Mapinguary reports in Amazonian travel and ethnographic literature

Record summary

Mapinguary is an Amazonian forest-being tradition described in travel writing, regional folklore and later cryptozoological literature as a large, powerful, sometimes foul-smelling creature. Early twentieth-century accounts are valuable for comparing Indigenous and settler narrative transmission with later claims that the being represents a surviving giant ground sloth. The reports vary substantially in appearance, behavior and locality, and the giant-sloth interpretation is speculative. Researchers should establish which descriptions are contemporaneous ethnography, which are translated oral traditions and which were added by later authors.