Wayãpi - History and Cultural Relations

The Wayãpi Indians are not indigenous to their present territory. Their migration is documented in early Portuguese sources. During the first thirty years of the eighteenth century, they migrated from the lower Rio Xingu to the Rio Jari, and then proceeded northward along the Jari and the Amapari rivers.

At that time, they had been in contact with Jesuit missionaries and were sent by the Portuguese to fight against the French colonists. Historic documents, as well as their own oral tradition, indicate that this alliance came about very quickly, but between 1780 and 1815, they became totally isolated.

From 1820 on, some groups of northern Wayãpi began making contact with French officials, but, for most of their communities, the era of isolation in the forest continued through the nineteenth century. It was not until the 1940s that the Oyapock headwaters villages were contacted by French geographers, and only in 1973 did the communities in Brazil come into contact with officials of the Fundação Nacional do Indio (National Indian Foundation, FUNAI).

Today, Wayãpi communities range from the moderately acculturated (Camopi and Aramirä, respectively the northernmost and the southernmost communities) to the traditional (Trois Sauts and Mariry). Furthermore, there is evidence of two groups, located at the headwaters of the Eureupousine River (French Guiana) and the Rio Yengarari (Brazil), who have made no contact at all, either with the main group of Wayãpi or with non-Indians. Some Wayãpi work in their own communities as civil servants in the French and Brazilian administrations, but the majority still practice traditional life-styles.