The Mehinaku claim their older villages were much larger; which is likely because European explorers had not brought the diseases that indigenous people had no immunity to.

These communities were likely abandoned for a variety of reasons, overused soil, intrusion of leaf-cutter ant colonies, and a tribal taboo associated with living in places where many people had died.

In 1884, when the first German explorers arrived at the Xingu River headwaters and began to document the tribes living there, the Mehinaku had two villages and a camping site used only during the dry season.

The proximity of a post where they could receive medical care gave them little incentive to relocate to their ancestral homeland, although the risks from the Ikpeng were gone by that time.

Huts that house families of ten or twelve people have no internal walls, and are situated around an open area that is in constant view.

[4] On the rare occasions when members of the group are out of sight, their activities can be inferred by their curious fellow villagers, who are able to recognize (and draw from memory) each other's footprints.