THE AMAZONS

The Amazon River acquired its name because a group of Spaniards who made an astounding trip down it in the 1540s reported fighting formidable female warriors. They were described as 'very white and tall, with long braided hair. They went 'naked' but with their privy parts covered, with their bows and arrows in their hands'. Like the Amazons of classical mythology, they were ruled by a queen and lived in their own strictly female communities, consorting with men only for breeding purposes. Modern Europeans dismiss teh theory but indian peoples in the Amazon Basin beliebe it and have kept alive a tradition of ferocious women warriors and all-female villages. the Amazons are said to live on an island in the Lake of the Mirror of the Moon, matiung with the nearby men once a year. They keep only the female babies and hand their infant sons back to those who fathered them.