Nambicuara

The Nambicuara are an indigenous society residing in what is now the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. This entry focuses on ethnographic evidence collected during fieldwork with the Cocozu subgroup around 1940, at which time missionaries had been present in the region for about a decade (Boglár, 2010:4). Considered by outsiders to be fierce and aggressive, the Nambicuara had very little contact with non-indigenous peoples until the end of the 19th century, at which time anthropologist Luiz Boglár made the first ethnographic description of the group (Boglár, 2010:1). At the time and place this entry focuses on, Nambicuara religion centered around potentially dangerous spirits and a basic and ubiquitous concept of power believed to be present in living beings and inanimate objects. Shamans were relied on to appease and propitiate the supernatural beings (Boglár, 2010:4-5). For the Nambicuara, religious beliefs were inseparable from almost all aspects of social and political life. Therefore, this entry considers the religious group to be coterminous with the society at large.