Xingu (people)

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Xingu Indians
Aweti • Kalapalo • Kamaiurá • Kayapó • Kuikuro • Matipu • Mehinako • Nahukuá • Suyá • Trumai • Waura • Yawalapiti

Total population
3000
Regions with significant populations

The indigenous people of Brazil's Xingu River have many cultural similarities despite their different ethnologies. Xingu people represent fifteen tribes and all four of Brazil's indigenous language groups, but they share similar belief systems, rituals, and ceremonies.

In the centuries since the penetration of the Europeans into South America, they fled from different regions to escape modernization and cultural dissimilation, nonetheless settlers made it up as far as the upper run of the Río Xingú. By the end of the 19th century about 3,000 natives lived at the Alto Xingu, where their current political status has kept them protected against European intruders. By the mid twentieth century this number had been reduced by foreign epidemic diseases such as flu, measles, smallpox and malaria to less than 1,000.

Two Brazilians, Orlando Villas Bôas and his brother, claim that from 1946 to 1973 an administrative and commercial post contributed substantially to the fact that in the year 1961 at the Alto Xingu of the Parque Indígena do Xingu one furnished, in order to offer to the remaining ethnical minorities a shelter. This has to it contributed that the number of the Xingu here living in 32 settlements rose to today again over 3000 inhabitants, half of them younger than 15 years.

The Xingu living in this region have similar habits and social systems, despite different languages. Specifically, they consist of the following Indian peoples: the Aweti, Kalapalo, Kamaiurá, Kayapó, Kuikuro, Matipu, Mehinako, Nahukuá, Suyá, Trumai, Waura and Yawalapiti.

There is a ceremony called Yamaricama where it was offered to the governor Blairo Maggi of Mato Grosso state. Headdresses made of parrot and Macaw feathers are used by men. But the women wear it in the ceremony and assumed control of the village.