Kaxixo

The Kaxixo are an indigenous people of the upper Sao Francisco basin in the interior of Minas Gerais, living around the Para River. The game also attaches to them the name Carijo, borne by a related people. The original Carijo were Guarani speakers who had moved from the Paraguay region to the Brazilian coast between Cananeia and the Lagoa dos Patos; their name comes from a Tupi word meaning descendants of the ancient ones.

Portuguese raiders seized so many Carijo as slaves that their name became a colonial byword for captive Indian labor. In 1554 Carijo warriors joined the attack on Sao Paulo.

From the 1700s the Portuguese dispossessed and enslaved the Kaxixo as well, turning them into hacienda servants and day laborers alongside transported Carijo slaves, Africans and settlers; through generations of mixing they kept their identity, and a riverside cave grotto remained their sacred place.