Mororuma

The Yuracaré are a forest people of the lowlands between Cochabamba and the Beni in Bolivia. Their language is an isolate with no known relatives.

Yuracaré tradition distinguished two kinds of spirits. The first owned the earth and the clay, which was treated with fear: it was not to be urinated on. The mororuma were the owners of the most powerful lightning bolts, and lent that power to Yuracaré shamans to cure illnesses. The dead were buried with their bows and arrows, for they were believed to go to a place underground where game was plentiful.

To resist Spanish expansion the Yuracaré withdrew into isolation. Only from the end of the eighteenth century did they cease to live outside the colonial world.