Chapter VII: The Lower Amazons—Obydos to Manaos, Or The Barra of the Rio Negro

The Múras have a bad reputation all over this part of the Amazons, the semi-civilised Indians being quite as severe upon them as the white settlers. Everyone spoke of them as lazy, thievish, untrustworthy, and cruel. They have a greater repugnance than any other class of Indians to settled habits, regular labour, and the service of the whites; their distaste, in fact, to any approximation towards civilised life is invincible. Yet most of these faults are only an exaggeration of the fundamental defects of character in the Brazilian red man. There is nothing, I think, to show that the Múras had a different origin from the nobler agricultural tribes belonging to the Tupí nation, to some of whom they are close neighbours, although the very striking contrast in their characters and habits would suggest the conclusion that their origin had been different, in the same way as the Semangs of Malacca, for instance, with regard to the Malays. They are merely an offshoot from them, a number of segregated hordes becoming degraded by a residence most likely of very many centuries in Ygapó lands, confined to a fish diet, and obliged to wander constantly in search of food. Those tribes which are supposed to be more nearly related to the Tupís are distinguished by their settled agricultural habits, their living in well-constructed houses, their practice of many arts, such as the manufacture of painted earthenware, weaving, and their general custom of tattooing, social organisation, obedience to chiefs, and so forth. The Múras have become a nation of nomade fishermen, ignorant of agriculture and all other arts practised by their neighbours. They do not build substantial and fixed dwellings, but live in separate families or small hordes, wandering from place to place along the margins of those rivers and lakes which most abound in fish and turtle. At each resting-place they construct temporary huts at the edge of the stream, shifting them higher or lower on the banks, as the waters advance or recede. Their canoes originally were made simply of the thick bark of trees, bound up into a semi-cylindrical shape by means of woody lianas; these are now rarely seen, as most families possess montarias, which they have contrived to steal from the settlers from time to time. Their food is chiefly fish and turtle, which they are very expert in capturing. It is said by their neighbours that they dive after turtles, and succeed in catching them by the legs, which I believe is true in the shallow lakes where turtles are imprisoned in the dry season. They shoot fish with bow and arrow, and have no notion of any other method of cooking it than by roasting. It is not quite clear whether the whole tribe were originally quite ignorant of agriculture; as some families on the banks of the streams behind Villa Nova, who could scarcely have acquired the art in recent times, plant mandioca, but, as a general rule, the only vegetable food used by the Múras is bananas and wild fruits. The original home of this tribe was the banks of the Lower Madeira. It appears they were hostile to the European settlers from the beginning; plundering their sitios, waylaying their canoes, and massacring all who fell into their power. About fifty years ago, the Portuguese succeeded in turning the warlike propensities of the Mundurucús against them and these, in the course of many years’ persecution, greatly weakened the power of the tribe, and drove a great part of them from their seats on the banks of the Madeira. The Múras are now scattered in single hordes and families over a wide extent of country bordering the main river from Villa Nova to Catuá, near Ega, a distance of 800 miles. Since the disorders of 1835-6, when they committed great havoc amongst the peaceable settlements from Santarem to the Rio Negro, and were pursued and slaughtered in great numbers by the Mundurucús in alliance with the Brazilians, they have given no serious trouble.

There is one curious custom of the Múras which requires noticing before concluding this digression; this is the practice of snuff-taking with peculiar ceremonies. The snuff is called Paricá, and is a highly stimulating powder made from the seeds of a species of Inga, belonging to the Leguminous order of plants. The seeds are dried in the sun, pounded in wooden mortars, and kept in bamboo tubes. When they are ripe, and the snuff-making season sets in, they have a fuddling-bout, lasting many days, which the Brazilians call a Quarentena, and which forms a kind of festival of a semi-religious character. They begin by drinking large quantities of caysúma and cashirí, fermented drinks made of various fruits and mandioca, but they prefer cashaça, or rum, when they can get it. In a short time they drink themselves into a soddened semi-intoxicated state, and then commence taking the Paricá. For this purpose they pair off, and each of the partners, taking a reed containing a quantity of the snuff, after going through a deal of unintelligible mummery, blows the contents with all his force into the nostrils of his companion. The effect on the usually dull and taciturn savages is wonderful; they become exceedingly talkative, sing, shout, and leap about in the wildest excitement. A reaction soon follows; more drinking is then necessary to rouse them from their stupor, and thus they carry on for many days in succession. The Mauhés also use the Paricá, although it is not known amongst their neighbours the Mundurucús. Their manner of taking it is very different from that of the swinish Múras, it being kept in the form of a paste, and employed chiefly as a preventive against ague in the months between the dry and wet seasons, when the disease prevails. When a dose is required, a small quantity of the paste is dried and pulverised on a flat shell, and the powder then drawn up into both nostrils at once through two vulture quills secured together by cotton thread. The use of Paricá was found by the early travellers amongst the Omaguas, a section of the Tupís who formerly lived on the Upper Amazons, a thousand miles distant from the homes of the Mauhés and Múras. This community of habits is one of those facts which support the view of the common origin and near relationship of the Amazonian Indians.

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