Free
The Amazon and its thousands of tributaries pass through 2.7 million square miles of land as they flow to the sea. This area is known as Amazonia. It is mostly tropical rain forest.
European settlers first arrived in the region in the 1500s. At that time, around 5 million Indigenous, or Native, peoples lived there. Contact with Europeans brought diseases they had never known. And before long, tens of thousands died of smallpox and other illnesses. Entire tribes of Indigenous peoples were wiped out.
Today, about a million Indigenous peoples live in the rain forests of the Amazon. They’re descendants of the first peoples to live along the Amazon River. Among them are tribes such as the Kayapo, the Krenak, and the Yanomami. Each group has its own culture. Each has its own language and its own territory.
Until the 20th century, most had little or no contact with people living outside their isolated part of the forest. Below, we focus on one group – the Yanomami.
