"The guaraná people," who domesticated the wild vine of the Maués-Açu and pound its roasted seed into a sacred bread, sipping it whenever the nation must reach consensus.
First reached by Jesuits at the Tupinambarana mission in 1669 and pressed by rubber traders, they held the forest between the Andirá and Marau; some 13,000–16,000 remain in the Andirá-Marau reserve, exporting fair-trade waraná guaraná.
1669Jesuits reach the guaraná people The founding of the Tupinambarana mission brings the first sustained contact between Europeans and the Sateré-Mawé. Father Bettendorf records the Andirá peoples drying and pressing guaraná into balls 'praised like whites praise their gold' — the domesticated vine that would later be carried across the world.
An accessible survey of the pre- and post-contact Americas that conveys the pre-conquest complexity and colonial devastation of Amazonian and Brazilian indigenous peoples.
Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian IndiansJohn Hemming · 1978
The conquest and missionization of Brazil's Indians (broad regional context).