Chavantes

Chavantes, a warlike and predatory Brazilian people, formerly dominant along both banks of the Tocantins, known to the early Portuguese explorers as Canociros from their great skill in navigating their canoes. Their arms were a very long spear, the bow and arrow, and a massive club; but some of the tribes having been converted by the Jesuits learnt the use of firearms, and afterwards escaping to the woods became very formidable to the white settlers in Goyaz and Maranhelo during the first quarter of the present century. But they were weakened by intertribal wars with their southern neighbours, the equally fierce Acroas and Payaguas. Some are now settled and have become peaceful cultivators and traders about the confluence of the Tocantins and Manoel-Alves-Grande.