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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 Puriis, or very
nearly where Condamine many years afterwards (in
1741) 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 1'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 traverse-rent le Grand Fleuve, et
le chemin de la riviere Noire. . . . Plus bas
prirent
que Coari, les Indiens nous dirent
memes choses avec quelques varietes
partout
dans les
les
circonstances
;
principal."
mais tous furent d'accord sur le point
For many other details, tending to the
refer the reader to
same conclusions, I must again
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