This paper explores the bibliographical and ethnographic tools used by Charles-Marie de La Condamine (1701-1774) to represent the Amazon River to the European reading public in the mid-eighteenth century. By carefully analyzing La Condamine’s descriptions of native populations and the sources upon which he relied as he descended the river, the author emphasizes the narrative strategies he employed to portray his observations as first-person eyewitness accounts. The article goes on to examine contemporary reactions to La Condamine’s Relation abrégée d’un voyage fait dans l’intérieur de l’Amérique méridionale (1745), especially the manner in which the text recounted the cultural characteristics of Amerindian populations and the persistent myth of female warriors living apart from men who were thought to populate the region from early in the sixteenth century, if not earlier.
Amazon; ethnography; exploration