Kura

The Bakairi, who call themselves Kurâ, meaning our people, are a Cariban-speaking people of northern Mato Grosso in Brazil, living along the headwaters of the Arinos and Teles Pires rivers in the cerrado south of the Amazon rainforest.

Their earliest remembered home was the forest on the lower Teles Pires, until internal quarrels and warfare with the Kayabí drove them south in three separate groups.

The western group reached the upper Arinos and first met Portuguese miners and slaving expeditions in the early 1700s, afterwards working in mineral extraction. The central group settled the headwaters of the Teles Pires and only encountered settlers in the early 1800s, when they took up cattle raising and farming. The largest, eastern group moved to the upper Xingu, lost touch with the other two and remained unknown to Europeans beyond the frontier.