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This article takes a look at the history of the colonial and post-colonial gaze on the kapiwaya, a register of indigenous ritual dances and songs widespread in northwestern Amazonia. It shows that the current patrimonialisation of the kapiwaya and the relative debates are a continuation to the representations and practices promoted by missionaries, soldiers and politicians since the end of the 19th century. Although these ways of giving shape to the songs and dances have in common the occultation of the indigenous point of view on the kapiwaya, they become an arena where the political recognition of indigenous peoples is played out.

This article focuses on the work of Maximiano José Roberto, a descendant of a prestigious Tariana lineage, a collaborator of the academic elite of Manaus and an unknown pioneer of Amazonian anthropology. His main work, the legend of Yuruparí, is an important document for the study of the history of the Upper Rio Negro region in the nineteenth century. Pervasive in the narrative, the question of the status of women in indigenous societies is presented under the form of a bloody struggle. However, alongside the ruthless repression of women's fights against the establishment of a hegemonic male power, a form of gender violence hitherto absent from the mythologies of the Upper Río Negro appears: the symbolic confinement of indigenous women. Our hypothesis is that this transformation of gender violence results from the encounter of Maximiano José Roberto's literary and political project with the expectations and assumptions of the male and colonial intellectual elite of the Brazilian Amazon at the end of the nineteenth century. Therefore, the legend reflects through the work of Roberto the profound transformations of Brazilian national society in its relationship with indigenous communities.