river, washed from head to foot, painted from the face down to the middle of the body, and then sent home naked to be adorned with feathers and celebrated in their new womanhood by the entire community with music and dancing. During these ceremonies, the other women would give them small quantities of manioc beer to drink; finally, the oldest man in the village would come up and strike them on the shoulders with a small stick, giving them at the same time the names they would bear for the rest of their lives. After undergoing this ritual, the men were allowed to ask for them as wives. The Omaguas harvested their crops from the island mud-flats as well as from their swiddens; and they stored manioc underground in ingeniously designed pits, to be protected from the flood and then eaten during the next planting season. They hung up maize and other fruits of the soil in the high parts of their houses for preservation. When the floods came, they were ready for it on elevated bark floors in their tall houses, and used their canoes for all movement from one place to another. They fought and hunted only with the lance, blowgun and boquetera, a sling discharging hard clay bullets used to kill the manatee, the river turtle and the enormous pirarucú fish. The Cambeba rebellion of 1701 By the 1690s, Portuguese slave raids launched intermittently from Pará (modern-day Belém) became so intense and frequent that the Cambeba from distant communities, as well as neighboring Yurimagua, fled to the comparative safety of the Spanish Jesuit mission settlements near the mouth of the Napo River, including San Joaquin de Omaguas. This influx of refugees contributed to a deterioration of the relationship between the Jesuits and the longer-term Cambeba residents of the mission settlements. In 1701, Cambebas in several settlements rose up against the Jesuit missionary presence, under the leadership of the Cambeba cacique Payoreva. At Fritz's request, a small military force quelled the revolt, and Fritz subsequently instituted annual visits by secular military forces to intimidate the Cambeba and stave off potential uprisings. Payoreva was arrested and imprisoned by the Spanish, however he escaped and returned to San Joaquin de Omaguas to persuade the Omagua people to leave the influence of the missionaries and establish new settlements along the Juruá River. Fritz attempted to persuade the Cambebas to return to