tupi

None of them are baptised Indians, and they do not dwell in villages, like the more advanced sections of the Tupi stock; but each family has its own solitary hut. They are quite harmless, do not practise tattooing, or perforate their ears and noses in any way. Their social condition is of a low type, very little removed, indeed, from that of the brutes living in the same forests.

Henry Walter Bates - The Naturalist on the River Amazons

"Progress" seems unknown to the pipe; the most advanced nations are somewhat behind the barbarians, and in the matter of snuff the Tupi or Brazilian savage has never been rivalled. The greater part of the vendors seemed to be women, of the buyers men; there was more difference of appearance than in any European fair, and the population about Nkulu seemed to be a very mixed race.

Sir Richard Francis Burton - Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2

One enacts the part of the Caypor, a kind of sylvan deity similar to the Curupira which I have before mentioned. The belief in this being seems to be common to all the tribes of the Tupi stock. According to the figure they dressed up at Ega, he is a bulky, misshapen monster, with red skin and long shaggy red hair hanging half way down his back.

Henry Walter Bates - The Naturalist on the River Amazons

There is nothing, I think, to show that the Muras had a different origin from the nobler agricultural tribes belonging to the Tupi nation, to some of whom they are close neighbours, although the very striking contrast in their characters and habits would suggest the conclusion that their origin had been different, in the same way as the Semangs of Malacca, for instance, with regard to the Malays.

Henry Walter Bates - The Naturalist on the River Amazons