Satere Mawe

The Mawé, better known as the Sateré-Mawé, are a Tupian people of the lower Amazon and Tapajós basins. In the 1600s they held wide territories on the Tapajós plateau before colonial pressure and wars with the Munduruku pushed them toward the headwaters of the Andirá, Abacaxis and Urariá rivers.

Sedentary farmers who enriched their fields with terra preta, they domesticated the wild guaraná vine into a cultivated shrub. A Jesuit described their guaraná balls in 1669, and from the early 1700s they traded guaraná sticks and featherwork to the Portuguese along the river routes.

The Jesuits founded the Tupinambarana mission on the edge of their lands in 1669, yet they kept their villages, trade and language. In 1835 they joined the Cabanagem insurgency that swept the Amazon.