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The Katukina lived through a period marked by constant dislocations during their first years of contact with Whites, attempting to escape alive from the ‘correrias’ organized by the Peruvian gum extractors and Brazilian rubber tappers – incursions aimed at eliminating the indigenous populations in order to provide uninhibited access to the rubber trees. As they fled the correrias, the Katukina were scattered throughout the region. With no means of keeping themselves intact as a group, they became dispersed throughout the forest, living on game, wild plant produce and raids on the plantations they came across during their travels, since they were no longer able to make their own as swiddens: these would have provided an easy trail inevitably leading the Whites to them. Moreover, the constant relocations were also impelled by the belief that the spirits of the dead, pining their kin, could come to earth in search of the living.

The correrias came to an end in the first decade of the 20^th century, in part due to the depletion of the gum trees which had been felled, but also due to the border conflicts between Brazil and Peru, which were resolved by treaty in 1909. A fall in the price of rubber on the international market in 1912 also contributed to cessation of the correrias. Although over, the Katukina retain horrific memories of these events transmitted by their parents and grandparents, recollections telling of flights and separations in the forest, filled with images of mutilated bodies and marked by violence.

As the region became populated by non-Indians, the Katukina witnessed both the territory in which they lived and their population drastically reduced – and here we must also take into account the population losses arising from the diseases which had not existed among them in the past. Faced with no alternative, the Katukina ended up working in rubber extraction, but continued to be dispersed across the region, since it became usual for each nuclear family to settle to work in a different rubber zone. This obviously caused a rupture in their society, since they were no longer able to organize and share their lives in accordance with their own principles and sociocultural values.

In this to and fro between rivers and rubber zones, the reference point was always the Gregório river, or more precisely the Sete Estrelas (Seven Stars) rubber plantation, a place to which the Katukina invariably returned after varying periods in different locations. The moves from one river or rubber area to another are part of Katukina memory. The main areas they passed through were the Sete Estrelas and Cashinahua rubber plantations on the Gregório river, Universo on the Tarauacá, and Guarani and Bom Futuro on the smaller Liberdade river.

During the 1950s there was a break in the constant dislocations and the majority of the Katukina – though not all of them – were reunited at the Sete Estrelas rubber plantation. The group was split in the following decade as a result firstly of misunderstandings between the Katukina, their chief and the new owner of the rubber plantation for whom they were working, and secondly due to disputes with the Yawanawá, a neighbouring Pano indigenous group from the Gregório river, with whom relations had always oscillated between open hostility and reserved friendship. Seeking a new boss and wary of the threat of conflicts with the Yawanawá, part of the group decided to look for another place to live. They eventually settled for about eight years at a rubber plantation close to the mouth of the smaller Liberdade river, on the frontier between Acre and Amazonas states.

The 1970s witnessed two events which contributed in a definitive form to the contemporary location of the villages: the opening of the BR-364 (Rio Branco-Cruzeiro do Sul) highway and the arrival of the New Tribes of Brazil Mission (Missão Novas Tribos do Brasil – MNTB) to begin working among the Katukina of the Gregório river. With the start of the construction works for the BR-364, part of the group which had settled during the previous decade close to the mouth of the Liberdade river relocated to work with the 7^th BEC (Batalhão de Engenharia de Construção/Construction Engineering Battalion) in clearing forest for construction of the highway; they were also joined by other peoples from the Gregório river. After the clearance work was complete, the Katukina received permission from the 7^th BEC to live alongside the highway, which they thought would be a good location due to the proximity to the town of Cruzeiro do Sul, an urban centre where – so they hoped – they would be able to sell what they produced easily and also obtain the industrialized goods they required. Those who returned to or remained in the village on the Gregório river, saw the missionaries of the MNTB as a potential regular source of medical and educational assistance.

It was only in the middle of the 1980s, after many years of wandering and relocations, that the Katukina were guaranteed their rights to possession of the territory where they lived, finally breaking the ties which had bound them to the rubber bosses.