Compared to the other groups in the northern Pano subset, the Matsés have the largest population.
Contact with Indigenous and Non-Indigenous People The origin of the Matsés is directly related to the merger of various Indigenous communities that did not always speak mutually intelligible languages. Historically, the Matsés participated in looting and planned raids on other Pano groups. The incentive for these attacks involved the massacre of that particular Pano group's Indigenous men, so that their women and children became powerless due to a lack of protection. The Matsés, consequently, would use their superiority and dominance, by killing off warriors of the other Indigenous' groups so that the women and children of the other groups would have no other choice but to join the Matsés, where they would have to assimilate. From approximately the 1870s to about the 1920s, the Matsés lost their access to the Javari River due to the boom of the rubber industry which was centered in the Amazon basin, where the extraction and commercialization of rubber threatened the Matsés lifestyle. During this period, the Matsés avoided conflict with non-Indigenous people and relocated to interfluvial areas, while maintaining a pattern of dispersal that allowed them to avoid the rubber extraction fronts. Direct contact between the Matsés and non-Indigenous people commenced around the 1920s. In a 1926 interview between Romanoff and a Peruvian man working on the Gálvez river, the Peruvian declared that rubber bosses were unable to set up on the Choba river due to Indigenous attacks. These attacks ignited a response from the non-Indigenous people, who kidnapped Matsés woman and children. This resulted in intensified warfare, and successful Matsés attacks meant that they were able to recover their people, along with firearms and metal tools. Meanwhile, warfare between the Matsés and other Indigenous groups continued. By the 1950s, the wave of rubber tappers fizzled out and was later replaced by "logging activity and the trade in forest game and skins, mainly to supply the towns of Peruvian Amazonia."
Health Presently, the Matsés have failed to receive adequate health care for over a decade. Consequently, diseases such as "malaria, worms, tuberculosis, malnutrition and hepatitis" have continued without reduction. The lack of organization and distribution of appropriate vaccinations, medication and prevention methods has resulted in high levels of deaths among the Matsés. The main problem is that most Indigenous communities lack medications or medical tools – microscopes, needles, thermometers – that help make basic diagnoses. For instance, Matsés today suffer "high levels of hepatitis B and D infections" and hepatic complications such as hepatitis D can cause death in a matter of days. It also causes the Matsés communities to distrust the use of vaccines. These people now fear falling ill, and do not receive clear information as to what caused the symptoms of their deceased kin. Sadly, "The Matsés do not know how many of them are infected, but the constant loss of young people, most of them under 30 years old, generates a pervasive mood of sadness and fear."
Education In Brazil, Matsés communities are considered to be monolingual, so teachers are recruited from the community itself. Teachers tend to be elders; individuals that the community trusts to teach the youth although they have never completed formal teacher training. Attempts have been made to promote Indigenous teacher training. The state education secretary for the Amazons has been formally running a training course, but lack of organization means that the classes are offered only sporadically. Presently, only two Matsés schools exist, constructed by the Atalaia do Norte municipal council. Despite complaints from the Matsés communities, funding and construction of official Matsés schools is rare. As a consequence, Matsés parents, who hope to provide their family with higher education and greater job opportunities, send their children to neighbouring towns for their education. The lack of Matsés schools—that would have focused on Indigenous knowledge, culture, and language—consequently raises the likelihood of children assimilating into a culture unlike their own, decreasing the chances of cultural transmission to the next generation.
Other Materials Comprehensive descriptions of the general Matsés culture can be found in Romanoff's 1984 dissertation; discussion of the Mayoruna subgroups history and culture can be found in Erikson's 1994 dissertation; and information about Matsés contemporary culture and history can be found in Matlock's 2002 dissertation. The first anthropologist to work among the Matsés was Steven Romanoff, who published an article on Matsés land use, a short article on Matsés women as hunters, as well as his Ph.D. dissertation. Works by Erikson (1990a, 1992a, and 2001) are all useful published ethnographic studies about the Matis in Brazil, which are relevant to the description of the Mayoruna subgroup, but lacking specific data on the Matsés. Luis Calixto Méndez, a Peruvian anthropologist, has also been working with the Matsés for several years. At first he did some ethnographic research among the Matsés, but in recent years his research has been restricted to administrative work for the Non-Government Organization Centre for Amazonian Indigenous Development. The Matsés made their first permanent contact with the outside world in 1969 when they accepted
SIL missionaries into their communities. Before that date, they were effectively at-war with the Peruvian government, which had bombed their villages with napalm and sent the Peruvian army to invade their communities to counter Matsés raids on villages to kidnap women for the tribe. At present, relations between the Matsés and the Peruvian government are peaceful. Dan James Pantone and Bjorn Svensson described the Matsés first peaceful contact with the outside world in an article in
Native Planet. In their article, James and Svensson described the 1969 encounter between the Matsés with SIL linguists Harriet Fields and Hattie Kneeland. That same year, 1969, photojournalist
Loren McIntyre made contact with the Matsés as described in
Petru Popescu's book
Amazon Beaming. == Indigenous political reorganization ==