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Most cultural anthropologists now believe that the wars Chagnon witnessed were provoked by Chagnon himself. He offered axes, machetes, fishhooks and pots in exchange for ethnographic information, creating tensions among villages that vied for monopoly control of his wares. Within months of Chagnon's arrival in 1964, three different fights broke out between villages that had previously been at peace for decades. Anthropologist Brian Ferguson reports that Chagnon was "very much involved in the fighting and the wars. Chagnon becomes a central figure in determining battles over trade goods and machetes." A Yanomami reports that Chagnon offered him an outboard motor in exchange for help, including the procurement of a Yanomami wife. Shotguns, a seemingly unlimited supply of trade goods and willingness to don feathers, face paint and a loincloth allowed Chagnon to transform himself from an "improverished Ph.D. student at the bottom of the totem pole to being a figure of preternatural power." Tierney argues that many of Chagnon's data are simply false. The Yanomami do not have a particularly high murder rate, nor do men who kill reproduce more than those who don't. Neither are the Yanomami particularly well-nourished--a claim that Chagnon uses to argue that men fight over women and not food.

Unfortunately, Tierney says, the portrait was inaccurate: "The Yanomami have a low level of homicide by world standards of tribal culture and a very low level by Amazonian standards ... The attempt to portray the Yanomami as archetypes of ferocity would be pathetic were it not for its political consequences." Indeed, the book became anthropology's bestseller, which brought the modern world to the tribe's doorstep. Other anthropologists wanted a piece of the action; filmmakers wanted to document their lifestyle; the Atomic Energy Commission wanted their unique, untainted blood for radiation studies. The Yanomami wanted to be left alone, but no one listened.

In the three decades chronicled in the book, the invading hordes gave them measles and weapons to kill each other, destroyed their homes and damaged their culture beyond repair.