Haliti

The Haliti, as they call themselves, meaning people in their tongue, are better known to outsiders as the Paresi, a name not from their language but fixed on them by the bandeirante Antonio Pires de Campos in the 1720s. They live on the Parecis plateau of western Mato Grosso, between the Cuiaba and Guapore headwaters, where their Haliti language, a Central Arawakan tongue of the Paresi-Xingu branch, remains in everyday village use.

Their first meetings with Europeans came in the seventeenth century, and after an expedition of 1718 they were swept into the Mato Grosso gold economy: for over a hundred years Haliti men were seized as miners, while disease and slave raiding broke up many of their villages.

Through that ordeal they kept settled village life, speech and ceremonies, including beer and bread making kept by subgroups such as the Kozarene.