Identification. The name "Yagua" is of unknown but definitely foreign origin and first appears in Jesuit sources of the eighteenth century. The Yagua call themselves "Nihamwo" (people).
Location. The Yagua live scattered in the tropical rain forest of the northwestern Amazon, between 2° and 5° S and 70° and 75° W, mainly in the northeast of the present-day department of Loreto, Peru, bordering Colombia and Brazil.
Demography. In 1982 the Yagua population was estimated at 3,300 living in about sixty villages of 10 to 180 inhabitants.
Linguistic Affiliation, Yagua is the only extant member of the Peba-Yaguan Language Family of the GĂȘ-Pano-Carib Phylum. At least three dialects are spoken today.