Omagua people

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Omagua
Three Omagua men, painted by George Catlin between 1854 and 1874.
Total population
5000 (2002)[1]
Regions with significant populations
Brazil, Peru
Languages
Omagua language

The Omagua people (also known as the Umana, Cambeba, and Kambeba) are an

Columbian Exchange. During the 18th century, the Omagua largely abandoned their indigenous identity in response to prejudice and racism that marginalized aboriginal peoples in Brazil and Peru. More tolerant attitudes led to a renewed tribal identity starting in the 1980s.[1]

The name Cambeba seems to have been applied by other neighboring tribes and refers to the Omagua custom of flattening their children's heads by binding a piece of wood to the forehead soon after birth. Omagua women would jeer at the women from other tribes, saying that their heads were "round like those of forest savages." In the 18th century, the Omaguas would point out to travelers that their flattened foreheads were a sign of cultural superiority over their neighbors, and for a long time they resisted abandoning this custom, even under missionary pressure.[2]

Pre-Columbian era

chiefdoms, in many areas of Amazonia (particularly the inter-fluvial regions) and even large towns and cities.[4] Amazonians may have used terra preta to make the land suitable for the large-scale agriculture needed to support dense populations and complex social formations such as chiefdoms.[4]

Earliest European contact

Coro on the coast of Venezuela into the Llanos, where they engaged in battle with a large number of Cambebas and Hutten was severely wounded.[8] In 1560 Pedro de Ursúa even took the title of Governador del Dorado y de Omagua. Alexander von Humboldt referred to the supposed location of the mythical golden city, "El Dorado de las Omaguas", as being "between the sources of the Rio Negro, of the Uaupes (Guape), and of the Jupura or Caqueta."[9]

The

indigenous people adapted to a more mobile lifestyle in order to escape colonialism. This might have made the benefits of terra preta
, such as its self-renewing capacity, less attractive—farmers would not have been able to employ the renewed soil as they migrated for safety.

Cristóbal de Acuña, who accompanied Pedro Teixeira
's 1637-38 expedition along the length of the Amazon, commented extensively on the colorful woven clothing used by the Omaguas, writing that

...all of them go about decently dressed, both the men and women, who weave...not only the clothes they need but also other items traded with their neighbors...they make very beautiful cloth, either woven in different colours or painted so perfectly that it is almost impossible to distinguish between them... [11]

Most early chroniclers remarked on the Omagua practice of flattening the head, a practice common among indigenous South American tribes. Acuña described it in his Nuevo descubrimiento del gran Rio de las Amazonas:

All of them have flat heads, which makes the men ugly-looking, though the women disguise the fact more since their heads are covered with abundant hair. The natives are so accustomed to having their heads flattened that as soon as children are born, there are put in a press where the forehead is compressed with a small board and the skull by a much larger board, which, acting as a cot, supports the entire body of the newborn...they end up with the forehead and skull flattened like the palm of the hand...looking more like a deformed bishop’s mitre than the head of a person.[11]

The practice of head-flattening evidently died out towards the end of the eighteenth century. Later visitors to the region, including Ouvidor Sampaio and Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira were told that the practice was intended to distinguish the Cambeba from other tribes that continued to eat human flesh long after the Cambeba had abandoned this practice. Pedro Teixeira remarked in 1639 that "they are very savage people and though all those living along the river are savage and eat each other, the Kambeba are unsurpassed since they eat nothing other than human meat and use the skulls of those they kill as trophies."[1]

Population estimates

The Cambeba (Omagua) were described by Europeans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the largest and most important of the various nations that inhabited the banks of the Amazon River. In addition to their high population density, the Cambeba were noteworthy for their advanced level of sociopolitical organization. They were a sedentary, civic-minded people who wore clothing and had an identifiable political authority; they also were involved in military conflicts with tribes from the interior, whose prisoners of war were incorporated into Cambeba society as domestic servants.[12]

In 1639 Pedro Teixeira observed over 400 Cambeba villages between the Javary River and the Jutaí River, but fifty years later Samuel Fritz found only 38 villages, many of them located on islands as a means of self-defense.[13] A smallpox epidemic in 1648 lasted three months and may have killed up to one third of the population. A second epidemic in 1710 came during a period of warfare.[7] Modern estimates of Cambeba population size at contact range from a very conservative 4,000-7,000,[14] to a credible 91,000.[15]

Samuel Fritz and other missionaries began concentrating the scattered indigenous communities into

Betty Jane Meggers that the Cambeba were extinct.[18]

Modern-day populations are divided between Peru and Brazil. In 1994 there were approximately 3,500 Omaguas living in the area near

Ticunas, with smaller groups in Manaus. The Brazilian population is estimated to be around 1,500 people, but an official 2002 census identified only 325 individuals, possibly due to poor census techniques and because those Cambebas living on the Ticuna reservation were counted as Ticunas.[1]

Linguistic controversy

Some linguists

Kokama language already existed in a form similar to their modern forms by the time European missionaries arrived in Maynas in the 17th century.[22]

The use of the language has declined due to schooling of young people, and Cambeba is spoken fluently only by tribal elders on formal occasions, in meetings and in some school classes.[1]

Early Jesuit missions

Missionary interactions with the Cambebas began with an expedition led by the

Quechua-Cambeba translator, produced a number of ecclesiastical texts in Omagua, including a catechism.[22]

In 1687,

Jesuit reductions."[24]

Cultural observations of Samuel Fritz

Much of what is known about the Cambeba people was written by Samuel Fritz during the 38 years that he lived in the Amazon. Fritz described Omagua men as unusually "talkative and proud" in comparison with other Amazonian Indians. They were universally acknowledged to be the best canoemen on the river. They wore beautiful multi-colored cotton clothing including "

mulberry, of a forest fruit called jagua." The Omaguas told Fritz with remarkable candor that before becoming Christians, they had enjoyed a kind of polity and government; many of them living a sociable life, showing a satisfactory subjection and obedience to their principal caciques, and treating everyone, men and women alike, with a certain consideration.[2]

According to Fritz, when Omagua girls reached

manioc beer to drink; finally, the oldest man in the village would come up and strike them on the shoulders with a small stick, giving them at the same time the names they would bear for the rest of their lives. After undergoing this ritual, the men were allowed to ask for them as wives.[2]

The Omaguas harvested their crops from the island

pirarucú fish.[2]

The Cambeba rebellion of 1701

By the 1690s, Portuguese slave raids launched intermittently from Pará (modern-day Belém) became so intense and frequent that the Cambeba from distant communities, as well as neighboring Yurimagua, fled to the comparative safety of the Spanish Jesuit mission settlements near the mouth of the Napo River, including San Joaquin de Omaguas. This influx of refugees contributed to a deterioration of the relationship between the Jesuits and the longer-term Cambeba residents of the mission settlements.[13]

In 1701, Cambebas in several settlements rose up against the Jesuit missionary presence, under the leadership of the Cambeba cacique Payoreva. At Fritz's request, a small military force quelled the revolt, and Fritz subsequently instituted annual visits by secular military forces to intimidate the Cambeba and stave off potential uprisings.[23] Payoreva was arrested and imprisoned by the Spanish, however he escaped and returned to San Joaquin de Omaguas to persuade the Omagua people to leave the influence of the missionaries and establish new settlements along the Juruá River. Fritz attempted to persuade the Cambebas to return to the mission and even promised a pardon for Chief Payoreva.[25] Many of those who followed Payoreva were eventually enslaved by the Portuguese, as was Payoreva himself in 1704. That same year Fritz was appointed Jesuit Superior and responsibility for the Omagua missions was handed over to the Sardinian Juan Baptista Sanna, who had begun working among the Omagua in 1701.[23]

Destruction of indigenous communities

In February 1709, the new king of Portugal, João V, sent a large contingent of Portuguese soldiers to raid the Upper Solimões and to demand the withdrawal of all Spanish missionaries from the region. Fritz wrote to the Portuguese commander begging him to desist, but the Portuguese destroyed several Yurimagua and Cambeba communities. Finally, in July, Spanish authorities sent a military force to drive the Portuguese out, burning several Carmelite missions in the process. In 1710 the Portuguese sent more troops into the region, leading Sanna to attempt to relocate the populations of San Joaquin de Omaguas and the neighboring San Pablo to the safer location of Yarapa, on the lower Ucayali River. However, the Portuguese arrived in the midst of this relocation, killing many Omaguas, and capturing others, as well as taking Sanna prisoner. He was held in Portugal for a short time and eventually sent on a mission to Japan.[7]

The fighting dispersed nearly all the communities of the Yurimaguas and the Cambebas, and the survivors were devastated by an epidemic which began in April 1710 and left the formerly populous region of the Upper Solimões uninhabited. Jesuit activity among the Cambeba ceased until July 1723, when Bernard Zurmühlen and Johannes Baptist Julian arrived to found a new mission. Zurmühlen remained with the Cambebas until 1726, and San Joaquin de Omaguas became the principal center for missionary activity in the lowland regions of Maynas until the Portuguese expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767.[22]

The Cabanagem Revolt

Main article: Cabanagem

rubber, discouraged Cambeba traditions and culture.[13]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Benedito Maciel, "Kambeba: Indigenous Peoples in Brazil," Instituto Socioambiental, Brazil
  2. ^ a b c d e David Graham Sweet, "Samuel Fritz, S. J. and the Founding of the Portuguese Carmelite Mission to the Solimões," chapter 6 of A Rich Realm of Nature Destroyed: The Middle Amazon Valley, 1640-1750. Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1974.
  3. ^ Juan Forero, "Scientists find evidence discrediting theory Amazon was virtually unlivable", Washington Post, September 5, 2010
  4. ^
    ISBN 1400032059
  5. ^  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Omaguas". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 98.
  6. ^ Forero, Juan (September 6, 2010). "In Amazon, traces of an advanced civilization". Washington Post. Retrieved 8 September 2010.
  7. ^
    ISBN 0674751078
  8. ^ "Hutten, Philipp (Felipe Dutre, de Utre, de Ure), Conquistador, 1511 - 24.4.1546 in Venezuela." Deutsche Biographie
  9. ^ Humboldt, Alexander von, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America During the Years 1799-1804, (chapter 25). Henry G. Bohn, London, 1853.
  10. ^ Graham, Devon. "A Brief History of Amazon Exploration". Project Amazonas, Inc. Archived from the original on 2019-08-09. Retrieved 2019-09-09.
  11. ^ a b Acuña, Christobal de. 1641. Nuevo descubrimiento del gran Rio de las Amazonas. Madrid: Imprenta del Reyno.
  12. ^ Jesuit Camila Loureiro Dias, "Maps and Political Discourse: The Amazon River of Father Samuel Fritz," The Americas, Volume 69, Number 1, July 2012, pp. 95-116.
  13. ^
    ISBN 0521333938
  14. ^ Grohs, Waltraud. 1974. "Los indios del Alto Amazonas del siglo XVI al XVIII: Poblaciones y migraciones en la antigua provincia de Maynas." Bonn: Bonner Amerikanistische Studien; p: 25.
  15. ^ Denevan, William. 1992. The Native population of the Americas in 1492. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press; xxvi.
  16. ^ Charles de la Condamine, "Carte du Cours du Maragnon ou de la Grande Riviere des Amazones dans sa partie navigable depuis Jaen de Bracomoros jusqu'à son embouchure et qui comprend la Province de Quito, et la Côte de la Guiane depuis le Cap de Nord jusqu'à Esséquebè," Veuve Pissot, Paris: 1745
  17. ^ a b Charles Marie de La Condamine, Relation abrégée d'un voyage fait dans l'intérieur de l'Amérique méridionale: depuis la côte de la mer du Sud, jusqu'aux côtes du Brésil et de la Guyane, en descendant la rivière des Amazones..., Jean-Edme Dufour & Philippe Roux, 1778; University of Lausanne
  18. ISBN 0882956094
  19. ^ Cabral, Ana Suelly. 1995. "Contact-induced language change in the Western Amazon: The non-genetic origin of the Kokama language." University of Pittsburgh, PhD dissertation.
  20. ^ Cabral, Ana Suelly. 2007. "New observations on the structure of Kokama/Omágwa." In Leo Wetzels (ed.), Language Endangerment and Endangered Languages, 365-379. Leiden: CNWS.
  21. ^ Cabral, Ana Suelly. 2011. "Different histories, different results: The origin and development of two Amazonian languages." Papia 21(1): 9-22.
  22. ^ a b c Michael, Lev . 2014. "On the Pre-Columbian Origin of Proto-Omagua-Kokama." Journal of Language Contact 7(2):309–344.
  23. ^ a b c Lev Michael and Zachary O’Hagan, "A Linguistic Analysis of Old Omagua Ecclesiastical Texts," University of California, Berkeley.
  24. ^ Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society, Issue 24, 1859; University of Minnesota.
  25. ^ Edmond Herbert Grove-Hills, Annexe au Contre-mémoire, Vol. I; Imprimé au Foreign Office, par Harrison and Sons, 1903.
  26. ISBN 0521437237
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