Kagwahiva

The Kagwahiva, or Kawahíb, is the common self-name of a cluster of south-western Amazon Tupi-Guarani peoples, including the Amondawa, Karipuna and Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau among others, their mutually intelligible speeches forming the Kawahíva dialect cluster, closest to Apiaká. Their earliest homeland was around the headwaters of the Tapajós and Juruena, where European sources mention them from 1750.

In the eighteenth century Munduruku expansion, followed by colonial pressure, dislocated the Kawahíb into small, highly mobile bands scattered through the forests between the Madeira and Ji-Paraná, living by hunting, gathering and small-scale farming.

Early nineteenth-century travellers thus met not one tribe but a constellation of related Kagwahiva groups, each keeping the common name and language.