Miranha

The Miranha, who call themselves Améjimínaa, “people of below”, are a Bora-speaking people of the middle Amazon, living along the middle Solimões and lower Japurá rivers, with related communities in Colombia. They farmed manioc in forest clearings, hunted and fished, and lived in large round communal houses, or malocas, under chiefs whose power made them feared along the river.

European travellers depicted them as savage cannibals, and their chiefs grew prominent by trading captive enemies, and sometimes their own kin, to white slavers in exchange for metal tools.

The Portuguese established regular contact from 1710, when their expeditions drove the Spanish back from the Solimões towards the Pacific, after which the Miranha were drawn into the riverine trade in slaves and tools that emptied many villages of the region.