The total number of Native tribes which inhabited present day Brazil at the time of first contact is disputed and difficult to ascertain.
Brazilian Pardo and Mestizo population have mostly unknown indigenous backgrounds, some or several of them likely stemming from extinct cultures.
The Bandeirantes hunted and enslaved indigenous peoples in the then unexplored interior of Brazil from the 16th to the early 19th century.
Most of the recorded extinctions of the Brazilian tribes were caused by warfare with the neo-Brazilians and from the epidemics which were sometimes deliberately spread by the colonizers.
Examples are Krenak and Apiacá In certain other cases, tribes which became extinct in Brasil existed as a living nation elsewhere, such as the Oyanpik