Macunaima by Mario de Andrade and Cobra Norato by Raul Bopp are landmarks in Brazilian modernist literature. Their authors followed an opposite path to that of European explorers and naturalists who copied tales from the forest and translated them to the languages of their countries of origin. They highlighted the national character of these stories told by indigenous people. In this article, I correlate this modernist imaginary with native narratives that, currently, present updated versions of indigenous tales, whose protagonists are problematic heroes associated with ethnical processes alike. During ethnographic fieldwork, I have heard, in fact, statements deriving from these narratives. The narrators associate their heroes' adventures with facts of their everyday lives. Such stories are recurrent in different areas of native Amazon, either in the heart of indigenous cultures or Brazilian afro-descendant communities.