Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
On the evening of the 29th of July they were securely moored off the island of Catua, so as to pass the night, which promised to be dark. On this island, as soon as the sun rose above the horizon, there appeared a party of Muras Indians, the remains of that ancient and powerful tribe, which formerly occupied more than a hundred leagues of the river bank between the Teffe and the Madeira.
The Muras are now scattered in single hordes and families over a wide extent of country bordering the main river from Villa Nova to Catua, near Ega, a distance of 800 miles.
The use of Parica was found by the early travellers amongst the Omaguas, a section of the Tupis who formerly lived on the Upper Amazons, a thousand miles distant from the homes of the Mauhes and Muras. This community of habits is one of those facts which support the view of the common origin and near relationship of the Amazonian Indians.
At this time the natives become almost aquatic animals. Several tribes of Indians inhabit the Gapo; such as the Purupurus, Muras, and others. They build small movable huts on the sandy shores during the dry season, and on rafts in the wet.
The Muras have become a nation of nomade fishermen, ignorant of agriculture and all other arts practised by their neighbours. They do not build substantial and fixed dwellings, but live in separate families or small hordes, wandering from place to place along the margins of those rivers and lakes which most abound in fish and turtle.
There is one curious custom of the Muras which requires noticing before concluding this digression; this is the practice of snuff- taking with peculiar ceremonies. The snuff is called Parica, and is a highly stimulating powder made from the seeds of a species of Inga, belonging to the Leguminous order of plants. The seeds are dried in the sun, pounded in wooden mortars, and kept in bamboo tubes.
Penna was inexorable; he ordered the crew to weigh anchor, and the disappointed savages remained hooting after us with all their might from the top of the bank as we glided away. The Muras have a bad reputation all over this part of the Amazons, the semi-civilised Indians being quite as severe upon them as the white settlers. Everyone spoke of them as lazy, thievish, untrustworthy, and cruel.
Besides the Araras and the Mundurucus, the latter a tribe friendly to the whites, attached to agriculture, and inhabiting the interior of the country from the Madeira to beyond the Tapajos, two other tribes of Indians now inhabit the lower Madeira, namely, the Parentintins and the Muras.
It is related, however, that the Indians of the Madeira were hostile to the Portuguese from the first; it was then the tribes of Muras and Torazes who attacked travellers. In 1855 I met with an American, an odd character named Kemp, who had lived for many years amongst the Indians on the Madeira, near the abandoned settlement of Crato.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking