Orellana had arrived at an Indian settlement, the chief of which he calls Aomaguas, on the 12th of May, 1541, at San Fernando de Machiparo at the junction of the Putumayo and the Amazon.[55] Fray Gaspar de Carvajal, in his report preserved by Oviedo,[56] speaks of “the tribe or settlement of Machiparo, of which we heard from Aparia ‘_el grande_,’ as also of another kingdom called Homaga, which was in conflict with that of Machiparo.” The analogy between Homaga and Omagua can hardly be disregarded; and as the account continues, “After the latter had withdrawn from the Machiparo to pursue us, we went on eight or ten leagues farther to an elevated village which we judged to be on the border of the settlements and of the kingdom of Homaga”--the supposition is therefore not improbable that the tribe of the Omaguas inhabited, in the middle of the sixteenth century, that extensive tract which is bounded on the north by the Guaviare, on the south by the Amazon, and may have had the Cassiquiare and Rio Negro (partly) on its eastern, the Rio Uaupés and the Japura on its western borders. Herrera’s remark in his introductory “_Descripcion_” (of the year 1611) is not without significance: that “south of the province of Venezuela are the Omaguas and Omigos, with the provinces of the _dorado_.” At all events, the tribe seems to have inhabited a large tract, which included in the north extensive grassy plains, and in the south the thick woods of the shores of the Amazon.
The Omaguas belonged in all probability to the linguistic family of the Tupi-Guarani, and therefore to the principal division of the Brazilian aborigines. Many words in their language are undoubtedly of the Tupi idiom. Indeed, Velasco said in 1789: “This people is scattered over an extent of more than fifteen hundred leagues in the interior of America, under the names of Omaguas, Aguas, Tupis, and Guaranis.” According to the Jesuit Cristoval de Acuña,[57] who visited the Amazons in the Spanish service in 1639, their name means “Aguas,” or Flatheads. The Portuguese called them “Cambebas,” which has the same meaning in the Tupi language. Though unanimously pronounced, even as late as 1743, physically the handsomest Indians of the Amazon shores, their figures were deformed by the custom of pressing the heads of their infant children flat between two boards. The custom had been discontinued in 1777 when the Ouvidor Ribeira visited them at Olivenza at the mouth of the Rio Yavari, thirteen leagues below Tabatinga on the Amazon.