, Fabulous stories about the wealth of the Cambeba and the search for
El Dorado led to several early expeditions into their country, including those of
Georg von Speyer in 1536, of
Philipp von Hutten in 1541 and of
Pedro de Ursúa in 1560. In 1541 Hutten led an exploring party of about 150 men, mostly horsemen, from
Coro on the coast of
Venezuela into the
Llanos, where they engaged in battle with a large number of Cambebas and Hutten was severely wounded. In 1560 Pedro de Ursúa even took the title of
Governador del Dorado y de Omagua.
Alexander von Humboldt referred to the supposed location of the mythical golden city, "El Dorado de las Omaguas", as being "between the sources of the
Rio Negro, of the
Uaupes (Guape), and of the
Jupura or Caqueta." The
Spanish explorer
Francisco de Orellana, who was the first European to navigate the full length of the
Amazon River (1541–42), reported densely populated regions running hundreds of kilometers along the river, although the people there left no lasting monuments, possibly because they used local wood as their construction material. While it is possible Orellana may have exaggerated the level of development among the Amazonians, their
semi-nomadic descendants are distinguished by having a hereditary yet landless
aristocracy, a historical anomaly for a society without a
sedentary,
agrarian culture. This suggests they once were more settled and agrarian but became
nomadic after the
demographic collapse of the 16th and 17th century, due to European-introduced diseases such as
smallpox and
influenza, while still maintaining certain traditions. Moreover, many
indigenous people adapted to a more mobile lifestyle in order to escape
colonialism. This might have made the benefits of
terra preta, such as its self-renewing capacity, less attractive—farmers would not have been able to employ the renewed soil as they migrated for safety.
Gaspar de Carvajal, who accompanied Orellana, included a description of the Omaguas in his 1542 work
Relación del nuevo descubrimiento del famoso río Grande que descubrió por muy gran ventura el capitán Francisco de Orellana ("Account of the recent discovery of the famous Grand river which was discovered by great good fortune by Captain Francisco de Orellana"), discussing their culture, diet, housing, settlement patterns and political structure.
Cristóbal de Acuña, who accompanied
Pedro Teixeira's 1637-38 expedition along the length of the Amazon, commented extensively on the colorful woven clothing used by the Omaguas, writing that ...all of them go about decently dressed, both the men and women, who weave...not only the clothes they need but also other items traded with their neighbors...they make very beautiful cloth, either woven in different colours or painted so perfectly that it is almost impossible to distinguish between them... Most early chroniclers remarked on the Omagua practice of
flattening the head, a practice common among indigenous South American tribes. Acuña described it in his
Nuevo descubrimiento del gran Rio de las Amazonas: All of them have flat heads, which makes the men ugly-looking, though the women disguise the fact more since their heads are covered with abundant hair. The natives are so accustomed to having their heads flattened that as soon as children are born, there are put in a press where the forehead is compressed with a small board and the skull by a much larger board, which, acting as a cot, supports the entire body of the newborn...they end up with the forehead and skull flattened like the palm of the hand...looking more like a deformed bishop’s
mitre than the head of a person.
John Hemming, modern historian, explorer, and expert on the indigenous populations of the Amazon, estimates that on the year 1500, the Omagua had a population of approximately 60,000, being the most populous tribe along
upper portions of the Amazon River within Brazil. In 1639,
Pedro Teixeira observed over 400 Cambeba villages between the
Javary River and the
Jutaí River, but fifty years later
Samuel Fritz found only 38 villages, many of them located on islands as a means of self-defense. to a credible 91,000. Samuel Fritz and other missionaries began concentrating the scattered indigenous communities into
Jesuit reductions in order to facilitate religious
indoctrination and protect them from enslavement by the Portuguese, but smallpox devastated the population, leaving the region of the upper Solimões uninhabited. that of the 30 Omagua villages marked on Fritz's 1707 map, he saw only ruins, adding that "all the inhabitants, frightened by the incursions of a group of bandits from Pará, who came to enslave them in their own lands, dispersed into the forest and the Spanish and Portuguese missions". Modern-day populations are divided between Peru and Brazil. In 1994 there were approximately 3,500 Omaguas living in the area near
Nauta, Peru. In Brazil, Omaguas live in several villages on the middle and
upper Solimões in
Amazonas, in lands predominately occupied by the
Ticunas, with smaller groups in
Manaus, including the doctor and shaman
Adana Omágua Kambeba. The Brazilian population is estimated to be around 1,500 people, but an official 2002 census identified only 325 individuals, possibly due to poor census techniques and because those Cambebas living on the Ticuna reservation were counted as Ticunas.
Linguistic controversy Some linguists argue that the
Omagua language is derived from
Tupi-Guarani and became a distinct language in relatively recent times, however there is evidence that Omagua and the closely related
Kokama language already existed in a form similar to their modern forms by the time European missionaries arrived in
Maynas in the 17th century. The use of the language has declined due to schooling of young people, and Cambeba is spoken fluently only by tribal elders on formal occasions, in meetings and in some school classes. ==Early Jesuit missions==