Jurupari in Claude d’Abbeville’s Maranhão Account

Record summary

Claude d’Abbeville’s Histoire de la mission des pères capucins en l’isle de Maragnan records Indigenous religious concepts and named beings from Maranhão, including material associated in later scholarship with Jurupari. Jurupari is a culturally specific supernatural or ritual figure, not a straightforward animal report, but its colonial documentation is relevant to the boundary between “unknown creature,” demonology, and Indigenous cosmology. Comparing French transcription with Portuguese and later ethnographic sources can clarify whether later monster interpretations are historically justified or retrospective.