This book brings together the results of six years research of the Nukak,a hunter-gatherer group from the Colombian Amazon. These results are based on information collected during seven fieldwork seasons carried out between 1990 and 1996, as well as on interviews with two Nukak boys with a good command of the Spanish language and three Nukak women who were hospitalized in Santafé de Bogotá. In the mid-1990s the Nukak population was estimated at approximately 500 known people, a figure arrived at from several different sources of information and by correlating data from researchers in the area. Of this population I have had contact with 223 individuals from nine different bands (or band segments) in their habitat in the tropical rainforest, as well as the three women in Santafé de Bogotá mentioned above (they had been taken there temporarily for medical treatment) and three children who lived in colonos (settlers’1) houses in Guaviare. This gives a total of 229 people with whom I have had face-to-face contact, and from whom I have gained knowledge of the various aspects of Nukak culture.