WARLIKE WOMEN 463 
Towards the close of the sixteenth century, 
F. Cyprian Bazarre, a Jesuit missionary to the 
Tapacura Indians (a tribe of Moxos), heard accounts 
similar to those related by Ribeiro, tending to place 
the Amazons in the country lying southward of the 
Great River and westward of the Purus, or very 
nearly where Condamine many years afterwards (in 
1 741) heard such circumstantial accounts of them. 
This traveller spoke at Coari with an Indian whose 
grandfather had met a party of those women at the 
mouth of the river Cuchinara (now the Puriis). 
" Elles venoient de celle de Cayame, qui debouche 
dans I'Amazone du cote du Sud entre Tefe et 
Coari ; qu'il avoit parle a quatre d'entr'elles, dont 
une avoit un enfant a la mamelle : il nous dit le 
nom de chacune d'elles ; il ajouta qu'en partant de 
Cuchinara elles traverserent le Grand Fleuve, et 
prirent le chemin de la riviere Noire. . . . Plus bas 
que Coari, les Indiens nous dirent partout les 
memes choses avec quelques varietes dans les cir- 
constances ; mais tous furent d'accord sur le point 
principal." For many other details, tending to the 
same conclusions, I must again refer the reader to 
the original. 
The numerous missionaries on the Amazon 
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries all 
testify to the same traditions. It was no uncommon 
thing, they say, for Indians in confession to accuse 
themselves of having been of the number of those 
who were admitted to visit periodically the women 
living alone. Their testimony may be summed up 
in the words of an old Indian at San Regis de los 
Yameos (a village on the left bank of the Amazon 
above the mouth of the Ucayali), as delivered to the 
