Native Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Amazonia - The "Abominable Muras" in War and Peace

Five centuries of colonialism and neocolonialism have wrought continuous
and seldom-mitigated disaster in the history of all native
American peoples. Generally speaking, these once numerous and welladapted
peoples were intrigued at first contact with European visitors
and their accoutrements, and were inclined to receive them hospitably.
Then, with bewildering speed they were infected by the Europeans’
devastating epidemic diseases, deprived of social and political autonomy,
subjected to forcible religious proselytization and obliged to accommodate
the Europeans’ insatiable demand for their land, their
labor service, and their surplus production. These pressures caused
native Americans to devise modes of resistance to colonial domination;
and as resisters they were subjected to repression and defeat by
the colonialist forces. Finally, those that survived the holocaust of conquest
were reduced to seeking some sort of accommodation with the
new colonial order.