Key Facts about Mashco Piro Tribe

July 20, 2024

Rare photographs of the Mashco Piro, an uncontacted Indigenous tribe residing in the remote Peruvian Amazon, were published recently.

About Mashco Piro Tribe:

Mashco Piro are believed to be the largest uncontacted tribe on Earth, numbering more than 750 people.
These nomadic hunter-gatherers live in the Amazon jungles of the Madre de Dios Region, close to Peru’s border with Brazil and Bolivia.
They are believed to have fled into the recesses of the jungle during the Amazon Rubber Boom in the late 1800s, a time of enslavement and death for many tribes.
They live on the banks of the Las Piedras River in the Alto Purús National Park in huts constructed of palm leaf. In the rainy season, they retreat to huts in the rainforest.
The Mashco-Piro tribe speaks a dialect of the Piro language.
Way of Life:
- Members of the tribe wear very little clothing.
- Men, women, and children alike wear only a yellowish-brown cloth above the waist and perhaps arm and leg bands of the same color.
- They have medium stature and athletic build.
- All have straight black hair worn shoulder length or longer.
Men probably hunt with the weapons they have been seen carrying, such as bows and arrows, as well as spears.
Peru’s government has forbidden all contact with the Mashco Piro, fearing the spread of a disease among the population to which it has no immunity.