The ethnographers who traveled and lived in Amazon basin at the beginning of the twentieth century are focused, in this article, as sources of reflection for the history of anthropology. Points of view of P. Tastevin, Koch-Grünberg, Stradelli and Nimuendajú are analised in their implications for the local knowledge of the Solimões River and for the field of ethology. Some aspects of their intelectual production, in addition to facts of their biographies, considered within the framework of the background of each one of them, are the subject of this inquiry. The best-known contribution of those ethnographers to contemporary anthropological theory is their interpretation of the beliefs and representations of the Amazon Indians. The main interest is to show how the shared situation lived by those ethnographers have produced relation between their works, even though the circumstances of their interaction have not been explicit in written documents, and each one of them have not always seen the other as a true interloctor.
ethnographers; anthropology; ethnology; history; background; representation; documents; interloctor