Numerous accounts from Spanish, Portuguese and English explorers from the 1500s to 1700s report seeing large tall warrior women who ruled their society and would fight furiously. Wearing gold crowns, white makeup, long long hair, weilding bows. Taking men from rival vilages and using them to get pregnant, killing any sons or getting rid of them and only keeping daughters. Given the numerous reports, how likely is it that this is true?
I dont have any sources right now. I had been reading the book "River of darkness" by Buddy Levy that goes over the evidence in portions of the book.
So how likely is it that "Amazons" ever existed?
I'm Brazilian and the consensus is: there were no Amazons wearing golden crowns or acting like Greek mythology Amazons, this is pure fiction. What may have existed were isolated groups of women that, for some reason (sickness, warring with other tribes) had no men at the moment of the contact with white people, but they had relationships with other tribes and didn't kill children.
A particular matriarchal tribe known as Içamiabas attacked Francisco de Orellana when he entered their territory. There's some controversy about his account because it says that "they had really long hair like women". According to Father Gaspar de Carvajal their leaders were women, but there's no evidence that there weren't men in the party that attacked Orellana.
According to legend, the Içamiabas had a relationship with the Guacari tribe. They had sexual relationships once a year or intermarried depending on who is telling the legend. Girls stayed with the Içamiabas and boys with the Guacari. An fertility amulet called Muiraquitã, made by native women, was given as a gift to the Guacari men. This is all legend, there's no evidence but accounts by white European men influenced by Greek mythology.
It's hard to find online content in English on the subject but here you can see the Wikipedia article on Muiraquitãs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muiraquitã.