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 indigenous people in Brazil's Amazon Basin. Their territory, when first in contact with Spanish explorers in the 16th century, was on the Amazon River upstream from the present-day city of Manaus extending into Peru. They speak the Omagua language. The Omagua exist today in small numbers, but they were a populous, organized society in the late Pre-Columbian era. Their population suffered steep decline, mostly from infectious diseases, in the early years of the 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]
^ abBenedito Maciel, "Kambeba: Indigenous Peoples in Brazil," Instituto Socioambiental, Brazil
^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.
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