A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro,

by Alfred Russel Wallace

Five tribes are met with by the traders:—

1. Múras, from the mouth to sixteen days’ voyage up.

2. Purupurús, from thence to about thirty days’ voyage up.

3. Catauxís, in the district of the Purupurús, but in the igaripés and lakes inland.

4. Jamamarís, inland on the west bank.

5. Jubirís, on the river-banks above the Purupurús.

The Múras are rather a tall race, have a good deal of beard for Indians, and the hair of the head is slightly crisp and wavy. They used formerly to go naked, but now the men all wear trowsers and shirts, and the women petticoats. Their houses are grouped together in small villages, and are scarcely ever more than a roof supported on posts; very rarely do they take the trouble to build any walls. They make no hammocks, but hang up three bands of a bark called “invíra,” on which they sleep; but the more civilized now purchase of the traders, hammocks made by other Indians. They practise scarcely any cultivation, except sometimes a little mandiocca, but generally live on wild fruits, and abundance of fish and game: their food is entirely produced by the river, consisting of the Manatus, or cow-fish, which is as good as beef, turtles, and various kinds of fish, all of which are in great abundance, so that the traders say there are no people who live so well as the Múras; they have therefore no occasion for gravatánas, which they do not make, but have a great variety of bows and arrows and harpoons, and construct very good canoes. They now all cut their hair; the old men have a large hole in their lower lip filled up with a piece of wood, but this custom is now disused. Each man has two or three wives, but there is no ceremony of marriage; and they bury their dead sometimes in the house, but more commonly outside, and put all the goods of the deceased upon his grave. The women use necklaces and bracelets of beads, and the men tie the seeds of the India-rubber tree to their legs when they dance. Each village has a Tushaúa: the succession is hereditary, but the chief has very little power. They have pagés, whom they believe to have much skill, and are afraid of, and pay well. They were formerly very warlike, and made many attacks upon the Europeans, but are now much more peaceful; and are the most skilful of all Indians in shooting turtles and fish, and in catching the cow-fish. They still use their own language among themselves, though they also understand the Lingoa Geral. The white traders obtain from them salsaparilha, oil from turtles’ eggs and the cow-fish, Brazil-nuts, and estopa, which is the bark of the young Brazil-nut tree (Bertholletia excelsa), used extensively for caulking canoes; and pay them in cotton goods, harpoon and arrow-heads, hooks, beads, knives, cutlasses, etc.

The next tribe, the Purupurús, are in many respects very peculiar, and differ remarkably in their habits from any other nation we have yet described. They call themselves Pamouirís, but are always called by the Brazilians Purupurús, a name also applied to a peculiar disease, with which they are almost all afflicted: this consists in the body being spotted and blotched with white, brown, or nearly black patches, of irregular size and shape, and having a very disagreeable appearance: when young, their skins are clear, but as they grow up, they invariably become more or less spotted. Other Indians are sometimes seen afflicted in this manner, and they are then said to have the Purupurú; though it does not appear whether the disease is called after the tribe of Indians who are most subject to it, or the Indians after the disease. Some say that the word is Portuguese, but this seems to be a mistake.

The Purupurús, men and women, go perfectly naked; and their houses are of the rudest construction, being semicylindrical, like those of our gipsies, and so small, as to be set up on the sandy beaches, and carried away in their canoes whenever they wish to move. These canoes are of the rudest construction, having a flat bottom and upright sides,—a mere square box, and quite unlike those of all other Indians. But what distinguishes them yet more from their neighbours is, that they use neither the gravatána, nor bow and arrows, but have an instrument called a “palheta,” which is a piece of wood with a projection at the end, to secure the base of the arrow, the middle of which is held with the handle of the palheta in the hand, and thus thrown as from a sling: they have a surprising dexterity in the use of this weapon, and with it readily kill game, birds, and fish.

They grow a few fruits, such as yams and plantains, but seldom have any mandiocca, and they construct earthen pans to cook in. They sleep in their houses on the sand of the prayas, making no hammocks or clothing of any kind; they make no fires in their houses, which are too small, but are kept warm at night by the number of persons in them. They bore large holes in the upper and lower lip, in the septum of the nose, and in the ears; at their festivals they insert in these holes sticks, six or eight inches long; at other times they have only a short piece in, to keep them open. In the wet season, when the prayas and banks of the river are all flooded, they construct rafts, of trunks of trees bound together with creepers, and on them erect their huts, and live there till the waters fall again, when they guide their raft to the first sandy beach that appears.