White Amazonian Indians

White Amazonian Indians or White Indians is a term first applied to sightings or encounters with mysterious white skinned natives of the Amazon rainforest from the 16th century by Spanish missionaries. These encounters and tales sparked Percy Fawcett's journey into the uncharted jungle of the Amazonian Mato Grosso region. Various theories since the early 20th century have been proposed regarding the documented sightings or encounters.

History

The Spanish Dominican missionary Gaspar de Carvajal first claimed meeting a white tribe of Amazonians, he wrote in his Account of the Recent Discovery of the Famous Grand River (1542) of a tribe of Amazonian women who were "very white and tall" who had "long hair, braided and wound about their heads". British Journalist Harold T. Wilkins in his Mysteries of Ancient South America (1945) compiled further accounts of similar sightings of "White Indians" in the Amazon Rainforest from the 16th to 19th century by explorers and Jesuits.

Percy Fawcett in the 1920s searched for the Lost City of Z in the Amazon which he believed was inhabited by a race of "White Indians".

Alexander Hamilton Rice's 1924-1925 expedition into the unmapped Amazonian regions adjacent to the Parima River was publicized in The New York Times in July 1925. The article contains the following physical description of the "White Indians":

Then two Indians who were bleached white by the sun, but of pure Indian blood, came out from the forest to greet the party. Dr. Rice described them as being undersized and undernourished.