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In relation to the specific history of the Kanoê of the Omerê, in the beginning of 1996, the employees of the Contact Front, Marcelo do Santos and Altair Algayer, with Munuzinho Kanoê as interpreter, got the first statements from the group. Below, we summarize in part the story of how only the family of Tutuá survived.

The group then had approximately 50 people, most of whom were women and several children. One day, the men got together and decided to go on an expedition looking for other peoples, with whom they could negotiate several marriages. All the Kanoê men, from the oldest to grown-up boys, went. The women were left only with their children. The days passed and the men did not come back. The anxiety among the women grew every day and two of them decided to go in search of the men. Three or four days later, they came back with the tragic news: their husbands and sons had been killed. The women entered in panic and, with no hope, they decided to commit collective suicide. They prepared a poison, gave it to their children to drink, and poisoned themselves. Tutuá, however, who had hardly begun to drink the poison found the strength to struggle for life and vomited what she had drunk. She also was able to save her children - Txinamanty and Purá -, her sister and her niece (Aimoró).

The Kanoê of the Omerê were thus reduced to two adult women and three children. But Tutuá's sister was not the same. She went crazy, not believing that the men were dead; she left her daughter Aimoró with Tutuá and, alone, went after her husband and boys. Tutuá even tried to stop her, but in vain: her sister left and she was never heard of again.

Tutuá, alone, raised her children and niece, seeking refuge in the forest. However, as soon as she had established contacts with the Akuntsu, she tried to get closer to them, in the hope of finding possible marriages for her children. But the relations between the two isolated indigenous groups were not always friendly, not only because of the linguistic barrier, but also because of the accentuated cultural differences between the groups. From what Marcelo dos Santos could gather, through Munuzinho Kanoê as an interpreter, Tutuá Kanoê always tried to get her children closer to the Akuntsu, in the hope that Babá, the chief, might come to give one of the girls as a wife for her son Purá. At the same time, Tutuá hoped that her daughter Txinamanty and niece Aimoró would get pregnant by Pupaki, an Akuntsu man, or by the chief Babá himself. But the attempts were always frustrated. Every time they got close, conflicts and death threats against the Kanoê arose, which ended up being concretized. Because she was more nervous and aggressive with the Akuntsu, Aimoró was killed by them. This death worsened the relations between the two groups even more. Despite the instability of living together, however, Txinamanty Kanoê got pregnant by the chief Babá and, in October of the same year, a boy was born. The Kanoê boy gave his name, Operá ("jaguar") to the newborn and adopted the name of Purá ("cricket").

With Aimoró's death, the Kanoê became relatively sadder than they already were, for, besides being the pajé of the group, Aimoró still had a happy, more festive spirit. It was she who organized the few rituals that the Kanoê still held. The Kanoê still insisted in getting close to the Akuntsu, but the conflicts continued. To minimize the problems, the indigenists intervened and suggested to the Kanoê that they move their village to another forest reserve, on the banks of the Omerê stream, approximately three kilometers from the Funai camp.