Mura Indians are a South American Indian people of the Amazon tropical forest of western Brazil. The Mura originally inhabited the right bank of the lower Madeira River near the mouth of the Jamari River. Contact with whites led them to adopt guerrilla tactics; they spread downstream to the Purus River, raiding sedentary farmers along the way. By 1774 the Mura expansion had been countered by a local Brazilian campaign of extermination. In 1786, weakened by disease and by losses suffered at the hands of the aggressive Mundurukú, the Mura made peace with the colonials. The Mura are primarily fishermen of the rivers. A family spends much of its time in its canoe. The Mura are approaching extinction as an ethnic population. They now speak Portuguese, and few remember the Mura language.
