it has been suggested that the warlike Awashiri, who are the terror of the Napo Piohe and Orahone tribes, are nomad Andoke or Miranha. Certainly both these people wander far from their usual districts. So feared are the Andoke that Boro carriers will refuse to go into the bush in the Andoke country.
Wallace credits the Kuretu with peaceable habits,[55] but for the most part all these peoples live in a constant state of internecine strife. Some friendship, or perhaps—as tribes never make friendships outside their own language area—it would be more correct to call it intertribal commerce, takes place between certain of these groups; and a mutual hatred of one group will occasionally form a vague tie between others. For instance, the Boro, Resigero, and Okaina may not love each other, but they agree in their detestation of the Witoto. The Okaina and the Andoke are practically at ceaseless war with all their neighbours, but the Andoke have some traffic with the Muenane and with the wandering Karahone, who serve to link up the tribes of the north with those of the south of the Japura, though they are separate from all other tribes. The Boro on the left bank of the Japura, where they migrated into territory trenching on that of the Menimehe, are on fairly amicable terms with the latter, and I have even seen a Boro man with the Menimehe tribal mark, though menimehe means “pig” in Boro. Possibly he had married a Menimehe woman. The Boro and Resigero also intermarry—at least cases of such marriages are known. The Tukana and Bara tribes on the Tikie will not marry into any other tribe, except the Maku, who will intermarry with any.
This state of endless warfare is based not on avarice but on fear. They fight because they are afraid of each other, and see no protection but in the extermination of their neighbours. Every ill that befalls a man they set down to the evil intent of an enemy. Death, from whatsoever cause, is invariably considered to be murder, and as murder it has to be revenged on some suspected person or persons. Hence it follows that blood-feuds innumerable are carried on relentlessly. Any and every excuse serves for a fight. If a thunderstorm should wreck a house it is more than sufficient reason for that household to attack another in reprisal of the damage done; for it is to them quite evident that the catastrophe was caused by the magic of some malicious dweller in the vicinity.
This state of abject apprehension influences the tribesmen in other ways. It will be found as root cause of many a tribal custom, and must not be forgotten in judging of native character and morals.
One result is that there are no recognised native trade routes or trade centres, to the best of my knowledge, nor are there any markets where the tribes of any language-group may meet and exchange their wares. Even local markets are non-existent. Trade is individual. Articles of commerce are handed from the maker to the purchaser, from the owner to the buyer, from tribe to tribe. If a tribe be renowned for pottery, as are the Menimehe, such pottery could only be obtained from a Menimehe, or bought “second-hand” from tribes living in the neighbourhood of the pottery workers, and from them traded to others, third, fourth, and even fifth hand. That articles are bought and passed on indefinitely in this fashion is proved by the fact that I found a Price’s candle-box among the Boro tribes on the Pama river, who had had no relations with the white man before my advent. After all, the wants of the Indian are few and simple, and he can supply most of them for himself, or at least a community can furnish its own; extra-tribal goods are distinctly luxuries.
It would be futile to attempt to give any localities for the many tribes into which the language-groups are divided; for if the group as a whole is to be regarded as a roving quantity, the tribes and their component units are far more uncertain, in view of their migratory habits. I have therefore not done more than make lists of the tribes met with in the middle Issa-Japura districts, without reference to the exact spot they might have temporarily inhabited when I met them.[56] These lists, which do not pretend to be exhaustive, contain the names of 136 Witoto tribes, 41 Boro, and 15 Okaina.
The “Maynanes,” “Recegaros,” and “Yabuyanos” mentioned by Hardenburg[57] as Witoto “sub-tribes, or naciones,” are not Witoto at all, and nacione is not a recognised name for these divisions, but merely adopted from the loose jargon of the rubber-gatherer. Nor is the same writer correct in considering the Witoto to be “the largest and most important tribe,” as the Karahone outnumber them considerably, and many other language-groups are decidedly more important in both the social and the scientific scale.