Ukaragma

The Arara, who call themselves Ukarãgmã, “people of the red macaw”, are a Cariban-speaking people of the Brazilian interior, holding the forests along the Iriri river near where it joins the Xingu. They lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers, moving through the forest in small bands but gathering in large communal houses; they hunted and fished and planted manioc, sweet potatoes, bananas and pineapples in forest clearings.

Feared as warriors who kept war trophies, they also intermarried with neighbouring tribes, and for rituals they painted their bodies with black designs drawn from genipapo fruit. As Portuguese settlement spread along the lower Amazon in the 1600s and 1700s, they remained upriver beyond colonial reach.