The Kuikuro are an

indigenous people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

from the

Mato Grosso Mato Grosso ( – lit. "Thick Bush") is one of the states of Brazil, the third largest by area, located in the Central-West region. The state has 1.66% of the Brazilian population and is responsible for 1.9% of the Brazilian GDP. Neighboring ...

region of

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. Their language,

Kuikuro The Kuikuro are an indigenous people from the Mato Grosso region of Brazil. Their language, Kuikuro, is a part of the Cariban language family. The Kuikuro have many similarities with other Xingu tribes. They have a population of 592 in 2010, up ...

, is a part of the Cariban language family. The Kuikuro have many similarities with other Xingu tribes. They have a population of 592 in 2010, up from 450 in 2002. The Kuikuro are likely the descendants of the people who built the settlements known to archaeologists as

Kuhikugu Kuhikugu is an archaeological site located in Brazil, at the headwaters of the Xingu River, in the Amazon Rainforest. The area around Kuhikugu is located in part of the Xingu National Park today. Kuhikugu was first uncovered by anthropologist Mi ...

, located at the headwaters of the

Xingu River The Xingu River ( ; pt, Rio Xingu, ; Mẽbêngôkre: ''Byti'', ) is a river in north Brazil. It is a southeast tributary of the Amazon River and one of the largest clearwater rivers in the Amazon basin, accounting for about 5% of its water. ...

.Heckenberger, Michael. ''The Ecology of Power: Culture, Place, and Personhood in the Southern Amazon, A.D. 1000-2000.'' New York: Routledge, 2005. The settlements were probably inhabited from around 1,500 years ago to about 400 years ago; after this point the population may have been reduced by diseases introduced by

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

ans or, indirectly, by other native tribes who had traded with Europeans. Grann, David. ''The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon.'' New York: Doubleday Publishing, 2009. Stories of Kuhikugu may have inspired the British explorer Percy Fawcett on his ill-fated expedition looking for the "

Lost City of Z The Lost City of Z is the name given by Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett, a British surveyor, to an indigenous city that he believed had existed in the jungle of the Mato Grosso state of Brazil. Based on early histories of South America and his own e ...

" in the 1920s.

Language

The Kuikuro language is a language of the Karib language family, one of four dialects from the southern Karib language, the other three being the Kalapalo, Nahukuá and

Matipu language Amonap, also known as Apalakiri, is a Cariban language spoken by the Kuikuro and Kalapalo peoples of Brazil, and formerly by the Matipu. It is spoken in seven villages along the Culuene River in the Xingu Indigenous Park of Mato Grosso.Seki, ...

s. The Kuikuro language is still used in all aspects of life of the Kuikuros, except with communicating with other tribes. Intermarriage and Increased access to television and trading with the outside world has increased the need for the use of

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

. Tribal leaders and men most often know Portuguese, and it is rarer for women to know it, but this has been changing in recent years. An

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...

has been developed for Kuikuro and other Upper Xingu languages for training native teachers and creating educational materials. These teachers have now written a large number of texts, some used in local schools. Linguist Bruna Franchetto collected audio recordings of stories told in Kuikuro with transcriptions, which are permanently archived at the

Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) is a digital repository housed in LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections at the University of Texas at Austin. AILLA is a digital language archive dedicated to the digi ...

History

According to archaeological research, the history of the ancestors of the Kuikuros began around a thousand years ago. According to studies done in the Xingu region, by AD 1400 indigenous villages had reached great proportions, with buildings,

palisade A palisade, sometimes called a stakewall or a paling, is typically a fence or defensive wall made from iron or wooden stakes, or tree trunks, and used as a defensive structure or enclosure. Palisades can form a stockade. Etymology ''Palisade' ...

s, bridges, and entry gates, with bridges and roads having congruent angles to each other. It is estimated that nearly 10,000 natives lived in the region at the time. One of the first contact of the Kuikuros with Europeans was with the German Karl von den Steinen’s 1884 expedition. Steinen is known in Kuikuro narratives as Kalusi, "the first white man to come in peace." The Kuikuro’s oral history extends back to even before Steinen, to the first European man to visit the Xingu, though these people were not like Steinen, and captured and killed natives, and were known as ''bandeirantes.'' During contact with the Europeans, many deadly diseases were distributed to the natives and their numbers dropped dramatically. It is estimated that the population dropped from 3,000 natives in 1900 to little over 700 by the end of 1940.

Religion

The Kuikuro’s religion is a mixture of Shamanist and healing beliefs. Their beliefs are based on traditional narratives that explain how and why things exist. They Believe that Giti (Sun) and Alukuma (Moon) created the world, but they also believe in the ancestors of the sun and moon and how they were created. They also believe in Itseke, beings that live in the waters and in the forest that bring illness and death. The Kuikuros follow

Shamans Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritu ...

, who serve as religious leaders and healers. The Shamans can also connect with the Itseke, while ordinary people can not. The shamans go through many rituals and initiations to become shamans, and must be in a state of seclusion during these initiations. They can then diagnose diseases and causes of natural disasters and theft in the village.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuikuro People Xingu peoples Indigenous peoples in Brazil Indigenous peoples of the Amazon