The Incredible Kichwa: Indigenous People of the Amazon Jungle

At sunset, the jungle comes alive just as the day’s blistering heat is fading. It signals with sound and movement. Black-masked capuchin monkeys crash through the palm canopy, flying recklessly overhead. Insects thrum, click and buzz.

Then the birdsong. Kiskadees, caciques and tanagers harmonize with yellow billed toucans. Our Kichwa guide is the only one able to distinguish between their calls.

Sunset Hikes

We climb ten flights of stairs on steel stanchions where two hundred foot long wire footbridges are suspended 120 feet above the jungle’s ceiling. Here our guide Sanshu pauses to listen, sourcing the singer in a tree visible only to him. And to us by using the high-powered tripod mounted binoculars he sets up for us.

Who are the Kichwa?

The Kichwa of the Amazon rainforest on the Napo River are an indigenous group of people from Ecuador. They are the largest in the region with a population of around 55,000 people. 

They believe humans, plants, and animals all have souls and are almost regarded as equals. The souls of plants are held in high regard since all life depends on a healthy relationship with nature. Unlike the Christian understanding, a soul is thought to be physical and visible through Ayahuasca which is revered as a sacred or magical plant due to its medicine and spiritual purposes.

Their diet is based on yucca, a potato-like food that is usually boiled. On the day I visited a Kichwa community, two members of the women’s community cooperative had prepared a traditional meal, cooked over a fire, for us to sample.

When food is scarce, the Kichwa people depend on alternative nourishment. The Amazon is biologically rich, but food is not abundant. 

Daily Rituals

The Kichwa mother awakens at 3am each day to prepare the family’s breakfast drink. Called chicha, it is a beverage made using fermented yucca roots – also called manioc. The result is a white-yellow liquid, with a milky consistency and a sour aftertaste, with usually 1-3% alcohol. This is both breakfast and an energy snack for family members.

The Kichwa rituals celebrate their jungle home in storytelling and song. They believe the surrounding plants, birds and animals have had former lives who are the spirit protectors of the forest. Perhaps evolving from a former human state.

Jungle Nights

On our nighttime hikes, our guide’s intimacy with the jungle and innate understanding of its inhabitant’s nocturnal habits and patterns was astonishing.

He heard the deadly bullet ants burrowing in a nearby rotted stump.

He found the toucans mating in a faraway treetop.

He felt the closeness of the tarantula.

Understood the monkey’s calls. He told us many stories about healing powers of plants and showed us where they were found. He identified the hallucinogenic and poisonous mushrooms.

He could see in the dark.