Where or what was the last culture or tribe to encounter the outside, modern world? Were there tribes in South America in recent history that have not yet met a white man, or a Spaniard, or anything like that? Maybe on some remote island?
Napolean Chagnon made his career out of an ethnogrophy of the Yanomomo in ~1950. They’re probably the best known out-of-the-loopers, but others may have come along since.
How about an ethnography. And yes, I am aware that the popular spelling of the tribe’s name has changed since the original publication of Chagnon’s work.
Rednecks.
IIRC, Jared Diamond in his Guns, Germs, and Steel suggests that the last “first contact” probably occurred in the highlands of New Guinea in the 1930s. Don’t have it to hand, but apparently it was only when Westerners were able to fly over the New Guinean highlands in aircraft that they realized that what they’d assumed to be uniformly inhostpitable mountains in fact contained numerous valleys, with lots of different tribes in them. In many cases, these tribes weren’t even aware of each other’s existence, much less that of the Europeans. Their languages were in most cases wholly different from one another, etc. It took years for expeditions to reach all of them. I suppose it remains theoretically possible that there are still undiscovered peoples in these areas.
rackensack, I thought that he said that there definately were tribes in PNG that had not yet been ‘discovered’ - Previously ‘discovered’ tribes had spoken about them, and so they know that they’re out there somewhere, but have no idea where…
I do know that up until the 1930s, there were Australian Aborigional tribes that had had no western contact, or at least only indirect western contact, but I think that they’ve all been ‘found’ now…
The Huaorani (aka Waorani, Aucas, etc.), of Ecuador, first came into significant contact with westerners in the 1950s. Of course they knew that westerners were around somewhere out there for a long time, and often killed those who intruded, but the real contact started in the 1950s (I think; maybe not until the 1960s). I believe that one small clan has fled to the remotest part of the Huaorani territory and still may be living out there out of direct contact with western civ. There is an excellent book on the recent history of the Huao called Savages (intended by the author as an ironic). I recently worked in a remote area of Peru where there was sufficient concern about possible encounters with “uncontacted” groups that everyone had to be vaccinated against just about every known disease to avoid possibly wiping them out. One of my field assistants, a Yaminahua in his 40s, was a young man when the missionaries first came to his village.