[1] The Huambisa first encountered the Spanish in 1549, and through the next decade the conquistador Juan de Salinas launched several incursions in their homeland.
[1] Spanish Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries made a series of attempts to evangelize the Huambisa in the 18th and 19th centuries, but all resulted in failure.
[1] The Huambisa have faced significant turmoil since the 1940s as their native land has been the subject of a border dispute between Peru and Ecuador.
[3] By the 1980s, the Huambisa gained legal recognition of their ownership of their ancestral lands, making them one of the few indigenous peoples in South America who retain the territory they had prior to European colonization.
They are primarily agriculturists who grow crops, especially plantains and cassava but also tobacco, cotton, and other plants, using slash-and-burn methods.