ILLINOIS LIBRARY URBANA-CHAMPAIG r| 'RAL HIST. SURV INI Botany \\illiam T. Vickers Timothy Plowman M, >lication 1356 iBLISHED BY FIELD MUSEUM OF NATUF FIELDIANA Botany NEW SERIES, NO. 15 Useful Plants of the Siona and Secoya Indians of Eastern Ecuador William T. Vickers Department ofAnthropology and Sociology Florida International University Miami, Florida 33199 Timothy Plowman Department of Botany Field Museum of Natural History Accepted for publication January 6, 1984 August 31, 1984 Publication 1356 PUBLISHED BY FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 1984 Field Museum of Natural History Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 84-80843 ISSN 00 15-0746 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Table of Contents Abstract 1 1 2. Siona man with a basket of harvested fruit Introduction 1 of Pseudolmedia laevis 49 The Setting 2 13. Banisteriopsis caapi growing in cultiva- Methods 3 tion at Tarapoto, Peru 50 List of Plants of the Siona-Secoya 4 14. Shaman's apprentice collecting foliage of Conclusion 33 Diplopterys cabrerana 51 Acknowledgments 34 15. Shaman's apprentice pounding stem sec- Literature Cited 35 tions of Banisteriopsis caapi 52 Index . 61 16. Bundles of mashed stems of Banisteriop- sis caapi boiling over the fire at the cer- emonial yahe house 53 17. Siona woman collecting young Astrocar- List of Illustrations yum leaves 54 18. Fruits of peach palm (Bactris gasipaes) and plantains (Musa x paradisiaca)or\lhe Location of study sites in Napo Province, kitchen floor of a Siona house 55 eastern Ecuador Facing p. 1 1 9. Siona woman washing fruits ofpeach palm 1. Secoya male in decorative dress 38 (Bactris gasipaes) 56 2. Siona-Secoya canoes entering a small trib- 20. Secoya girl preparing a mash from boiled utary of the Aguarico River opposite San fruit .... 57 Pablo 39 peach palm (Bactris gasipaes) 2 1 . Secoya woman pressing peach palm mash 3. A traditional-style Secoya house at San a sieve 58 Pablo 40 (Bactris gasipaes) through 22. x at the 4. A Siona-Secoya youth planting Zea mays Brugmansia insignis growing Kofan village of Dureno on the Rio (Gramineae) in a recently burned plot . 41 Aguarico 59 5. A Siona garden three months after plant- 23. Brunfelsia grandiflora growing in the yard ing 42 of a Siona-Kofan household on the Cuy- 6. Secoya man painting a cotton cloth ... 43 abeno River . 60 7. Scarification on the arm of a Siona youth 44 8 . Secoya woman roasting a flat manioc cake 45 9. Secoya men making spears 46 [0. Shaman's apprentice fashions a shaman's List of Tables rattle from the leaves of a Pariana species for the yahe rite 47 ; 1 . Siona-Secoya youth harvesting fruit of 1 . Outline of plant uses among the Siona- Pourouma cecropiifolia 48 Secoya 34 111 U-l a CO Useful Plants of the Siona and Secoya Indians of Eastern Ecuador Abstract The Siona and Secoya Indians of eastern Ec- 26 distinctive cultural groups, and today number- uador are shifting cultivators and foragers who ing about 50,000 people in seven surviving groups make extensive use ofboth feral and domesticated (Jivaroan, Lowland Quichua, Waorani, Siona, Se- plant materials in most aspects of their culture. coya, Kofan, and Zaparo). This study fully or partially identifies approxi- Like all indigenous peoples, the Indians of Ec- mately 224 species in 1 66 genera and 69 families uador have an intimate knowledge of their sur- that are in common occurrence. A wide variety of roundings. Over many millenia, an enormous cor- these plants are employed for foods and as ma- pus of information about plants and animals has terials for tools, weapons, crafts, construction, and been discovered, upon which these peoples con- personal adornment. The use of plants for medic- tinue to base their subsistence. Groups living in inal and ritual purposes is notable, with emphasis different geographical and ecological areas of Ec- given to hallucinogenic plants of such genera as uador have specialized inventories of the useful Banisteriopsis, Diplopterys, Brugmansia, and wild plants of their areas, as well as extensive Brunfelsia. As in a number of northwestern Ama- knowledge about cultivated plants, both native and zonian societies, the use of Banisteriopsis is par- introduced. Although Spanish names for plants are ticularly significant because it is the basis of the in general use throughout the country, more iso- most important rituals and is viewed as the me- lated Amerindian groups have developed inde- dium through which supernatural knowledge and pendent systems of plant classification, and most power are achieved. The Banisteriopsis cult is the plants have names in native languages. conceptual cornerstone of Siona and Secoya reli- The ethnobotanical study of the major cultural gion, mythology, art, medicine, and warfare. areas of South America, of which the Amazon Basin is an outstanding example, has scarcely be- gun. Research on the native uses of plants falls far behind the general floristic surveys which are now Introduction being conducted in several countries in order to document what plant species exist in each area. In spite of its small area (105,685 sq mi or ap- Many previous accounts of native plant names proximately the size of Colorado), Ecuador has a and/or uses in Amazonia lack scientific identifi- remarkably rich flora, estimated to contain at least cations of the species because of the difficulty in 20,000 species of vascular plants (A. Gentry & C. naming many groups of tropical plants and, more H. Dodson, personal communication). Many areas importantly, are not documented with preserved of Ecuador, especially the eastern lowlands which voucher specimens for future re-examination to form the western edge of the Amazon Basin, re- confirm or refute the species identity. main unexplored or poorly sampled by botanists. For the Northwest Amazon, there are relatively Superimposed on this exceptionally rich flora are few studies of indigenous uses of plants which are a diversity of Amerindian peoples, estimated at substantiated with voucher specimens. Outstand- the time of European contact to include at least ing among these are numerous works of R. E. VICKERS & PLOWMAN: USEFUL PLANTS OF SIONA-SECOYA Schultes on the ethnobotany of tribes of the Co- map facing page 1 ) and speak closely related dia- lombian Amazon (Schultes, 1942, 1954, 1955, lects belonging to the western division of the Tu- 1956, 1963, 1964a,b, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970a,b, kanoan language family. The two groups are cul- 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, inter alia). Two disser- turally similar, and in the Aguarico River basin tations have attempted to enumerate the plants of (of northeastern Ecuador), they have joined to form the Kofan Indians of the Colombia-Ecuador bor- common settlements in which they interact and der area (Pinkley, 1 973) and of the Kamsa Indians intermarry with frequency. Historically the Siona of the Sibundoy Valley in southern Colombia were associated with the Putumayo and Aguarico (Bristol, 1965), but neither of these has been pub- rivers, whereas the Secoyas inhabited the north lished, and the studies remain largely unavailable. side of the Napo River below its confluence with Davis & Yost (1983) have recently completed an the Aguarico. The Secoyas consider the Santa Maria ethnobotanical study of the Waorani (Auca) of River, which is within the latter area, as their tra- eastern Ecuador. For Amazonian Peru, only a pre- ditional homeland. liminary listing of the useful native plants has been The area once covered by members of the west- prepared (Bodley, 1978). Berlin has made exten- ern Tukanoan linguistic branch stretched over an sive ethnobotanical plant collections in the Alto area of approximately 82,000 sq km (31,500 sq Maranon region and, to date, has published arti- mi) between 1N-4S latitude and 73-77W lon- cles on the classificatory principles of Aguaruna gitude in what today constitutes parts of Ecuador, ethnobotany (Berlin, 1976, 1977) and the botan- Colombia, and Peru. Steward (1949, p. 663) es- ical aspects ofAguaruna cosmology (Berlin, 1978). timates that their population at the time of the King (1982) and King & Levey (1982) have made conquest was 16,000. The present population observations on the ethnopharmacology and diet, probably does not exceed 1,000 individuals in respectively, of the Angotero-Secoya Indians of scattered settlements in Ecuador, Colombia, and northeastern Peru. For the Choco region of west- Peru. ern Colombia, Forero Pinto (1980) has published The climate corresponds to Koppen's Afor trop- an ethnobotanical study of the Cuna and Wauana ical wet (with no month drier than 60 mm of rain- Indians. fall). Data collected at Limoncocha (a former Sum- During the course of conducting studies on the mer Institute of Linguistics base camp on the Napo subsistence patterns and ethnography of the Siona River), 32 km southwest of the Siona-Secoya set- and Secoya peoples in eastern Ecuador, one of us tlement ofShushufindi on the Aguarico River, show (Vickers) collected some 273 plant specimens in a mean annual rainfall of 3,375 mm (132 inches) order to document the use of plants among these for the period 1971-1972. The month of least rain- closely related groups. Various aspects of this re- fall for this period was December, with a mean of search, including the dynamics of subsistence and 172.5 mm (6.79 inches); the month of greatest the impact of frontier development, have been rainfall was March, with a mean of 411.2 mm published elsewhere (Hames & Vickers, 1982; (16.19 inches). Generally speaking, the "dry sea- Vickers, 1976, 1979, 1981a,b, 1983a-c), but a son," runs from December through February, and compilation of all the species observed or recorded the "wet season," from March through July. The has not yet appeared. In recognition of the great elevation of the study area is approximately 250 dearth of published data on the useful plants of m (823 ft).