The Juris (also ''Juri'', ''Yuri'') were a tribe of

South American Indigenous people In South America, Indigenous peoples comprise the Pre-Columbian peoples and their descendants, as contrasted with people of European ancestry and those of African descent. In Spanish, Indigenous peoples are referred to as (), or (). The term ...

, formerly occupying the country between the rivers Içá (lower Putumayo) and Yapura, north-western

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

. In ancient days they were the most powerful tribe of the district, but in 1820 their numbers did not exceed 2000. Owing to inter-marrying, the Juris are believed to have been extinct for half a century. They were closely related to the Passes, and were like them a fair-skinned, finely built people with quite European features.

Language

Data on the Yuri language (Jurí) was collected on two occasions in the 19th century, in 1853 and 1867. The american linguist Terrence Kaufman notes that there is good lexical evidence to support a link with

Ticuna The Ticuna (also Magüta, Tucuna, Tikuna, or Tukuna, ) are an indigenous people of Brazil (36,000'')'', indigenous peoples of Colombia, Colombia (6,000), and indigenous peoples in Peru, Peru (7,000). They are the most numerous tribe in the Brazi ...

in a Ticuna–Yurí language family (1994:62, after Nimuendajú 1977:62), though the data has never been explicitly compared (Hammarström 2010).

Relation to Carabayo

It is commonly assumed that the Juri people and their language has survived among the uncontacted people or peoples of the

Rio Puré Rio or Río is the Portuguese and Spanish word for "river". The word also exists in Italian, but is largely obsolete and used in a poetical or literary context to mean "stream". Rio, RIO or Río may also refer to: Places United States * Rio, Fl ...

region. The name "Yuri" is often used as a synonym for the only named people in the area, the

Carabayo The Carabayo (who perhaps call themselves Yacumo) are an uncontacted people of Colombia living in at least three long houses, known as '' malokas'', along the Rio Puré (now the Río Puré National Park) in the southeastern corner of the cou ...

in Colombia. A list of words collected in 1969 from the Carabayo, only recovered in 2013, suggests the language is close to Yuri, though perhaps not a direct descendant.

References

Ethnic groups in Brazil {{Brazil-ethno-group-stub