Kaapor

The Ka'apor, formerly known to outsiders as the Urubu, are a Tupi-Guarani people whose name means forest people in their own language, from the Tupi words ka'a for forest and poro for people. They took shape as a distinct group only in the late 1600s and early 1700s, probably between the Tocantins and Xingu rivers, when their ancestors fled the Portuguese-Brazilian advance into southern Pará and the trade in jungle products.

Moving east across the Tocantins, they kept to the deep forest far from colonial settlements and missions. Documented village locations trace their long retreat through the Acará basin around 1810 and the Capim River around 1825, as pioneer pressure followed them eastward.

Mobile slash-and-burn farmers and hunters organized under village chiefs, they kept their Tupi-Guarani speech and remained effectively unconquered and unmissionized through the end of the colonial era.