Wauja
ethnic group
The Wauja or Waura (Waurá: Waujá; Portuguese: Uaurás) are an Indigenous people of Brazil. Their language, Waurá, is an Arawakan language. They live in the region near the Upper Xingu River, in the Xingu Indigenous Park in the state of Mato Grosso, and had a population of 487 in 2010.
History
The Wauja and Mehinako, two Arawakan-speaking tribes native to the Upper Xingu River, are likely descendants of various tribes which came into the region in roughly the 9th or 10th century CE. Archaeological records going back to the time between 1000 and 1600 suggest that the people living in the region were mostly sedentary, with relatively large communities. These villages were built around a central plaza, and were defended with ditches and palisades. Archaeological evidence from the region suggests a strong relationship with a band of Aruak tribes stretching from the Upper Xingu to modern day Bolivia. It is unknown what sort of relationship the Aruak-speaking people of the Upper Xingu River had with other, Carib-speaking tribes, although the current multiethnic order in the region was in place by the 18th century.
German ethnologist Karl von den Steinen was the first European to record the existence of the Wauja tribe in 1884. He received hints that the tribe might exist (under the name Vaurá) by other indigenous peoples that he encountered on his expedition. He discovered exactly where they existed when given a map of the region by members of the Suyá tribe.
The public source identifies “Wauja” as ethnic group. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Wauja, ethnic and group.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1099056. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2010, 1000, 1600 and 1884.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wauja” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.