Kuikúro

Kuikúro, also called Amonap, is a southern Cariban language of the upper Xingu in the Mato Grosso interior of Brazil, spoken along the Culuene River by the Kuikuro and, with only dialectal differences, the Kalapalo. Nahukuá and Matipú form the rest of this small southern branch.

Its speakers are held to descend from the builders of the earthwork settlements of the Kuhikugu region, whose large palisaded villages with bridges, gates and roads had grown up by around 1400. Those towns were abandoned some four centuries later, perhaps after diseases brought by Europeans reached the basin, and the people regrouped in the river villages of the multi-ethnic Xingu network.