Third day in the Yura village, Manu National Park. Sitting in a hammock along with Jose and the other two Yura guests. It's great being a Yura guest, and the other two Yura know it. All you have to do is lie around in a hammock and you are fed constantly -- fish, masato, roasted monkey, even some fairly rotten tapir meat that must have been laying around for some time. It really stank, so I passed, but the Yura really seemed to like it. Only 32 people here, and like the other Yura communities, these are the ones who survived after the epidemics that followed the first contact.

After the first four Yura were taken to the mission village, they were loaded up with gifts and then given a ride up the Mishagua River and released. The Yura hiked for two days, each with a large sack of pots and pans, sugar, machetes, metal cups, etc. -- the same things that the outside world has been using to lure Indians out of the bush since Columbus arrived. They hiked for two days and arrived in their village on the Fitzcarrald Pass at night. People blew armadillo-tail "trumpets" to gather the villagers and by the light of a campfire, the four Yura told the shocked villagers their story. They had been taken by a boatload of dawa (outsiders/enemies) to a huge village where innumerable dawa lived, like in the land of the dead, of how they saw huge metal birds land from the sky (helicopters), how they saw tiny dead spirits (on a television set), and how they had been given all of these gifts, and then let go.

One old Yura who had been in the village at the time told me that as he listened to this tale, that his whole body had begun to shake, so full of fear was he. These men had gone to the land of the dead and then returned! One can only imagine how much of a shock it must have been for these people -- a paradigm shift, like learning that the world was round and not flat, or hearing tales from the first travelers returning from the New World. Unfortunately, small groups of Yura began to descend the river and hail woodcutting boats. Soon, these too were taken to the mission town and showered with presents by the woodcutters. For years, the woodcutters had been kept out of the area due to arrows, and were now eager to begin logging the upper Mishagua River. About this time, an epidemic of whooping cough hit the mission town and the visiting Yura quickly became sick. When they returned to the Fitzcarrald Pass area and Manu, an epidemic broke out. Over the next year -- and I have collected terribly sad tales of old Yura dragging themselves off into the jungle to die -- approximately 30% of the Yura died, almost all of the old shamans, chiefs and the elderly.

What a price to pay for a few bags full of gifts.

A month ago, I was listening to the chief tell me this story, and his six or seven-year-old daughter was listening carefully as her father described all the gifts that the Yura received shortly after their contact.

"Erpa" ("Daddy"), she said, "why were we given all of those gifts and no one gives us anything now?"

"That's the way it is when you are first contacted," the chief said. "Everyone wants to give you things. Then they forget about you and start chopping down the trees."