Kiriri

The Kariri, also written Cariri or Kiriri, are a cluster of Indigenous peoples of the sertão, the dry backlands of northeastern Brazil, spread across the São Francisco River basin and the neighboring backlands. Their name comes from the Tupi word kiri'ri, meaning silent or taciturn, and colonial writers classed them among the non-Tupi peoples generically called Tapuia.

Related tongues formed the Kariri language family within the Macro-Jê trunk. A Dutch governor described the Carirys of the Paraíba interior as early as 1639.

After the Dutch were expelled, the Kariri north of the São Francisco rose in the Confederation of the Cariris, known to the Portuguese as the Guerra dos Bárbaros of 1683 to 1713; the defeated survivors were gathered into missionary aldeias, and their name lives on in the Cariris Velhos and Cariris Novos highlands.