Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/85

Rh not without significance: that "south of the province of Venezuela are the Omaguas and Omigos, with the provinces of the dorado." At all events, the tribe seems to have inhabited a large tract, which included in the north extensive grassy plains, and in the south the thick woods of the shores of the Amazon.

The Omaguas belonged in all probability to the linguistic family of the Tupi-Guarani, and therefore to the principal division of the Brazilian aborigines. Many words in their language are undoubtedly of the Tupi idiom. Indeed, Velasco said in 1789: "This people is scattered over an extent of more than fifteen hundred leagues in the interior of America, under the names of Omaguas, Aguas, Tupis, and Guaranis." According to the Jesuit Cristoval de Acuña, who visited the Amazons in the Spanish service in 1639, their name means "Aguas," or Flatheads. The Portuguese called them "Cambebas," which has the same meaning in the Tupi language. Though unanimously pronounced, even as late as 1743, physically the handsomest Indians of the Amazon shores, their figures were deformed by the custom of pressing the heads of their infant children flat between two boards. The custom had been discontinued in 1777 when the Ouvidor Ribeira visited them at Olivenza at the mouth of the Rio Yavari, thirteen leagues below Tabatinga on the Amazon.

The Omaguas appear to have been at least half-sedentary Indians. They were probably divided into two groups, according to the character of the