DESTRUCTION OF THE CILIKUNAS

Summary

There is a story current in the Rio Branco region that the Cilikunas lived near the foot of the mountains of the moon near the head of the Takutu River in Brazil. As the first missionaries sent among them were not well received, soldiers were sent to punish the Indians, whom they found on a great sandbar without protection or defense. They massacred the whole tribe. There may or may not be some foundation for the story, but the legend told among the Wapisianas concerning the disappearance of the tribe is interesting in this connection.

A woman went to get firewood a short distance from her home and after she had partially filled her carrying basket with fallen sticks she went to a clump of trees and broke off a dead branch, thus frightening a deer which jumped up and started to run away. The woman, startled, made a motion as if to throw the branch at the deer, when to her surprise it fell down dead. She laid it on top of the firewood and carried it home. When she told her husband how she killed the deer he refused to believe such a strange story, saying that she must have a lover who killed it and gave it to her; but she adhered to her original story and in showing him just how it was done she pointed the branch at him and he fell dead at her feet.