Uncontacted Tribes

                 Did you know there are still people living in the jungles and mountains that are uncontacted by civilization? In fact, there are many such tribes living around the world today. Some can be very dangerous, whereas others can be nearly impossible to find.

While on our trip into the Manu Rainforest in the Amazon, we actually stayed only a few miles from the site of a recent attack on illegal loggers by the Mashco Piro Tribe, one of the biggest tribes still living uncontacted. Sources say that the attack was unavoidable because the logging company had been logging and building roads inside their territory and destroying their land. On September 4, 2024, the Mashco Piro Tribe opened fire on an illegal logging camp that was logging inside their territory, killing two loggers and injuring at least one more with bows and arrows. 

Another dangerous uncontacted tribe is the Sentinelese. They are known as being the most dangerous uncontacted tribe in the world, and the most isolated as well. This is because they attack and kill anyone that approaches their territory. They live on North Sentinel Island, which is approximately the size of Manhattan, and is part of an island chain that also houses another uncontacted tribe, the Shompen. They are nomadic hunter gatherers and are thought to live in 3 groups on the island, although information on them is not solid, as it had to be gathered from boats out of arrows-range from shore. They are violent towards outsiders and have killed several people. This includes John Allen Chau, an American missionary killed in 2018, and two Indian fishermen who had moored their boat near North Sentinel to sleep after poaching nearby when their boat broke loose and drifted to shore (2006).

The ¨Man of the Hole¨ was the last member of his uncontacted tribe and the sole inhabitant of the Tanaru Indigenous Territory in Rondonia state, in the western Brazilian Amazon. He was called ¨Man of the Hole¨ because of his habit of digging deep holes, sometimes filled with stakes. He was the last member of his tribe after the rest were massacred by cattle ranchers who wanted land. He resisted all attempts at contact, so next to nothing is known about his tribe. He is used by activists as a symbol of indigenous genocide. He died in 2022.

There are many uncontacted tribes still living in the world, and I have only scratched the surface of the many, many tribes still out there. If you want to learn more, Survival International has lots of information. I hope that this essay has bored you out of your skull and that you regret clicking on it.

P.S. My parents made me write this.

sign at the manu rainforest docks warnig about uncontacted tribe violence