Kuikuro

The Kuikuro are a Cariban-speaking people of the upper Xingu River in Mato Grosso, one of the interconnected Upper Xingu tribes. They are regarded as the descendants of the builders of the archaeological towns now called Kuhikugu, whose palisaded villages, plazas, bridges and radial roads housed perhaps ten thousand people by around 1400.

These settlements were abandoned around four hundred years ago, probably after epidemics introduced through European contact shattered the old network. Surviving Kuikuro communities kept the village-otomo way of life, combining fishing, manioc farming and ritual exchange with their Xingu neighbors.

Their cosmology centers on the sun Giti and moon Alukuma as creators and on the Itseke spirits of water and forest, dealt with by initiated shamans who diagnose illness and misfortune. Portuguese slave-raiding bandeirantes entered their oral memory long before peaceful European visits, leaving disease and disruption.