408 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 193 4 



tribes in the interior have retained their independence. Foremost 

 among these is the Giiarani, whose language is still commonly spoken 

 in Paraguay, and the Kaingua and Are of southern Brazil. Other 

 Tupi tribes living on the Upper Maranon are the Kokama and the 

 Umaua (Omagua) who have possibly found their way to the Mara- 

 non from the Gran Chaco by way of the Ucayali River. This tribe 

 understands river navigation. The principal food of its people is 

 roasted manioc meal. They also fish in season, drying a certain 

 amount and grinding it up as provisions for future use. They live 

 in large communal houses covered with palm-leaf thatch and con- 

 struct palisades around their villages. They weave hammocks in 

 which they sleep and under which they maintain a continuous 

 smudge fire. They wage war on neighboring tribes and are canni- 

 bals to the extent of eating their enemies. Their own dead they 

 conserve in large burial urns (iga(^aba). Their speech is the univer- 

 sal language of the early missions and early traders, generally used 

 by the whites and Indians in widely separated parts of Brazil. In 

 its modern form, the " lingoa geral ", the language of the Tupi is 

 the " lingua franca " of tropical South America. Today it is rapidly 

 giving way to the use of Portuguese. 



The Tupi tribes of the coast and along the river courses may be 

 contrasted with tribes of the interior who live to a large extent from 

 the chase. These tribes of the Brazilian interior are grouped under 

 the generic term " Tapuya ", generally known as the Ges tribes, so 

 named because many of the tribes of this linguistic stock have names 

 ending with the syllable -ges (g equivalent to the French j). These 

 tribes do not have boats or hammocks; consequently they are called 

 barbarians by the Tupi. Many of the Ges tribes are characterized 

 by the wearing in their lower lip of large brown disk labrets. North- 

 ern Tapu3'a live in northern Brazil in the province of Pernambuco 

 and Rio Grande do Norte. 



The Ges were the earliest known occupants of the Brazilian up- 

 lands. Their many extensive migrations have left tribal remnants 

 at widely scattered points and no one large area is at present pre- 

 dominantly inhabited by Ges tribes. Today in the main, while the 

 Carib and Arawak occupy the Amazon and Orinoco River plains, 

 the Tupi-Guarani and Ges inhabit the remainder of the huge tropical 

 forest and savanna area insofar as it is at all occupied. 



Westward and northward of the Ges tribes there are two large lin- 

 guistic stocks only recently distinguished as to their original habitat. 

 These are the Caribs and the Maipure (Nu-Arawak) tribes. The 

 original home of the Carib was probably in the interior in the vicin- 

 ity of the Upper Xingu, the most primitive type of Caribs en- 

 countered by Von den Steinen. From here the Caribs emigrated 

 northward into the Brazilian province of Amazonas, gradually oc- 



