Social Studies- Tribe Studies

In Social studies, we began studying about a tribe called the Matses. They are an indigenous tribe that lives in the Amazon Rainforest. We are supposed to write a paragraph about them.


Who are the Matsès? Interestingly, Mastsès - or as we call ‘ Jaguar People’- are an indigenous tribe that lives in the remote areas of the Amazon Rainforest, specifically, in the Javari River.

They use a method called ‘ Slash and Burn ‘ to create small-scaled farms. Planting crops is a great benefit for them because they don’t have any contacts with outsiders. Their primary food source is fishing but they also hunt and plant crops. Example of these foods is sweet plantains, maniocs, and roots such as beetroots, and carrots. They also hunt wild animals like wild boars. These things are basically the way they survive.

So how did their life on the land change? Their lives dramatically change when they began having an interaction with the outsiders. They began trading goods like clothing, food, and materials. These improved the lives of the Matsès. They began living in larger, fixed, super-nucleated and permanent villages. They stopped traveling into different parts of the forest and decided to stay in one specific area and continue living. They also stop creating farms all over the place causing to cut trees. Importantly, the lifestyle of the Matsès changed and improved. Committed to change, the tribe agreed to improve the way of their living and began contacting with outsiders which really had a strong impact on their community.

Some of them even chose to go out and face the real world and began living in rural cities or places, but some still chose to stay in the forest and continue living the way their ancestors or their parents lived.