Before and after Rondon
The common impression of Rondon is of an intrepid man who explored the pristine wilderness and made contact with unknown wild Indians. An image, that is, of someone with a penchant and talent to subdue wildness in its diverse modes. The reality though may not be so simple, the Nambikwara congeries and other indigenous peoples inhabiting the southern fringe of the Amazon basin had a long history of previous contacts. The Latundê played a role in the fabric of the Northern Nambikwara cluster before retreating into isolation, living on the edge of a region of rapidly changing peoples and places. At some time they separated from the main body of the Northern Nambikwara peoples, and more specifically from the Lakondê, most likely a consequence of the construction of the Telegraph Line lead by Rondon. It is unclear whether they or Indians from another related component of the Northern cluster ever had peaceful contact with the Whites before Rondon. The occupation of areas in Rondônia and the documented rubber gatherers’ penetration from rivers throughout the region north of the Nambikwara do Campo, preceding and coinciding with the Mission, certainly do indicate the possibility that the Northern Nambikwara and the Sabanê were affected by the movements of the rubber frontier. In contrast with previous possible historical relations, Rondon and his Mission accomplished two major feats. They crossed the heartland of the Northern Nambikwara peoples, established a fixed occupation and made contact with numerous Nambikwara villages. In this sense, Rondon’s efforts represent the first real contact. He constructed base camps and extended the Telegraph Line right through the middle of the northern territory. This represented the materialization of the Brazilian state’s claim to the land. It would not be for several more years that the Sabanê, Lakondê and other members of the cluster would learn about the State, the nation and its claims that Rondon and his achievements exemplified. The Indians reinterpreted their understanding of Rondon in light of the newly created social space of intersocietal interaction and interethnic situations. In this manner Rondon assumes an importance from the external point of view of Nambikwara history and a salient significance in the Sabanê and Nambikwara interpretation of the Whites and their own conception of the same history. As a central figure in these chronicles, it is worthwhile to examine Rondon carefully.

Rondon’s heroic image relates to his famous mission to construct the Telegraph Line from Cuiabá into the Amazon in order to integrate Amazonia into the national framework envisioned by the recently constituted Republic of Brazil. Rondon seems to have fully adhered to the military ideology and the justification of their intervention. The aim of the republic and the military was to extend the authority of the nation, in effect seen as the benign and civilizing power of the state, to all its borders and to include all major regions of the country within the reach of the central government. Several efforts were made. During the previous successful construction of a Telegraph Line within the state of Mato Grosso, Rondon participated and made friends with some of the employees, a group of Bororo Indians. Here Rondon learned his way around and later proved perfectly suited for the task of leading this major project of geopolitical state building. Rondon, then a major, was a native of Mato Grosso. He came from a rural background, and was a qualified engineer. Ideologically a firm positivist, Rondon was dedicated to the country’s progress. His abilities and skills made him the most suitable candidate to lead what became known as The Rondon Commission. Although the characteristically lengthy and cumbersome official title did not feature his name, it was also commonly referred to as The Rondon Mission. The use of the word mission in this name may have given participants a religious analogy to their project and helped put this political mission on par with those of religious missionaries, who were usually in the front lines of the conquest and sociopolitical domination of Indian peoples. As if they too found themselves on a kind of sacred mission.

It is not coincidental that Rondon was a member of an offshoot of the Positivist Church founded by August Comte, a man who claimed that this church represented the highest form of the religion. When away on the mission in the wilderness of the Northern Nambikwara region Rondon did not forget the festivities on the anniversary of the death of Comte, a man who Rondon regarded as “humanity’s greatest philosopher”. He recommended that his wife and family be his representatives at the commemoration that took place at Brazil’s previous capital, Rio de Janeiro (n.d.: 247). Known widely as a frontiersman, Rondon adhered wholeheartedly to a prominent group in the army that embraced the western ideology concerning progress and what can only be described as a totalizing reductionist evolutionary scheme of the history and future of mankind. In this philosophy, the idea of backward tribes occupied a legitimate but inferior place. Rondon is remembered for his humane treatment and a certain respect for the Indians he encountered. By examining the available literature, this seems a fair judgement and one that is perpetuated in the Brazilian hero cult dedicated to the great explorer and protector of our Indians[i]. In one famed incident, Rondon was hit by an Indian’s arrow and had to restrain his companions from taking immediate revenge. As he surely would have died had it not been for the bandoleer that he wore across his chest, it is clear that he lived by the belief that made him legendary, die if necessary, but never kill[ii]. In this respect, he belonged to a strand of the historical European intellectual tradition that recognized the Indians as human beings in a country where only a small minority agreed. For example, in the beginning of the nineteenth century the traveler Auguste Saint-Hilaire attempted in vain to convert local Brazilian hosts in the interior of Espírito Santo to accept this point of view. He did not meet with any success because the local population considered these savage Indians as heathens, and as worthless, ferocious beasts, unfit for any attempt to be civilized. They believed that to be a real human being, one must be baptized (a view prevalent even today among Catholics in Recife[iii]). Hypocritically, this understanding contradicts the Catholic idea that the Indians have human souls and should be treated accordingly (Hemming 1995: 136). Saint-Hilaire was a naturalist and Rondon himself was very much inspired by the ideal of being a naturalist. He patronized the scientific aspects of his expeditions, employed scientists and he himself lectured in public and wrote, among other topics, about geography. Both Saint-Hilaire and Rondon shared the scientific notion that the Indians are essentially children (Saint-Hilaire), that is, perfectible, and so must be capable of being educated in the higher forms of an advanced society.

Therefore Rondon seems to have held the Indians and their tribes – this word itself a by-product of the evolutionary conception of history – in a relatively high regard and certainly felt sincere affection for them. Despite this admiration and respect for the societies and cultures of these peoples and their special competence in various activities inherent in their lived world, the intrinsic superiority of Western civilization is not a topic open for discussion. Yet, in light of Rondon’s humble background in the interior and his restraint even when hit by Nambikwara arrows demonstrate that Rondon is indeed both a courageous and just figure firm in his resolve. It can be said that he recognized the humanity of the Indians more than the vast majority of his compatriots, no small feat for someone of his background. But he also believed strongly in the evolutionary scheme of mankind and felt that as human beings are perfectible, the Indians ought to educated by a disinterested tutelage to reach a higher level of civilization. Such education involves first and foremost the teaching of work as understood to be the disciplined activity of the body engaged in producing for others and being involved with the market. The idea was to change the basically short-term production and consumption strategies of the Indians into something more similar to the capitalist mode of production[iv]. Indeed, the foreign nature of Indian economics (or lack thereof) caused observers to regard what the perceived as idleness, laziness, improvidence or carelessness to be completely askance to a real work ethic. Within the Indian peoples, the socially set levels of needs normally were easily met by the existing production levels. Indian villages and peoples remained, consequently, in a state of unproductive autonomy with what many outsiders perceived as an “infuriating indifference to material possessions” (ib.: 137)[v].

The real issue is what the Indians considered normal productive activities was not the same as what the outsiders thought of as work. This underscored the necessity of education for a people considered less evolved and justified intervention. This usually forceful interference was sometimes done with the sincere intention of being for their own good and hence this was seen as an act of helping these childlike peoples who were still in the infancy of mankind. This concept of backwardness is still current in Western societies and is almost universally characterized as the Stone Age, an expression current in writings relating to the Telegraph Commission. The human beings left in the wake of history need the assistance of those who know better. This fundamental and obviously ethnocentric and tempo-centric assumption appears as the undisputed common sense in Rondon’s time and, as already evident, remains a constant certitude in even the temporary conceptions of Indians. Especially so when seen as savages and uncivilized. The well-intentioned disposition of granting a human status to “our Indians” (Rondon), is evident the Republic’s possessive tone. Brazil’s positivist national slogan written on the flag, order and progress, also implies the duty of transforming these citizens. Indians, currently considered the first Brazilians – note that such an understanding of history inherently involves the idea of eternal or pre-existing nation-state – must become genuinely useful citizens that participate in the national life. For this goal to be reached, the Indians must be taught this view. Despite the silence about the arbitrary nature of this symbolic dispossession of political autonomy, it should be obvious that no native people ever realized that the national state considers their territory as part of the national territory and its peoples as national citizens. This literal and symbolic violence derived from the conception of the nation-state is always passed over under silence and the right of political and territorial possession usually is conceived of as an undisputed naturally existing right. To all compatriots like Rondon the order must be imposed in the whole country and then the state must lead the way to progress. Although, of course, in this scheme, order is progress and, so as to bring about the new order, the opposite is also true.

In fact, the entire Telegraph Line project can be thought of as a manifestation of the domination and domestication of wild spaces and indigenous peoples. Here, under the auspices of science, the positivist inspiration of the Mission correlated not only with development interests but also with scientific advancement. This is clear in the language used during the expeditions, and the explorers’ mention of new lands that qualified observers had not yet penetrated. The Mission discussed these issues, especially about the discovery of rivers and the delineation of the watersheds and river basins. They effectively turned the penetration of virgin lands into an exercise of naming new rivers and outlining the network of watercourses which permeate the country. Such geographical questions raised debates among the participant officers and were discussed in detail in Rondon’s lectures in the then-capital Rio de Janeiro, where his talks aroused a very interested public. Rondon gave new names to nearly all rivers and streams in the region of Nambikwara occupancy. Rondon even renamed some stagnant small towns and villages to encourage development. For example, Rondon is responsible for naming what is currently a large town in the Sararé region, located at the upper Guaporé River – Pontes e Lacerda (Rondon 1922: 26). Rondon usually chose names in honor of significant dates, national republican events, and personal associates. Many of these new names are still in use. Other examples include Rio da Bandeira (Flag), Rio Comemoração (Commemoration), Rio Tenente Marques (formerly the Rio Ananaz – Pineapple River – renamed to honor the sudden death of a participant of the Mission) and Rio da Dúvida (River of Doubt). The latter is a reference to the doubt concerning into which basin this river drains. This doubt created a sort of geographical controversy cumulating during discussions at the capital and ended up calling the attention of the former U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt with whom Rondon led a joint expedition to clear up the issue[vi]. They mounted the expedition, travelled to the region and descended the river, initially through Northern Nambikwara lands. When they arrived at the lower reaches they discovered that the river was inhabited by rubber tappers who used to come up from the Madeira River. Men there were sure that the river’s name was Castanha. Characteristically, despite the fact that the regional people already had christened the river, it was renamed and now is known as the Rio Roosevelt.

The history of the incorporation of unknown lands
Under Rondon’s guidance and within the premisses of his thought, the Telegraph Line first penetrated into a section of the Paresi territory that was inhabited by a people that spoke an Aruak language and who had long-standing relations with the Nambikwara that populated the eastern border. For a long time these Indians had suffered various national intrusions of diverse nature. Interestingly, this people was considered to be more civilized than many of their neighbours because their means of sustenance stressed their horticultural techniques and due to their peaceful reputation. In this sense, they constituted a forceful counterbalance to the Nambikwara, whom many thought to be uncivilized, warlike, nomadic and brutish cannibals. This benevolent image turned the Paresi into preferred junior partners in the planned civilizing process. They became major junior collaborators in the civilizing mission to bring progress to less advanced tribes, the most primitive being, of course, their neighbours. It should be noted that the Paresi nicknamed the Nambikwara “those who sleep on the ground” and here White and Paresi prejudice and stereotype coincided to condemn Nambikwara backwardness. An Indian people that did not even make or use hammocks, the only exception in the region, surely are the most primitive of all the Indians. Rondon cites this Paresi name with a certain approval[vii]. Lévi-Strauss also reminds his readers that the Indians, in general, disregard anyone who is so poor as to not even to possess a hammock. He stresses a kind of material austerity for the Nambikwara. In fact, although a common stereotype regards all Indians as poor and lacking in material culture, all peoples do possess their proper notions about the socially established normal level of material possessions and that what represents wealth. It is probably not arbitrary that, by a coincidence, both of these men were familiar with the Bororo, an indigenous people of Mato Grosso who placed great importance on ownership of a enormous variety of material culture and for whom the wealth of the corporate matrilineal group consists in the ownership of a diverse array of objects, including myths and rituals[viii].

Rondon published a volume on “Ethnography” in the series of publications edited by the Telegraph Commission somewhere around 1910[ix]. The volume opens with a description of the Paresi according to the usual evolutionist scheme. Rondon noted the high degree of development of their agriculture and in an attempt to improve the limited cultivation capability of their land, he proposed that they move to richer soil. The Paresi leader Toilori refused the offer. He clearly stated his attachment to his land and indicated the limits of what his people considered their territory, “where their grandfathers were born, died, hunted, and cultivated crops” (Rondon 1947: 34). Interestingly, aside from a strong attachment to an ancestral territory, there was the necessity of periodically moving villages owing to poor soil. Nonetheless, Rondon did not take this to be a nomadic tendency. Not even when the Paresi relocate for cultural reasons like a number of deaths, and hence for what Rondon would call an irrational reason. Greatly suffering from the encroachment of rubber tappers from the Amazon basin and the forceful recruitment inherent in the rubber exploitation system, this same leader explicitly refused the offer, mentioning that he had no desire to be a rubber collector[x]. Living at the headwaters along the watershed of the Amazonian river basin and at the higher parts of its rivers, the Paresi only partially escaped from the pressure of the rubber system expanding upward from the lower parts of the river that are located in the forests where rubber trees are much more abundant. Many villages suffered from the pressure to give up their lands and join the system, than at its zenith. Another such group of people were the neighboring Nambikwara do Campo who, despite the same scarcity of rubber trees of the Parecis plateau, also suffered attacks by rubber tappers. Fortunately, their resistance to compromise and a greater mobility earned them a brutal reputation that may have protected them (at least in part) from further encroachment. Ferociousness was, in this constellation of images mediated by the notion of undomesticated wildness, equated with cannibalism; and so the Nambikwara were thought of as a particularly wild people close to untamed nature.

Rondon, naturally, did not abandon his plans to help the Paresi come closer to civilization. According to Machado, an expert on the Paresi’s relation with Rondon, the Paresi are prominent in the Rondon’s conception of the Indian and his decision to act in their favor (Machado 1998:253). Rondon represented the Federal Government to the Paresi and he called them to his aid in his discoveries in order to carry out the state’s firm demand to populate this immense hinterland and regain the primitive splendour of the Paresi from before the enormous decline of this populous and wealthy great nation. Accordingly, he created great scenes demonstrating both the generosity of the government and of himself as its representative. Once during a sort of inter-village potlatch, Rondon made a great show of the distribution of the usual commodities to people from various localities and of different group affiliations. To stamp the most vivid impression upon their naive spirits with the power and greatness of the government, this military man dressed in his most regal uniform. This impression management (as called by Goffman) thus established him as the embodiment of the abstract and distant government from Rio de Janeiro, the very city that was his home base where his family lived. Personifying the state with an elaborate external signs entails a conscious construction that coincides with the image he projected towards national society. This personal trajectory successfully transformed his personage into a national hero. By promising easy access to outside commodities, either by the redistribution that he employed to gain the Indian’s confidence and cooperation, or as rewards for labor engagements, the Commission unquestionably needed to succeed, Rondon achieved the same effect among the Paresi. Consequently, the Indians assigned him the role of a exalted and generous chief, as it was through him that goods were redistributed. This sentiment arose amongst a people who were already dependent on outside goods, and either subjected to the exploitative rubber regime or to the collecting of ipecac; accordingly relations with Rondon entailed a great relief from the direct and sometimes violent domination imposed on them (see Machado 1998: 253-60). Thus, Rondon managed to fabricate being a hero among the Indians as well.

Rondon despised the violence inflicted on the Indians and considered the total system of the rubber market, from the low price fetched by produce to the high cost of commodities, to be unjust and exploitative. In fact, he claimed that he paid his laborers the same as he did the national laborers. The employment of the docile Paresi demonstrates both the use of education and the transformation of the Indian into a manual laborer. This docility is obviously another stereotype, although overall, it may contain a kernel of truth. Mainly, it may have arisen out of this paternalistic hero image and the concomitant generous favors granted, and the fairer treatment they received compared to the disparaging and unfair contact to which most of the Paresi were subjected[xi]. Docility apparently is equated with domestication and acceptance of domination. The Mission consequently gained a reliable labor force, Indians were responsible for various aspects of the construction of the Telegraph Line and they were indispensable guides through the unexplored Nambikwara lands. The Commission built a boarding school for regional Indian students. Initially this was based in the Paresi heartland, later it was moved to Utiarity, closer to the Nambikwara. Some students (including six orphans from Vilhena) learned the morse alphabet and worked on the telegraph, while others were soldiers and even trumpet players who knew how to play the military commands and the national anthem. Consequently, an Indian could sound the command to stand at attention and play the national hymn when Rondon arrived at his station during one of his later tours of excursion through the region. This purpose of education was to inspire a firm national sentiment jointly with new capabilities and social customs. Being a positivist, Rondon did not support the religious missions. He competed with them directly for control over the role of mediator and fraternal protection. The Paresi hence actualized this project of protection without direction (in the words of Roquette-Pinto [1919]), letting progress take its natural course. They became Rondon’s dedicated, submissive [sic] and very loyal friends, ideal laborers for the conquest of the wilderness along with its savage inhabitants (apud Machado 1998: 247; 265). They were an ideal example for the 1910 political campaign to make the Indians wards of the state under the auspices of the new agency Serviço de Proteção aos Índios e Localização de Trabalhadores Nacionais (“Service for the Protection of the Indians and the Localization of National Laborers”). Interestingly, the task of this agency differs from pure protection to Indians as it also supported colonization in favor of the settlement of national agricultural workers. The latter idea was abandoned eight years later[xii].

The labor force participated in a variety of activities undertaken by the Mission. The Indians’ own participation in the Mission ranged from their determination to move villages or groups to telegraph stations, to individual or family movements along the route of the Telegraph Line. The Commission itself cared for orphans of epidemics and, in time, was involved with not only arranging but even determining marriages for Indians directly under its influence (Machado 1998: 287). The type of commitment from the dominated Indians themselves stemmed from more than an alleviation of oppression. These Indians developed a sense of being Rondon’s Indians and being civilized Indians. On one occasion Rondon participated in an inter-village feast meant to promote harmony between close and distant kin. It was during this time that the image of Rondon was firmly established as a chief of the Whites who supported traditional leaders and genuinely appreciated the native culture and the Paresi language. The Paresi recognized the builder of the first house of a village as the owner of the place, the natural local leadership, but also acknowledged a few major leaders with authority over more than one village. Rondon reinforced this authority by means of the redistribution of goods through these headmen. Perhaps after using his power to resettle whole villages to the Posts he had founded, Rondon already came to be seen as a chief of chiefs[xiii]. In separating Indian territory from White lands and renaming all rivers and various places, he acted as the mythological hero of the Paresi that named the whole region and allocated the different segments to their respective territories. Hence, by renaming and in a way resettling the lands Rondon replicated the original process of occupation by the Indian peoples and he, probably unknowingly, played the role of master of renewal of the placement of the Paresi in the cosmos (cf. Machado 1998). One of the Indians who served Rondon (self-proclaimed Indian of Rondon) was reported to have said: “That one is our chief (…) He is correcting the world!” (Machado 1998: 272). Apparently, these Indians believed that one who imposes order on the land and the people reinstates the world. Perhaps one could say, master of a way of worldmaking (Goodman 1978).

When the Paresi chief, Toloiri, unexpectedly died, Rondon lamented the lost opportunity to propel progress through this collaborator. The death was a serious setback to Rondon’s grand plans and to the “speed and profoundness of the desired transformation” of the Paresi people (Rondon 1922: 48). Toloiri belonged to the Paresi group sometimes referred to as Cabixi. This group was generally regarded by the other Paresi segments as uncivilized. They may have been confused with the savage Southern Nambikwara groups believed to be responsible for the persistent long term attacks on the former capital of Mato Grosso, Vila Bela (a city on the Guaporé River, near the Bolivian frontier). Hence the name Kabixí both in and out of the Paresi group refered to the least civilized and most savage group. The man whom Rondon called a chief was the only one of this southern Paresi group to be incorporated as a guide in Rondon’s Mission[xiv]. Ironically, only after Toloiri’s death did Rondon honor him by giving his name to one the smaller streams deep within the Nambikwara territories. The Tolori river currently marks the border of the Pyrineus de Souza Indian Territory, near the city of Vilhena (Rondon n.d.: 195; today the name is pronounced Tolori). As a result, one of the only Paresi geographical names is an homage to a dead chief engaged by the Mission and is nowhere near his home territory: Rondon usually knew the Paresi names of geographical occurrences but never adopted them for national usage, always choosing a Brazilian name. The Northern Nambikwara region even includes features with his daughter’s names. In naming these lands, Rondon was essentially claiming them for his country. The nation-state required undiscovered lands to receive proper names as part of the nationalization process. On one occasion Rondon received explicit orders in naming locales. Owing to the sensitive international character of the expedition with Roosevelt, and in compliance with the government resolution, as communicated by the minister of Foreign Affairs, Rondon was told “(…) to perpetuate on the map of Brazil the memory of the voyage of geographical discoveries” (Rondon 1916: 75-6). The renaming of the River of Doubt as Roosevelt River could be said to represent the official government policy of imprinting the national mark on the land and transforming geographical landmarks into the distinguishing features of the Republic.

The less contacted Southern Paresi maintained relations with the Nambikwara of the Guaporé valley. Some Southern Paresi even learned the language of this Nambikwara cluster. A brother of Toloiri spoke the Nambikwara language (Rondon 1922: 43). At this time, the other Paresi also used the term Cabixi pejoratively for both these Paresi and Nambikwara, placing their kin on the same low level as their despicable neighbors. However, Rondon and Roquette-Pinto (see, for example, 1913: 382) preferred to restrict the name Cabixi to the Nambikwara. This name identified them as the assailants of the Vila Bela inhabitants (the locally called Cabixi). This is presumably because this leaves only notorious savages as the culprits and saves face for the Paresi[xv]. Both authors presented a possible redefinition of the reference implied by the name of an Indian tribe as the mere finding out of the truth, again playing down the political and social consequences of naming. Rondon knew very well that the names of Indian peoples represent labels assigned by the Brazilians who came into contact with them. Rondon wrote that the name Nambikwara has its source in backlanders and has been in circulation for a long time. As for the name Paresi, he explains that it is what the explorers understood to be the proper name of the Paresi for themselves. Rondon also remarks that almost all peoples have their own auto-denomination. He relates, however, that the contacts with what he called Nhambiquara have not been successful in discovering what this name for themselves might be.

With the fundamental aid of Paresi guides and laborers, the Mission first penetrated the Paresi heartlands and later the territory of the Nambikwara do Campo. The glamour of penetrating new lands and ensuing encounters with indigenous peoples enlivened this monotonous advance. In stark contrast with the peaceful Paresi, the penetration of Nambikwara territories caused anxiety and tension. But there was also the thrill of serving the Republic and extending the State’s authority over untamed populations, expanding the economic potential of the nation. During this historical time, national curiosity stimulated Rondon to publish ethnographic details about the Nambikwara. He started the chapter emphasizing the fame of this people in the beginning of the century: “Among the savage populations of Brazil none have recently aroused more attention than the Nhambiquára or Nambiquara tribe that lives in the extreme north of the state of Mato Grosso” (Rondon 1947: 45). This is the first time the Nambikwara gained a fame they did not procure. It is unclear why Rondon decided to adopt the spelling with an “h” instead of the simpler Nambiquara (Price 1989b: 195). Apparently, he wanted to maintain the previous century’s spelling as cited in the work of the German Karl Von den Steinen. Von den Steinen based his information on the reports of the state agency then dealing with the Indians. In this publication, Rondon demonstrated a penchant for ethnography. He copied the model of both current scientists and predecessors like Von den Steinen. This project, however, was not to be done in the same way that foreign investigators proceeded but carried out in the service of the republic, like the hagiographic articles in a journal of the capital in 1915 clearly show. Instead of collecting exotic objects there was to be “(…) an attempt to construct an image of the nhambiquara people detailed enough to permit one to know how, when, and in what sense one would have to act to be agreeable to them, to obtain a mode of expression more suitable to their mentality, to the state of their soul, and to the intentions that their discoverer and protector held towards them” (Missão Rondon 1916: 134; the book is based on a series of articles in the journal that seems to copy parts of the Mission’s reports; no author is cited but the writer is thought to be Buena Horta Barbosa, the brother of participants in the Mission, Lima 1990: 19). The investigation of what the discoverer also describes as the unknown ethnic conditions of the Nambikwara clearly aims at the loftier purpose of ethnographic knowledge subordinated to the discoverer’s exalted intentions of pacification (under his protection) and subsequent improvement of this people (his intentions). The quest was for useful knowledge that could further serve the nation, not just the sterile collection of material objects[xvi].

It is probably not arbitrary that the ethnographic style after the initial conclusion regarding the absence of any real historic information begins with giving the coordinates where the expedition first encountered Nambikwara, where Rondon was first attacked and then relates the making of contact by the worker in charge of the Campos Novos Station (the Nambikwara do Campo; Rondon 1947: 46-8). This contact proceeded quite slowly in 1910, and the information obtained is rather restricted to directly observable phenomena like ornaments, sleeping on the ground, and bodily features. The employee in charge and an army officer succeeded in annotating a very small vocabulary in two different places with two different dialects. This is exactly the information presented by Roquette-Pinto (1913) at the Congress of Americanists in London in 1912. Notably, the ethnography on the Paresi contains more information than the one regarding the Nambikwara. Rondon himself reminds the reader of the severe limitations of his notes. Contrary to what is asserted in Missão Rondon, a version of the same work that was specifically geared towards the general populace, his ethnography remains rather subordinated to his practical objectives of the efficient construction of the telegraphic line. What Rondon did accomplish, in contrast to this otherwise meager knowledge, relates to the Nambikwara’s reputation. Previously, a people thought of as the wildest savages could only be feared as cannibals (Missão Rondon 1916: 136). In Brazilian imagery, the primitive savage fierceness is associated with this practice, iconic of the basest level of civilization or, more aptly, barbarity. Consequently, Rondon searched through the remainders of food refuse in many villages in order to examine the bones. This inquiry found no evidence of cannibalism (ib.: 145). The verdict of, one might say, primitive but not anthropophagic, raised the Nambikwara to a higher level of civilization and they gained a slightly higher regard for their lifestyle.

Rondon’s account of the adventures during the Mission gives the impression that he felt both respect and admiration for the Nambikwara’s valiant resistance to the invasion of their lands, although he never abandons the predicate of primitiveness. In one incident on the savanna “a cabocla” – a polysemic Tupi word meaning a copper-colored person of at least some Indian ascendancy, but it can also refer to an Amazonian Indian, or even a civilized Indian – shot an arrow which hurt someone on the expedition. This astonished the members of the Mission. Embarrassingly for the wounded man Brazilian’s masculine pride, he was struck by a woman (Missão Rondon 1916: 141). Incidentally, this shows that there have been other groups aside from the Latundê, where women used a bow and arrow prior to contact. Apparently then, this phenomenon is not necessarily an act of desperation on the part of a group. Another incident (mentioned earlier) had a strong initial affect on the Brazilian image of Rondon. Despite nearly being shot in the neck, Rondon refused to retaliate or permit any action against the Indians (see Rondon 1922: 26). This attitude denotes what is known as the peaceful embrace that was used in the conquest of Brazil’s interior. An embrace that actually rather denotes the pressure of a relentless envelopment, containment and encapsulation that the encircled Indians must have felt (that is, not unlike the more general enclosure movement of lands in the interior). The event certainly aided in the fabrication of the image of a hero. It is no surprise that this event is always cited as the prime example of Rondon’s compliance with his own dictum and a major noble feat responsible for his legendary status (see the short biography of Rondon by Bigio, 2000: 45)[xvii]. This story and similar variants appear even in international summaries of Rondon’s life. It is well known that arrows actually hit him and some of the equipment that he wore bore the impact mark made by the most perilous one (Hemming 1995: 445)[xviii].

In the first years of the Mission, the Telegraph Line penetrated further into Nambikwara territories each dry season. Finally, they reached the Serra do Norte (the northern mountain range). Despite the name, the Serra do Norte is not actually a mountain range. It was optimistically labeled this way in the hope that it could be the legendary gold-rich mines (known as the lost mines of Urucumacuan) mentioned in historical texts. They were rumored to be located somewhere in eastern Rondônia, anywhere from Vilhena onwards into the current state, and other rumors about finding appeared once and while in reports and publications. Coincidentally, this area comprises the Northern Nambikwara’s region and includes several of the rivers and streams of their homeland. In 1913, impressed by the rumors, Roosevelt suggested that gold mining could be a major incentive that might spur the occupation and development of the whole Nambikwara region. He went on to declare that the entire region awaited a great future in agriculture and cattle raising (Roosevelt 1914: 203); see Rondon (1922: 66) for the Commission report). The change in landscape, vegetation and climate from the savanna highlands of the Parecis Plateau made a strong impression on the members of the Mission. Each journey had its difficulties. Rondon told Roosevelt that he named the Ananaz (pineapple) River after the deserted Indian pineapple field that fed the famished explorers when they reached the river (ib.: 175). In effect, as the exploration crossed the Nambikwara do Campo territory, there were frequent accounts of the size, quality and variety of their fields (raising food crops like the staples maize and manioc, and even various types of potatoes)[xix]. Apparently, these fields had a relatively abundant yield. In 1908, the Mission encountered a village sighted before and abandoned before the explorers entered: a vast clean plaza, around which were built one big house and three smaller ones; an area planted with two fruit trees was nearby; one field in fallow a little farther and beyond that quite a large field testified to the tenacity of these people. Rondon noted that the original vegetation was cleared better than that of the civilized neighbors. It was very well done, well cleared, effectively burnt and trimmed afterwards (Rondon 1922: 33)[xx].

Rondon follows the Paresi in distinguishing two different groups of Nambikwara, one of them being more warlike and intractable, the other less so. Thus, Rondon recognized some differences between the groups or tribes of the great Nambikwara Nation. When penetrating the north one of the officers met, by chance, a woman carrying foodstuffs and a child. He established the first contact, which was reported to be very friendly. Thus, Rondon postulates the second group has lighter customs and is more peaceful then the Plateau groups. Rondon attributes this difference to the state of war between rubber gatherers and Indians (to which he also attributes the presence of some metal tools, like axes and machetes among the latter). Past the savanna, around Vilhena (already outside of the Tapajos basin), the region is made of a denser forest with a number of small brooks that constitute the headwaters of several rivers that ultimately run into the Madeira River. It is probable that because of the smallish rivers and the presence of rapids the Northern Nambikwara had avoided serious invasions previous to the occupation occasioned by the Commission. To the north, there lives a number of warlike Tupi Mondé peoples. These peoples also helped deter access from adventurers traveling upriver. In this forested region, the Commission was glad to find several open grassy areas where the mules and oxen found something to eat. According to Rondon and other members, these open, savanna-like areas are the result of the continual Indian practice of occasionally putting fire to the land in order to clean it of the vegetation, resulting in permanent campos (savanna). This corresponds with the general Nambikwara preference for villages built in open areas and their inclination to inhabit savannas. Owing to these open lands, Rondon decided to change the itinerary of the Telegraph Line to use these pastures as ideal places both line itself and for the telegraph stations and the government cattle farm of Três Buritis. The latter constructions could offer support for mule trains and personnel movements along the Telegraph Line. If so, the Telegraph Line competed with the ecological spaces created by the Northern Nambikwara themselves and hence appropriated a most appreciated part of their ecosystem.

Within this region the expedition found diverse remains that the people left behind in their hasty departure. These objects represent a cross section of the culture of these people. Items found include fire sticks, stone axes, a gourd with a fermented drink, a dead wild pig, head covers made of monkey pelts and tucum strings, a roasted wild potato, urucu seeds, pieces of manioc cakes, several types of arrows, two parakeets under a woven basket, a small pestle, and a ceramic cooking vessel. Overall an interesting and very rich ethnographic collection that was left untouched out of respect to the Indians. To assure that no one meddled with any of these objects, Rondon posted a guard while the expedition’s main body (the civil labourers) passed the spot[xxi]. The objects catalogued clearly demonstrated the village’s impressive ability as cultivators and hunters. Later, the expedition came across another uninhabited village. This one had several conic houses that formed a triangle around a plaza. The occupants had planted banana, pineapple, araruta (a type of potato), cotton and the remains of the maize already collected from the stalks. Note the indigenous presence of cotton and ceramics. Interestingly Rondon does not point out the fact that the banana trees imply either some kind of direct contact with the Brazilians or long distance trading between Indian groups that passed this imported crop to this remote area. So although this place was indeed very distant, history already had caught up with these isolated Indians. The unique conic form of the houses fascinated Rondon. He attributed this distinctive shape to the influence of runaway slaves who founded a maroon village to the south in Guaporé Valley (these slaves were fleeing from Vila Bela and mining villages; see Part III). This was a relatively popular theory and reappears in his later writings (Rondon 1922: 64). In this sense, he did propose to keep open the possibility of an incomplete isolation even though this contrasted with the key propaganda about the expedition and its explicit goal, namely, the exploration of the unknown – unknown wilderness and unknown wildness.

It is noteworthy that, after this speculation about the origin of the distinctive houses, there follows a description regarding the refuse of the bones of many fish, wild pigs, and tapir. This was yet more proof of the sound ecological adaptation and a tribute to the quality of the hunters and to the variety of the game. Rondon, however, asserted this find to be perhaps the most original from the viewpoint of indigenous archaeology of the whole expedition, and possibly of the last few years in general (ib.: 64). Archaeology places these objects in the past when he actually discusses a village given as uninhabited but not abandoned (as the nearby fields prove). It may well have been evacuated soon before the invader’s advance, out of fear. However, by using this classification Rondon demotes the inhabitants to the past and so conceives ethnography as the potential archaeology of the future. The fact remains that the region was populated enough to afford these chance encounters. A richer habitat and a relatively dense population challenged the Mission to elaborate a notion of the future for this region within the premises set by the ideology of progress. The report highlights the value of the incalculable richness of the land. The supposed economic advantages of the region range from the rich alluvial layers full of gold and diamonds to the inexhaustible forest products and the very fertile soil, ideal for agriculture. Simply put, the symbolic value of being a part of the Republic appeals to economic values and the sentiment of belonging. Both of these dimensions, of course, imply no change in the tendency to expropriate land and wealth from the indigenous inhabitants as a naturalized and unreasoned practice. The symbolic value motivated an elaborate Independence Day ceremony; the national anthem was played on the expedition’s phonograph, the flag was raised, compliments were paid to the leader at his barrack and the order of day discussed the great services of José Bonifácio to the country and its independence. José Bonifácio entertained notions about the education of the apathetic savages and their perfectibility as human beings whom could be incorporated within civilization as wards of the state, a line of thinking strikingly similar to that of the positivists. Rondon named the future telegraph station in the region after this patron. Furthermore, this same statesman thought the lazy Indians needed little in life and could get along without strong desires for private property, the vanity of social distinction, or the desire for commodities of civilized man. Thus, he believed, that the Indians should be given presents that both encourage these social motives and impress them with the technological might of civilization (see Erthal apud Machado 1998:266-8). It is no coincidence that Rondon published a picture of his phonograph playing in a Nambikwara hut[xxii].

The story of the hardships involved with crossing the Northern Nambikwara region and going on to the Madeira River are preceded by the heroic example of Columbus and the reference to “(…) our beautiful pavilion [with the flag] fluctuating serenely in Brazilian lands, to remind us that our beloved fatherland would never abandon us, and from all sides she extended to us her loving motherly arms” [fatherland is feminine in Portuguese] (Rondon 1922: 67). The patriotic rhetoric couched in a familial and paternalistic idiom may have influenced Rondon’s fellow officers and some of the civilian recruited men. The Republic was seen as the superior and caring parent of dependent children. Those civilians, however, did not always share Rondon’s enthusiasm. An enlisted Paresi Indian recounted that the workers of the civilian camp, separated at a considerable distance from the officer’s tents, schemed to kill Rondon. Thankfully for Rondon, the rumor reached the military and a rebellion was prevented. Note that the set up and infrastructure of the camps and the tents thoroughly maintained class and social distinctions (Machado 1998: 283-5). At the end of a particularly difficult expedition, Rondon praised the men he journeyed with as admirable backwoodsmen with muscles stronger than steel without whom the expedition would have failed (Rondon 1922: 68). Other comments asserted that these men were in desperate need of a civilizing education. Clearly, the same kind of condescending attitude prevailed towards the common sertanejos, people very good at physical labor in service of the enlightened superior officers, but simultaneously in need of a cultural enrichment to escape their primitive customs. Admiration of physical body and strength was associated with the rejection of the same men’s sociocultural background. This brings to mind the famous positivist intellectual and fellow military Euclides da Cunha whose book was a model to Rondon, as is evident in his description of the landscape and nature. Euclides da Cunha writes that the race which populates the country’s interior in the Northeast was mixed and yet in some respects outstanding: “before anything else, the sertanejo is a strong man.” [xxiii]

The bodies of both sertanejos and Indians needed the guiding hand of the superior civilized minds; the same Service (SPI) could thus take care of them. In this way, resuming the major results of the three years of expedition in his public lectures, Rondon confirmed the notions of the superiority of the coastal cities on the Atlantic seaboard over the deep interior, though such a notion was already accepted in the capital. Rondon asserted that: “We, the descendants of the conquerors of these lands, really can do very much to benefit the inhabitants of these interiors; however in that environment they are better prepared than all of us as they already adapted their organism, and are of inestimable service to us. It is a simple question of the combination of efforts without any evident preoccupation of transforming civilizations, habits, or customs [like the services rendered by the Bororo and the Paresi at the service of the Telegraph Line s]. The inhabitants of the Campos Novos of the Serra do Norte, a docile and intelligent people, probably closely related to the Uaicoarcorês or Nhambiquaras (of the large group of Gé) also already provide us with valuable assistance at the construction of huts, and the opening up of fields and camps” (Rondon 1922: 80). At least in the heart of this city and its capital public Rondon identified himself completely with the listening elite, the conquest and the conquerors, and not at all with the conquered, contrary to what one might suspect given his renowned partial Indian ancestry so focal in his hagiography. A partial Indian ancestry is still a minor share of a predominantly White make up. The quality of a remote Indian ancestry by this time was an even fashionable higher-class feature[xxiv]. In his text, after exempting the savages from the charge of anthropophagy and reminding them of the long list of violent incidents during the penetration of their lands, Rondon commemorated on the success of the visits of the Indians to the camps. Describing the current fraternizing he finished his thoughts on the racial future: “And as they belong to an intrepid and tenacious race, the men being robust, tall and handsome, their incorporation into the Brazilian population can only be advantageous to the physical improvement of the latter” (Rondon 1922: 81). Quite in accordance with the intellectual agenda of the day and its worry about the future of the mixed Brazilian people, the future of the Nambikwara race is to dissolve and improve the general stock. Under superior guidance and with formal education they may contribute to the evolution of Brazil. Remarkably, this future resembles closely the ancestry and personal trajectory of Rondon himself.

Expeditions in Northern Nambikwara territory
A few years later, when the Indian Service was institutionalized and under his command, Rondon organized the famous expedition with Roosevelt (in accordance with the allure of the unknown and the fame of exotic exploration). A year after the scientific expedition, he gave another series of lectures, again in the capital Rio de Janeiro. Both men held a lot of discussions and Rondon did not pass the opportunity to point out some of their convergent views. Thus both agreed on the necessity of the Indians to be allotted to the state as “(…) pupils of the nation during the time they do not attain the level of civilization that permits them to amalgamate themselves with the rest of the population and be absorbed by it”. The ex-president also approved of the republican model of action put into practice in the intervening years “(…) to resolve, amongst us, the great problem, sharply formulated by José Bonifacio, of the establishment of the ethnic unity of the Brazilian people” (both citations Rondon 1916: 44). The ethnic unity, in this idiom, means the assimilation of the Indians and their racial and cultural disappearance as distinct peoples into a Brazilian melting pot. In another aspect though, the situation between the two countries differed. According to the very magnanimous picture painted by Roosevelt, his nation reserved lands as the right to property of the Indian tribes and indemnified them with compensations in case of loss or removal in the public interest. In Brazil, Rondon notes indignantly that the question of land allocation to Indians differs considerably. The land registers in the towns are already full of land deeds and property rights claiming lands where no civilized man ever even set foot. On paper the territories of Indian peoples are carved up by these titles long before any owner ever visited or could present a claim based on real presence on his land. If the so-called proprietors following their personal interests should claim these rights and take actual possession of the land, by a monstrous inversion of the facts the Indians would be treated as if they were invaders and thieves (Rondon 1916: 44-5). True enough, although the counterpoint with the Northern hemisphere is a distorted picture and in actuality both situations reveal strong analogies in conceptions and actions[xxv].

Land was a real, continuous and conscientious preoccupation of Rondon that found its way into the policy of the Service to create Indian reservations when the legal opportunity arose. Before such action, the Commission applied for land grants for its own benefit and use around its telegraph stations. That is, to benefit Posts like those at Utiarity and José Bonifácio to the north, right in the heart of the Northern Nambikwara territory. The Service’s record for the formalization of Indian land possessions and the associated realization of a land-base for the various Indian peoples themselves is a relatively poor one (Lima 1995). In conformity with his ideas of respectful but, in effect, subordinated humane integration within the Brazilian territory, Rondon succeeded in making contact with the Northern Nambikwara when visiting the ranch already established at Três Buritis. He stayed during one of these efforts by the Commission to support the Telegraph Line with locally produced food and work animals, a subsistence base to decrease the demand for goods and diminish the need for long supply lines. Between the first expedition in 1909 and the passage at the end of 1912, the Rondon Commission set up a ranch at this place, near José Bonifácio. The local people engaged in the establishment and production turned the enterprise into a relatively large business in the middle of Northern Nambikwara lands. If the Commission petitioned for land around the Posts and included this sort of own managerial productive activities, no apparent concern over land rights of the traditional inhabitants occured at this point. At least in the beginning of the establishment of the Telegraph Line and its concomitant supporting activities these took precedence over any other concern Rondon might have had about land rights. He conceived the inhabitants as Brazilians also to be beneficiaries of the improvements implemented and the very example of the success of the ranch as the future for the Indians (as employees or peasant-like occupants). Sovereignty could never lie with the uncivilized subalterns to be incorporated into the benevolent civilized state, and in the process the proletarianized or ‘peasantified’ Indians would supposedly require much less land.

When Rondon reported on the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition, he did not elaborate on the previous expedition through the Southern Nambikwara lands. He does remark on the feature of the enormous success of several local groups of different peoples visiting his expedition, receiving presents and reciprocating likewise. If during this trip he gave a fair stock of presents, his resources may have exceeded the means later dedicated to the people employed in the service of the Line. The year before his trip, the Brazilian anthropologist Roquette-Pinto traveled along the Line to the northern area. He described how the Indians did not frequent the various Posts because the people in charge of the Posts had not been given provisions and so lacked metal instruments and other utensils to distribute to the Indians. Doubtlessly this was at least partially the result of the long transport lines necessary for replenishment. It was also a token of the financial difficulties often associated with long-term government projects[xxvi]. Two of the employees at Três Buritis, the telegraph operator and the cattle caretaker, are said to be very good friends of the Indians and pointed out to him that one of the “large Nambikuára” villages was nearby. Later while searching for Indians for his investigation, the employees brought Roquette-Pinto to a group of “over 200, with their women and children” who had resolved to make camp nearby a hut for a few days. The author documents the symbolic and economic conquest of part of the Northern lands and the subsequent flourishing of the ranch in his account. He testifies that the establishment of peaceful relations through the exchange of commodities at a time when the Indian population was also present in considerable size. He forfeited a cow to keep the Indian group in close and to commence some research (Roquette-Pinto 1919).

Roquette-Pinto wrote Rondônia (1917; republished several times), a famous book in homage to Rondon. It was he who first suggested naming this Brazilian state after the man who had done much of the renaming in the region. Incidentally, this honorous name encompassing the grid of names he himself imposed could never be suggested by him in good taste. The virtue of modesty and the notion of serving the country impeded such vanity. Roquette-Pinto profited from the aid of the Commission chief on his trip, as in the example of the cow used to feed the Indians and retain them nearby. The retribution inherent in the book title later extended to the proposal that eventually created the state of Rondônia. In the book itself his data consist mainly of the measures he took of them for their racial characterization, in accordance with the scientific mores of the day. Although he projected a less anthropometrical and more cultural future for anthropology and spent considerable effort gathering sociocultural information, he confessed to learning little cultural information[xxvii]. Yet, what he learned from observing the Indians contains some interesting glimpses of contact and native life. The size of the group around the civilized base is in itself surprising and it might have been composed of the temporary joining of several local groups. Even if this was the case, the overall testimony points to a dense occupancy of the land. Around the fazenda of Campos Novos various groups of Indians gravitate in order to procure the metal tools they prize above anything else (they trade anything for a large ax head), and where they seek medical aid as well. One can safely assume that Três Buritis, where the Line ended at that time, initially transformed into a similar center of attraction and production. On the other hand, the author observes that he did not gain insight into the relations between the Northern groups which he assumed consisted of a few secondary nuclei within the major ensemble. He mentions the Tagnani, Tauitês (the only ones he made some notes on) the Tarutês, Taschuitês and Salumá. On some of the pictures in the book the visitors appear, sometimes lying around on the ground in typical Nambikwara fashion as a sign of their being at ease. He situates the main group of the Northern area between the eastern Doze de Outubro River (towards the east of the Tenente Marques) and the western Roosevelt River, extending north towards the junction of the Tenente Marques with the Roosevelt. All in all the Northern territory encompasses quite a large region spilling over in the direction of Pimenta Bueno to the south (locating the Tagnani in the center on the map; see Roquette-Pinto 1919)[xxviii].

Roquette-Pinto, the first Brazilian anthropologist to visit the Nambikwara made some direct observations about the villages of these groups. He noted that the village plan centres around a large, clean, circular plaza approximately fifty meters in diameter. The villages are located at small hills of savanna vegetation in the forested region envisaging to dominate the surrounding landscape and, because of this reason, at some distance from the stream that serves as water supply. The village buildings are in a star-like form, a circle with outgoing paths where two houses oppose each other “at the extremities of one of the diameters of the plaza” (ib.: 229). At the Festa da Bandeira River (given as the Nambikwara name Karumí in the text), he described the plaza as measuring twenty meters and the circumference of the two houses add up to 28 and 30 meters, respectively. In the largest house he found three smoking racks and two enormous black pots that could not have fit through the small door openings. As mentioned earlier, the presence of this ceramics among a tribe mostly reputed to be either without this technique or only able to produce coarse rudimentary pots might astound some but he does not comment on his find nor does it seems to be noticed or accounted for by later anthropologists[xxix]. What really aroused his astonishment, however, concerns the state of agriculture verified by the fields and the crops grown: “They feed themselves principally on agricultural products; it is one of the paradoxical features that this population shows such a development of their agriculture in their retarded stage” (Roquette-Pinto 1919: 238). He then goes on to describe several kinds of foods, one of them being the manioc cakes toasted in the ashes of the fire, and adds that the manioc is a staple food always present in the house as an indispensable component for any meal (ib.: 240; 245). Meat, of course, as proven by Rondon’s examinations of the house waste as well, furnishes a necessary and amply present complement to the food consumed, but Roquette-Pinto adduces that the special taste for hunted monkeys might have arisen from previous cannibalistic practices (ib.: 241). From his Western vantage point, monkeys call to mind children, or, more generally, human bodies. His scientific writing geared towards a more scientific audience (as opposed to the political writings of Rondon) was not restrained in offering the hypothesis that the primitiveness of the Nambikwara warrants the notion of their being only one step away from cannibal stage.

It is for this reason that the sophisticated horticulture astounded the anthropologist. According to the customary evolutionary stages of mankind, their state of primitiveness (and the shocking lack of the hammock in particular), should combine with a hunting and gathering economy. He therefore returns to the same point to stress that the size of a large population like the one he met here in the north could not depend only on hunting. So the seed of agriculture permitted their ample numbers yet he emphasized “(…) their preservation in the ‘stone age’ until now” (Roquette-Pinto: 254). He attributes the cultivation of the very fertile lands also to their isolation from the White man and his domestic animals (even the dog). The obligation to survive under these circumstances caused them to “perfect themselves in this industry” and “turn into distinguished agriculturalists even when remaining in a very elementary state of civilization” (ib. 1919: 254). In other words, the observer recorded a remarkable horticultural activity that furnished a permanent supply of manioc and other crops (both food crops and non-food ones, like tobacco) as attested by the size of the fields, the quantity produced and the variety of cultivated plants. As a counterpoint to the deftness and skill of horticulture, he claims that according to his observations, the Indians collected the maize still green from the fields or the manioc prematurely before full growth. However, the green maize is edible when prepared correctly and may be appreciated as such. The early harvest of manioc may have been due to a specific harvest, tiding them over between two normal harvests. Therefore, these observations do not indicate hunger or malnutrition. The overall picture impressed Roquette-Pinto just as it did Rondon. Indeed, his previous remarks on the abundant produce and horticulture attest to this. Roquette-Pinto noticed these fields to be of a regular circular form and he thought that the abandoned fields may be transformed into open spaces of campos (savannas) within the forested region.

The string of telegraph posts and the trail blazed by Rondon not only opened the way for Roquette-Pinto as the first Brazilian anthropologist to visit and do research among the Nambikwara, but also paved the road for the mentioned joint North American–Brazilian venture to clear up the ambiguity of the Rio da Duvída. The description of the journey in a book published soon afterwards is written as a report of events but it also serves as an important medium of promotion of ideas in the intellectual and political arena of the age. Here Rondon explains the circumstances of his first contact with the Northern Nambikwara that occurred after his initial penetration described in his lectures of 1910 when, at the end of 1911, he searched for the best route to construct the Line. Just like Roquette-Pinto, the Mission members attributed the presence of savannas, called campos, in the wooded region to the action of slash and burn horticulture practiced by the Nambikwara[xxx]. Rondon remarks that, from the Juruena onwards, the area is inhabited by groups such as the “(…) Nenês, Iáias, Navaitês, Tagananis, Tauitê and others, each of which occupies his own proper territory in the valleys of the various rivers and streams” (Rondon 1916: 137). This relatively dense population furnished the string of islands in the woods through which Rondon resolved to create the trail of posts for his precious wire. First he headed to the northeast of Vilhena between the headwaters of the Roosevelt and Ique Rivers to a place where a subordinate officer discovered “(…) a large village and many fields of Nhambiquaras, of a group we later learned to be called Mamãindê; I, however, did not encounter anything: the Indians had abandoned the spot and incinerated the village” (ib.: 138). It is worth noting how this shows both the extension of the Mamaindê territory and their proximity to the other Northern groups. This reinforces the likelihood that this group was at one time a semi-unified population. The only village today is located in the Guaporé valley to the south of Vilhena.

Rondon makes contact
The way Rondon noted the existence of basically demarcated territories for each different people did not distract him from his broader aim of incorporating these peoples as Brazilians and the lands as Brazil. After developing the new trail (occasionally with the help of the “Tauitês”), Rondon arrived at Três Buritis. The ranch served as a place to rest and feed the cattle necessary to the construction and maintenance of the line, Rondon met with his maternal uncle and the man’s nephew, and he decided to explore the area to the north and northwest of the main fazenda with them (Roosevelt (1914: 227) took this uncle to be the farm manager). Unexpectedly meeting five unarmed Nambikwara men in the forest, Rondon correctly guessed that the small group did not harbor any violent intentions. He established a form of contact. One of the men spoke animatedly before Rondon dismounted from his horse and circulated amongst the group. He succeeded in communicating an interest in visiting their village and they gladly invited him to follow. During most of this trip, Rondon had to restrain his deeply suspicious uncle who, as his nephew pointed out, represented the thoroughly prejudiced regional population that rated the Indians (in an obvious line of long-standing tradition) as hardly better than animals, treacherous, and totally untrustworthy. The description of the way the Indians walked by their weapons without picking them up, serves to underpin Rondon’s own counterpoint “(…) the trait of true nobility, of courage, and of tact by these men” (Rondon 1916: 142). Rondon, of course, wanted to counter the negative stereotypes about Indians and especially the fame of the primitive and savage Nambikwara[xxxi]. Therefore he amply recounts their very good welcome and the bountiful food and drink offered to them as guests: an interminable procession of manioc, manioc cakes, toasted maize, potatoes and a kind of sweet potatoes, monkey meat, fish and toasted larva.

He found some thirty men from two different groups in the village, with no women and children. Later he discovered the women and children gathered in the only large house of the village. Initially this house protected them from prying eyes. The house contrasted to the many others, constructions which more closely resembled lean-tos and allowed no privacy[xxxii]. On arrival, two men, one of the incoming party and one from the village, each gave a loud speech. Afterwards the headman sent messengers to a neighboring village of Tagananis and about ten Indians came over from the north and the same man energetically asked them to lay down their weapons. Other people kept arriving because word was sent to other nearby villages of the Tauitês, Minis and Tachiuvítês (ib.: 147). Even at night, a large number of Indians, a crowd, collected at the village around the campfires and lively discussions ensued. As the night advanced, the women left the large house but fled when the stranger stood up to look at them, much to the amusement of the men. Rondon rested his head on the leg of one of the Indians. This seemed to please the choosen Indian. Rondon even dozed (his uncle, on the other hand, did not as much as blink). In the end, a multitude of no less than two hundred people assembled. The Indians did not sleep because, he conjectured, they were very excited about the stirring prospect of the metal axes they desired ardently. In the morning they invited him to visit the neighbouring villages on the same savanna and in an undefined but relatively short time he saw four other villages the total population of which the visitors calculated to be over three hundred individuals.

It is worth resuming that within an easy walking distance lived three or four different groups, some of which were very likely distinct peoples with dialectical differences, in five villages and numbering at least over three hundred fifty people. This was a dense multi-ethnic network of villages and peoples in one small pocket of the much vaster Northern Nambikwara territories. Through long-distance trading a new metal ax already had found its way to the village, presumably from the Campos Novos fazenda. A large delegation accompanied Rondon back to the main base and he gave each presents like axes, machetes and beads. From this time on, contact was not only firmly established but also expanded throughout a much larger region, including the Sabanê. No doubt the already present multi-ethnic network of relations facilitated this effect, proving to be bigger than the small pocket within the larger region visited by Rondon. “From this date on the visits of the Indians to our camps never ceased and there were occasions at which they arrived in groups of 200 or more. The word about such an extraordinary success spread very rapidly in the sertão [hinterland] and soon caused other tribes than to join in, situated to the North at a distance of over twenty leagues. Thus, we got to know the Sabanês, the Iaiás, the Xaodês and the Teiobês, who are the most beautiful men of the whole region” (Rondon 1916: 150). Note that the name Sabanê was already in circulation. The other names designate now unknown groups or peoples because of either extinction or renaming (in ignorance of previous naming). Sabanê is one of the few names to endure.

This information places the Sabanê to the north of Três Buritis, rather then to the east. The mixture of group names does not assure much certainty that the Sabanê referenced are the current Sabanê. As will be discussed in a future section, oral tradition claims the group originally came from the forests to the east – northeast of this location, and a later entry into the Northern Nambikwara region. The reference to a northerly origin could indicate a direction to the northeast, suggesting a migration from the direction of Mato Grosso. This group’s original Amazonian territory may have been what is now the Aripuanã Indian Park (most of it in the northwestern corner of Mato Grosso). This Sabanê may have left because of pressures from the Cinta Larga or other Tupi Mondé. In any case one may assume that the Sabanê already lived either in the Northern Nambikwara region or in an immediately adjacent area north or northeast, participating in its intricate pattern of relations in this congeries of villages and peoples. The region occupied to the north of Três Buritis and José Bonifacio extended for a large distance that must have passed the confluence of the Tenente Marques River with the Roosevelt River if the mentioned measure is correct. It remains unclear how the Indians communicated across such a distance. It is certain that Rondon’s presence created a stir in the whole region. As another indication of the curiosity aroused, the military man added that even the elders came over to his camps to look “(…) at the men that suddenly appeared in their lands and had the power to produce such a profound and radical modification in their secular customs like the one that results from the substitution of stone instruments by steel tools” (Rondon 1916: 150). In itself, the causality postulated that the mere presence of metal tools shapes a radical sociocultural transformation denotes the common belief in the efficacy of extraneous objects as agents of change that naturalizes and validates the exercise of domination to produce social change.

So, in the name of civilization and in consideration of the protection and advancement of the contacted Indians, Rondon decided to name the new telegraph station José Bonifacio. In his opinion no one could better express “(…) the moral and civic exigencies of the emotions and hopes that had been born and that we wished to flourish than this great statesman of Independence” (ib.: id.). The author of the benign proposal of bringing the independent Indians up to civilization under the aegis of the enlightened Brazilians could be the iconic patron of the telegraph station, the metaphoric reference of the whole project of the recently initiated grandiose enterprise of the protection and civilization. In this respect, Rondon pretended to infuse a patriotic and symbolic significance to the inauguration of the telegraph station named after the hero of independence. He not only timed the inauguration ceremony to be on the birthday of the illustrious patriot but, “by another happy coincidence”, “(…) not only with the presence, but also the contribution of a group of Nhambiquaras, the “Tauitês”, who selected one of their daughters to raise the sacred symbol of Brazilian nationality upon the hallowed ground of the sertão” (Rondon 1916: 150). Without being so direct, such words (given at a formal address) probably evoked the classical image of claiming possession of a virgin territory, and the primary act of affirming the state’s right to these lands to Rondon’s audience. Of course, for someone like Rondon who esteemed the heroism of Columbus, the same act must have reminded him and the audience of the original claiming of Brazil. Note the similarities to the so-called first mass during the discovery of Brazil. Naturally, the raising of the wooden cross would interfere with his positivist religion. Hence the republican symbols substituted the original religious elements of Cabral’s well-known founding act. Earlier sacred acts and objects are now replaced by another sacred symbol, imbuing the flag with similar extraordinary content. Evolution and the nation-state replace the conversion of the inhabitants of the new lands to the sacred religion implied in the first exemplary act. The intensity of the belief in evolution, and faith in the future development of society against all possible negative evidence, adds a religious character to such system of convictions (Brody 2001: 336).

Thus the replication imitates the so called birth of Brazil of nationalist imaginary, with the finishing touch being the active participation of the very people being expropriated by the act, as if they gave their consent and were already present as a kind of proto-Brazilian[xxxiii]. In fact, just like his predecessor, Rondon must have been aware that the Indians could not have the slightest idea of the symbolic significance in the ceremony[xxxiv]. In the interest of historical myth making, he ignores any aspect of the Indian’s view. From another perspective of the same event, the assistance of the symbolically inferior in the subordinate role of raising the sacred symbol by a child represents the future as the still pliable Indian. The child is more easily educated to acquire the level of a new superior stage is more symbolic than Rondon intended. Put differently, this was a silent reproduction of an old ceremony of establishing subordination and legitimizing expropriation. The ritualized pattern only changes the major objective and justification from the salvation of the soul by participation in the true religion to the incorporation of the native’s bodies in the nation and civilization. The Indian’s subordinate prospective role remained unchanged, this was the path to assimilation. Perhaps Roosevelt’s mention that Rondon descended paternally from the Paulistas, a people who stand out as the colonial raiders of Indians and searchers for riches in the interior and considered by popularized history as the conquerors of the hinterland, is not irrelevant (Roosevelt 1914: 204). It seems no coincidence that the hagiographic descriptions of Rondon always foreground his Indian descent. In a way, Rondon followed in the footsteps of these conquerors in a novel manner of conquest, as if uniting in his own person common representations of the past and future of Brazil.

Along the wire: “one of the most attractive indigenous cultures in Brazil”
The dense network of associations between related but different peoples within the Northern Nambikwara territory was officially incorporated into Brazilian boundaries, a fact that should be recognized by the constellation of other similar entities, the other nation states. Formerly, these peoples and their villages were outside of the reach of the republic or the preceding empire. The journey of Roosevelt and Rondon thus traversed the unknown wilds already symbolically appropriated but actually outside of official civilization. Roosevelt proudly recounted his penetration and traveling through the area in the company of Rondon. The ex-president had his own reasons for participating in a similar expedition to the wild unknown uncharted lands, emulating great explorers of other continents in order to put on the map rivers and undiscovered territories (cited in Enders 1998: 15). This personal desire coincided with a vision about the occupation of these savage lands being the exclusive duty and right of the American countries. Such a notion appealed to Brazilian diplomacy and in effect engendered the invitation from the Brazilian ministry of foreign affairs to Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s expression of the principle that the savage expanses in the Americas should be the civilizing task of the countries within which bounds such regions officially lay was directed against any European power tempted to consider some void as a legitimate area of colonization. Such beliefs were felt to be justified when looking at what was happening in Africa at the time. Brazilian diplomacy pursued a policy of guaranteeing the right to Amazonia by settling the border problems with all neighbours, including the European ones to the north. An alliance with the United States and its strengthening by means of the expedition would serve the country as well as the concomitant publicized demonstration of how Brazil was engaged in charting and civilizing its interior (thus justifying its right in the international arena; Enders 1998)[xxxv]. Today, a hundred years later, the same ally is ironically conceived by nationalists as the very threat to sovereignty in Amazonia. This supposed threat is manipulated by false rumors and maps (usually on internet) in order to reject all outside interference within the region; in effect it is ordinarily an argument against Indian rights and in favour of an unrestricted pillage of natural resources.

The positivists also perceived a chance to boost their own internal prestige and their influence in shaping the political agenda of civilizing the interior and the way to proceed with the formation of the nation (Enders 1998: 11). It is impressive to note a number of similarities of presuppositions about the nature of man in society, his past and future between the group of Rondon and Roosevelt. One such point issues from the general premise of the design of the natural evolution of mankind. It concerns the translation of the presumed technological distance into the supposed superiority of the entirety of Western culture, and that this advantage inevitably generates the desire of the retarded tribes stranded in a primitive stage. Stressing the more negative aspects of such parameters of evaluation, Roosevelt saw ephemeral villages and a tilling of the soil with the rude and destructive cultivation of savages in the several abandoned fields of the Navaitê (Northern Nambikwara) down the Roosevelt River (Roosevelt 1914: 242). Just as the Pareci they should be raised by degrees in order to procure to a permanent rise induced by their valued friend and leader Rondon (to be followed and obeyed) and the virgin land opened up for progress to industrious settlers (ib.: 183; 203). The slight contradiction with the rather extensive maize and manioc cultivation encountered before on the Chapada does not deter him from emphasizing the implicit comparison with modern white settlers and predicting a future of a large pastoral and agricultural population in the very same region. Roosevelt adopts the point of view of the savage that must struggle for survival, “(…) the immense labor entailed by many of their industries, and the really extraordinary amount of work they accomplish with the skillful use of their primitive and ineffective tools” (ib.: 196). More than that, when visiting a village and observing the presence of some commodities like some knives “(…) which they sorely needed, for they are not even in the stone age” (ib.: 229). The Stone Age was as low as any people can sink in this paradigm, and being below this level was a condition very rarely invoked. The degree of attributed primitiveness confers his expedition a special distinction in the set of expeditions into the unknown. His vision of the future seems remarkably similar to what already happened in the U.S. West. There, the Indians were conquered and dealt with. There were no more expeditions into the unknown. The conquest and assimilation of primitive peoples was seen as the natural, desirable, irrevocable and unquestionable outcome of history. An analogous process was well underway in Mato Grosso.

On the other hand, Rondon, while sharing the same general premises also emphasized the positive qualities of the primitiveness. He worries about the manner in which this people can be transformed as they are by definition his countrymen within the same nation-state. Hence the kind of view of the popularizing account of the Missão Rondon exposed in the book published only a year later, when the same naturalness of superiority is thought to be the cause for the gradual absorption of White technology and culture all by itself. That is, no abrupt imposition of cultural change is necessary: All inducement needed concerns what may be called ‘the push of poverty and the pull of commodity’. “These modifications shall be produced as the result of an evolution, the march of which is accelerated by the new instruments of labor with which we provide them, as well as the firearms, salt, matches, sugar, clothing and other utilities that rapidly enter into their customs, turning them ever so much dependent upon the relations with us and increasingly determining more intimate approximations. It is these voluntary, spontaneous approximations that will integrally change them, without neither leaps nor perturbations. And it has been noted that these modifications occur much more quickly than one could imagine” (Missão Rondon 1916: 258-9). Reality proved otherwise and belied this optimism. The ranch at Três Buritis did flourish around this time. Roosevelt, for example, claimed he saw over a hundred head of cattle. The region was considered the most densely populated area of all of Nambikwara land (in the expression of the ex-president). The valleys of the Ananaz, Roosevelt and Bandeira Rivers contained the largest population the authors considered as one group, although they were subdivided into numerous sub-groups like the “(…) Mamá-indês, Tamá-indês, Malondês, Sabanês, Iaiás and Nava-itês” (ib.: 298). Rondon estimated the total population at 20,000 souls, the density of villages varying according to ecological conditions. In other words, if Rondon conceived of the Nhambiquara nation to consist of five major sets of groups, the richer northern region should be settled by over a fifth share of this figure (over a 4000 persons; ib.: 302). He recognized these segments as sufficiently distinct to merit the notion of tribe within the encompassing Nation.

The destiny of the long line of telegraph poles, stations and ranches (stations of civilization; Rondon quoted in Enders 1998: 13) was not as anticipated. Contrary to expectations, decline set in when technological change transformed the Line into obsolete technology. Although the telegraph was used once during the 1930 uprising in São Paulo against the federal government, it already was considered obsolete. The telegraph gave way to radio communication. Slowly, technical progress doomed the string of stations and its personnel to an ever increasing governmental neglect and disregard. Largely becoming dependent on their own resources, the people manning the stations and farms fended for themselves as best as they could, just as when Lévi-Strauss undertook his famous expedition through the Mato Grosso and into current Rondônia. By the time of his expedition in the 1930s, the contact phase had transformed the scene into a demographic disaster, especially as the even more isolated Northern Nambikwara were the primary victims of the so-called Columbian exchange, the arrival of unknown contagious diseases. The results of the White penetration from the setting up of the Line, the presence and passage of a mixture of officers, soldiers, and lower class workers touched off a series of epidemics worsened by the reactions of the Indians to flee the sources of infectious dissipation and the meager, if existent, medical assistance available. Simultaneously, the sporadic entry of the servicing personnel and the absence of a large wave of settlers occupying Indian territory, left the Indian peoples with a very large measure of autonomy. Consequently, the first years of the conquest operated under the auspices of Rondon actually brought in the occupational forces for the Line that wreaked havoc with the epidemics naturally carried by the incoming new people – the decimation and demographic devastation of contagious diseases – without, as yet, the effects of large scale land restrictions introduced by settlers. In the years between the initial time of Rondon’s approach and conquest and the adventure of the Lévi-Strauss expedition the Indian population greatly decreased, ruining the viability of a number of villages and even peoples to sustain an independent life. Lévi-Strauss followed the Telegraph Line and ventured beyond the straight line itself where he met some surviving groups, among them a group of Sabanê. While at the Vilhena station he described the very severe effects suffered by the Indians after Rondon’s passage:
“I encountered two new bands, one of which consisted of eighteen people who spoke a dialect close to that of the people who I began to be acquainted with, while the other, thirty-four members strong, used an unknown language; later I have not been able to identify it. Each was led by a chief, with, it would seem, in the first case purely profane attributions; but the chief of the other more important one was soon to reveal himself as a kind of sorcerer. His group was designated by the name of Sabanê; the others were called Tarundê.”(Lévi-Strauss 1984: 360; my translation from French).

The Sabanê language is incomprehensible to any Northern Nambikwara speaker and it is safe to assume that the group mentioned above is indeed the Sabanê, His earlier, more academic, monograph of 1949 confers with the comparison with current speakers scrutinized by current linguistic research (with Antunes (2004), fieldwork in 2001). The 34 Sabanê in Vilhena are the survivors of the previous epoch when Rondon estimated the total number of the whole Nambikwara nation at about twenty thousand. Lévi-Strauss, who cites this number, probably affected by the impressive decline in population, held this to be most likely an inflated number, and no more than an educated guess. Nevertheless, when considering the descriptions of the population before the ravages caused by the contagious diseases, the total may not be very much off the mark. Well aware of this, Lévi-Strauss remarks that the bands previously comprised several hundreds of members and that all evidence pointed to a rapid decline: “(…) thirty years ago the fragment known as Sabané consisted of over a thousand individuals; when the group visited the telegraph station of Campos Novos, a count amounted to a hundred and twenty seven men, plus their women and children. However, an epidemic of the flu broke out when the group camped at a place called Espirro[xxxvi]. The disease developed into a kind of pulmonary edema and three hundred natives died in forty eight hours. The entire group fled, leaving behind the ill and the dying. Of the thousand Sabané known in the past, only nineteen men and their women and children survived in 1938. Perhaps, in order to explain these numbers, one must add that, since a few years ago, the Sabané were engaged in a war against some of their eastern neighbours. But a large group located not far from Tres Buritis was annihilated by the flu in 1927, except for six or seven persons of whom only three were still alive in 1938. The Tarundé group, one of the most important ones in the past, had twelve men (plus their women and children) in 1936; of these twelve men, only four survived in 1938” (ib.: 347).

Only recently the Brazilian anthropologist Luiz de Castro Faria, who accompanied the expedition as the officially appointed Brazilian representative and inspector, published some of his notes and pictures. His numbers and dates in his diary differ slightly with the above but confirm the sudden and significant population decline:
“(…) there were over a thousand Sabanese in 1929. In November of the same year, an influenza epidemic hit a group of forty-eight men accompanied by their families – a total of three hundred people – who were waiting for the general’s arrival at Espirro. Of these only seven escaped, but is suspected that they had carried the illness to the maloca, causing an even higher number of deaths. In 1931, a group visiting Campos Novos, along with the Manduco [Manduka] was once more struck by the disease, although only one woman perished. On returning to the maloca, they carried the influenza, and so there were more deaths. Finding out the situation in which the Sabanese were the Manduco attacked their maloca, killing many.

 In 1932, the Sabanese came under pressure from the Manduco and appeared at the Vilhena post: they numbered only ninety-seven. They resided at the post for three years. In 1935 they went to José Bonifácio, after being summoned by the telegraphist to work in a swidden; there they once more contracted the flu, which claimed more victims. Today only twenty-one men and twenty women remain” (Faria 2001:133).

The terrible effects of the epidemics on the Sabanê serve as the major example to Lévi-Strauss on the enormous losses of the Nambikwara and if the whole group totaled thirty-four people at the time of 1938, then these accounts indicate between 959 and 966 people died. A population drop of 96% or 97%. Lévi-Strauss and Castro Faria relate some figures that probably were gathered by witnesses. Such data are derived either from the Commission reports (not easily consulted today), or else from the testimony of employees they met along the Telegraph Line . This confers considerable reliability to the numbers cited even if the original base line of a thousand seems to be more of a reasonably informed guess than the result of a census. Such a decline may seem to be exaggerated but comparative cases examined in the recent years confirm impacts similar to the one suffered by the Sabanê (see Dobyns 1993). The contrast with previous reports can hardly be more striking: the Taúitê that visited the Roosevelt expedition and the members of the same group in the village visited by the expedition’s doctor did not show any kind of disease. “Every one appeared to be in perfect health” (Cajazeira 1916: 32-3). It will hardly be surprising that the people at trade centres in North America were submitted to higher mortality than people in non-trading areas and it stands to reason that the telegraph stations functioned as nodes on the web of contagion (cf. Dobyns 1993: 276). Espirro, a settlement along the Line constructed to gather diverse groups is a prime example. Roquette-Pinto, for example, commented that the fazenda of Campos Novos attracted all groups into which the great tribe is subdivided, even enemies fraternize at this exchange centre (1919: 171; the classification of fazenda is his, and indexical to the scale of the economic operation).

Fleeing the Line may create a safer distance but also would put one beyond the reach of any medical assistance, and may spread the disease to other villages. The temptation of the useful metal tools occasionally encourages the Indians to trade or receive presents. This proved a deadly transaction because it facilitated the transmission of the full range of unknown diseases along all posts of the Line and spread into the entire region. The metal utensils effectively created one dependency that the Missão Rondon presupposed to be a sufficient motive for total acculturation. However, the lack of any further influx of immigration into the region and the relaxed state power left the Indians autonomous, completely following their old ways. In fact, no such obvious causal relation exists between the want for metal instruments and the adoption of culturally superior behavior. Without an actual system of domination that brings about this supposedly natural result and the various languages and cultural variants of the Nambikwara ensemble were reproduced by the different peoples despite the power bestowed upon the civilized of the Line by the control of access to these commodities. In effect, the gradual abandonment of the personnel by its employer allowed the Indians to counteract this power because of their numbers and physical force, and, in a way, actually more or less turned the tables[xxxvii]. The impact created by contact, conjoined with the war on eastern neighbors waged simultaneously, must have thoroughly disorganized the sociocultural and political organization of the Sabanê, similarly to the Tarundê. Very little is known about the Sabanê previous to contact, but the disastrous decline in numbers undoubtedly disorganized this people, almost obliterating their existence. When Lévi-Strauss stayed at Vilhena, as cited, the two local groups (villages) entertained friendly relations differently from the animosity verified between other local groups in Campos Novos. Both were fragments of very much larger peoples. The author remarks on the existence of several such groups or peoples who were so reduced that they could no longer pursue an independent way of life. By this time, most peoples had been forced to constitute one village out of the formerly autonomous villages of their own people or else had been compelled to cohabitate and negotiate with a similar fraction of another people to restore the conditions of a socially viable group. In Lévi-Strauss’ judgment:
“In Vilhena, on the other hand, I witnessed an attempt at reconstruction. For there was little doubt that the natives with whom I made my camp elaborated a plan. All of the adult men of one band called the women in the other one “sisters”, and the latter called the men in a symmetrical position “brothers”. As for the men of the two bands, they designated one another with the term that, in their respective languages, signifies cross cousin and corresponds to the relation that we would translate with “brother-in-law”. Given the rules of Nambikwara marriage, this nomenclature results in granting all of the children of one band in the situation of “potential spouse” of the children in the other one and vice versa. In this way, by the play of intermarriages, the two bands would be fused in the next generation” (Lévi-Strauss 1984: 326).

Lévi-Strauss, perforce constrained by a very limited vocabulary – a sort of Telegraph Line pidgin –, considered the two groups in question as culturally identical but diverse by the mutually unintelligible languages (a gulf mediated by one or two individuals of each group). This is a view rather common among the students of Nambikwara although later anthropologists do not fail to emphasize a diversity within the whole set. There is a tendency to use the ethnonym as an encompassing catch word for all the different peoples and segments in any way affiliated to the linguistic family. A trend to feel justified about such homogeneity in sociocultural organization even when dialects or languages are barely or completely incomprehensible leads a sensitive author like Lévi-Strauss to include the Sabanê within the ensemble called Nambikwara. From the time of Rondon this usage has been followed mostly because a few visible distinguishing features, in particular sleeping on sand, a practice that set all of them so much apart to outsiders that the invisible cultural differences were overlooked. In effect, as Lévi-Strauss observed, the Indians looked very much alike in their near or complete nudity. Considering the circumstances, Lévi-Strauss did a remarkable job in ethnography, but failed to confirm or deny the classification of the Sabanê language within the Nambikwara language family. He also perceived quite well the social chiasm between the two bands which camped close to each other yet clearly maintained a social distance marked by the separation of their campfires[xxxviii]. He recounts episodes about the Sabanê leader that left the Tarundê one with a certain misgiving about the honesty of his colleague’s intentions and the outcome of the whole joint project to aggregate the different fractions and regain a larger and more viable sociopolitical unit. The Sabané were engaged in a war against the most northern group of the Nambikwara on the savanna, one that occupied the land extending from the Ique River in the north to the headwaters of the Doze de Outubro and adjacent Camararé, with the center more or less where current reserve of Aroeira is (Lévi-Strauss 1948: 3; 9; 11). Waging war must have enhanced the pressure on the Sabanê to realize a significant addition to their potential of diminished demographic resources and to augment their chances of permanence as a people. Lévi-Strauss, without explicitly saying so, justifies their inclusion in the encompassing Nambikwara (my ensemble) yet he documents the conceived ethnic differences reporting on the tensions between the groups. Social difference plays a significant role in the project to merge of these two distinct peoples, in particular the distinctiveness of the languages, and the author perceives the precariousness of the convergence and the uncertainty about the outcome of the fusion of the two bands.

Lévi-Strauss could not forecast the ultimate result and when he wrote his popular book of the middle of the fifties he did not know it either. Lévi-Strauss believed that he earned an unexpected fame with the publication of his book on journeys into the unknown lands and encounters with exotic peoples. Discounting the book by Roosevelt of lesser distribution and fame, the Tristes Tropiques, the sad tropics, marks the introduction of the Nambikwara to the international scene of Western literature and the general public. To each party its proper fame. The reception of the idea of the Nambikwara among this public probably involves an image of one of the most primitive and backward peoples that the author encountered in his philosophical voyage in search of the meaning of his own life and of the significance of human sociality in human society. Although it is not easy to assess the impact of this book on the circulation of stereotypes in Western countries, it is remarkable how some ideas and facts expressed about the Nambikwara entered into a wider circulation. Such appearances arise in surprising contexts. For example, a Columbian Catholic bishop quoted Lévi Strauss during a course on homosexuality and the Catholic attitude towards human sexual nature: “Yet, there are some signs that certain criteria are not absent in primitive tribes in contrast to the emptiness of a “culture” that turns its back on nature and ethics. And here we have a truth that involves an underlying anthropology. If C. Levi-Strauss recorded homosexual practices in some tribes, he also pointed out that in others, like the Nambikwara, this sort of conduct was given the name, “Tamindige Kihandige”, which means “False-love”, for which, as one moralist commented, it shows that they are more mature than certain ethnologists (Margaret Mead) [xxxix]. Sometimes, ironically, the primitive tribe appears to concur in the moral judgement pronounced by the authority for whom the condemning attitude attributed to the Nambikwara rhetorically underscores how even these primitives already reject a practice that the immature anthropologist only catalogued as an example of the malleability of human conduct. As if the exegesis of the native term by Lévi-Strauss somehow contradicts the position of Mead in favor of cultural relativism and against ethnocentrism. This is an unexpected usage of the savage (though just one instance in a long line of Western tradition) actually against Lévi-Strauss’ intention in more than one way, because he also clearly states that the same Indians do not morally object to the behavior described.

Apart from entering into more ample circulation of certain attributes in the wider social context, within anthropology the name of the Nambikwara also is associated with the intellectual activity of Lévi-Strauss. The name of the Nambikwara as a anthropological case also derives from some articles where his observations are framed more abstractly. These publications highlight the specific way this people come into existence within the specialized literature as a typical case for a specific example in a thematic field. Added to the case of homosexual behavior appearing in both circuits of dissemination of knowledge, there are a variety of themes: the gender-based division of labor; the question of powerless leadership; the polygamy of chiefs as a retribution for the service of leading the local group; the origin and function of power and its relation to literacy. Furthermore, there is the dualism between the wet season and sedentary horticulture versus the nomadism of hunting and gathering in the dry season; trade exchange and war; cross cousin marriage (the traces of the possible fusion of groups and the implicit duality in Dravidian kinship terminology can be noted in his own first major work, The elementary structures of kinship and also in lesser-known earlier publications: Lévi-Strauss 1943; 1944; 1946; 1948a and b); and the astonishing simplicity of the social organization (family life), material culture and dearth of clothing and ornaments. Sometimes for the writer, the Nambikwara represent the simplest expression of human society. For example, he discusses the implications of the elementary social structure of the Nambikwara band for the origin and function of political power (Lévi-Strauss 1984: 373). However, such simplicity is tempered with his keen eye to individual personalities and characteristics. In no way did he translate the supposed absence of social complexity into a reduction of the varied and typically human qualities of the natives, as if these human beings also are depreciated into a lower life form. A type of humanity in its most elementary condition, a typical modéle réduit, is a proposition used at other times to gain insight in the laws of social life, observed as the sociological experience of a human experiment in sociocultural living. Here it leads him to conclude that the Nambikwara are the most simple expression of a reduced society made him find only human beings[xl]. In closing the chapters on the Nambikwara in Tristes Tropiques with this statement, he may sometimes confuse readers. Even if he thought he found only the smallest amount of social complexity, the minimal sociocultural condition of man still is profoundly and uniquely human and leaves space for an ample specter of personalities and expressions of individuality.

One of the paradoxes of the writings of Lévi-Strauss is the large public reception of this work amongst diverse audiences beyond his fellow anthropologists. This resulted in the propagation of a number of ideas generated by the Nambikwara experience into mainstream anthropology (reprinting articles on the family, trade and war and political leadership in general readers). Simultaneously, very few of these readers ever set an eye on the academic companion thesis to “The Elementary Structures of Kinship” that predated the popular version (at the time the main doctoral thesis always was accompanied by a smaller supplementary one). Of course, its publication in the periodical of the Society of Americanists (Lévi-Strauss 1948), with its limited editions, contributes to this fact. More importantly, for the same reason the posterior correction of any of these views on the Nambikwara hardly ever penetrates into the same non-specialist circles reached by the popular book. In effect, the views expounded by Lévi-Strauss, admirable as his fieldwork may be when the extreme constraints in which he operated are taken into account, have been proved by later researchers to be incomplete, limited, and to have lead to generalizations not supported by later data. The characteristics of Nambikwara society mentioned above all have been subjected to more or less substantial changes, critiques and amendments. One clear example is the homosexual relation between cross cousins, a relation never witnessed by Lévi-Strauss, as he carefully cautions the reader, yet he still felt justified in suggesting it as a reasonably fair assumption. In this instance, the same conduct was interpreted by his companion anthropologist on the expedition, the Brazilian government representative, Luiz Castro Faria, as indicative of playful behavior devoid of real erotic content[xli]. This kind of joking relationship was corroborated by the findings of Price in the behavior between brothers-in-law among the Nambikwara do Campo (in his 1971 thesis). As far my own few observations permit me to generalize, similar behavior obtains among the Sararé.

Lévi-Strauss read the reports on the Nambikwara of the Rondon Commission and studied the book of Roquette-Pinto. In his academic ethnography he affirms the total lack of attention given to the Nambikwara after Roquette-Pinto, clearly considering his work as its continuation. Hence his major aim was to fill in some gaps in the previous research and especially to study familial and social organization. It is also superfluous to state that he did not pretend to exhaust the subject, if only because he spent time with them during the nomadic period and did not hide the fact that visiting during the sedentary season would have rectified the perspective of the whole. Conscious of his limitations, he cited Roquette-Pinto in claiming that the scientific constructions in this terrain will always be slow. As a sharp observer and anthropologist, the author is quite explicit about some injunctions on his work among “one of the most attractive cultures of indigenous Brazil” and he expresses the wish to renew his research to include sedentary life (Lévi-Strauss 1948: 3). Apparently, Lévi-Strauss never explained why he did not pursue his study. His propositions and generalizations have only been subjected to revision by later Nambikwara scholars. The most debated case concerns the dual organization of the yearly cycle of activities. The very assertion that he only witnessed the nomadic dry season is a relevant rejoinder, as are his warnings about the limitations of his fieldwork. Yet, the notion of a season of nomadic hunting and gathering and the shorter period of sedentary horticultural villages is recurrent and pre-eminent in his description. Years of intensive research on economic subsistence among the Mamaindê (by P. Aspelin) demonstrated both the profound mastery of horticulture, its integration in the general culture and the overall sedentary disposition of this people. The Northern Nambikwara are definitely not nomadic in the sense that the prior research averred[xlii]. In the response following the original article questioning his results, Lévi-Strauss simply complied to the dictum of the temporary nature of knowledge he himself cited about a predecessor. Thus he mostly adhered to the straightforward belief that better and more elaborate research must be accepted as the normal way of progress of anthropological knowledge. He did make a few relevant criticisms about the difference in the respective periods of research. For example, the tremendous encroachment and invasions suffered by the Nambikwara provides, in his view, a plausible compelling force to sedentarization. Also, the Nambikwara are a far from homogeneous lot, a pertinent observation but something in the Sabané case not readily noticeable in his own prior writings. Lévi-Strauss further claims to have reported mostly about the more northern bands. This is interesting because these peoples are underrepresented in recent ethnographic research. But, on the other hand, it is remarkable argument as the Mamaindê are in fact part of the Northern Nambikwara. Maybe their current geographic position in the Guaporé Valley induced the author to this statement.

Lévi-Strauss (1976) warned against a simplistic invalidation of his observations and that the available data really could support his conclusion. There is no reason to discuss and compare the distinct ethnographic results in all its complexity, although it is relevant to remember the differentiating contextual set of social conditions in distinct moments of history. With hindsight, however, it seems reasonable that the kind of possibilities of research and the constraints imposed on the time and space of his observation and communication allow for the conclusion that the Nambikwara could have perfectly well been predominantly sedentary. In fact, the reading of the prior reports consistently and constantly highlights the unequivocal mastery and presence of horticulture and permanent houses in villages, especially the emphasis posited by Roquette-Pinto. Nevertheless, sometimes an early observer like Roosevelt classified the villages as ephemeral, even when he himself passed through a northern village with two large huts of closely woven thatch, circular in outline, with a rounded dome, and two doors at opposite ends; there were fifteen or twenty people to each hut with a large assortment of material objects described as implements and utensils (Roosevelt 1914: 229). Notice that this particular expedition was delayed. They entered the region after the beginning of the rainy season; Rondon’s pioneering efforts, on the other hand, usually took place during the dry seasons. Thus, it was likely during the dry period that he first made the described contact and completed his tour of the northern villages. He mentioned the same conical houses (although only one in the initial village; Rondon 1916: 145)[xliii]. Yet, the popularized version from roughly the same time, in the book Missão Rondon, he proposes to guide the evolution of the Indians slowly and without abrupt changes, including their sedentarization and the construction of villages (1916: 258). According to this view, the notion of sedentary life opposes nomadism. In itself, nomadism is pejorative, a stigmatizing label denoting the idea of wandering around with no permanent residence. It connotes a suspicious restlessness and unworthiness. Rondon designated a large village in the northern region with a great number of constructions around a major house and ample plantations as representing “a regular and semi-nomadic life” (s.d.1: 231). It is noteworthy that even with these qualifications he still considered the epithet semi-nomadic justified.

The issue of nomadism is academic to the debate among anthropologists but was hardly innocent in the beginning of the twentieth century when evolutionary schemes based on general common sense stereotypes were prevalent in Western societies. At the time when evolutionism functioned as a descriptive tool shaping scientific social interpretation, it was the commonly shared belief of the scientist, the positivist and the general public that the Nambikwara were uncivilized and backward. Compared to other Indian peoples their savageness and wildness justified the application of more violent means for defense or domination. A German geologist who accompanied Rondon in 1908 described a partially sedentary tribe with nomadic inclinations. He recognized a certain degree of civilization because of the presence of well-made houses in villages and the sizable horticulture while the Indians at the same time traversed large tracts of land on hunting trips. As Price comments, all this concerns their position on the evolutionary scale of value. This type of value assignment applies to Rondon’s attempt vigorously seeking to disprove accusations of cannibalism. In sum, divested of the value judgments, Price regarded these reports as evidence that the Nambikwara mode of economic adaptation did not change significantly between Rondon’s time, his own, and Aspelin’s research some sixty years later A few years after the debate Aspelin (1979a) reexamined the historical evidence I drew on above to confirm the highly probable scenario that the Nambikwara were not originally nomadic. Instead, these judgments may stem from too limited a theoretical paradigm (as in Rondon’s case), or a fieldwork too limited in time (as with Lévi-Strauss). Viewed in this light, the Nambikwara proved far less primitive than the allegations claimed and this was important to some narrators to raise their status. On the other hand, such partially raised prestige remained incomplete and a practice like moving a village after some years still counts as unstable, perhaps semi-nomadic, behaviour. Maybe not barbarians but still savages, the Nambikwara still qualified for the pedagogical tutelage of the state for improvement. Worse, the idea of nomadism continued in full force among the personnel of the Line, people whom, understandably, hardly ever ventured beyond their posts and rarely visited villages but were instead visited by the various peoples (Aspelin 1976: 8)[xliv]. In stark contrast to all of this debate, as far I know, all components of the Nambikwara ensemble consider themselves sedentary and distrust people who wander about too much (Fiorini 2000).

From 1907 to the 1940s, the notion of sedentarization the errant or semi-errant Indians like the nomadic Nambikwara served as a cliché in the Service (SPI, Serviço de Proteção aos Índios) to implant a policy of attracting Indians, settling them, and constructing modern permanent villages. In such villages, the responsible functionary would unite a maximum of separate groups and then these are administered by an employee of the Service. In effect, imposing a benign protection to teach modern methods of subsistence and raising the cultural level of the Indians while augmenting their production level. The byproduct of such an endeavor was the liberation of the now superfluous lands to worthy settlers while the nomadic condition justifies the exercise of a strong mode of domination. Nomadism carries a remarkable number of stereotypes like being marginal, autarchic, and being socially frozen from immemorial times. Significantly they are viewed as societies without real occupancy, as very loosely related to the land they inhabit. Sedentary villagers tend to regard nomads as menaces, brigands, and overall archaic reprehensible autonomous people. The state apparatus usually adheres to the opinion that such people should be compelled to settle as soon as feasible, without regard to any specificities (see Digard (2000) for a general discussion). Therefore, when the Service policy makers and statements stress nomadism and the need for action such appeal is, politically and administratively speaking, far from an innocent statement of a supposedly ontological state. In fact, when one of the major goals concerns the fixation of nomadic or errant peoples and groups the intervention proposed consists of the total subordination and transformation of economic and sociocultural ways of life in accordance with absolutely distinct notions of economic activity and social organization (cf. the analysis of Lima 1995; for example, chapter 8)[xlv]

Another view of history
The Service made an effort to establish a foothold in the Nambikwara region in the twenties, without much success (Price 1978:150). Getulio Vargas’ ascent as dictator in the thirties and the personal vicissitudes of Rondon’s political life in this context always made itself felt in the rise and fall of the funds and power of the Service. The Service was crucially linked to its founder and major protector, Rondon, whether as its direct patron or under his indirect direction (Lima 1995). In the forties some of the prestige and influence of Rondon was recovered when the so-called New State (an authoritarian state) also proposed a march to the west and such undertaking brought Rondon closer to the president. The Service patronized a renewed search for the mines of Urucumacuan, a mystical place who many believed in, Rondon included. The search mainly went along the upper Pimenta Bueno River (also known by its prior name as Apidiá). The mines were never found, but contact was made with the diverse Indian nations that peopled the riverbanks. By this time, the rubber patrons had subjugated most or all the peoples of the region and forced them to work in the rubber gathering enterprise. Here the representative of the Service encountered Indians like the Massacá (future Aikaná) and Kwazá and promised to found a Indian Post to come to their assistance. This proposal failed and the Post never materialized to replace the rubber trading posts. As noted in the previous Part regarding the Latundê, this episode practically disappeared from the memory of the agency and the resurgence of the Aikaná took considerable time[xlvi]. It is not coincidental that the journey and the planning of this effort happened in the Second World War when the rubber collecting in Amazonia regained some of its drive because of the necessity of the product in war machinery. With North American demand and finance, the rubber gathering revitalized interest in the region and a wave of rubber soldiers migrating from the poor Northeast Brazil were employed to furnish the cheap labor essential in the rubber extraction economy. The wide distribution of the individual trees in the forest required manpower and resulted in a pattern of extensive occupation of very large areas.

The renewed interest also brought the state to renovate its own interests in the region. The Indian peoples suffered because of the renewed pressure to cede their territories to the invaders. Usually by violent means or at the very least backed up by the potential of force, the invaders expelled or killed them. In addition, in some cases, they suffered because of the attempts at subjugation and to press the men and their families into the tapper mold as regimented cheap labor. The state as the formal holder of the monopoly of power and violence at this time did not really possess the necessary independence of local power structures to impose itself as the sole legitimate executive branch of the official regime of law and order. Thus, the Service expanded its network in the usually very difficult attempt to set itself up as the legitimate agency to deal with the Indians, as the sole lawful institution of state intervention and unsubordinated to the local interest groups. The region of the Nambikwara, of course, as Lévi-Strauss’s travels make clear, featured a tense relation between the decadent pretentiously dominant Line and the effectually autonomous Indians. As Lévi-Strauss was mainly interested in the sociocultural dynamics of the Indian society, his remarks about the political unrest (Lévi-Strauss 1976) appear mostly in Tristes Tropiques and he does not really analyze the interethnic relations and the fact that the tenseness emanates from the clash between the Indian autonomy versus the false superiority of the civilized. This was not as much a clash of civilizations as a conflict of distinct visions of the same fact and the opposing naturalness of the right to power. Consequently, in order to achieve a greater grip of the situation, in 1942 the Service installed itself in Espirro and initiated an important part of its operations in the area of the Nambikwara. It founded a new Indian Post between Campos Novos (on the Plateau) and Vilhena (the Post lies within the current Indian Area Pyrineus de Souza and was already designated by this name in the time of Lévi-Strauss; Aspelin 1976: 21). The founding of the Post along the Line corresponds to the temporarily increased interest raised and the attempt of the state to implant a semblance of its right of disposal of people, the introduction of its goals and discipline, and right of the management of its own territory. To Rondon, it may have represented a belated sign of the worth of his Line. Noteworthy in this respect is that he may have been a strong proponent of modernity but he stubbornly insisted in communicating with the engineer in Porto Velho by means of the Telegraph Line even when the much more modern and rapid means of radio was already available (Dequech 1988).

The employee responsible for the Post set it up in a strategic area. Located in the territory of the northernmost group that belongs to the Southern language cluster it is simultaneously relatively near the limits of major groups of the Northern language set. Near, for example, the Mamaindê, some of whose villages were first located by Rondon’s lieutenant north of Vilhena and which were abandoned a little later. Still later, more or less at the time of the establishment of a port on the Cabixi River in 1921, most of their villages apparently were settled near or on this river to the south of Vilhena. Here they suffered immense losses from epidemics. Subsequently they lived in a village, or villages, away from the river at some twenty kilometers south of the new Post. Essentially, they withdrew into the interior, away from the Line and other lines of penetration, but not so far away as to be unable to visit the nodes of civilized presence. As for the Sabanê, Rondon’s prior reports put them far to the north but later they too apparently moved southwards. By the time of Lévi-Strauss they visited as far south as Vilhena, where he found a group in the company of the Tarundê. The Rondon Commission furnished a map of the whole area north of Vilhena, revised before its publication in 1915. The map shows an impressive number of malocas (the large houses) along both sides of the Tenente Marques River, a string of longhouses adding up to over ten units; they extended from the source going down river far beyond the settlement of Três Buritis. Unfortunately the map does not indicate which peoples lived in these houses. In the same region, however, the Taganani do merit a specific mention, and the symbols on the map that signal houses are specifically designated as village. Near José Bonifácio some three other villages appear on the map, one labeled as village of the fishing Indians. The large area not located near the Line or the paths that already crossed the region is left blank. In this way, the middle of the map shows a large White central area demonstrating the complete ignorance of the Indian settlement of the major part of the Northern region. Clearly the map proves the presence of a dense Indian population of those parts visited by the explorers, while a very large part of the region remained relatively unknown. Although the map is not explicit on the issue, it still stands to reason that the Sabanê inhabited some or most of the indicated malocas in the area north-northeast of Três Buritis.

Lévi-Strauss drew a map where the Sabanê occupy an area above the strip of the Mamaindê territory (he still indicates a part as north of Vilhena) and extending to the north in the direction of the upper and middle Tenente Marques (spreading in the direction of the Roosevelt) and to the northeast to areas adjacent to the upper Aripuanã and along the upper Juruena Mirim (affluent of the Juruena). Probably about one year after the founding of the Post, a Sabanê was born on the Tenente Marques River. The man, known by his Portuguese name Manézinho Sabanê is one of the few elder Indians still alive today who was born and raised in an independent village. He narrates a slightly different but not necessarily contradictory history. From the point of view of the stories told by his own elders, the history of the Sabanê begins in the northeast part of the Northern cluster, in the direction of the town of Diamantino, Mato Grosso. Of course, historically the oldest towns elevated to the status of municipality included immense areas within their boundaries, in this case roughly the whole upper northwestern corner of the state[xlvii]. Although it is hard to ascertain exactly, it is likely that the site of origin must have been to the north of the Nambikwara do Campo of the Parecis Plateau and in the direction of the Aripuanã headwaters. It is uncertain how far to the north the territory of the early Sabanê extended as, possibly, the most northern component of the Nambikwara ensemble. It is certain that these lands shared one or more frontiers with enemy peoples, possibly the Cinta Larga or other segments of the Tupi Mondé configuration that may have occupied territories along the middle Aripuanã River at the time[xlviii]. The diverse peoples of the Tupi Mondé thus from this time on probably were the major enemy of the Sabanê (although, as seen above, others like the Manduka also made serious inroads). At the time of the Lévi-Strauss’ expedition it was known that Indians from the Aripuanã attacked and killed the Sabanê (Faria 2001: 119). The local rubber-tappers called the Indians who killed the wife and a chief’s son Suruí (Faria 2001: 131). Today the Suruí are located the northwest of Três Buritis but Tupi Mondé names at this point are unlikely to be clearly fixed.

One can be reasonably certain that the Sabanê used to live in an area in some way to the northeast of the major cluster of Northern Nambikwara which comprised a number of smaller peoples centering in the area from the Tenente Marques to the Comemoração. This places the former territory on the edge of the total region of the Nambikwara Nation (to use Rondon’s term) and the people in a habitat that is much more forest than savanna. The language and the information of the few available elements of Sabanê culture bear out this relative distance and approximation to peoples of other languages and cultures. As noted, the Sabanê language differs considerably from the two major clusters of the Nambikwara language family and it constitutes a separate branch. The degree of distinctiveness caused by language drift from the moment of linguistic separation from the major blocs of the linguistic family reveals the considerable duration of the division. Although definitely affiliated with the other languages, Sabanê is unique in that it is incomprehensible to speakers of the other languages and it features a number of distinctive characteristics. In much the same way, contrary to what Lévi-Strauss thought, the Sabanê so-called original culture also includes a series of traits or institutions that demonstrate a differentiation from the main body of the Nambikwara ensemble. For example, the Sabanê had a bachelors house that lodged the unmarried youths and adult men and which they left when they married into the house of their father-in-law. The source of this information, Manézinho, himself slept in this men’s house. When his father remarried, the new wife went to live in his father’s house, and, therefore, he felt that he could not stay at the house. Such a men’s lodge does not exist among the other peoples of the Nambikwara family but is a familiar phenomenon among other peoples. In fact, the Rikbaktsa (Macro-Jê) who used to live north of the Nambikwara cluster, at the Juruena more or less at the same latitude as the Aripuanã Park do have a similar house for single male adults in their villages (Arruda 1998; in the fifties the Cinta Larga also expelled the Rikbaktsa from the western bank of the Juruena, see Dornstauder (1975); so its is possible the Sabanê at one time were neighbors of the latter, a connection suggested by the men’s house; this accords with the map in Price and Cook (1969) where the Sabanê are kolimisi). In this case, perhaps, the hut may have been mostly a sleeping place for bachelors rather then a true men’s house although it is said that Sabanê fathers did not allow their daughters to enter this hut. Furthermore, although my knowledge is unfortunately fragmentary, there are strong affinities with the Nambikwara ensemble in the architecture of the cosmos and its inhabitants. The cosmology shows relevant variations in the distribution of the layers in the sky and the localization of the habitation of the important supernatural figure of Thunder (the same powerful supernatural being invoked in the adventure of the headman recounted by Lévi-Strauss)[xlix].

In other words, in social organisation and cosmology the Sabanê vary significantly from the Northern Nambikwara, but on some essential features, like the seclusion ritual for girls experiencing their menarche and the basic components of shamanism, the similarities and analogies permit fruitful interaction and a basic mutual understanding. The narrator lived in some of the villages that were founded after the Sabanê arrived in the area around and between the Roosevelt (named Yatalánma, a kind of bee) and Tenente Marques (named Kókia, hawk) Rivers. He was born on the latter river and subsequently his kin moved to banks of the Roosevelt. The distance between the two locations implied in a two or three day trip that crossed the Três Buritis River (named Waykía, wood). In fact, Manézinho is one of the few people alive that grew up in the autonomous villages and can recount some of the flavor of the indigenous lived worlds in free villages in the forties and fifties. He recalls that the villages generally had a relatively large number of houses. According to his recollection, at least six, but on the avarage ten people inhabited each house. The Tenente Marques village was abandoned under pressure from the Cinta Larga, who descended upon the Sabanê and attacked all of the Northern Nambikwara branch from the north-northeast. He claims that this village had about twenty relatively small houses. The other village at the Roosevelt was called Yatali (dry wood) where he estimates that roughly the same number of houses each hosted around ten people, thus this village was larger than the previous. The numbers of houses and inhabitants are uncertain as the narrator must refer to the distant past and only learned to express exact quantities in Portuguese numbers in his adulthood. Still, they represent a secure indication of a number of houses and a total population that is not unusual compared with other forest peoples. It does not, however, agree with Roquette-Pinto’s description of the smaller villages of the Northern Nambikwara[l].

Other villages existed and sometimes resulted from the fusion of smaller ones for defensive purposes. One village to the northeast at the Tenente Marques named Titotá (the larger species of peccary) was under permanent risk of attack by the Tupi, who were thought to live some twelve days away. A small village called Ulúmatití (tapir), localized to the southeast of the former suffered at least one battle with the raiders. Manézinho’s village always attempted to exact retribution of its enemies and sometimes united with one and up to four other villages to make a counter-raid. The Sabanê accuse the enemy, usually called Cinta Larga, of taking parts of their victim’s body as trophy and consuming it later. Manézinho adds that they were selective enough to prefer Whites or Indians and rejected those of black people[li]. The Sabanê made arrows with eagle feathers for their raids. In their own engagements they intended to pursue and to kill the men and capture the girls to take them back to be incorporated into the village. Clearly the pressure from the north was heavily felt and caused dislocations and fusions but at several times a number of villages seem to have existed simultaneously. The population probably was greater than the small group encountered by Lévi-Strauss. This discrepancy may have arisen from either miscommunication about the existence of other groups in the more remote areas or perhaps because of a population surge. In general, the elder remarks that all of the Sabanê spoke the same language and were one people: dërëbitimuli (my people, my kin). The different villages, on the other hand, did not always enjoy friendly relations and often fought each other. Therefore, it is quite possible that the people on the Line and Lévi-Strauss did not know about Sabanê higher up north. However, most groups entertained personal relations with the stations because of the goods to be obtained, especially steel instruments. Such an inducement to contact should motivate visits of possible other villages. Note that Rondon’s and the commission’s reports mention a group called Iaiá. This word is probably is derived from a Sabanê kin term (elder brother and parallel cousin) and hence this may have been another Sabanê village. The name of the Sabanê themselves might very well stem from sapáne (younger sister); Lévi-Strauss (1948b: 31) gives sabáni as younger sibling and iáia as elder sibling. The name Tawaindê resembles the Sabanê word for hunter, tawánte (for both terms G.Antunes 2001: personal communication; also Antunes 2004). This shows that the Sabanê language apparently influenced the group naming. The profusion of names and the temporal changes, of course, depend on who conferred what name, to whom and at what time, but by this derivation the label could be a referral of one Sabanê group to another. In that case different Sabanê villages may have been named as if different groups. It is also possible that some Sabanê village was unknown or differently named in Lévi-Strauss’s time.

Thus, Manézinho claims that the Sabanê left the region to the northeast under pressure from other peoples. Fighting with these neighbors – at one time he named the Cinta Larga, Nambikwara[lii] (in regional parlance restricted to the Campo group, for example the Halotesu), Salumã (now officially renamed Enawenê Nawê; an Aruak speaking people close to Paresi), as the peoples whom were killing us – they fled until they thought to be out of reach and settled down again. In fact, recently the same elder saw the photos of a poor Brazilian family that invaded the Enawenê Nawê area in the eighties and paid for their audacity with their lives. The mutilated corpses pierced with arrows reminded the Sabanê very strongly of the victims of his own war and he identifies this people as one of their old enemies[liii]. In the region existed a large village called Kulimansi, a place name, which is thought to have lodged all of the Sabanê at one time[liv]. Although this may be a more mythical reference to emphasize the common ancestry, it certainly coincides with the notion of the existence of large villages before and after arriving in the Roosevelt region. It is thought that the fragmentation into smaller villages only happened later. One striking point in this history of gradual migration is the constant reference to a withdrawal from villages and adjacent fields that was accompanied by the return to pick up plants, roots, stems and seeds from their old cultivated lands. They appear to have always gone back to collect the produce of their fields and gather the means to recreate the gardens in the new territory.

According to this account, the Sabanê were a thoroughly sedentary people that under normal circumstances changed their village sites every few years (Manézinho once mentioned ten years). They lived in settled villages and highly valued their horticultural activities. After felling the new fields sometime in the beginning of the dry season, the village dispersed for some time into the forest for hunting and gathering but they returned for the burning and planting in August, to live in the village afterwards[lv]. They buried the dead in a particular tree bark with all of their possessions for the spirit within the house without abandoning the construction. The house was fortified with a wooden infrastructure of about a meter high from the ground, circling around the perimeter. Burial in the house and the wooden construction are not usual Nambikwara practices, although Roquette-Pinto suggests some wooden underpinning for a house of the Northern Nambikwara and the latter (Lakondê) use the same technique for the enveloping the dead within a tree bark to serve as the coffin. The most remarkable distinctive feature of the Sabanê concerns Mané’s assertion that the married men used to sleep on the ground, the young men sometimes did the same, but the bachelors also used to sleep in hammocks. Moreover, and particularly revealing, his own father knew how to weave and actually fabricated hammocks. Whether or not was taken over from allies or enemies in the high north-east is unknown. This practice distinguishes them from other members of the linguistic family which categorically refused the use of the hammock and the adoption of the corresponding weaving technique. Also, contrary to the entire major bloc of the Nambikwara ensemble, the Sabanê preferred to live in the forest, near a savanna and running water, but not in the open savanna[lvi]. In these aspects the Sabanê differ from the normal attributes that most saliently characterize the so-called Nambikwara (as if a nominal group that implies a basic similarity and identifiable as one Nation).

The mention of the Nambikwara as an original enemy may have been an involuntary admission but the two groups certainly did not maintain any previous friendly relations. During a later interview, Manézinho described how contact was made. When the Sabanê encountered unknown or previously unfriendly peoples, they followed a mode of establishing alliances that seems to have been generalized among all the neighboring peoples and of which the Nambikwara case was one particular instantiation. Unfamiliar groups were approached with the utmost care, in order to test their willingness to forge a friendly relation and avoid enmities. This friendship had to be created as the other Indians rarely liked us initially. Some peoples immediately waged a war after the discovery of the presence of the intruding Sabanê was discovered and peace was not reached. All of the other peoples always feared or distrusted the Sabanê. Each of the newly encountered groups always had to be gradually convinced of their good intentions. Therefore, entering the area of the unknown Northern Nambikwara and, apparently, part of the Southern Nambikwara signified a potentially dangerous enterprise. In fact, the premise of the world outside of the own local group as a very menacing place appears prevalent among other elders of all peoples living in Aroeira. Probably the same conceptualization of the outside still holds for the younger generation as they still believe that illness and death result from sorcery of angry or envious Indians (even from their own people; this could be a reason for the internal disagreements and fragmentation within the Sabanê)[lvii]. A means of conveying good intentions was to “talk to them”, even if no common language could be found. First from a distance they called out that they were friends and did not harbor any violent designs. One day a courageous Sabanê tuxauá of around forty or fifty, an urikapari (a strong leader, translated as boss in Antunes 2004: 251), mustered the courage to approach the Nambikwara and came face to face with them. After this contact that familiarized the unknown Indians to their presence, they initiated the trading of all sorts of objects – things like feathers, arrows, bows, necklaces, threads and cotton. This may be similar to the silent trade witnessed by Lévi-Strauss (1976a; orig 1942) where the participants exchange objects without bargaining or conversation. This may be a delicate phase because the same author notes that the silentness potentially generates grudges about the varying appraisals of the values inherent in the objects exchanged. Manézinho said, they did not know that we are good, that we do not harbor bad intentions and are not like animals. This sort of exchange should therefore not be understood as simply trade of objects not produced by oneself. Although not absent, in its multifarious aspects it is rather more a representation of something closer to diplomacy, the social enactment of a new friendly tie and strongly of a political character.

After a process of becoming accustomed to each other and gradually being convinced of genuine intentions, the two groups began to learn each other’s languages, and participate in each other’s feasts and rituals. They showed their respective singing and dancing skills. Lévi-Strauss’s description (1984: 357-9) of singing and trading confers with Manézinho’s short observations which do not, however, mention altercations between the men of the two groups that clear the air by venting their griefs. But then again, such interaction normally would require the understanding between incomprehensible languages and thus only can come about in time. In this way the Sabanê founded their new relation to the Nambikwara (in the restricted regional sense) in a template of interaction that, judging from the case of Rondon and the Latundê, was and is shared by all groups, irrespective of language and cultural distinctions[lviii]. In the first phase, after some measure of friendship, the parties listen to each other’s musical and festive performances and invite the other group to attend their rituals. In time some people starts to learn the other’s language and after a while they can communicate and provide the link to a better communication and comprehension between villages. The Sabanê engaged in a regional web of relations in this manner that also included the Kithaulu (northwestern neighbours of the Nambikwara). The whole set of allies were on bad terms with the Manduka (the most northwestern of the Savanna Nambikwara) and with the Mamaindê. In this way, before reaching the Northern Nambikwara region and familiarize with the (as yet unknown) Tawaindê, the Sabanê are said to have inhabited the area north of the Nambikwara. That is, in all likelihood, in a region to the north of, or even part of, the northern tip of the Nambikwara reserve, or to the north of the lands immediately adjacent Enawanê Nawê (and, as seen, close to the Rikbaksta). Being friends (dërërëbiti), means being invited to feasts and bringing food for the occasion, observing and participating in dancing and singing rituals, and exchanging objects to foster a mutual understanding.

This mode of alliance assures part of the necessary peace with important peoples in the vicinity. However, this amity does not include the exchange of women until we are very well acquainted, the Sabanê failed to achieve this level of social integration with the Nambikwara and the Kithaulu. In a reconstruction pieced together from what Manézinho told Antunes and I, the pressure of other peoples again drove them on and they ventured in the direction of the Tenente Marques. Looking for another place to live in peace, the Sabanê moved on. Initially, they saw few indications of other people but eventually they spotted human tracks during hunting, fishing and scouting expeditions. Alerted by the traces of human occupancy, careful observation from a certain distance revealed that the other’s language was incomprehensible. After discovering the village and ascertaining the language difference, the Sabanê discussed the strange peoples’ dispositions. They guessed that the others were peaceful (here Manézinho used the Brazilian vernacular, manso, tame, as opposed to brabo, wild). Some Indians of the group reconnoitered the terrain with an intent to initiate hostile activities, but the public opinion of a peaceful attitude prevailed. Three or four men then bravely attempted a direct face-to-face contact. The group contacted spoke a dialect the elder considers to be close to Tawaindê, a language and people that the Sabanê called Sowaintê. Lévi-Strauss (1948b: 12) mentioned the sováinte as the Sabanê name of part of Northern Nambikwara that live on the right bank of the Roosevelt River. They ended up living close by and further strengthened their ties learning the respective languages, taking the relationship further then the previous alliances. It is fairly certain that Lévi-Strauss witnessed such a process in a precarious stage, and it will be remembered that he stressed the enormous demographic decline suffered before. Lévi-Strauss did not know the outcome of this social engineering. In the case of the Sabanê and Sowaintê they drew so close as to exchange women. The Sabanê elder, however, recalls that the peoples were still populous. This opinion is furthered by his belief that living in the forest away from cities and civilization is much healthier than living near Whites[lix]. In this view, due to the mutual appreciation of each other’s women as beautiful, a part the men of one people married women of the allies and vice versa. In the forest people died much less and generally enjoyed good health and, according to these recollections, from the exchange between both groups ensued a significant population increase. In this respect, the co-operation proved fruitful and new villages settled at the Tenente Marques and in the remainder of the region.

This still leaves with the question whether the Sowaintê are the Tarundê of Vilhena. The Sowaintê are Northern Nambikwara but Lévi-Strauss (1948: 53) already noted that their language is closely affiliated to Lakondê: a dialect group he called b2. Tarundê, on the contrary, pertains to the group b1, joining tarúnde, maimãde (ib.: 50). They would be survivors from two distinct local groups that used to live on the eastern bank of the upper Roosevelt. At the time the Tarundê wandered around Vilhena and received a visit from the Kabixi, coming from the south. This probably means this group was Mamaindê. During this visit the author treats the two local groups as if one group from dialect b1. The linguistic ability shown by Lévi-Strauss makes this close identification very likely. Hence the strong possibility that the Tarundê are a distinct local group of the Roosevelt River but, in regional terms, affiliated with the Mamaindê. On his map the b2 area extends from the Guaporé Valley – the current Mamaindê territory – to the north of Vilhena towards the Roosevelt. As Price concluded that usually there existed a very close linkage between rivers, river basin and peoples or regional sets of local groups, this is either an exception of one regional set straddling the water sheds or the Mamaindê and the Tarundê actually considered one another very close, but different, regional sets. No one ever heard again of the Tarundê (no one Price knew, nor did he find a mention in the literature; Price 1978: 150). Of course, they may have renamed but it would be quite unclear as to under what name they would be known at other times. What is known is that the current Mamaindê are composed of remnants of local groups from the Valley (of the eastern side of the Cabixi River). And the only male survivor of the Northern Mamaindê from around Vilhena lives at Aroeira, and, it is commented, accuses the southern branch of having killed his relatives[lx]. Hence the strong possibility that the Tarundê were Northern Mamaindê or very close to them; and now they would be either extinct, or consisting of only one single person (possibly two, there are some unsubstantiated references about another woman). It is notable, incidentally, that of 68 quotations of words and phrases in La vie familiale only two are not from a Tarundê source. Really, Lévi-Strauss was right in pointing out the influence of the northern cluster in his ethnography even if his ecological description of Nambikwara land is definitely more appropriate to the Plateau.

Thus, in contradiction to the assertion of totally disastrous decline by Lévi-Strauss, the recollection also affirms that the populational strength of both groups did not really falter until after a period of some growth. Manézinho suggested that there was a population decline around the time of Lévi-Strauss but he does not report a precipitous decline that engendered a reciprocal design to join forces with different peoples or villages. In reality, both local groups exchanged women but did not fuse. That is, not until the final dispersal of the Sowaintê the latter cease to exist as an independent people (a point I will return to below). Calling each other by terms of affinity and exchanging partners is actually not a project of fusion but the pattern of a normal more elaborated alliance. Here the primary contradiction revolves around the period before the personal memories of Manézinho and, partially, his experience of the later situation. On the one hand, as observed, the anthropologist did not really call attention to the total population of either people. On the other hand, a possible partial explanation concerns the fact that among most Amazonian indigenous peoples personal experience is much richer in detail than the reports on historical events before the narrator’s life. The latter tend to be more stereotyped and less informative, reducing the content to a higher level of abstraction (Gow 2001). In discussing the years encompassing his childhood until adulthood, Manézinho envisions a number of roughly ten villages all with the same language and culture before the fusion. There was much inter-village participation in rituals and activities in a mesh of intense social relations. Each village in the web of villages constituted their own lived worlds of a free and viable specific mode of sociocultural life. For Manézinho, the major assault on the viability of the independent and autonomous Sabanê occurs gradually over his lifetime, culminating at the time when he was a young adult and the autonomous village life had to be abandoned.

Part of the Sabanê was drawn to or was coerced to go and live at the Post at Espirro (another point I will return to below). Another part of this group remained in the forest and maintained exchange relations with the José Bonifácio station. This station had been transformed into the centre and hub of access to external commodities of all Northern groups. In the forties and fifties, the Lakondê (probably originating in an area near the Melgaço River to the west), the Tawaindê (apparently living to the northwest of the station), and the Sabanê (in between the Roosevelt and Tenente Marques with at least once a village as far west as an affluent of the Comemoração River), still enjoyed independence and practiced intensive exchange relations amongst one another. As noted, the Sabanê entered this mesh of alliances even before Rondon’s arrival. The project of allying with one of these Northern groups seems to have succeeded in replenishing group numbers. Simultaneously, the Sabanê reached a level of alliance relationships with the other Northern Nambikwara groups that perpetuated the feelings of distinctiveness and a certain distance[lxi]. In the fifties, however, the Cinta Larga raised the intensity of their inroads in the region of the autonomous villages and all Northern groups began to suffer more severely. At the end of this decade and in the beginning of the sixties, despite the withdrawal in the independent villages away from White populations, the epidemics broke out again. The existence of José Bonifácio and the Indian Service Post with the Indian people forcefully contained in Espirro – although both cases represent only a precarious link and channel of external commodities and personnel from outside the region – must have functioned as a conduit for a continual flux of dangerous potential contamination. It is known that in similar situations epidemics struck early and lingered for a long time before erupting again in the same region (Dobyns 1993: 275).

The telegraph station allowed young male Indians to work periodically and to earn some wages to obtain steel tools. Sometimes entire villages camped near the small interethnic station although no people, village, or group seems ever to have moved to the immediate vicinity and give up its independence. The station, by the way, created it own complex interethnic micro-cosmos – with a few Whites, some Paresi Indians and local Indians married to the personnel comprising a small permanently resident village[lxii]. Different groups did not make camp jointly in the vicinity but, as clear sign of distinctiveness, raised temporary shelters on their own near the compound. It did create an environment of meeting all other groups of the large region and several or, maybe, many people learned other languages in this linguistically diverse environment. Manézinho was at this time a young adult and acquired some knowledge of Lakondê, Tawaindê, and Portuguese while working. In addition to her mother tongue, Lakondê, Teresa learned Sabanê very well as she was exposed to it at a young age when playing with the visiting children. From her Paresi foster father she also learned Portuguese. Her rapid acquisition of these languages stems, at least in part, from the fact that she was exposed to them when she was only three, an opportune time for language learning. Her case confirms that small children with the innate potential to acquiring native competence can do so in more than one language (here aged about three). Manézinho, a native speaker of Sabanê and a stern critic of the abilities of second-language learners, affirms that Teresa is a very good speaker (although she has had little opportunity to speak this language for most her life). From the previous transcript of the template of action from contact to alliance, a strongly positive attitude towards multilingualism transpires. The mould of practice thus probably partakes of a favorable pan-Nambikwara disposition towards competence in various languages. In the multi-ethnic meeting-ground of José Bonifácio, this disposition favored the acquisition of various foreign languages. Observe that these peoples were not only interested in the so-called national language as the primary lingua franca. In this historic period, all Indian languages and dialects prospered as long as the native speakers did, and even spread to members of other language groups.

One segment of the Northern Nambikwara, the Sowaintê, in a way merged with the Sabanê although not, it seems, as conscious project. No traces are known of some of the other groups and peoples due to the fact they either died out completely or the few surviving individuals integrated into other more fortunate groups or peoples. This is a complicated process of which little is known. For example, the Navaitê known to Rondon and whose territory was encountered by Rondon on his descent of the River of Doubt, after whom he named a tract of river rapids, later on disappear from the literature. This seems to have been the most northern group but Teresa believes that the Lakondê originally used to occupy a region situated much lower on the Roosevelt River. In that case this people would have been neighbors to the Navaitê or they could simply be the same people, having been renamed after the Line became decadent. As for the Sowaintê, I did not come across their name in the limited number of published reports from Rondon’s epoch that I have been able to consult. This people experienced a process of gradual decline and diminishing numbers affecting their capacity to live as an independent group. According to Manézinho, whose wife is a Sowaintê, roughly three women and one or two men are the only remnants of this group now that they have submerged in the Sabanê and the scattered descendants do not appear to assume any collective identity. There are a few other parallel instances of this process. As seen, one elder Mamaindê now living in Aroeira belongs to a group of Northern Mamaindê originally inhabiting the Vilhena area and the Southern Mamaindê are accused of murdering their northern brethren (in the south originating from the Guaporé and Cabixi valleys). Only one other woman is said to be from the same people. This man does not live among the Mamaindê in the Guaporé the Southern Mamaindê Valley Indigenous Territory because he hates the killers of his close kin. This man’s Mamaindê identity persists even when, in similar cases of disintegrated peoples, they usually are subsumed within a larger people.

Another example is the Yakoloré[lxiii], formerly neighbors of the Lakondê after they had moved to the south closer to José Bonifácio, a few descendants also may be living in Aroeira. Most of these fragments of former local groups and peoples nowadays are classified by outsiders as belonging to the predominant enduring groups, the Sabanê among them. Manézinho’s wife, Ivone is normally known and registered as Sabanê. She herself affirms that she does not understand how the disappearance of her people came about. She recalls that her people died more because of internecine warfare with other Northern Nambikwara than of diseases, although she recognizes that both contributed to the mortality rate out when they lived in a patch of savanna in the Roosevelt region (the Campo do Susto). Her father left the region and lived among the regional Brazilians where she grew up. Despite this, as a young girl she maintained her original language, the same as Lakondê and Tawaindê (all close dialects of the Northern Nambikwara cluster). Curiosity even stimulated her to learn Sabanê from a Sabanê foster mother. She was taught this quite different language when she was an adolescent and now speaks fluently. Observe that people born in an autonomous setting show a strong favorable disposition to learn various languages. Of course, the necessity of isolated individuals to attach themselves to a viable local group and the customary interethnic marriages lead to very unfavorable circumstances for language maintenance. The language can normally only be spoken with the few other surviving kin (or those who learned the language when it was socially relevant). Consequently, their offspring tend to be assimilated into the larger ethnic group and their origin forgotten. This is the case for the children of Dona Ivone, all identified as Sabanê, and the same appears to hold for the other Sowaintê women. The Sowaintê amalgamated with the Sabanê and the result is assimilation and concomitant disappearance of ethnic and linguistic uniqueness.

Notes
[i] See, for example, the words of Darcy Ribeiro (1959) at the third Brazilian Anthropology Meeting (1958), shortly after Rodon’s death. Ribeiro suggests that the Indians’ humanity and right to existence and land did signify a considerable advance (an advance that sadly usually existed mainly only in theory). The principal right, however, was the freedom to evolve without constraint, the privilege to naturally adopt the superior Brazilian culture (see Abreu (1996: 108-135) for the development of hero-cults in Brazil with reference to Rondon).
[ii] Marcos Galindo claims that the phrase originates from a ghostwriter who helped prepare Rondon’s speeches and books (2002, personal communication). Rondon, in fact, cared very much about his public image. Marc Piault notes that Rondon always appears impeccably dressed even when filmed or photographed during expeditions, deep in the wilderness (2001, personal communication). He has examined the context of Rondon and images in detail (Piault 2001).
[iii] Mísia Lins Reesink 2002, personal communication.
[iv] Today several studies demonstrate that the management of the environment, for example the planting of palm trees, do imply in long-term strategies.
[v] Sometimes the literature employs the idea of a subsistence economy to this kind of situation. This notion carries some unfortunate connotations. The Indians did not live in a state of poverty nor were they at the limit of their production capacity without any surplus. The most important point here refers to a negative evaluation of this sociocultural mode of production, which is never considered sufficient as a method of integrating economic production and consumption, or as the conversion of means into socially acceptable sustenance. These issues are present in various debates concerning the anthropological economics of non-western or non-capitalist societies that demonstrate the difficulty of discarding the ethnocentric centrality of what, mostly uncritically, are western and capitalist characteristics (this includes the debate on equality and hierarchy in so-called simple societies; Flanagan 1989).
[vi] The Brazilian part of the expedition was known as the “Roosevelt-Rondon scientific expedition” to stress national participation. Such an expedition could have potentially hurt national feelings if not for Roosevelt’s diplomatic behavior, sometimes described as respect by Brazilian contemporaries. The upper reaches of the Roosevelt river received a number of names. A small upper river was named after the son of the former US president and participant in the expedition, Kermit Roosevelt. It’s noteworthy that this stretch of river has many rapids and waterfalls that probably had protected the Northern Nambikwara from the full impact of earlier intrusions.
[vii] Rondon remarks that the Paresi did not even sit on the ground. This contrasts to the Nambikwara who sit on the ground in a peculiar and culturally specific way. The Paresi stereotype probably implies a more general perspective than merely ways of sleeping (Machado 1998 : 234).
[viii] When Rondon compares the Northern Nambikwara with their Tupian neighbours (of the Pimenta Bueno), the trait of sleeping on the ground is explicitly mentioned as, among other things, a trait that classifies the latter as being more advanced than the former (Rondon 1916: 154).
[ix] This is the year Machado and others place the reference in their bibliography but the original has no publication date (it was republished in 1947).
[x] Already accustomed to contact, they even hunted with firearms. The leader Toilori expressed the wish to act as a collector of a certain medicinal root gathered only with expeditions during one season of the year (translated by Hemming (1995: 202) as the “ipecac root”, this is poaia, in Tupi ipecacuanha according to Machado [1995: 259]). This collecting could be mounted in much more independent manner and participants would be free from the harsh exploitative regime of the seringal.
[xi] Note that Rondon’s own observations may contradict the peaceful image of the Paresi. Rondon relates how twice the Nambikwara attacked the Paresi, who defended themselves with firearms, inflicting heavy losses. The Paresi even pursued them to a large village on another river far into Nambikwara territory (Rondon 1947:38-9). The assassination of over 40 Nambikwara contradicts the prevalent view. The nature of the relations between these two groups is a matter under discussion (the Paresi are subdivided into a few endogamous named groups). Fiorini (2001, personal communication) is elaborating the idea that their neighboring groups had developed some symbiotic relation between warriors and horticulturalists before outside encroachment (this is examined in more detail in Part III). Max Schmidt, who travelled through the area at the same time, believed the Paresi presented this pacific image purposefully while simultaneously using bows and arrows to assault Whites and blame the savages (apud Machado 1998: 301).
[xii] That is, the agency was also charged with colonizing any newly opened regions with agricultural laborers (see the extensive social analysis of its inception and origin that includes discussion regarding the construction of Rondon’s hero image in Lima 1995).
[xiii] One such major chief went to Rio de Janeiro with Rondon after the expedition of 1910 and came back with many commodities, like cattle and a gramophone which, according to Schmidt, he used to consolidate a firm domination over his subjects (apud Machado 1998: 301). This reinforcement of inequality most likely derives from the economic development assistance sent by Rondon (see the similar disastrous effects of unequal access among the Yanomami, Tierney 2000). In other words, unintended or unforeseen consequences of development aid goes back at least as far as Rondon. It seems likely that this aid was intended for the community as a whole, not as private property.
[xiv] Price (1983b) discussed the changes of this name and the question of to whom it was applied. By the time of Rondon it was usually referring to Nambikwara of the Guaporé Valley (see Part III). For more information about Toloiri’s role as the only collaborator, see Machado (1995: 254-5).
[xv] This hierarchy may have extended to a social hierarchy within each village where leadership may have had some hereditary aspect. Thus, the society would have been less egalitarian than usually presumed. According to Schmidt, the inter-village chief who returned from Rio with many presents changed the social conditions of his community. I take this to mean that the chief exploited the commodities to establish himself in a way analogous to the rubber debt peonage and position himself as an owner with real power instead of the superior, but relatively powerless, person he previously was. This was meant to reinforce older ideas about inequality and to transform into power differences.
[xvi] Actually, the expedition and Rondon collected many indigenous objects which he greatly valued according to the standards of the day, as the wealth and the pride of an ethnographic collection of the unknown. Many if not all of these objects were in the first collection of the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, helping the institution establish itself as an important museum. The museum corresponded with its firm scientific support in the political struggle of Rondon and the positivists to justify the intervention of the state in interethnic relations, and aided in creating the Indian Protection Service, headed by Rondon himself. This mutually productive alliance encouraged Roquette-Pinto to propose the name of Rondônia for the northwestern part of Mato Grosso (see Lima 1995). Thus, the region that was once barely acknowledged, began to be effectively incorporated into the nation.
[xvii] This author takes a slightly more critical stance than some other biographers but he hardly contributes to the understanding of the making of the hero. In all likelihood the author felt somewhat restrained because the national oil company financed this edition with the explicit purpose to furnish the public a series of portraits of “personalities that contributed to the formation of the national identity” (opening page, Bigio 2000: 3). Image building continues and occasionally resurges in the Rondônia papers in respect to the great civilizing hero who gave his name to the state. The Indian Protection Service (SPI) had less qualms about using euphemisms and appealed to the argument that the protection and salvation of the Indians by the government assured the indispensable means to the “conquest” of the closed interior of the country (ib.: 35).
[xviii] Rondon mentions the saddle and carbine preserved in Brazilian museums but nothing about the chest protection that is supposed to have saved his life in other versions of this accident. There may be several versions of this famous encounter.
[xix] Supposing that the exploration arrived on the Ananaz River exactly from the Parecis Plateau, these other reports reveal the savanna to be different from the somewhat extreme poverty attributed to this ecosystem.
[xx] In the interest of pacification and science, no reservations about this kind of invasion and expulsion appear in the text, as if this complete invasion of the village is a normal act. The expedition’s participants did plant maize in the field among the manioc to demonstrate their good intentions and, explicitly, to show the utility of their metal instruments (Rondon 1922: 34).
[xxi] Observations like these tend to show Rondon a natural leader who dispenses with stern discipline and force in favour of earning allegiance and devotion through example and natural authority. The guard shows the limits of this picture, substantiated by other examples (Zarur 2003: 269).
[xxii] The picture was taken on a 1908 expedition. It featured a large hut ornamented with various presents and the phonograph playing prominently. Note that despite the fact that this picture appeared in a work on ethnography, it features a clothed expeditionary beside the phonograph. The house itself seems to be more the scene of self exhibition than a picture of ethnographic value (Rondon 1947: n.p.). The presence of the phonograph demonstrates that Western music was seen as civilizing. The school at Utiarity used music to inculcate new civilized body discipline and set of dispositions, a very effective way to alienate the children from their own sociocultural background (Lima 1995: 308-9).
[xxiii] This is a rough translation of what may be the most quoted phrase of Os Sertões. The gulf between the elite conception of the Republic and that of the common soldier is also evident in the Canudos war described by the same author. This famous work is considered as a classic and has a special status in some circles. This work, assimilating the European scientific theories of the times, stressed the geographical and racial determinations of the people and their culture in the interior.
[xxiv] On race, its relation to ethnicity, and the notion of blood as a vector of physical and moral qualities and rapid historical overview of its history and persisting current relevance, see Reesink (2001).
[xxv] In the beginning of conquest the aim was to convert the Indians and strove for assimilation but small areas were sometimes declared reserved for Indian occupancy. Much later this came to resemble North America: “The expropriation of North American Indian lands eventually secured by the reserve system: Indians were given title to enclaves of land which were for the most part of only marginal use, along with token compensation for the loss of millions of acres of other land” (Brody 1975: 225). As for Rondon, his were prophetic words; even in the nineties the former showcase of official indigenist action, the Xingu National Park, has been subjected to a long and difficult lawsuit brought on by land owners with falsified titles. For a history of the genesis of this particular and in many senses exceptional Indian Park, see Menezes (1999).
[xxvi] It is interesting to note here that the problem of the overextended supply lines also occurred at the time when the prestige and allotted funds of the Commission were at its peak, before the later decline set in. Rondon himself, apparently, did not lack the means when he himself travelled through the region.
[xxvii] What he did do was to follow the usage of Rondon and the Commission to apply the name of the Serra do Norte for the entire region from Campos Novos up to the limits of the Northern Nambikwara constellation of peoples, effectively mixing up the northernmost of the Southern Nambikwara ensemble with the former. In this way it is sometimes difficult to know which of the clusters certain information applies to.
[xxviii] He also speculated about the significance of the names of these groups. Sometimes he surmised a connection with a name in older documentation, sometimes he attributes the name to a kin term like Uncles and hypothesizes that might be because they are the most primitive group of the tribe. In this reasoning the Nambikwara themselves are seen as evolutionists, but sometimes the naming proceeds clearly through the alter-classification customary among the entire ensemble of peoples although not an expression like uncles or children, which in all likelihood derived from a misunderstanding or mistranslation. The respondent may have answered a question about the name of a group with who in the other group he knows (see Price 1972 and later publications for an exhaustive treatment of such names, this is examined in the next Part).
[xxix] He remarked on a large stone outside the house that was being used for cracking palm nuts. He casually noted that were it not for the enormous weight of the object he would take it to the museum ignoring the necessity of discussion with the owners. As mentioned, Rondon restrained himself when visiting an abandoned village in spite of the enormous ethnographic worth. His honesty was motivated by the obligation to foster goodwill. Visiting in the name of science apparently allowed for some special liberty. As seen, Rondon posted a guard and the practice of just taking Indian things in this sort of situation was normal for those of the interior. Regardless, although ordinary thievery was socially intolerable and a very despicable action in the interior, taking Indian objects was not judged so harshly.
[xxx] The geologist of the Roosevelt-Rondon expedition concurred. He described the savanna around Vilhena as the last natural one and comprised of a red clay and sand mixture. This could have been an additional reason for its growth into a town. From here on the savannas are the result of the action of man while the forest and vegetation attains increasing heights and Três Buritis is surrounded by high forest full of valuable timber (madeira de lei). Both Três Buritis and José Bonifácio are built on what were known as Indian savannas (Oliveira 1915: 33;47).
[xxxi] On this issue, he differs with Roosevelt. Although Roosevelt did agree with Rondon on a number of issues, for example he too considered the nakedness of the Indians to be entirely modest, yet they still were, to him, the wildest and most primitive savages he ever came across in his travels, even when compared to what he called the African tribes at the same stage of culture (Roosevelt 1914: 208; 210).
[xxxii] Rondon does not say so but it would make sense if these were destined to one of the groups as visitors and the main house is that of the hosts.
[xxxiii] The popular book, Missão Rondon (1916: 242) also reports the same solemn occasion in very similar words. It is mentioned how many Indians of the Taú-i-tês participated and how one girl was assigned to raise the flag, in commemoration of the newly achieved peace with Rondon.
[xxxiv] From the recent experience of the festivities around the so-called 500 years of Brazil event, I conclude that the audience and public generally accepts unquestioningly the never explicit notion that the Indians at the first mass actually acted out of some kind of natural respect for the religious event, not simply out of mimetic politeness for the Portuguese.
[xxxv] It has even been argued that Rondon was well suited for the task to enhance this alliance on the personal level with Roosevelt because of his experience with the attraction and pacification of savages. That is, to pacify Roosevelt, as it were, and gain his respect for Rondon and his country (Zarur 2003: 262-3). In this he apparently succeeded, it seems Roosevelt came to admire Rondon and, by extension, his work and country.
[xxxvi] Forebodingly, the name “Espirro” means “sneeze”.
[xxxvii] As Lévi-Strauss commented, he knew them already decimated by epidemics but still, after Rondon’s humanitarian efforts, no one had attempted to subjugate them. Put differently, enjoying the autonomy of following their own way of life unencumbered by outside interference and domination (ib.: 345-6).
[xxxviii] He drew the conclusion about homogeneity on the basis of the material available most of which he collected in the course of this extremely arduous research. He did, at a certain point warn that the because of the lack of clear communication with the Sabanê: “Il ne m’appertient donc pas de présenter son point de vue” (1984: 362).
[xxxix] This quote comes from For Authentic Sexual Education by Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family. This talk was given at the seminar on Parental responsibility for sex education, London, September 1999 (Text available on Internet, accessed 2000). This example of cultural relativism is only one example among many but has the advantage of showing how cultural relativism is always contested by those high-ranking professionals in the religious hierarchy in pursuit of maintenance and increase of their religious capital. Needless to say the instance cited is not purported to be any condemnation by Lévi-Strauss.
[xl] [Une societé réduite] “Celle des Nambikwara l’était au point que j’y trouvai seulement des hommes” (ib.:377). What I interpret to mean they are still normal and complete human beings in the fullness of a specific mode of social life.
[xli] At least as far as concerns a picture in Tristes Tropiques which shows the play between two Indian girls; he already claimed to understand the situation differently (O Globo Nov. 28, 1998). Modern linguistic research cannot yet confirm or deny the meaning of the phrase in the bishop’s quote (Telles 2002, personal communication; she does not recognize the phrase).
[xlii] Debate in the Bijdragen tot de Taal, Land en Volkenkunde, 1976, nr. 132 with the article by Aspelin and comments by Lévi-Strauss and Price. The latter wrote a Final Note citing early evidence of another observer participating in Rondon’s expedition in support of the predominantly sedentary life style (a German ethnographer; Price 1991). However a recent general investigation into the living conditions of the Amazonian rainforest peoples (among other rainforest areas), still found it necessary to explain that their previous reputation as nomads has been disproved (website: lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Sonja/RF/Ukpr/Report49.htm; accessed 2000).
[xliii] He calculated over three hundred people for five villages and that would amount to over sixty people per village. He speaks about a number of make-shift shelters put up around the inner circle but also mentions the presence of visitors from another village, so that might very well be the reason for this precarious arrangement. The Missão Rondon ventures the assertion that the shelters are family dwellings and the house serves as storage of the crops but this may be due to the same circumstance. Additionally, people such as the Sararé prefer to sleep outside, but otherwise live in houses.
[xliv] In his comment, Lévi-Strauss does not acknowledge this probable influence but cites the missionaries as witnesses to the common knowledge that the northern bands were far less sedentary than the southern. However, the mission can only be the one at Utiarity, which was established shortly before his arrival. Thus, the common knowledge could still very well derive from the people on the Line. It is notable that Lévi-Strauss paints a clear picture of the fears of the employees and the generally tense and always problematical relations entertained with the Nambikwara. Abandoned, hardly trained and of regional origin, their common sense must have been close to the normal stereotypes about Indians and hardly representative of Rondon’s earlier attempts to elevate these views. Rondon actually had a harder time to impose his humanist conceptions and discipline than is generally assumed. Roosevelt (1914: 216) even mentions that twice soldiers had deserted their little lonely stations and fled to the Nambikwara. He suggests that the soldiers went to live permanently with the Indians, an unsubstantiated and unlikely conclusion.
[xlv] The discussion on Nambikwara nomadism also has an important place in the contributions of all three protagonists after a polemic article by Price, in the same journal reviewing the former discussion. This debate took a somewhat more problematic turn and need not be reviewed again for the present purpose. Suffice to say that Price adduces further support and that the two recent ethnographers agree on the rejection of nomadism; Lévi-Strauss contends to have already abided by the empirical evidence mustered in the first place, only raising some questions as to possible sources of discrepancy (see Price 1978;Lévi-Strauss 1978; Aspelin 1978). As said, Aspelin (1979) re-affirms the picture as does Aytai (1981) in a very little known contribution. Aytai only suggests that a particularly heavy drought may have fostered an abnormal situation witnessed by Lévi-Strauss.
[xlvi] Even though the travels of Duquech were mentioned in a book by the Service in 1944 and various pictures of these peoples were published (Magelhães 1944).
[xlvii] In 1728 gold was discovered in Diamantino by Gabriel Antunes Maciel and the region began to be regularly visited and conquered (Dornstauder 1975: 2).
[xlviii] In 1941 the mining engineer Victor Dequech (1943) visited the upper Apidiá, now usually called the Pimenta Bueno River prospecting for gold and minerals. He did meet the Indians on the river, who had regained much of their autonomy with the decline of rubber tapping. He situates a mysterious Nambikwara group between the Apediá and Vilhena, adjacent to the current Latundê Area but locates the Sabanê, Xolandê and Mamaindê west of the upper Comemoração river, west of the Roosevelt river. Although he was a very astute observer of his own travels, he did not visit this region and based this possibility on hearsay. Regardless, it is interesting to note as an index of the extension of the occupation of the Northern Nambikwara cluster at the time.
[xlix] The comparison made here refers to narratives about the levels in the sky and their characteristics for the Lakondê and Sabanê as told by Tereza Lakondê and Manézinho Sabanê.
[l] This ideally consisted of two opposing houses, even if this plan did not confer with the single-house village visited by Rondon. One wonders why this dualistic picture is not mentioned by Lévi-Strauss when he definitely proposed dualism for the village plan in other cases; however, he did not visit any real village and his tendency to note and point to all forms of social dualism finds an outlet in the seasonal differentiation and his notion of the merging of the Sabanê – Tarundê.
[li] Keep in mind that in studying the Cinta Larga, João del Poz claims in these earlier days the distinctions between the different Tupi Mondé groups are blurred and the name in question seems to be used indistinctively for all of them. It seems likely that these attackers were indeed Cinta Larga. The mother of the narrator was a victim and the enemy took body parts but not the head, as was Cinta Larga custom (Del Poz 2001, personal communication).
[lii] The Nambikwara in question refer to the regionally designated Nambikwara do Campo cluster living on the Parecis Plateau. These peoples are given as extending up to latitudes as high as Três Buritis which would make this possibility plausible and the Sabanê might have been in the middle of these enemies (the Nambikwara and Enawenê to the east or south and the Tupian groups to the north).
[liii] This information was gathered with Antunes (2002, personal communication) at the Funai administration in Vilhena. Antunes also generously supplied the data on the history of the Sabanê villages.
[liv] It is noteworthy that the Enawenê live in one large village of some 250 persons (Valadão 1998). In the diary of Castro Faria cited above it remains unclear but at times he seems to imply that the Sabanê lived in one maloca or at least with many people within the same village.
[lv] The same sort of temporary period of foraging is known among other forest peoples, like the Arawetê (Viveiros de Castro 1992). Here this conduct regards a social event, a trek, and is not so much any kind of nomadism or caused by any insufficiency of sustenance (actually Southern Nambikwara do the same, see Part III). I suspect the same may have been true in this case as the aim also consists of stocking up meat to eat in the village. As said, the Sabanê are probably more like a forest people and, due to fear of another flood that killed many people in the mythical past, do not live near the larger rivers.
[lvi] In this description of similarities and differences, one important distinctive feature coincides: piercing the upper lip and the nose (see Price 1972). This practice was abandoned a long time ago.
[lvii] Shamanism continues to be very important even after the language shift of this generation and appears to be a very relevant practice even in the face of other sociocultural changes. It seems to adapt to knowledge of the new world created by the White man. The shaman consults the spirits to establish if some illness is Indian or White, and is to be treated accordingly.
[lviii] Lévi-Straus mentioned that the exchanges can be based on a real need of objects not locally produced, probably either raw resources or handicraft. However, except perhaps an item like suitable stone for tools, the exchange of women and people certainly enables learning other methods of fabrication. So, just like the hypothesis about the exchange of items at the Alto Xingu by Pedro Agostinho (1999, personal communication) this may in fact entail a renunciation to a skill exercised by another in order to maintain a kind of social group division of labor, each group had their ability. Lévi-Strauss noted that some Nambikwara peoples did not produce ceramics and so participated in exchange. The Sabanê, in fact, did know to fabricate cooking pots and exchanged them with some of their Northern Nambikwara neighbors for things like feathers and necklaces. Trade is for social relations rather than scarce goods. As Price (1989b: 36) said: “People who trade are people who intermarry; and people who trade do not make war on each other”.
[lix] In a way this possibility reinforces the possibility of other Sabanê living in the area at the time. Although this does not become clear in Tristes Tropiques, in the academic thesis there is a clear reference that the group at Vilhena was only a fraction of the Sabanê. They were at odds with the old allies of their own people. Relations of antagonism (ib.: 50; 103) would explain the search for other allies, even of another people.
[lx] Vilhena is far away from the source of the Cabixi River, although it small creeks run to the north. In Vilhena the denser vegetation along the same streams used to be cultivated by Mamaindê. That is, my collaborators asserted that ‘Vilhena belongs to the Mamaindê’. Note that is about the only place where the high lands separating river basins permit very easy passage from set of rivers running south to the other running north. Hence the possibility that the Mamaindê regional set extended into another basin. Near Vilhena lies the high ground from which several rivers start running in various directions. Among them the Pimenta Bueno River and this shows how the Mamaindê used to be close to the current position of the Latundê. Finally, Stella Telles (2006, personal communication) points out that the Mamaindê dialect group differs in certain syntactic features from the Lakondê dialect group Hence, if the Tarundê and Cabixi easily mixed and conversed freely, then they very likely did belong to the same dialect group. This is why other regional sets may be calling them by the same name.
[lxi] Lévi-Strauss claims that a proper distance permits friendly relations and all sorts of exchange – Mané even mentioned that his Sabanê village readily gave food to needy allies. Such a distance does not threaten to erase ethnic differences and attendant sentiments of some permanent distrust.
[lxii] This is the place where Teresa Lakondé was raised when her mother (maternal aunt) became remarried to a Paresi Indian employee. Other Indians sometimes hold not being a village Indian against her today. However, her knowledge of Lakondê culture is large and, with the death of her brother, the last strong leader, unique.
[lxiii] Perhaps the name comes from the “village Ialaquiauru of the Tauitê” mentioned by Rondon (1947: 34). But the Lakondê people called themselves Yalakolori, also close to this name Yalakiaoro, so any identification is conjecture.

Myth and history
Before I return to Rondon as the major figure in Sabanê and Northern Nambikwara history viewed from both sides of the ethnic divide, I would like to discuss an interesting and, from an outside point of view, curious aspect of Sabanê ethnohistory. During a conversation with Manézinho about the Sabanê view of their own history, the elder asked me and my colleague if we were American. Ideas and beliefs about Americans arose mostly from contact with the people from the Summer Institute of Linguistics[i] (SIL) who operated in the region as early as the later 1950s. Prior to this there was an American Protestant mission, the South American Mission in the region. Some of its members in Utiarity were killed by Nambikwara only a few years before Levi-Strauss’s visit to Nambikwara land. The Indians’ motivation for killing the unprepared and rigid Protestant missionaries is unclear and the details of incident are not quite clear. Perhaps it has to do with the conviction that disease and death are often caused by nefarious human intervention. Lévi-Strauss supposes that a missionary gave a sick Indian medicine and when that Indian died, the others took the medicine to be poison and believed the missionaries to be murderers (1984: 342-3). Hence the notion of Americans may even date as far back as the thirties or possibly earlier with Roosevelt’s expedition. Lévi-Strauss discussed the situation and the events of the killing with the Indian perpetrators on the Parecis Plateau, so the participants in this drama were unlikely to be Sabanê. Yet, somehow the fame of the so-called Americans reached this people too. Manézinho related the following story as told to him by his great-grandfather, a man who lived at a time before the introduction of clothing[ii] (this account is edited for the present purpose):
After the Sabanê left the stone/hill in which they had taken refuge when the primordial sky threatened to fall on them, the cosmos was slowly transformed into pre-contact world in which they lived in their own land on their own terms, in their own “style”. Every people has its own thoughts and conceptions about the world, as for example seen in the differences of the Sabanê myth with the myth of the origin of domesticated plants of the Nambikwara. This period ended when the “American” emerged on the scene. His great-grandfather and his father told him about it. His great-grandfather walked about naked. The American lived in a large fortified house made of the white man’s material that could not be penetrated by the Indians. He also chased the Indians through the bush in order to cut their heads off and he killed many Indians. Some succeeded to run to the bushes where escape was possible because when passing through this vegetation the American’s height slowed him down. The Sabanê decided to take revenge. They lied in ambush, waiting for the American to go out. Many people on both sides died and the Sabanê decided to leave in search of a more tranquil place to live. This was the first time they moved. Only later they were harassed by other Indians and decided to move again.

Thus, after the cosmos gained its definite shape and inhabitants populated the earth, the first time the Sabanê entered into a conflict their enemy was an apparently non-Indian American. The American lodged in a fortified house and, although a human person, the narrative shows him as a monstrous anti-social entity who inflicted heavy losses on the Indians. The murderous conduct of the American reminds one of the general behaviour of the evil spirits that permanently display a disposition to persecute humans with illness and death. The entire Nambikwara ensemble seems to share the conviction of the permanent dangerousness of the spirits and may allow a comparison with myths from the Nambikwara do Campo. In their myths human encounters with the evil spirits are common and are fraught with danger (as illustrated in several myths, see Pereira 1983)[iii]. The fact that the Americans are seen as the impetus that first moved the Sabanê out of their homeland is surprising, but still makes sense. Real American missionaries generally tended to be thoroughly repulsed by Sabanê and Nambikwara cultures which they deeply misunderstood. One may say that some pursued the Indian’s salvation and, let us say, take their spiritual heads around with the same gusto as the mythological American sought the decapitation of their real heads. Lévi-Strauss thought, in effect, that the missionaries in Utiarity were utterly unprepared to deal with such savages and in their straightforward self-righteousness created serious conflicts. Even if this is an educated guess, the basic premise that strangers bring death and endanger survival is certainly substantiated by history.

At this point Rondon comes into history. Pushed on by Indians into new lands after the flight from the Americans, the Sabanê followed Rondon. Rondon had an important significance for the Sabanê and was a key symbol for both sides in the kind of conflict of interpretations that always follows the pacification of a previously autonomous and untamed people. Manézinho’s remarks permit my conclusion that the dislocation of the Sabanê from their position as a northern neighbour of the Nambikwara did not occur before Rondon’s advance into what is presently Rôndonia. This event caused serious apprehension about an attack by Rondon and the Sabanê thought about the possible necessity of a pre-emptive attack on the Mission. The Indians first observed and evaluated the advancing strangers during the construction of the Telegraph Line. They noted their different speech, always the preliminary criterion to classify a stranger and consider the possibility of contact. The first scouts returned home without any other action. Armed with arrows, two villages allied themselves in order to investigate the truth of this apparition as some Indians did not believe the story. A new large group set out to verify the situation and found that the road already had passed. They spied on the passage cut through the wilderness and when the strangers went by again they watched from afar. After another retreat, they inspected the place where the path was being cut and wondered about what kind of ax these strangers used. Then three courageous men met the party and fired some arrows, they nearly killed Rondon but the arrow did not penetrate him owing to his iron attire. The Sabanê interpreted this as a miraculous escape. They believed that Rondon had special armor, a unique and particular trait, that rendered their own weapons useless. In other words, Rondon was thus particularly affiliated with iron and the Indians believed they were defenseless to his advancements through their territory[iv].

This story circulated among the Northern Nambikwara and the iron garb of Rondon impressed all of them (Mané Torto among the Latundê recounted a similar Tawaindê version). In fact, Rondon left iron instruments and gifts on the spot and this also is registered because the men left the arrows behind and the most courageous among them appropriated gifts like machetes, small knives, and axes. On their return, the general drift of opinion in the village favoured the decision that they should not kill Rondon and the more courageous men continued to collect presents. However, they threw the clothes and blankets into some water because of the bad smell and the fear of contagious diseases. Thus, as often happens in the beginning of contact, the Indians refused one of the items the Whites most valued as the hallmark of setting them on the road to civilization. Actually, the Indians were wise in not accepting clothes for, in case of the outbreak of diseases, bathing with clothes and wearing wet clothes resulted in more deaths. Rondon, in the Sabanê view, followed the same template of constructing an alliance discussed above. They considered the same mode of interaction to prevail as had been the case between the Sabanê and the peoples like the Nambikwara or the Tawaindê, whom, in the beginning, also did not like them. Manézinho conceived a parallel between the pacification method employed by Rondon and the Indian way of establishing a relationship of sociability between peoples of different languages: in the same way as Rondon became accustomed to us. It is interesting to remember that Rondon received counter-presents during all of the time of his travels with Roosevelt through the savanna. The pressing of these presents on to Rondon might indicate the desire to conform to this template. True to the mode, Rondon did not want to kill the Indians, contrary to some members of his parties to whom the narrator relates instances of shooting (and possibly killing, sometimes his explanation is not completely clear and the account may require revisions in the future)[v]. Rondon pursued a friendly relation and it is said that he also wanted to send the Indians to school. At least some of Rondon’s intentions seem to have carried over to the Sabanê and they decided that he should not be assaulted. They also appropriated the metal tools left. Rondon, for unknown reasons, did not construct any Indian Post at this time. He restricted his action to installing the telegraph and its infrastructure and initially may have thought these novelties and their personnel fulfilled the civilizing role.

Manézinho claimed that the Sabanê did not enter into direct personal relations with Rondon and kept their distance. The Sowaintê, on the contrary, did so, and the father of Manézinho’s Sabanê wife, Dona Ivone recalled his encounter with the famous White. When the Telegraph Line passed through their lands and through the Northern Nambikwara complex, Rondon interfered with their way of life. A boy at the time, her father recounted that he travelled with Rondon when he distributed clothing, axes, machetes and everything, and the day he descended he also made a village. That is, he headed towards the south uniting the Indians in large villages because of the danger of the Cinta Larga. The Indians lived all spread out over the region, practicing their slash-and-burn horticulture. The pattern of occupancy consisted of scattered villages and village clusters of the same people. Rondon concentrated them near the Line, possibly with the promise of the further distribution of free commodities. As such, he is remembered as a very generous person that always handed out gifts throughout the entire region and to all Indian peoples and villages he encountered. By virtue of his policy of gratifying people with all these commodities, for a time he may have succeeded in congregrating the diverse peoples in larger villages (a list of these goods also features objects like necklaces and sickles). Like the Sabanê most, if not all peoples, lived in various villages. Of course, this project of intervention is coherent with the notion that the Indian’s occupancy of the land was wasteful of resources and modernization could provide them with a more than sufficient substitute for their itinerant horticulture and mode of life that many considered semi-nomadic. The general probably always preferred larger permanent villages just like he enticed the Paresi too to move to the telegraph stations. The attraction of ample distribution assured that the Indians would not kill him. On the other hand, the story that the general did not dress in ordinary clothing is confirmed by her father, who affirms he put on steel clothing. With these extraordinary attributes Rondon initially may have accomplished his aim to gather the Indians in larger villages near the Line, but this influence was temporary and it was not long before the old pattern resurfaced.

The real impact of Rondon is in the world view of the affected Indians. Just like for the Paresi, his figure impressed itself forcefully on history and the Sabanê not only followed Rondon into the Roosevelt-Tenente Marques area, they transformed their world view with Rondon in the primordial role he cast for his own public persona. Again I follow the Manézinho’s account. He narrated the myth on two occasions. The myth accounts for the birth of Rondon, the Whites and the characteristic objects they possess. Myths refer to the origin of the cosmos, the changes that occurred afterwards and the way the major outlines of the realities of the current world came about. One might say the domain of mythology to be both the production of sociocultural meaning by means of ‘total social narratives’ and thoroughly articulated with the other domains of the real world (from ritual to all daily activities). Myths expound the sociocultural categories of the conception and the interpretative schemes of experiential practice (Silva 2000). The narratives in effect are recurring in a transformative mode that re-elaborates older myths into newer versions or generates new myths that accommodate the experience of phenomenal change[vi]. In this sense, the myth that is recounted below places the White man and his foremost head figure within the origin stories. Although to an outsider this may seem like a new myth, it likely reuses the main notions and underlying principles of older narratives. Manézinho’s narrative permits a glimpse of the Sabanê view of historical change (the following account is edited from the two separate versions; I try to remain as true to his language as possible):
This Rondon, he was born from a family here. An old man lived alone in a house and his wife lived in another house some distance away, just as from Vilhena to Aroeira [roughly 20 km]. Another woman lived here. There is another village with Indian inhabitants. An old man of ours lived here and two women. The two women were beautiful. The old man waited for the women to arrive who told that the man was one of them and when he heard laughter went to have a look he would kill the visitors and they ate that people [the beginning is somewhat confusing, especially the role of the women but not the fact of anthropophagy] [vii]. So the old man raised this boy. He took the node that is located under the armpit and a protuberance just like the node that is located under the tongue and put them into the ashes of the fire and the node exploded and they turned into people [as if making popcorn]. Thus he created two little boys and raised them. Then he told, look, the husband of that wife lives over there at that place, they kill people, they eat people too. Oh, sure. They went to play at the savanna. You know how children play in the savanna don’t you? He went to play and met him. The Ocelot [jaguatirica]. He is the same as an Ocelot but he is human. The boy played near his house and encountered the Ocelot. He met these children and he wanted to kill him. Do not kill me, I am your grandfather, he said. This Ocelot he was a person. He took them to his home. He gave them food, started to make arrows, do everything.[here in fact it seems that the old man met the children and engaged them; the mention of the Ocelot was interspersed by soliciting comment from the narrator]. So they went to kill this man here. The man with the things, the Ocelot. On a feast day, one or two days of travel. He went to sleep there. He arrived at night. The people, the children, they already had grown into men when they arrived at the house of this man.

Then it started, because in the past, before this Rondon was born, he was located at the side of a stream. His house was constructed in the savanna. He [the Indian] made it all, but only with a cover. He took some limestone and that bark, that stone, the fine stone. They took the bark of a jatoba [a large tree used to make coffins], ten pieces of bark. Some ten Indians went after him. They take ten pieces of that bark, of that stone, the fine one, that fine stone. Some five pieces of bark, some other five of stone. He put it on the path. Then they turned into animals, into bats. They stayed there. So, of old when this Rondon was born, there were no matches, no use of matches. One used what the Indians also used, this little branch. The one to whirl. So this guy he comes in from over there. He has an ax, the only one to have an ax, machete, hoe and sickle, it seems. They have a gun. They went up to the top of the house, on the central beam. When early in the morning, his uncle told him, look, when he has got a gun, I will take care, when I go this way he will shout. When he gets up, he will fire a shot but don’t be afraid. When he fired a shot, he shouted, he already woke up and walked around. When the sun rose he fired and when he was on the path he fired again. Then he arrived at the house.[in one version someone swept the plaza before his arrival]. I will make a fire, I will go down and get some fish. He likes to eat only fish. So he started out. He lived near the river and set fish-traps in the river. One man, a Whit man. The fire won’t light. So he says, well it won’t light I will leave it and I will go and fish first and then light it. These people up in the house, they ordered that, the Indian ordered so he goes right away to the stream. So he leaves it and goes down to the river. He is naked, he does not have any clothing. He does not wear clothing but he possesses these things, ax, machete, hoe, all of that but not other things. The Ocelot he is naked too. At the river he dives and works his trap full of fish. When he dove under again they all jumped down from the house, all of them jumped down, armed, all of them turning into people again. When he came up again to the surface they sent their arrows and killed him. They killed him, took him out of the water and left him there.

They went for the trap with the fish, lighted a fire, roasted the fish and ate them. Then they grabbed the gun, broke it into pieces and threw it in the water [or burned it]. Then they got the ax, the machete, the knife, the hoe, the sickle, all of it. One old man, a little older, said, now, I want the ax. Well, no, I will take the ax you do not know how to handle it, no, I want it to cut treees. One thing for everyone, he does not use two things you see. They collected everything, left it, they all sat down to eat the roasted fish. They ate everything. He said, well, one gets the hoe, another gets the machete, another the sickle, the older one took the ax and put it near him when sitting down to eat. Then they cut up the body into pieces and threw it into the water. The others all got their thing, at the house, the knife, machete, everything they only did not take the ax, the older man forgot it. It seems that God made him forget this ax, you see. So they did not take the ax, left it, forgot it. After walking like from here to over there [one or two kilometers], the younger one, more intelligent, asked where is the ax? Ah, I forgot it. Did I not tell you, don’t forget the ax? Now go back and listen, they already turned into people, you can go back and listen over there, they already turned into Whites. The younger more intelligent man said, I told you not to leave it, to take it. They almost took everything.

So they hurried back and when they got close by they listened. But there are people, working at the fields, felling forest, yelling, children crying, women crying, yelling, men felling forest and talking. All White. That one he was alone, now there are over twenty people. Already they transformed, at that time, engineer Rondon was born. You see. My great-grandfather who told me. Then the Whites multiplied over there. This iron that he left, the ax, that turned into people. So he returned and listened. On arrival they already were transformed. I told you to take it, you did not take it because you did not want it. So they left and went away. They arrived and slept. That what they took they threw in the water, killed it too. That was it. So they arrived and the other day they went away to the sky. They went away, to turn into God. So this Rondon, he was born in this way, in the beginning he was not there. We were born first, then he was born second. That is the way the old people told the story. The one born from the ax turned into White men. That is the way they told me all, if they took all of the instruments, they would be born, the engineer [Rondon] would not be born. In no way he would be born. The number of Whites grew, they went to Rio de Janeiro to build a city and houses.

There in Rio de Janeiro he was born. The engineer Rondon was born. He was born there afterwards. He comes this way and things turn into cities, the city of Rio de Janeiro, making São Paulo, he comes to Cuiabá, he came over here and then they say he made this Brazil a city. All of this was Rondon. So Rondon came this way. He does not come right away, it takes a lot of time still. When there are many people, they grew to large numbers, then he comes over here. The Whites were born here, constructing houses, cities, cultivating, planting food, planting rice, beans, they say he came eating all of that. Rondon made a road, descending, with soldiers and with many people, constructing houses and stations. From here to Rio he went making houses, São Paulo, Brasil, Cuiabá, making homes, stations… Vilhena, Três Buritis, Melgaço and he continues descending, all of this was him. When he passed, we also passed this way. We joined up with others, we stayed together. We waited for Rondon to pass and we passed too. We only stopped because we met this other group and could not go any further [in the other version it seems that Rondon already was born with the Whites and then went to found the rest of the White man’s land] When he made the Line we ran. My great-grandfather said they ran in this direction. Afraid other Indian will kill us. Here in Três Buritis we encountered others. Not there, there nobody spoke with them. No one knows that he will come this way, because the Whites were born over there, so nobody knew who was born there. So other Indians attacked us and we came coming this way. Afterwards when we forget, no one knows, he comes this way. The Engineer Rondon passed here. No one saw him, never saw him. They did not get close. When he started giving things we started taking them, spying on the Line, taking things there but he did not meet Rondon, only his personnel. My great-grandfather only looked from afar. He thought he was a evil spirit. They thought they were evil spirits and wanted to kill the Whites in the beginning.

This condensed history is inserted in larger frame that comes from the origin of the Sabanê, the myths of the primordial times when people and animals were transformable into one another and the time when the Sabanê barely survived a large flood. Embedded in this unfolding of a ‘total cosmological ethnic history’ that is myth, the appearance and place of the White man and Rondon occupies a prominent role. This ethnohistory frames the most significant events of the Sabanê and captures the most relevant observations of places and the predicates of people, animals, and objects. Even if the myth above is not clear on certain points, the main lines set out the parameters of the way the Sabanê view their origin, their migrations, and the appearance of the White man (katatali). One of the recurrent features in myth refers to the fact that most if not all peoples or prominent cultural objects once were owned by one owner (or guardian, some animals, like the white-lipped peccaries continue to be under the command of a guardian until today). The connection of the myth of the master of the objects Ocelot, one of those persons that were human/animal before God ordered an end to this transformability, and the old White man is obvious in this respect[viii]. The first White man and Ocelot are the same as this man is the stingy owner of an important part of the cultural commodities that define whiteness. All owners, or masters, of culturally relevant items, did not share their possessions willingly and this seems to the case here. At the same time, the owner is characterized by an anti-social behavior that in another myth causes its shameful practioners to be transformed in animals who will eat inferior food. Anthropophagy is condemned and the old White man also eats only fish. In this belief system, you are what you eat, a constitutive relationship. Other masters, like that of the primordial fire, escaped alive from the events that took the original objects of their possession but they were always corporeally transformed for the worse. In this case death is his justified punishment for murder and the consumption of human and improper flesh.

A superficial analysis of this myth already demonstrates that the birth of the White man took place under very particular circumstances. On the one hand, the emphasis lies on the original nearness of the first old White man. Not really close neighbours but definitely close enough for some forms of interaction. The White man did not conform to the template of contact, of constructing alliance and friendship but is a most dangerous person, one of those perilous beings that seem to surround the Sabanê since their origin. His elimination should serve the Indians in pursuit of both a safer place to live and the material gains of the steel tools. In a way the old man is at a dead end, socially speaking. Old, living alone, married to a wife who lives at a considerable distance, the social and physical reproduction of the Whites seems unlikely. The original White man appears doomed to extinction. It is, perhaps, not without significance that the man owns only part of the full normal repertoire of his people. Anti-social, unreproductive, limited in resources, the White man is not a complete predecessor of the current White people. The narrative and the comments abound in stating the limits of this being, as a person and a mode of life. The identification with a carnivorous feline, high on the food chain represents this man’s solitary and dangerous nature. Thus it is actually by virtue of the subsequent action of the Indians reacting against the anti-social nature of this somehow incomplete person that the existence of the White people comes about. Sufficiently intelligent to kill the old man and appropriate his food and instruments, in the end they left without the kind of object that so strikingly characterized White people. An older Sabanê imposed himself on the younger (the age difference is expressed in terms for elder and younger siblings) and gets his way with the ownership of the ax. Respect is shown by the younger more intelligent man, in accordance with a hierarchical inclination founded on age, but his warning goes unheeded, the ax is forgotten and the White nation is born. It seems if the ax is the synecdoche of the power of multiplying and the attendant substance of the White people. Perhaps the remark in the time of Rondon’s construction about the astounding caused by the steel ax, as the foremost object that got the Indian’s attention in comparison to their stone tool, is true and finds expression in this myth. The steel instrument is a much more efficient and versatile tool as it permits the multiplication of garden products or the production of the same amount of harvest with much less effort. The White people came from the transformation of one steel ax and the amazing multiplication afterwards. In a way the Whites are the Ax People, or maybe the Steel People.

A steel ax transformed into a whole group of completely normal reproductive people. The fertility of this nation is astonishing and after their birth they expand to occupy vast tracts of land and build various cities. The steel ax is associated with notions of durability, hardness, efficiency, fertility and growth, much more so than the Indians, and its descendants outgrow them completely. Manézinho’s story repeatedly asserts that the man who left the ax behind is responsible for the origin of a people that overwhelmed the Sabanê when they returned under the command of the engineer Rondon.[ix] Rondon as the man clad in iron or steel represents in this respect the substance of the White people as he carries its essence on his impenetrable body. Rondon is the steel man who constructed roads and built cities, in this way, he is the most prominent White man, veritably the culture hero of the Steel People. He is also the man who is named whereas the old man in the story remains nameless as a prototypical White man without a specific identity. It is proper that Rondon should lead the Whites in their penetration of Northern Nambikwara territory; he pertains to a kind of supernatural realm and the question whether the White people identify with evil spirits also refers to the fundamental Nambikwara proposition of constant supernatural danger that may assume the form of human appearances. Initially the Sabanê thoroughly mistrusted the White’s foremost head figure and his presents. His actions intended to appease the Indians and manifest friendly intentions by means of a parallel to the template of interaction between initially hostile peoples abated their fears. On the other hand, it is interesting that the Sabanê accepted only the steel instruments and not the other gifts The other objects significantly were thought to potentially bear diseases and thus, in effect, supernaturally dangerous. Note that the mythological old man only owned necessary objects and did not have the clothing considered so outstandingly important by the Whites (or even the blankets, fairly unnecessary at the time when most people slept beside the fire). Steel does not propagate disease, in the myth the Indians do not suffer from contagious sicknesses. The descendants who so much appreciate being clothed on their return to the forest did bring various deadly diseases. In that way the return of the White people really may be the equivalent of a massive influx of evil spirits.

The notion that Rondon was a cultural hero was shared by a part of the Brazilians along with the myth of his enlightened leadership and progressive humane treatment of the Indians. This ended up in the national pantheon and ideology. Eventually the disciplined military man won such symbolic capital that the government choose to appoint him to the rank of marshall, one of very few in history. Marshall Rondon appeased the national conscience obscuring and eclipsing the genocidal record of the long trajectory of death and subjugation characteristic of Brazilian history ever since the discovery by Cabral (Reesink 2005). The national myths of Brazil’s permanence and justly treated Indians who willingly physically merged into the new mixed-race tolerant Brazilian proceeded to be shaped particularly from the nineteen thirties onward. Rondon, of course, worried himself with the destiny of Indian peoples and certainly entertained better intentions than many other parts of the elite in the country for whom the savages mostly represented an obstacle to be removed for their free access to riches. At the end of his life Rondon recognized the failure of the integration policy and believed isolation and minimal contact would have been far better (Zarur 2003: 269). But before this reexamination, the great peaceful encirclement (Lima 1995) projected by Rondon was suffused with the ideals of progress and the absolute notion that he and the positivists knew beyond doubt that evolution stands for the inexorable road to the future. They knew what was the unavoidable past, present and future and acted accordingly. Clearly a streak of authoritarianism inheres in any kind of ideology that is convinced of absolute rightness. The project of the enlightened guidance of the Indians by the National Indian Service from the beginning shared the general unquestioned assumption that the elite and the state must conduct and direct a process whose course was as natural as the laws of nature. Perhaps they thought that this leadership was a manifestation of a natural law. Such presumptions always lead to an almost certain appeal to power and the use of force if the reality does not conform to the expected and desired change. Rondon adhered to a military hierarchy and discipline. This was evident in the formation of camps. He set up his camp with his immediate aides, surrounded by the military participants. This was separated from the camp of the ordinary laborers. As mentioned previously, at one occasion the civilians wanted to revolt. Apparently this was due to a policy of discrimination and hierarchy. Rondon preempted the movement, discovered the leaders and punished them with fifteen lashes and dismissal from his service (this according to a Paresi Indian who worked with Rondon; Machado 1995: 283-5; at one earlier occasion, in 1894, a punished soldier died of his wounds because of complications; Zarur 2003: 269).

Discipline in the wilderness is no luxury and an efficient measure towards diminishing the negative effects of, for example, unlimited intruding visits and other liberties committed on the Indians. The usual ethnocentric ideological imagery of regional people and local laborers impregnated them with the sentiment of a superiority that justifies many actions which would be considered to be immoral if taken towards their own people. Unsurprisingly, after the onset of the laying of the Line, the sentiment of superiority never faded and the position of potential dependence, armistice, or factual independence between station personnel and Indian groups were never actually accepted as an index of an equality of level of civilization. The generalized stereotypes of nomadism, poverty and the notion of possessing no real property – an idea that may be thought of as ‘the absence of a possessive attitude in the occupancy of the land’ –, configured a permanent persistence of the attribution of the predicate very primitive people. The Nambikwara represented a kind of quintessential poverty and wildness. To Lévi-Strauss such apparent poverty must have seemed obvious after comparing them with the rich material expressions of peoples like the Bororo and Kadiweu whom he had visited before. This was compounded by the fact he never visited a real village. To the diverse types of personnel of the Telegraph Line who always dealt directly and indirectly with the Nambikwara the comparison with their society never stirred any doubt about the validity of their stereotypes and assumptions. The variety and amplitude of their slash-and-burn horticulture was neglected, even in contradiction to the initial reports of the Commission and Roquette-Pinto. Most external observers conceived the Nambikwara mental life only in condensed stereotypical form. Rondon, for example, followed the canon of the day and wondered what sort of fetishism comprised their religion; the missionary perceived the devil in the shamans or established a word for God by picking the name of a mythological culture hero. Combined with the positivist framework of the SPI and its evolutionist premisses, the Nhambicuara, this forged entity called a Nation by Rondon, could only be portrayed as one of the poorest and most backward Indians under their care. Stone age Indians always call for the benevolent action of the responsible authority which is absolutely sure it knows best for such ignorant people unable to fend for themselves. All bureaucratic agents normally felt free to set the course of development on their behalf. It probably never happened that this framework of postulates is examined and that the Indians might be fully human conscious adult persons, with their own ideas about the value of their mode of life, their right to the pursuit of happiness, and self-determination.

In the twenties and thirties the directives and studies of senior SPI bureaucrats illuminate both the inspiration of the military ideas of the military in the vanguard and the use of a military vocabulary (attraction, pacification, even Indian Post) applied to the whole process[x]. It is easy to discern the foundations of a colonialist and conquering regime of action where the assumptions plainly justify the active direction of the process of natural change. One key concept in this regime of conquest was the plan to sedentarize the Indians, especially the nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples. That is, to ordain a place of permanent residence where the colonial regime could implant its project to transform the Indian into a useful national laborer, simultaneously liberating the rest of the land from their occupancy and incorporating this people into the national economy. Accordingly, the founding of the Post in Espirro by the SPI functionary Afonso França corresponded to precisely this setting into motion of all the social machinery of control of these groups. Such Posts attempt to regulate the relation with the encompassing national society and determine the mode of integration. Designated Post chief (a relevant choice of words), França initiated his work attempting to aggregate as many peoples and groups as he could. Manézinho claims that he enlisted the help of the Mamaindê to gather information about the rest of the Northern Nambikwara and to invite them all to come and move to the Post. Paul Aspelin, the ethnographer of the Mamaindê economy, asserts that the Post, even though situated at a mere twenty kilometers north-northeast of the Mamaindê, exerted little influence upon this people. The employee confided to him never to have visited the village and to have maintained only slight contact. One of the reasons for this social distance concerns the unfriendly relations with the Manduka people on whose land the Post was built (Aspelin 1976: 21). My sense of this is that the Mamaindê wisely maintained their distance, their autonomy and only traded when convenient. However, this group is the southern branch of the Mamaindê people and not the part that used to live in the region of Vilhena (the reconstruction by Aspelin of the sequence and the locations of their former village sites confirms this). Recall that a Mamaindê survivor accused the southern group of being responsible for their near extinction of the northern component. The southern group occupies the Guaporé Valley basin (the Cabixi runs south), while the northern group belonged to area occupied by the Northern cluster, centered at the headwaters of the Roosevelt and Tenente Marques Rivers which run mostly north (Vilhena lies on the watershed).

Aspelin conversed with the government agent but initially did not investigate the particular situation of the Indian Post Espirro. Afonso França also left his work at the Post in 1968, some time before Aspelin’s arrival. As Aspelin’s thesis was concerned mainly with horticulture, the economy and its changes since contact, he described the situation dispassionately: “This post was responsible for the introduction of many new crops and tools and other changes into the lives of the Nambicuara in its vicinity (…)” (Aspelin 1976: 21). Talking to the responsible agent may have revealed something of what this introduction and changes in effect signified to the Indians living for twenty six years at this Post. The employee did indeed introduce new crops like rice, beans, sugar-cane and appropriate installations for processing of the harvest followed suit. New tools became available and conduct modified. However, the fraternal protection proposed by Rondon to be exercised with respect to the Indians slowly degenerated into an oppressive regime to enforce changes on them. Although such ideals may be lofty, in practice they entailed imposing what were held to be the necessary practices and suitable conceptions and conducts of civilization, in complete disregard of any concept of Indian sovereignty. The fraternity gave way to the certainty of righteousness and despite the good intentions, or more likely exactly because of these good intentions, no deviation from the pre-fixed path toward the objective needed be tolerated. Rondon and his personnel expected to be apprehended as if endowed with intrinsic authority. They believed that the inferior people would voluntarily accept the validity of their superior knowledge and thus willingly embrace the instructions of the civilized. When no such automatic recognition was offered, as was always the case, then the end justified the means. Guidance by consent changed into enforced compliance with the dictates of civilization. So the civilizing project of Rondon and his collaborators almost always transformed the differential power base into the real foundation of inducement to change. One may argue that this shift was intrinsic to the ethnocentric premisses of the project of Rondon and his Indian Service. Hence the imposition of the disciplinary colonial regime of petty domination often became unavoidable.

The way things worked in Espirro is a case in point. Perhaps Afonso França set out with the best of intentions, although Price (1975-6: 57) concluded he did not comprehend the Indians nor wished to do so. Anyway, now his name is associated with a regime of harsh and unjust petty domination of entire peoples or groups of one people. In the beginning, with the aid of the Mamaindê, he invited all the Northern Nambikwara and Sabanê to settle in Espirro and enjoy the luxury of a ready supply of the coveted commodities that Rondon was the first to hand out freely. Most of the time about an average of 55 people lived there (França recorded monthly and yearly reports of which only one large book survived a fire; Price 1994: 63). More people died than were born. Regularly França had to procure new laborers and Price suspects only the demoralized accepted. França came to write that: “These Indians (…) are quite perverse and sluggish at work” (cited in Price 1975-6: 58). With hindsight, Manézinho now assumes that the enticement of a false promise of a steady flow of steel instruments that lured several groups to the Post was a trap. Eventually the access to goods became subordinate to the goal to make Brazilians and laborers of people perceived as unfamiliar with work and lacking the proper bodily and mental disposition to real labor. The needs at socioculturally established level of the domestic mode of production did not predispose to work in the manner of civilized discipline (to borrow Sahlins’ famous expression). Hence the failure when the agent is unable to appeal to authority or to induce the desired rhythm of body and dedication to the job by means of non-relevant incentives. The so-called volatility and the undisciplined nature in relation to labor always exasperated the agents of education. In the end most officials do not conceive of any other means than the imposition of discipline by enforcing the work rhythm they chose as the only correct one. This was the path of Afonso França, revealing the authoritarian regime underpinned by the positivist ideology but mostly hidden after the screen of key words characteristic of the magic realism supported by the rockbed of unquestionable belief in natural progress. Dona Ivone offered the following statement (edited for clarity):

“The people of my father were many, I don’t know how they ended up with no one. My father said that the village was quite large, really large. Then the Indians got killed, dying, killing one another, many died, this went on and on, the measles attacked. So many died and a few were left. Many still lived in Espirro, there used to be many people and they did not end suddenly. I don’t know how this came about, there were many people there, it seemed it would never end. There was a time that they killed people. Faustino killed the Mamaindê captain. The people of Ana [one of the few survivors of the northern branch] killed a certain lieutenant, I don’t know and they killed a leader because of a woman, for the White of the past, they liked the Indian women. So he, they took this woman that the White wanted and ran away because of the heavy workload. You see nobody could fall ill, people with a newborn child could not stay home, pregnant women could not stop. You had to work pregnant and with children. So they got angry, fled but they went after them and killed them. Captain Paulo, the father of Marieta [living in Aroeira] and then they killed the captain of the Mamaindê and everyone became very upset. So they killed them, Faustino himself at the orders of Afonso [França, father-in-law of the first] Even my father was to be killed but his compadre did not let them, a White man, and Faustino did not either, but they were going to kill some four or five [the White baptized his child and that is a serious religious obligation]. Because of this the Mamaindê got angry too. So they died one by one. Every day. So that is how they ceased to exist. And when they fell ill, well Afonso never let them, you could never stop unless you died. So that is why they went on dying. He only ordered them to work, never took any care, beat the Indians. Why did the Indians not kill Afonso? The Indians were stupid too. They labored while being punished, ill, and so the people died out while there were many of them. These bad people are all dead now but in the past the Indians suffered. Nowadays the Whites work with the Indians but they don’t do that what they used to do. They ordered everybody to wake up very early in the morning, illuminating them to get them to work. The women worked separately from the men, the women here the men over there. A group went to clean the rice, another to harvest the beans, another to extract manioc to make flour, and another to move the rice, the maize.”[contrary to common belief, this indicates plentiful harvests, the only thing Dona Ivone was proud of].

The Post at Espirro gradually ceased to be a point of fraternal assistance and education of new tools, crops and practices, some of which were quite appreciated. The unfailing resistance of the sociocultural interpretations and practices imbued in the Indian peoples brought about an escalating spiral, a social schismogenesis of growing opposition and misunderstanding. A harsh regime of discipline was imposed that was backed up, in the ultimate instance, with recourse to open violence that culminated in murder. The Indians suffered enormously from a petty domination that recalled what Goffman called a total institution. In such a situation the lives of the inmates are thoroughly controlled: time and energy is spent according to the directives of the superiors and demeanor is imperative when addressing the Post chief or being addressed by a superior[xi]. Obviously the Indians’ autonomy and independence as a group and as individuals represented an obstacle to the completion of a project of imprinting inferiority, of acceptance of new superior values, and of creating the dispositions of being a dependent person, a client in a clientelistic relation. The latter basic hierarchical template and the notion of the patronizing of the good patron were attempted to be inculcated in peoples who conceived personhood as consisting essentially of equality, or at the very least, embracing the principle that the person is not to be subjected to the exercise of power. Thus the civilizing project is intrinsically an exercise in subjugation and domination. In this case petty domination by petty employees at the service of the larger aims of the encompassing colonizing state whose profound convictions of superiority created a totalizing institution. The sociocultural, economic and political situation produced in Espirro by far outgrew the original purpose of contributing to the war effort with the production of rubber. Not restricted to work alone, the work discipline necessarily expanded into an attempt to control the entire lived worlds of the subjected Indian peoples and groups. In this sense, the work regime gradually transformed into a kind of total institution. Of a different but not dissimilar situation, already in 1843 Marx wrote: “A brutal state of affairs can only be maintained by means of brutality” (Marx 1975: 205).

The whole situation of contact actualized in this colonial rule conspired to render the Indians into dependent subjects. It represents an attempt of socially producing what one party conceives of what the other ought to be. In the sense of Goffman, in the social artifact of two parties constructing their relationship, those attributes of the relationship that one side approves of are productive in creating a manageable order out of the relative chaos of reality. This preconceived image leads to neglect the contradictory facts of real life. In this relationship the notion of the self of each person constrains what the individual purports to be, but, simultaneously, imposes a pattern in the relationship with representatives of another social category: “(…) people tend to imprison each other, for directly, or indirectly through the self claimed, one signals something about what the other ought to be” (Hannerz 1980: 212). The very purpose of the ‘totalizing social situation’ in Espirro concerns the sociocultural construction of what the Indian men and women ought to be. Namely, fundamentally inferior human beings, who, for their own benefit, must obey the orders of the civilizing agents. Then, through following this civilizing regime, the subject, which is its object, really may become what the imposed image mandates that they should be. Through conscious and unconscious manipulations the more powerful constrains the weaker into assuming the role of what he is conceived to be and this affects his conception of self (cf. Hannerz on Goffman). It is also certain that this kind of domination creates an impression management by the less powerful simulating the appearance of compliance in face-to-face interaction with the powerful. At the backstage, amongst one’s own people, the subjugated usually tend to sustain a critical stance and perspective in defence of their own notion of themselves (to use some other Goffmanian concepts). However, the ‘total situation’ never fails to leave a mark on the subordinate and especially on the formation of the self-conception of the children who never experienced autonomous life and were not privy to a more positive self-image[xii].

In accordance to the general SPI policy of occupying the Indian lands with productive citizens, França arranged for the presence of a relatively large number of rubber tappers dependent on the Post for their access to the trees, and, undoubtedly, framed in a patron-client relationship. These men and their families were meant to become an example to the Indians of what civilized work should mean. At the same time, the regime of the barracão – the Post warehouse, like the trading post of the seringal where normally they must sell their products and buy their merchandise to the profit of the intermediary – created a firm obligation towards the Post chief. Thus, the indigenous area became a White seringal and agricultural work camp for the Indian. The presence of dependent tappers, obviously partial to all the usual stereotypes, served as an ultimate guarantee, if necessary, to the recourse of violence to maintain order. They were an auxiliary force to be called into action when the Indians revolted or escaped. Maybe the absence of a violent Indian reaction to humiliation is not so surprising but a realistic assessment of the forces at play. In sum, here one sees the actualization of the positivist motto written on the republican flag after the military coup against the monarchy applied to the case of one Indigenous Territory: ordem e progresso (order and progress). The order of a totalitarian work camp; the progress of autonomous human beings to subordinate workers in the great chain of production. At the time most agricultural production could not be transported to the market as, for example, Vilhena did not yet exist as a town. Rubber, comparatively, could be, and this must have produced some profit. Commodity production, sale of produce and monetary income also complied with the orientation of the Service (during most of its existence). The presence of the outsiders in the Indigenous Territory thus satisfied various aims of the Indian Service that clearly put its bureaucratic aims in the first place together with the least possible costs to the treasury. In other words, the Indians and their resources should also pay for the bureaucratic expenses made on their behalf. Such attitudes definitely do not consider the point of view of the protected under tutelage.

With the information gathered from the Mamaindê, França invited the Sabanê occupying their lands at the Tenente Marques and Roosevelt and succeeded in convincing some to settle at the Post, while another part preferred to continue in the home area. This caused a significant distinction in the historical trajectories of the people. One part remained independent, assuring their access to steel goods by way of the station at José Bonifácio. The other part began suffering from the colonial rule with its work regime imposed by the Post. Manézinho commented as follows (again, this is edited in the interests of brevity):
“It was the Post. So he united the Indians to tame them, to work. He went over to the village to get them, to bring them over here. By invitation. He went to the Sabanê village to invite them to work and to learn Portuguese, but there was no school. So he brought them here to work with him, at the time of the Indian Service. A part went, a part did not. They had a great leader, one that did order a lot, sent them off to hunt, fish, fell forest for the field and plant. He did not fight, he treated his people well. At the Post the Indians did not receive anything. Indians were there to work only not like the leader who ordered to work so we could eat and raise our children. Captain Lima thought we should not stay because an Indian does not want to be chastised, does not want to be bothered, and he only wanted to order to labor and Saturday and Sunday they hunted, fished, and searched for honey. The Indian is fast. But someone who did not go to the fields was punished. Afonso was wild. He was untamed. He only wanted to command the Indian to work. He invited the Dawaindê [older people often use Dawaindê for the Tawaindê or Tawandê] and he bossed everyone around in the same way to go to the fields, to fell the vegetation in three days and plant much sugar-cane, manioc, maize, rice, oh very much. They harvested rice, beans, they made manioc flour and sugar products. And then when the women worked to clean the harvest, he would send it to the rubber tappers, sending rice beans and manioc flour to the tappers to gather the latex. The tappers worked for him. The Indians ate food. Part of the produce was for them to eat, part went to the tappers. They planted, harvested and the food was sent to the tappers, the Indians eat the rest in order to work the fields. They kept cattle that was killed to give meat to the Indians to be able to work. The children took care of pigs, chickens and cattle. The children took the cattle to the pasture, locked them up and milked them for the Indians to drink milk. They did not sell anything, the only small town was Campos Novos with the boss of the seringal called Marcos da Luz [a famous seringalista on the whole region especially on the Plateau, see Costa 2000)]. Few Indians were there and many tappers were, that was Nambikwara land. Afonso was still young when he arrived. It was him that ordered our captain to be killed. We did not live there. We went to have a look first, worked to gain iron to labor at our fields and went off again. We cannot stay. Captain Lima, who was my brother-in-law, married to my sister, was the chief of the village where we lived with some fifty people. There at Espirro lived some two hundred people. The Manduka people, the Dawaindê people, a group of Sabanê and the people of my wife, the Sowaintê. Many people really. It was like this. Captain Paulo was a great leader, Sabanê, and Manalaisi was another great leader. They worked for Afonso and the Indians were chastised a lot, even women and children. So when Afonso went to Cuiabá to purchase merchandise for the Indians, they went away [Afonso travelled mostly by the Line apparently passing through Campos Novos]. This captain Paulo sent the word that they were leaving. So they walked and walked for ten days. When Afonso came back, he rounded up the tappers, went after them until he found them and killed them. They killed captain Paulo, they killed captain Manaliasi. Afonso ordered both chiefs to be killed. A tapper killed captain Paulo. He wanted to live here, to live in our village, he did not want to work anymore. Afonso was too much, he gave them work but beated them, chastised them and they got angry. They fled. Then the tappers overtook them, all armed. They killed only the two leaders, the rest of the people they brought back to Espirro. Those who got away went away to village. When they arrived in Espirro they beat them up a lot, men, women, everyone. A part escaped and went away.”

From this narrative the basic outline of the different histories of the minority and the majority of the Sabanê are outlined. There were those who maintained their freedom, but most of the people were attracted by the flow of promised goods but instead ended up in a colonial regime of forced labor. The violence in itself and the killing of leaders must have cowed the Indians into submission. This traumatic experience shows how protection can go terribly awry. It is no coincidence that a free Sabanê like himself preferred to obtain iron or steel tools working at the telegraph station. José Bonifácio also signifies the area’s incorporation into the larger framework of the nation with the attendant expropriation of Indian resources but its main purpose was different from that of the Post. The officials established a different relation to the surrounding Indian peoples. It is this time of the independent village of his childhood and youth that Manézinho takes to symbolize the true Indian life to which he wants to return (at the time of these conversations, more on this below). It is not so much the work in itself the autonomous Indians or their dependent compatriots oppose, it is particularly the injustice of being bullied, forced, or physically punished with a whip or with beatings[xiii]. It is a treatment reminiscent of slavery, where the dominated only had the right to work, to be worked, and in no way had the right to dispose of the produce of their labor[xiv]. The abundance created by their effort fed them and the rubber-tappers, integrating the two parallel modalities of production into one system under the overall controlling aegis of the agent. The surplus of non-marketable crops produced by the Indians in a transformed mode of their own sustenance economy supported commercial crop production[xv]. Under the regional prevailing circumstances, it is hard to imagine a better alternative for this system of outright exploitation.

As seen above, Aspelin neutrally reported this situation when he wrote the first article that revised the question of Nambikwara nomadism. When he reviewed the existing reports on Nambikwara agriculture he reexamined the historical sources and then he discussed the documents written by França himself and those around him. França’s letters suggest a competition for the labor force of the Indians between SPI, missionaries and rubber patrons near Espirro or in the region. In the first two years he used the villages that remained on the Roosevelt with their very large gardens to provide the food for both the Nambikwara he had attracted to the Post as well as for the Brazilian employees. The correspondence cited refers to 1943, 1946 and 1953 and is complemented with two other sources. The picture portrayed is telling:
“Afonso’s information here should also be placed in the context of his continual griping about the difficulties he had in persuading the Indians to works in the roças at the Post. Most of them complained, few would work very steadily, many fled and had to be chased and brought back (…) Many were bound, beaten and whipped and he had at least three killed for not working for him or enticing the others to flee his persecution, according to an anonymous document submitted to the directors of the SPI in Cuiabá and to the Indians’ account as well (Anonymous 1955). In spite of his complaining, Afonso succeeded in making them work, as witnessed by the report of his supervisor’s visit to the Post in 1946 (Monteiro 1946). Although severely criticizing Afonso for this lack of attention to other aspects of supervising a SPI Post, Monteiro found its land to be fertile, the game plentiful, the Indians hard workers, and the farms both well kept and very large in proportion to the number of Indians” (Aspelin 1979a: 35).

In brief, Aspelin’s analysis addresses another question and the clear systemic domination was mentioned only obliquely (he (1982) certainly does not mince words about domination and its disastrous effects in a paper for a different public). In his letters and reports França enumerates the difficulties and his solution to the labor problem. As far as can be concluded from the available evidence, the visiting supervisor Monteiro did not express concern over França’s brutal methodology. The anonymous document from 1955 did not prompt the Service to take any action to curb the obvious excesses. The denunciation confirms the accounts of the Indians and shows the cruelty and violence which França engaged in to keep the system functioning (without forgetting that some compliance also emerges from the stories, this relates to the general proposition that in such a situation there is often some acceptance by the victims). Possibly the internal reports partly exposed the methods but veiled the harsher aspect of this reality. Doubtlessly the results of this exploitation did not enter the publicly taking stock of the official protection by the Service. This case demonstrates that the actions undertaken transformed the notion of civilizing into the forceful participation in the internal market. It also highlights the persistent reality of expropriation and exploitation characteristic of the entire previous history of interethnic relations (see Lima 1995: 185-6). Rondon’s legacy is a central theme in the meshing of histories[xvi]. The story of iron and steel brings to mind the steel-clad military and the iron hand of domination. In fact, on the occasion of a rebellion around 1894, Rondon stifled a rebellion and physically reprimanded the guilty. In this largely unknown incident one of the leaders of the soldiers died as the consequence of an infection caused by the whipping. Such incidents are conspicuously absent in hagiographies that elaborate his peaceful reputation (Zarur 2003: 268-9). The army later abandoned these punishments and although this does not necessarily relate to Afonso França, the discipline he imposed does have a precedent in Rondon’s behavior. This contrasts to Rondon’s metaphor characterizing the method of peaceful encirclement, a process more aptly described a, possibly violent, siege, an envelopment or enclosure leading to conquest and harsh discipline[xvii].

The Sabanê’s near-disintegration and their integration in a new village
The system put in place in Espirro ended with França’s withdrawal in 1968. In the 1950s and 1960s, Indians believed to be Cinta Larga were putting increasing pressure on the remainder of the independent Northern Nambikwara, Sabanê, as well as people at that station that constituted the hub of their access to commodities and the channel of knowledge of the outside. Just as the appeal to learn Portuguese was a motive to move to Espirro, the station, as noted above, encouraged multilingualism. It was here that, by observing and listening, Manézinho first learned some Portuguese. Then the federal government encouraged another major influx to the West at the time of the creation of Brasília. The goal of this city and general government was to encourage people to move to the interior. This led to the construction of the federal highway BR 364, a road extending from Cuiabá to Porto Velho. In the southern part of the Nambikwara region the road was constructed by a major southern Brazilian contractor firm, Camargo Correia. They finished the part of the road up till Vilhena and, in doing so, interfered with the regional society and Indian peoples already in place. When president Kubitchek officially opened the road to traffic in 1960, he flew in a helicopter around Vilhena and took the foster-father of Dona Teresa with him in the aircraft as the representative of the presence of the former state enterprise that originally penetrated the region. Symbolically linking his visit and the construction of the highway to the mythical forerunner and the recently deceased Rondon, the president contrived to continue in the same spirit of patriotism and indigenism. Both men adhered to the same ideology of progress and development. The building of Brasília was portrayed as a major step towards the integration of the huge hinterland into the progressive thrust of the cities on or near the coast. The whole idea of building a capital in the interior was a positivist suggestion from the initial days of the Republic and incorporated in the constitution by a politician sympathetic to this small group (Enders 1998: 7).

By taking the functionary of the Telegraph Line with him, the president intended not only to present the face of continuity but also the face of promising change. Without doubt the idea prevailed that the Line itself was outdated and was to be superseded with new technology, yet more progress. From then on the entire Nambikwara ensemble entered into a new phase of expropriation. The road enabled the region to become reconsidered as a promising source of bounty to be exploited by the Brazilian citizens migrating from the south and northeast of the country. The old dream of Rondon of enormous progress that had disintegrated with the undesirable soil of the Parecis Plateau and the phantom of the goldmines of Urucumacuan, gradually returned in full force[xviii]. From then on, the people established in the region were drawn further into the control of the new stronger federal central government and its designs and plans for the future. One of these plans was to entice settlers to occupy empty or supposedly underutilized lands. It is uncertain whether at the instigation of the president who, according to Dona Teresa, showed concern for the Indian question or not, but one of the high level managers of the contractor firm took measures to allocate land to the Indians. At a certain time, still according to her testimony, he reserved land at Marco Rondon (literally “Rondon-landmark”) for the Northern Nambikwara and Sabanê. Around the same time the epidemics returned with full force too: Manézinho’s village was almost exterminated, apart from four or five survivors. Other peoples must have suffered the same fate. The combined effects of depopulation and the attacks of the Cinta Larga finally undermined the capacity of the remaining fragments of these peoples to stay in the region. The administration of the Telegraph Line abandoned the José Bonifácio station and transferred the personnel to other stations at the Line. One group of families, including that of Dona Teresa, moved to Abunã, at the opposite far western end of Rondonia, near the border with the state of Acre. Other people like Manézinho, a bachelor with very few living close relatives, chose to find their own way in the national society. A number of people retreated to Marco Rondon to work with Crusoé – a White man married to a Nambikwara woman – for even if the area had been set apart for the Indians on terms unrelated to the authority of the SPI, the manager apparently still believed they needed non-Indian guidance. At least the comments about this man characterize him as lenient. It was a situation very different from Espirro in the exercise of dominance. In addition, Marco Rondon is either within the original Northern area of occupancy or on the borders, so migration to this place was not as dramatic as it was to Espirro.

Therefore, due to unbearable pressures, the peoples and villages in the northern region disintegrated into fragments of various sizes, groups of families, families, and individuals. No one, according to the stories, renounced their homeland on their own volition. Obviously, some may have wandered out into the national society for their personal reasons, but such people are not easily traceable. For those wishing to stay, no official assistance whatsoever materialized to secure their birthright. Presumably, the SPI, a miscreant institution that collapsed during a 1968 corruption investigation did not act. If the Service was involved, it would probably have continued concentration the Northern Nambikwara in Espirro. Maybe some people migrated to the Post in search of safety but there are little indications about such movements. The employees of the Line were of diverse origins, mostly Paresi, there were a few Whites some of whom married Lakondê among other nations. Their new assignment on the other end of Rondônia and the persistence of this migration to a place so far away hampered continuing contacts with the dispersed peoples of their origins. Only Dona Teresa returned to the region around Vilhena with her White husband. Few (if any) others did the same. The older generation of these migrants who were speakers of the Lakondê (some of whom also spoke Sabanê) even when put into a total minority position in a strange land attempted to continue speaking their language. However, immersed in this new environment, the children did not tend to learn their elders’ languages well and abandoned its ordinary use in favor of Portuguese. Possibly, there still are some native or secondary language speakers alive (Dona Teresa tried to maintain contact but she does not know much about the fate of the group). Socially speaking, the contact with these people is largely lost and the descendants, judging from the little news available, are assimilating into national society. The relocation of the group of functionaries and their families affiliated with the Line significantly diminished the number of native speakers, particularly Lakondê. Where the station in the center of the Northern Nambikwara region stimulated language acquisition, incorporating Portuguese into the repertoire and creating the conditions that stimulated speakers to speak several languages, the subsequent enormous distance between the homeland and the other end of the state had the opposite effect. It provoked isolation from the main groups of their peoples, assimilation into the national society and gradual language loss. The group was too small and diversified to succeed in language maintenance. It seems unreasonable to expect anything other than further integration into regional society.

The few Lakondê staying in the Northern Nambikwara region seem to have made their living in Marco Rondon or at Cachoeirinha. Both places are located on the road between Vilhena and Pimenta Bueno. The Post at Espirro ended its role as a major point of concentration of Indians when the agent França retired to Cachoerinha. It is commented that a successor took charge but the official himself moved to a seringal that became known under the name of his son-in-law as the seringal do Faustino. In the absence of any archive material it can only be noted that he established himself and his family in a new property just when the Service disintegrated and reappeared under the name Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI)[xix]. In Espirro the various groups of different peoples began to intermingle and frequently married outside the group. When the Sabanê were autonomous, any women captured in a Sabanê raid were forcibly integrated; endogamy is said to have prevailed alongside a small-scale exogamy. The fact that everyone was subjected to the same work camp regime in Espirro caused the diverse ethnic backgrounds to become less significant than the imposed ascription Indian. In this situation, the people learned that this dominating regime considered them all the same. Their most basic identity as defined by the ruling powerful people consisted of all of the primitives being generalized Indians, an ethnic category with a commonly racializing tendency. In that sense, the end of endogamy coincided with the generalizing identity foisted on the distinct peoples. On the practical level, close interaction laid down during several years and population imbalances like the one that probably dictated the fusion of the Sabanê and Sowaintê contributed to an increased possibility (or even necessity) of intermarriage. This does not mean that the ethnic differences ceased to exist; rather they were harder to maintain. As a result, many interethnic marriages took place. As far as I can verify, the practice of mixed marriages did not bring about a shift to Portuguese by the generations born in this colonial situation. Instead, some spouses learned their partners’ language or acquired some passive understanding of it. It is said that Afonso França allowed native languages to be spoken. So a situation emerged where the native disposition to multilingualism prospered and prevailed over a shift to the Portuguese of the encompassing dominant Brazilian society. It must be remembered that the Post inhabitants lived in a region practically devoid of towns and larger agglomerations of civilized people. People who grew up under the circumstances of the penalizing regime usually speak at least one native language. This, by the way, contrasts to SPI’s general policy of repressing native languages and encouraging Portuguese acquisition.

In effect, the phase of disintegration that started with the dismantling of the telegraph station and a transfer completely ignorant of and indifferent to the interests of the local Indians or of the conditions of perseverance of their peoples continued with the retirement and setting up of a private agricultural enterprise. Afonso França did not just hand over the Post, he also needed manpower for his new activities. He was not known for his own labor efforts but limited himself to what euphemistically can be called management. Therefore he invited part of the Indians to resettle at his new place. A number of Indians moved with him, mostly Tawaindê and their spouses (some of other peoples). Mané Torto of the Latundê grew up here. Although Mané Torto’s evaluation is that this group did not suffer a particularly harsh domination, he cannot verify this from personal experience. Indeed, others compare it to slavery. The floundering of the SPI on the scandals that came to light aroused national and international attention to the plight of the Brazilian Indians. In 1970 a medical Mission of the International Red Cross evaluated the results of the aftermath of the creation of the Funai. For the most part, the result disappointed them and the situation of the Nambikwara of the Seringal of Faustino struck them as especially precarious: “‘a wretched state (…) of complete dependence’” (cited in Hanbury-Tenison 1973: 170). The hard work convinced the women not to bear children because they would not be able to take care of them properly. A bark extract was commonly used to induce abortion. A year later Hanbury-Tenison, particularly wanted to see them and verify any changes. He heard from several sources in Brazil, Europe and America that the group “(…) lived in a state closely resembling slavery” (Hanbury-Tenison 1973: 166). Such was the notoriety of França and his family that the account of his past circulated as follows:
“The story was that in the late fifties one Alfonso de França was the SPI man at an Indian post called Espirro, some ten miles east of Vilhena. There he had been responsible for the group of Nambiquara known as Tauandé, whom he was said to flog, torture and shoot as the mood took him. When his daughter married Faustinho he ‘gave’ him sixty of the Indians as a wedding present [the Indians pronounce the name Faustino]. They had been moved to the farm we were now visiting and although most of them had died from a measles epidemic in 1963, the survivors were still there. When the SPI was disbanded Alfonso’s crimes came to light but he could not, apparently, be prosecuted as the only witnesses who could testify against him were Indians. They, under the law, are minors and cannot testify. Instead, he moved away from the post, which has not since been manned, and settled with his son-in-law” (Hanbury-Tenison 1973: 167).

This concurs broadly with Manézinho’s testimony and his reputation was well deserved. The understanding that the Indians cannot be legal witnesses because they are technically minors embodies a gross misunderstanding of the law and probably reflects ideas circulating among the Whites. The Indians’ perceived inability to give evidence reveals the prevailing prejudice of the Indians as absolutely incapable. Even today it is quite common when the 1973 law 6001, the Estatuto do Índio, is misinterpreted: it classifies the Indian as relatively incapable, what enables the Indian person to exercise his rights and responsibilities as a citizen in accordance with his degree of understanding of the national society. It was very convenient here to avoid judging the crimes committed. This conception denies the main victims the right to testify about their suffering, impeding the voicing and redressing of social suffering with a fair judicial process. Very rarely has any such a crime been brought to court, this lends the false impression that such behavior is more justified and less grave than similar crimes within the regional society. The naturalness of his acts are evident in França’s conversations in which he complained that he had to retire because of poor health and that caused him to loose his right to a pension. He needed to work until his seventieth birthday for this right and wanted to get back in the Service. He wanted to know if his visitors and Hanbury-Tenison could help him get his job at Espirro back. He needed not to have worried so much, according to his official service record the state awarded him a pension in June 1971[xx]. During the course of his short visit, Hanbury-Tenison also managed to meet Faustino, of whom he obtained an unfavorable impression. He also learned that the work of the Indians was rewarded with clothes and some ambiguous monetary compensation. On the whole, Hanbury-Tenison thought the Indian village of twenty six people presented a downcast and abnormal character. Even the child he saw was apathetic and uninterested in the visitors. Faustino himself had a condescending and bored attitude towards the Indians and there was no typical small talk usual for people who have known each other a long time. He was embarrassed to be obliged to shake hands with the leader of the village (this should be Mussolini, the man who raised Mané Torto). In brief; “(…) I tried particularly hard not to prejudge the situation, but the atmosphere of gloom and despondency was inescapable. Without having seen any direct brutality or oppression, as we left I could not help feeling that civilization was at a very low point at the Seringal de Faustinho” (ib.: 170). Three days after the visit of Hanbury-Tenison the Red Cross released their report on the situation in 1970 to the press. It had been sent before to Brazil and the then FUNAI president commented in the press that measures had been taken a long time before. He affirmed that Faustino was being prosecuted on the basis of a FUNAI inquiry and the Indians moved to another post. This particular president was known for his general impatience and contentiousness with foreign interference on Brazilian Indian affairs. Such conduct for a long time exemplifies the policy towards the Nambikwara ensemble.

Around the time of the Tawaindê’s predicament, the Sabanê mostly ended up in Marco Rondon although certain individuals and particular families tried their luck separately. Hanbury-Tenison heard about these people but could not travel onwards to visit them. Without the opportunity of verification he nevertheless thought his information to be sufficiently secure to mention the contrast:
“Another forty-five miles up the road there was another farmer with a group of dependent Indians. These, I was told on good authority, were well treated and cared for, thanks to the generosity and humanity of the Brazilian patron. Although utterly dependent on him, it was said that he paid fair wages and protected them from exploitation and abuse.” (ib.: 170).

There is hardly any doubt that the above refers to Marco Rondon, as indicated by the distance and the relative close concurrence of the information furnished by contemporary testimony. The major point of divergence concerns the implication of the patron being the owner of the land. Meanwhile, not everybody left the reserve. A few people stayed at the Post in Espirro. Finally, as to the last possibility raised by the dispersal of the peoples of this epoch, it may be mentioned that recently there have been a few sightings of an unknown group in the Roosevelt area. It is speculated that they are people who fled to the forest during the epidemics. Perhaps the survivors formed a viable group and now live isolated. As for Manézinho, he left the forest, ventured into the outside and lived as a migrant. While living a near-nomadic life in regional Brazilian society, he learned many trades ranging from gold prospecting, and farming, to cattle handling. He also held various menial jobs in the city and worked in a seringal. He was lucky enough to establish a friendship with a Brazilian man with whom he joined forces and migrated within a region stretching from Acre to Cuiabá. His adventures and his adaptation to the national society is in itself remarkable for an Indian who grew up in an exclusively monolingual Sabanê village. The same capacity to adapt and accommodate into the niches offered to the poor laborers can be discerned in other personal and family histories. At this time of maximum dispersal of the Sabanê people such capacity implies a large possibility of permanent integration into the regional society of those Indians who for some reason did not stay with one of the groups. Consequently, some Indians and families may never return to an Indian community and this part of the population siphons off the national society; in the dispersed Sabanê groups of diminished populations this represents a serious loss.

Thus the dispersal also tends to isolate the fragments of these peoples and hinder the transmission of culture and language. Children are then raised in an adverse and highly discriminative social environment that regards the Indian languages and cultures as inferior. In the first place, the Indians and their children become very much aware of the attribution of inferiority. Furthermore, Portuguese is the daily language when in contact with Brazilians in the public sphere of social activities. The interruption of a daily communal native language ambience results in their own language’s retreat into the domestic sphere. Other factors interfered, like the interethnic marriages between Indians. As far as I have been able to reconstruct the circumstances, such marriages lead to several possible outcomes for their children. One is the adoption of Portuguese and the imperfect learning of one or both of the native languages of the parents. As the disposition to language maintenance is strong and favors multilingualism, this seems to be a minimal outcome when the parents are in a position to actualize the value attached to their own languages. In an ideal situation the young child may learn both Portuguese and one native tongue or even all three languages. Interestingly though, on the basis of the little evidence available, it seems that the mother’s language preponderates over the father’s. A mother that uses her own language in daily interaction imprints an indelible impression on her children and, at the very least, creates a good passive knowledge of the language. On the other hand, the process of language acquisition depends on the attitude of the father towards his language and his goals for his and his children’s future. In marriages that involve a civilized partner (usually an Indian woman marrying a White man) the disapproval of a typically assertive husband effectively discourages the use of any native language[xxi]. Dona Teresa never abandoned her heritage. On the contrary, she holds it dearly, but the White man she married treated her language and her origin as inferior. He did not allow her to speak her language to her children. This is one important way of assimilation and attendant language extinction. Dona Teresa is one of the last, if not the last, completely competent Lakondê speaker, a fact that deeply saddens her. Finally, on the other extreme, there is a case in which an indigenous foster mother raised an Indian stepchild teaching another indigenous language than the one from her father while living in the regional society. In conclusion, as far as I can understand, a number of factors enter into the successful transmission of languages with a series of possible outcomes. Generally, in Marco Rondon, the positive disposition persisted and tended to impart in the new generation a language maintenance that ranges from passive command to active competence.

The forced labor camp situation lasted about twenty-six years, even as the regime only gradually achieved total domination. It is not difficult to imagine how such a situation would indelibly inscribe the reality of domination in the lived experience of the people who suffered. Fortunately, the older people already had an independent basic worldview of dispositions, attitudes and a conception of self that was not contingent on foreign dominance. It was only later that they suffered from a negative self-image subordinated to the supremacy of the powerful. This left them with the resilient autonomy of the self intact and emboldened their resistance to the Post and their decision to flee from its prison. They managed to endure the derogatory paternalistic image of dependent, incapable and inferior people forced on them by their masters. Unfortunately, it was not possible to obtain any first hand narrative about the repression of the Sabanê and the subsequent duress. The repercussion was severe and all who lived through this surely felt humiliated and powerless by the experience. After the Sabanê were caught and their leaders murdered, they were likely taken back to Espirro at gunpoint. The beatings they suffered must have been an intolerable invasion of the sense of personal autonomy and dignity. Individual persons and collectively as a people they were subjected to a process of inferiorization on a land not theirs in an experience that called their social identity into question. Prior to contact, the Sabanê enjoyed an autonomous life on their own land and surrounded by similar independent peoples. The neighboring indigenous peoples and the Sabanê considered themselves to be distinct, and in the words of Manézinho, each peoples’ history is different, meaning their mythological origins and place in the cosmos differ in some significant aspects.

The notion of identity revolves about notions of self and others as defined by oneself, and by the reciprocal similar beliefs of alters with respect to oneself. The concept of collective and individual identity centers on the notion of autonomy and a fundamental kind of equality between peoples even when the neighboring peoples are held to be inferior[xxii]. Now the definition of one particular group of people that did not partake in the prior web of connecting peoples ordained new identities: dictating a basic similarity and, at a lower level, the need to find a new name for the people and the necessity of a new public name of the individual. Classifying all these peoples in the general category Indian acts as if the primary selfhood of all of the people so identified is the same. The inclusive category effaces the differences between indigenous nations. However, being Indian minimizes but does not annihilate previous ethnic classifications made within entirely new context of the encompassing hierarchical structure as construed by the superior people, originally outsiders to the system. Although all are Indians, there is still need for a name for each people. On this lower level these peoples may also be hierarchically arranged by those with the power to prescribe names and rank. The experience of such exercise of power of nomination and sociopolitical subsumption must leave its marks in the subjectivity of the victims.[xxiii].

It is reasonable to suppose that the elders can refer to their autonomous experience to counter the deleterious effects and affects of what may be called the experience of conquest. The notion of conquest is exemplified by the forceful disposal of the Indian women at the desires of the White male population in Espirro, depriving the Indian groups of the control of their most important human resources. The younger generations cannot rely on this mechanism in order to regain a control of themselves and construct a more assertive and positive identity, except via transmitted experience. For the first generation it remains to be seen whether this appeal to the experience of the elder generations suffices to recompose, or, better still, recreate an identity that includes a maximum of the previous conception of autonomy. The reality of oppression and humiliation resulting from the insertion in the increasingly overwhelming national society cannot simply be ignored and must enter into the practices of dealing with feelings and practical limits of impotence framed by colonial rule. Contrary to distinct but analogous situations like the forced labor camp or l’expérience concentrationnaire (Pollak 2000), at least some of the constraints of domination are permanent and require creative adaptation. What options did the Sabanê in Espirro conceive of as realistic after the Post that degenerated into a totalitarian camp was abandoned by França? Perhaps some of the more adventurous independently ventured into regional society, where the different constraints permitted a certain degree of freedom. A few choose to stay, possibly reasoning that the worst had passed. Such Indians preferred to be somewhere familiar rather than venture to a place even more foreign. Most migrated to Marco Rondon, an alternative which, due to the much less powerful and hardly totalitarian new boss, afforded the Indian group a degree of autonomy without interrupting access to new commodities. As far as I know, no one choose to return to the forest. In all likelihood, this has to do with the dissolution of the viable villages around the same period, the increasing expropriation of their own lands by the civilized, the presence of the Cinta Larga, and the fact that they were becoming accustomed to and partly dependent on the consumption of commodities not locally produced.

As noted previously when Afonso França withdrew to his private property he mainly attracted the Tawaindê. For the Sabanê co-habitation with him probably was not an option because they accused him of being responsible for the murder of their leaders during his previous relations with them. Despite the intimate relations between the two peoples when both were suffering in Espirro and the murders of the Sabanê, he still managed to convince the Tawaindê to move and work for him. França did change the labor regime under which the Indians toiled and, as one person of this group apparently testified recently, he abolished physical punishments and paid wages. In fact, the managing of the farm had passed on to his daughter, Dona Filhinha, and the previously mentioned son-in-law[xxiv]. They continued the exploration of the farm on the basis of paying the laborers weekly. Indian exploitation was evident in the low salary and in the fact that the landowners used the excuse of any failure to work during the whole week in order not pay them. This is confirmed indirectly with Faustino’s comment to Hanbury-Tenison (1973: 168) regarding the unreliability of Indian labor. The Tawaindê Indians lived on the property in their own houses and somewhat independently from the main house. One of them was the famous uncle of the Indian married into the Latundê group, Mané Torto, at the end of the seventies (see Part I). Price mentions that this man, Mussolini, a shaman, tradition-oriented and a strong leader – a big chief in Manézinho’s words –, was the last to move to Aroeira. In the housing and in certain practices, especially shamanism, they kept a physical and a social distance with the White management and the latter, apparently, provided some room for sociocultural expressions. It appears as if the very act of relinquishing of the former more rigorous control provided the opportunity for a less severe regime of debt peonage or weekly paid labor. Before settling in the Seringal of Faustino, the Tawaindê already felt the impact of newly created needs and the discipline instilled by the work forced on them in conjunction with the introduction of the concept of money. Hence this previous more forceful regime may have paved the way for a relative acceptance of the paternalistic regime in the classic pattern of the good patron (especially Dona Filhinha), and which is not explicitly backed up with the use of force. It would be interesting to discover who named the Indian leader of the Tawaindê people at Seringal do Faustino Mussolini, undoubtedly after the fascist. The civilized usually simply gave the Indians names at their whim, another clear sign of symbolic domination. At a later stage, having recuperated some autonomy, the Indians sought suggestions about Brazilian names given to children that they habitually simply accepted because to them from the Nambikwara point of view, these names were merely innocuous labels and not real names (at least for the Sararé, see Part III).

In 1972 yet another international mission, visited the Northern Nambikwara area. This time the Mission visited both Marco Rondon and the Seringal de Faustino. At the Seringal, they found the Tawaindê in better spirits than their predecessors. Yet, the very fact of still finding them at the Seringal clearly illustrates the general abandonment in which they encountered the Nambikwara ensemble where the previous adverse reports did not seem to prompt Funai to take any effective action. The Mission report does not say so clearly but when they agree with Hanbury-Tenison that Funai is being apparently unconcerned over these small isolated Nambikuara groups and that this behavior will let them die, they effectively concur this can be no less than ‘indirect genocide’ (or, perhaps, ‘passive genocide’ although in this case the adjective underrates intentionality and that, as seen in Part I, actually does tally with ‘normal’ genocide; Brooks et.al. 1973: 41). The Tawaindê, however, even without any official assistance felt distinctively better. They were under the impression that they owned their clearings but the Mission did not know what form the agreement had or if it was legally binding[xxv]. Faustino still owned the store of goods and medicines and employed them as a labor force and thus the Mission appears to confirm that they lived under a paternalistic regime of dominance by debt slavery and without owning any land. On the other hand, the situation still compared unfavorably to that in Marco Rondon, a “more run-down condition”. Some Indians were suffering from influenza. The Indians recounted former hardships when the measles decimated their numbers and wild Tupis attacked them. In other words, they mentioned the epidemics and assaults that drove the Northern Nambikwara away from their lands. They implied – not explicated in the report – that they were forced out of their home territory. That would be a reason to feel despondent and the motive for their acceptance of the situation of dependency. In such a context the impression of gaining some independence living in four houses behind barbed wire and with their own fields may have elevated their spirits. The authors’ conclusion still is essentially depressing: “The general picture was of a melancholy little group which appears still to have no explicit protection or assistance from FUNAI despite urgent appeals in RHT’s [Hanbury-Tenison’s] report” (Brooks et.al. 1973: 40).

Passing through Marco Rondon first, they found a small village of about 25 people living in six local Brazilian-style houses in a clearing with their gardens alongside the river. They noticed healthy people with a high morale. There were no frequent deaths, fair-sized gardens, neat houses, and clean clothes. The obvious problems related to poor dental health, worsened by the lack of relation with FUNAI and the limited size and the uncertain status of the land. The Mission thought the Indian clearing to be surrounded by other properties and thus calculated a future shortage of land to rotate the gardens. The presence of the school, which five Indian children, two interethnic marriages and the occupancy of Brazilian neighbors created the impression among the Mission’s participants that integration into regional society was preceding fast. In fact, exempting a extraneous material proof of Indian culture, typical baskets, they even conclude that “(…) the culture seems to be disappearing fast” (Brooks et. al. 1973: 39). The reasons adduced for the group’s move to Marco Rondon in 1958 included the same measles epidemics and attacks by so-called Cinta Larga as cited by the Tawaindê. Notwithstanding the sound reasons to possibly “escape an unhealthy location” (ib: 39) the inference drawn surprised even the Mission: “Our conclusion generally was that this is an example, somewhat rare in our experience during the Mission, of a small Indian band which has chosen to live among Brazilian settlers and seems to be adjusting and assimilating successfully” (ib.: 39). Such laconic deductions are partially based on the lack of background information and the lack of historical depth. These ideas may have unintentionally propagated the belief that the Indians at Marco Rondon actively sought assimilation and needed little FUNAI assistance. While it could be argued that many needed dental work and there were those who thought they required more land, overall the outsiders believed that the Indians had accepted the natural path to their own linguistic, cultural and ethnic demise. Such incorrect observations are countered with anthropological theory which suggests that sociocultural modes of life and of sociocultural difference are not always readily apparent. In a certain very significant sense culture is lodged in the heads of the participants and needs to be observed and investigated in an extended dialogue. Furthermore, their observations fail to take into account the reality of the political project of this people as made in and framed by a continuum of historical context.

Most of the Manduka seem to have stayed in Espirro, which is located within their traditional territory. Thus, the three major peoples separated in this period. This separation was further strengthened by the mixed marriages, which affected the ‘ethnic purity’ of each local group. By 1975 relevant changes in the regional and national framework obstructed certain options for the peoples involved, vitiating, for example, the return to their homelands. Most (or all) of their territories had come to fall under INCRA’s mandate, which transformed over a million hectares into the Corumbiara Project, in complete disregard to almost all previous settlements and claims[xxvi]. Conversely, the federal government continued to pretend to provide protection to the Indians, although definitely as a secondary objective and at the least possible cost. It was during a more protective time of Indian policy within the repressive military dictatorship that Price designed the Nambiquara Project to benefit the Northern Nambikwara who had fallen victim to private interests and were dispersed throughout the region[xxvii]. As was often the case in this power struggle, the Indians’ interests lost to the higher aims of the Nation and development. The actual legal status of the area at Marco Rondon is unclear, although Dona Teresa asserts with certainty that it had been set apart for the use of her people and other Indians. It must also be noted that the area probably falls within the range of the original Northern Nambikwara territory (or at least very close to this land). Thus, she feels the Northern peoples like her own have a just claim to this land. Moreover, in a large part of the area the superior quality of the soil compares very favorably with the almost sandy soils of Aroeira. However, Crusoé, the man put in charge of the Indians did not wish or could not avoid the gradual invasion of the area. Apparently, the occupancy had no official recognition. Also, the Indians did not react either to the gradual invasion of the lands. This was probably a sensible decision in light of their weakness and vulnerability (a consequence of the local power relations and lack of a countervailing protective federal agency). Owing to the bureaucratic weakness of the Indians’ land claim, the only solution envisioned by the Nambiquara Project personnel entailed a strategic retreat to Aroeira. They believed this would guarantee this land for their exclusive usage. With hindsight we can say this meant sacrificing superior soil and all the labor invested in the land for a territory with inferior soil quality that needed to be re-developed for occupancy.

The original idea was for the Indians to return to Espirro. By coincidence, Manézinho appeared at the scene when some FUNAI officials visited the region in an attempt to initiate some assistance to the abandoned Indian peoples of Rondônia then being assaulted by federal agencies and a massive influx of Brazilian migrants. A FUNAI agent from Porto Velho took note of him and invited him to participate in the reorganization of Espirro and the gathering of all the former inhabitants of the Northern Nambikwara territory in this place. Such action had the consequence of relinquishing claims to the Northern homelands that were still partially occupied. Manézinho had lived alone at the time of his wanderings. During his visits to Vilhena and Marco Rondon (about which existence he had been ignorant when away) he met an older man who offered his daughter in marriage. At that time she was courting a White, much to the chagrin of her parents who preferred an Indian son-in-law. After Manézinho had been traveling for some time and came back to the region, she accepted marrying him. He then agreed to engage himself in the project of the return to the Indigenous Territory. The individual trajectories of these individuals demonstrate that the creation of more intimate relations with the regional society exposes the group to a serious threat of losing part of its social and physical potential for reproduction[xxviii]. At the same time, if relations were less stressed with the neighbors, the increasing presence of Whites in Marco Rondon signals the weakness of both the White manager and the Indians to stave of the usurpation of what was supposed to be their land. Once again the lack of official protection and the absence of legal control fostered a situation comparable to that of the North American Wild West. When Funai proposed that the Indians move back to the Indigenous Territory around Espirro and to provide the means to resettle there, the insecurity of the whole situation in Marco Rondon plus the attractive support of a renewed and better protection offered must have influenced the Indians to accept the change.

Funai believed that resettling the Indians was a project completely under their control. Manézinho thought the responsibility of opening up Aroeira as his duty and the visiting, conversing and convincing the other Indians as his doing. Of course, the support supplied enabled the Sabanê to take care of the practicalities of the move. He, however, decided to discard the old village site of Espirro and relocate the village in Aroeira because of the heavier forest cover and less sandy soil. An unmentioned advantage of this move is the psychological benefit of moving away from the trauma associated with living at the former village site. There was also a renewal of paternalistic protection, and so more security in land holding and access to commodities. In many ways the previous occupation of Espirro exhausted the potential benefits of this place. Starting anew in Aroeira held the promise of inventing a different micro-world. Such inventions are common as human beings and groups always attempt to institute them according to their own image and affinities (Pollak 2000: 17). The Sabanê could reconstruct some of its previous mode of life and incorporate the now indispensable amenities of civilization. The idea of accepting the task to unite the Indians in a newly founded village and achieving the objective denotes the exercise of personal agency by Manézinho. The image of his adaptation and life’s trajectory in the national society confirmed the capabilities inherent in his personal agency. In that sense, he continued the active life he led before, showing much initiative, when assuming command as a new captain (the term used at the time). Additionally, his father and grandfather functioned as leaders in their time and his comments indicate a tradition that sons of leaders are predisposed to follow in their fathers’ footsteps. Socialization and experience thus prepared him to an active form of personal agency and to assume the responsibility for rebuilding the group. Given his conception of the Sabanê as a profoundly horticultural people, a belief reinforced by the national conception of work, he was proud to foreground his efforts to obtain all sorts of domesticated plants, to put in large efforts at gardening, and to equip the village with an abundant supply of food to receive the incoming Indian settlers.

Manézinho, the new captain, descends from the autonomous Sabanê decimated by hostile Indians and epidemics. It seems uncertain but doubtful that the Sabanê who had been subjected to the harsh camp regime could exhibit the resilience it takes to assume this leadership[xxix]. Chances are that after their traumatic experiences in Espirro and the faltering protection of Marco Rondon, the majority of the Sabanê were not ready for such a task. At the same time, notwithstanding the admirable courage and initiative shown by Manézinho, the constraints of the choices available to the Indians still derived from the dictates of the national society. The most obvious point in case concerns FUNAI’s handing over the Marco Rondon area, even though its right to recognize the land officially as Indian not only already existed but its monopoly to determine these territories was legally guaranteed. There was no legal necessity to renounce this parcel of Northern Nambikwara land (or closely to any original territory). FUNAI followed the constraints of the military regime, the pursuit of development at all costs, as well as its own interest of creating the least resistance possible to its actions by yielding to the interests of the national society of liberating the more fertile area. The people involved in the original phase of the Nambiquara Project had the very best intentions and generally played a very significant and positive role to the benefit of the welfare of Nambikwara ensemble. Despite the fact that the Indians gained more rights while Price was the project head, the restrictions still evinced one of the characteristics intrinsic of the typical colonial situation: namely, the colonized society’s freedom is interdicted to exercise any free will to select which of the dominate society’s sociocultural concepts and practices it will accept. “L’effet spécifique de l’interventionnisme colonial consiste précisement en cette accélération pathologique du changement culturel : en mettant sans cesse la société dominée devant le fait accomplie, en faisant à sa place les choix les plus fundamentaux, la politique coloniale, dont l’entreprise de regroupement représente l’expression la plus incohérente à force de cohérence, a empêché ce dialogue entre la permanence et l’altération, entre l’assimilation et l‘adaptation, que fait la vie même d’une société” (Bourdieu and Sayad 1964: 35)[xxx]. After the complete failure of fraternal protection, the abandonment of the Indians in national society, the desertion of those who went to work for their former tyrants, and the refusal to leave them any choice to remain where they already were, FUNAI finally adopted measures to ensure the Indians’ collective survival. When it finally acted, the institution obeyed the logic of colonial interventionism by means of the renunciation of the legal task to protect these peoples by not allowing them to choose the area of settlement, its limits and its management.

The installation of the various fragments of the indigenous peoples joined here united again the same peoples as those that comprised the Espirro population, and thus the same that endured the bitter experience of domination. Dispersed through the region and without federal protection, the peoples once again enjoyed some autonomy and control over the backstage (as seen, Goffman’s term referring to the secluded space created by the dominated for them to be exclusively amongst themselves and where they felt free to speak and act). From the notion obtained by the reconstruction of the degree of mastery of the traditional language by the different generations, it is likely that the decline of the native language competence was initiated at this phase. The generation that was born when the major part of the Sabanê lived in Marco Rondon is able to speak the language, although a few of them, according to Manézinho’s critical evaluation are not totally competent. Counteracting the tendency to privilege an egalitarian mode of multilingualism, this situation of domination encapsulated the protected domestic or communal Indian social sphere where the Indians attempted to maintain their language. The sheer power of domination, the concomitant devaluing of all kinds of indianidade (‘Indianness’) and the attribution of inferiority, bore down so heavily these people that it stimulated both the usage of Portuguese and the discouragement of the native language for public interaction. As to the standard national language, the Indians wanted to speak it well or suffer discrimination. Within the encompassing society, the Indian languages were viewed as slang or dialect and carried pejorative connotations. My recent trips to the region demonstrate that such a view continues to be predominant. Overall, a positive attitude towards the traditional languages of the Indians by a non-Indian Brazilian certainly did not exist among the people with whom the Indians interacted. This situation may favor the continued competence of their original language of the older people, especially if they retreat into the more private sphere. It is noteworthy that the two oldest Sabanê still alive in Aroeira (in 2000) hardly speak Portuguese, but it is equally revealing that they are the last non-speakers of Portuguese. All of the generation born from this period onward speaks at least some local Brazilian Portuguese.

Reunited in Aroeira the different peoples again commingled. The lamentable episodes of the reception of the Latundê took place in the beginning of the settlement (Part I). The people who had contacted the Latundê, particularly the Lakondê who spoke almost the same language, inflated the advantages of living in Aroeira. It seems they thought to explore their experience with the national society in the role of intermediaries and to subdue the untamed Indians for their women (and probably for the labor force of the men, as they knew very well the uses of disciplined labor). The fact that all of them were Indian and that the Latundê speak a dialect comprehensible to Northern Nambikwara speakers did not bother them, as there is no intrinsic solidarity between the different Nambikwara peoples. Indeed, a real fusion of the Sabanê and the Tarundê or Sowaintê would have been exception to the rule of incorporating individuals into more viable local groups, and would have been facilitated by unique circumstances. Bringing the Latundê to Aroeira occurred during the absence of the FUNAI agent responsible for the Nambikwara. Such action demonstrates the persistence of Indians pursuing their own agenda and the attempt to circumvent the interference of the outside agent. This can be thought of as a push to exercise their own personal and collective agency and to construct and preserve an uncontrolled sphere of social practice. In spite of the forced cohabitation, there has never been any love lost between the different ethnic factions in Espirro and the same appeared to be the case in Aroeira. On the other hand, the rejection of the national society threw them all together to suffer under the same stigma. They learned from this mentality and the diversified fractions of Aroeira nowadays present a united front in cases when the community is required to act. It was in part the colonial rule that prepared them to level out their differences in a joint political action. Furthermore, the bureaucratic logic of FUNAI deals primarily with so-called communities based on geographical local units, especially with the notion of village and Indigenous Territory, and only secondarily with peoples, either as wholes (when spread out) or as parts (within the same delimited area). Also, this agency created not only the community, based on residence, out of the generalized category Indians whom were already accustomed to a front stage (Goffman) dominated by Whites (the public spaces of Indian Posts and reservations), it also patronized a new dependency different from the formerly current obligation of work for food and access to external commodities. In the beginning of Aroeira, when the new settlement needed help to gather forces for preparing the fields and the building of the houses, every month a truck loaded with food and commodities arrived in the village. Courtesy of Tolksdorf (the man who headed the Nambiquara Project after Price lost the political conditions to administer it as he thought fit, this is also the man who is supposed to have contacted the Latundê; see Part I) . Incidentally, Tolksdorf is said to have paid for these goods himself, in all likelihood the institution lacked sufficient funds[xxxi].

From then on the new FUNAI style of administration produced its own form of control. After the beginning with the very generous support that possibly exceeded the Indians’ needs, in the next phase beginning in the 1970s they became subject to development projects, known as community development. These projects were different from the orientations of the Nambiquara Project (see Agostinho 1996), although they generally continued in the tradition of the Espirro regime, they lacked overt authoritarianism and corporal punishment. The notion of development and its supposed necessity is a dogma that persisted in this period and, even today, is part of the way of thinking of almost everyone involved in indigenous politics, policy makers and functionaries. The very few exceptions generate considerable friction with the adherents of the mainstream doxa. The point is that this development regime is cast in the terms of an iron law, worsened by the popular stereotypes that the Nambikwara are the poorest, most primitive, and neediest Indians. Since they are too primitive to know what their evolution should be, usually everything was decided by the Brazilian policy makers. In the eighties, the World Bank insisted on a program of assistance to the Nambikwara when the road BR 364 followed a new route, right through their homelands, and was to receive the asphalt that was meant to hasten the development of the region. This Program consisted largely of the financing of the bureaucratic infrastructure of the various posts for the different groups or peoples with which the FUNAI expanded its institutional operations. The money to protect Indian interests chiefly helped the bureaucracy invest in its own expansion. It substantiated the protection mostly in additional manpower and new buildings. Today Aroeira has one of the most elaborate supporting infrastructures of the FUNAI Posts in the entire region. Of course, with little qualified personnel and many corrupt and prejudiced employees, the availability of ample means were insufficient if no effective policy of protection is put into practice. The rerouting and building of the road still signified the assault on Indian Territory, an onrush on their resources and an onslaught on their health. The bureaucratic emphasis and the materialization of this Program, up to the point of being in detriment to the securing and legalization of the Indian territories, demonstrate the modified but persistent constraints of the encompassing controlling framework. Observe the similarity of conception and execution of Rondon’s policy. Most importantly, perhaps, is that decision-making never really involved the local Indians, even if in recent years nominal consultations of the so-called community are becoming the norm. During all of this period, the projects appear as gifted (the verb as is used for example by Strathern), as if presents donated and handed down from obscure sources by the agency. In this view, the Indians are expected to thankful for the constructions and actions made for their benefit. With rare exceptions in recent times, they go on being treated as dependent, basically incompetent people, not as autonomous individuals capable of deciding their own future. All generations since 1942 are indoctrinated in this premise insisted on by most institutional employees (with rare exceptions).

In Aroeira, this phase appears to have resulted in a community that has thoroughly learned to be dependent on the outside initiative of periodically renewed beneficial programmes that are implemented on their land. They continue to be divided amongst themselves into ethnic factions as can be observed in the subdivisions of the village constructed around the main buildings. Most prominent among those main buildings is the house of the employee and the infirmary, which function as the village center and as the centripetal force that binds the area together. The centrality is underscored by the far better quality of these constructions in comparison to the Indian houses, symbolically expressing materialized domination. Scarce resources have been introduced in the form of paid jobs for Indians that have been appointed as education monitor (local community educator), lay teacher, or nurse. These positions are usually offered to people after they have completed a few courses. Just like in all communities, these jobs are political appointments because being indicated by the community means the outcome of a complicated process of negotiations that result in the political compromise between factions and influential people. Other sources of monetary income are rare. In recent years some Indians started to sell local food crops when, with the growth of the town of Vilhena, a local market arose. Several years ago a road was built that connects the village to the town, reducing the time of the trip to around twenty minutes. The city and its attractions, shops, healthcare and the FUNAI office are visited on a daily basis with the pickup driven by an Indian and maintained by the community. This is remarkable but also characteristic of the created contradictions: few or no community succeeded in managing their own car (given to the community in the course of a development program) for over ten years. Although the formal Aroeira leader once proudly told me that the community calls for a meeting to contribute in the costs of car maintenance, the Indians also regularly solicit FUNAI to help them out and even trick institutions that are involved in some aspect with official assistance in order to circumvent expenses for fuel or repairs[xxxii]. Despite all the projects, no reliable source of monetary income exists for the large majority of the village. In 2001 an apiary project was suggested by a Funai official. Although this garnered some initial enthusiasm, there was already growing disinterest and abandoning of the project. No sufficient and permanent economic articulation with the wider economic system occurred since the commencement of the projects. It is commented this causes individuals to pursue own their strategies. For example, a middle aged man with two or three wives sought marriage with a widow, almost to the point of literally forcing himself on her because she had the rare right to a monthly state pension[xxxiii].

Reactions to the research process in Aroeira
Simultaneously divided and unified, the people in Aroeira combine the wish for managing their own lives with the acceptance of dependency (and the manipulation of this dependency to their own advantage). The historical trajectory sketched in the previous section, now was to be followed by a more elaborate ethnographic examination. Unexpectedly, however, Antunes’ continued research of the Sabanê language and my own proposal met with certain problems. A short account of the events will illustrate some of the difficulties of fieldwork and the community’s troubles. In accordance with the FUNAI rules that require that the community agree with any form of research, the linguist, already had presented to the community his intention to study the Sabanê language. A correct and justified exigency, except that in reality the proposal normally cannot be presented by the researcher himself. Therefore, the approval by the native community very much depends on the way the FUNAI introduces the subject to them and how the FUNAI employee directly or indirectly expresses his consent or dissatisfaction. In our case, the FUNAI regional administrator (Ariovaldo dos Santos) openly favored the research and thus convinced the local people of the Funai to support granting the authorization. The helpful attitude is far from automatic as the Funai abounds in internal factional strife and the local employees usually entertain their own notions about the Indians and research, having their own agenda and interests[xxxiv]. The authorization was granted in a meeting of a local employee with the community. When Antunes arrived, the Indians assembled again and they discussed the question of who he would work with. The meeting indicated the informant by means of a political process, another mediation of the relationship with the outside and in which linguistic competence is not the only factor relevant to the outcome. Additionally, the Indians did not want him to live in the village. This was no problem and Antunes made regular trips to the area to start his research.

After the first authorization, FUNAI submitted the proposal of anthropological fieldwork and the community’s permission was granted. Much later I discovered that FUNAI had posed my request to do fieldwork as linguistic in nature instead of anthropological. In the second half of 2000, when all the field researchers of the Nambikwara languages Project made a very rapid visit to Aroeira, the Indians received us well but there was some distrust. A group of Manduka, together with a few affiliated others (mainly Tawaindê), were setting up a village near the border of the Pyreneus de Souza Area of Aroeira with the Nambikwara Indigenous Territory (the adjacent land to the east). The village was to be on the territory of Aroeira but much closer to their relatives who lived with the Kithaulu (on the other side of the boundary in the other territory). In fact, this was an attempt to recreate a more ethnically homogeneous Manduka village within the traditional occupancy of this people. One of these elders involved in the effort spoke to me and insisted that his village had not been consulted and had not granted any permission. I reassured him that we would remain in Aroeira and not venture to his village without authorization. He did not react negatively at the end of this conversation. During a later visit made with my colleague Telles, we were met with the same attitude. Again, I answered all of the questions of one of the native health agents, to whom I explained the kind of research I would do, the intended results, and the possible benefits for the community. He affirmed he understood my intentions and added that he had been asked to pass on the information to the elders. It seemed that the informal council did not really know what they had agreed to.

When I arrived in Vilhena to carry out a short period of fieldwork, I counted on the authorization already granted, which was never withdrawn. The community did not offer FUNAI any warning about a change in their position. The local employee had spoken to the Indians about my arrival and they had expressed intentions to hold a meeting on the subject, but even the employee considered this a formality. Whatever the community’s position may have been at this point, fortuitous contingencies interfered. An unfortunate incident complicated the situation. A child died in ominous circumstances, a fact which caused a profound discontent in the community and a flurry of accusations and rumors within the village. In accordance to a general feature of the culture shared by all of the peoples of the Nambikwara ensemble, the dead are feared, for one of the components into which a person disintegrates after death can threaten the living (for the components of the living and dead Nambikwara person see Fiorini 2000). Also, deaths are never natural but are generally conceived to be caused by human sorcery or shamanism (even within the local group; Fiorini 2000). In reaction to the child’s death, the villagers dispersed and all collective actions were interrupted. The Funai agent asked me for patience and naturally I waited for the meeting and did not visit the Area. When the atmosphere calmed, a politically active man was seriously wounded in another accident, he had to be taken to the hospital in Cuiabá for paralysis treatment. Once more, the commotion impeded any meeting. It seems people do not believe events like this to be ‘accidents’. After the incident I happened to meet the cacique whom I already knew. He assured me that he understood the nature of my work and did not present any possible complaint to me nor did he ask for any additional explanation. Time passed and Antunes arrived in Vilhena. Despite the lack of any clear negative signs, a certain apprehension clouded the mood. Firstly, the way the meeting was arranged implied that it related to the permission to do research, which to my knowledge already had been granted. Secondly, the native speaker of Sabanê previously indicated to be the language expert by the community had been expelled (in their view) from Aroeira. This episode was related to the activities of one of his sons. The latter had received training as a protestant missionary by Americans missionaries working with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (such people paved the way for linguistic fieldwork and set a standard for this kind of project). Aroeira was opposed to missionary activity in the village, effectively impeding the son’s residence there. When his father allowed his to son to conduct some religious activity, the reactions to the events increased his existing dissatisfaction with the general social and political situation. According to him, this culminated in his decision to move from the village. Partly, this friction derived from prior political dissensions, partly, presumably, it originated in his paid work as a language expert and the attention the Sabanê language received in comparison to the other native languages spoken by other factions.

There were no overt signs of any rejection of our research before the meeting. When the meeting finally began, after weeks of postponements, things began smoothly. Both Antunes and I answered numerous questions. There were a few unexpected questions. Some wanted to know why it took so long to do linguistic research and to write teaching material for school, and what would happen to the research results. Having heard about research as a way to easy wealth for the researcher himself, the suspicion was born that the researcher pretends to work for the common interest of the Indians in order to get results while his real objective is personal profit. Being after their linguistic secrets this would be yet another incident of Indian exploitation by Whites. Later on, someone insinuated that I might be lying about my intentions. I reacted in the typical Brazilian fashion, firmly denying the suggestion of dishonesty and expressing a strong opinion about any such underestimation of my good faith and sincerity. The person who made the implicit accusation withdrew his remark. The belief of the exploitative nature of research permeated the atmosphere. Indian Organizations in Rondônia and some FUNAI employees likely propagate such beliefs[xxxv]. Botanical studies, for example, may be used as a front for lucrative pharmaceutical studies. Indeed, the Indian who charged me with dishonesty suspected that this may be my true motivation for working in the area. This distrust is the consequence of the long history of exploitation that engenders a strong suspicion of the intentions of any White. When most of our answers seemed to satisfy the participants in the meeting, finally a younger man came up to me and confessed that, although the Indians present did not want to admit it, the community already had deliberated the day before and had decided not to allow the research in the village. This oblique way of indirect expression of negation, disapproval or dissension is characteristic of the Wasusu (Fiorini 2000)[xxxvi]. The whole event turned out to be something of a dramaturgical scene enacted as a frontstage act, apparently consenting to discuss the fieldwork, while the real decision had already been taken in the closed backstage, without any allowance of our case being heard and influence the outcome. After several hours of an actually senseless conversation, I attempted to address the revelation. I reminded the assembly that I assumed they had a moral obligation to us because of their previous assent which I considered a commitment. I told them that calling it off at last moment – after travelling so far and waiting for weeks – was unfair. Then a few apparently somewhat embarrassed Indians proposed a compromise at the end of this meeting. Among them the cacique who had refrained form participating in the previous discussions. Finally, a compromise was reached and it seemed as if we would be allowed to begin our work. The cacique warned us however that some people not present at this discussion would still have to be consulted. The outcome was not definite. The FUNAI employee finally arrived too, for some reason he had not thought it necessary to be present before, and with a clear lack of enthusiasm offered to help mediate the dispute.

We were not at all sure we finally convinced the assembly. We were right. In effect, we witnessed a mode of “impression management”. The meeting seemed to have been an attempt to avoid clear denials and direct confrontations while wanting to deny the wishes of the Funai and of a higher class member of the national society or of a foreigner. The next day the Funai agent asked for some elders to discuss the case again with him but they flatly refused to even speak with him. They alleged a breach of etiquette occurred during the meeting and that this incident had offended them. They said they found fault with the lack of respect to elders[xxxvii]. The next day the community sent a letter to the Funai in Vilhena, subscribed by a number of the villagers, explaining the decision to deny all access to the area and availing them of the same argument as the cause of this refusal. Not a word was said about the prior authorization, about the assembly held the day before the meeting itself, or anything regarding the real reasons for withdrawing the prior consent and rejecting our fieldwork proposal. This seemed an expedient and astute post factum front to avoid revealing the political background of the decision and to uphold the semblance of unity and the appearance of consensus. In reality there was no consensus, as some of them confided later to Indians living in the city or outside the Aroeira area, although no one publicly admitted dissension[xxxviii]. In retrospect, after speaking with several knowledgeable people like Manézinho, a series of factors in the situation probably conspired against our stay in the village. Not being familiar with the village or its people we could not have had any knowledge about these reasons. First of all, there was Manézinho’s particular political situation of conflict with the majority. Additionally, there is the strong suspicion that the other ethnic groups envied the study of the Sabanê languages as well as the money paid to the collaborator. The previous remark about the new village’s independence, not granting any consent, likely represents the Manduka opinion. Although there are a group small in number, they can appeal to the fact of being the area’s original inhabitants, the owners, and thus claim a voice in what otherwise might concern solely the Aroeira village or only one faction. The elder who questioned me at the previous opportunity is a Tawaindê, so an alliance between the two groups against the Sabanê may very well be the case. The factors of the circulation of money and prestige weigh heavily in a village with scarce means, much possible envy and disputes of prestige.

After the meeting ended, the same Tawaindê elder who had told me about the lack of consent of the new village and another older man called me to join them. Sitting on the floor, they asked in an easy conversational tone if the Aroeira Indigenous Territory was in danger of being disintegrated as Indian land. I reassured them that they had a constitutional right that may only be abolished under very special circumstances and those did not exist. The question in itself reveals the profound distrust for White institutions, which can hardly be surprising, shaped as it is by the historical trajectory of these peoples. This also underlines their lack of access to legal knowledge and rights. A deeply ingrained sense of distrust and suspicion of White society seems to surface in these events. The suspicions voiced about the rumors of exploitative research fall entirely within these expectations. This brief dialogue happened in all tranquility and even in a somewhat conspiratorial atmosphere, in sharp contrast with the rejection of our request to do research, the suspicions aroused by it and the alleged reason for refusal. Moreover, while we walked to the car, the elder complained that the FUNAI was not helping them enough and asked me to bring him some sacks for the storage of manioc flour. I told him that I could not do much but I would try to assist him when I returned to the village. This was the same person who refused to speak with the Funai employee the next day. Such behavior brings to mind frontstage behavior according to the template of a clientelism, a model of patronage in place ever since Espirro. Perhaps, soliciting the gift was either a test to see if more immediate tangible benefits could be obtained, or else a way of subtly suggesting that an avenue of negotiation could be explored by positing implicitly the necessity of more direct material gains. A request for more direct tangible reciprocity is an entirely possible interpretation. The commodification of culture, including language, is developing in the region: the neighboring Nambikwara later demanded a payment of 50 Reais (about 25 Euros at the time) for the registration of a comparative list of fifty words. When we did not take up their offer, they informed the neighboring Kithaulu that their community should claim the same kind of transaction. A visibly embarrassed Kithaulu school teacher told us that he did not agree with this demand, but that he had to bow to the exigency of the community. On arrival in the Kithaulu village, one man shouted from afar to ask whether the health employee that accompanied us, with many years of experience in the entire region, had come to sell the land. A long history of exploitation translates itself into a sweeping fear and mistrust[xxxix]. The ensuing silence here about the experience of Espirro is, naturally, a lamentable fact that in a way perpetuates the oppression suffered and, in a way, the lack of public voice is the very result of this traumatic experience[xl].

The process of Sabanê language loss and the prospects for the future
The political dissension with the majority that still pretended to achieve a complete consensus about the rejection of our request, widened the gulf with the community and the expelled elder, Manézinho. By association, Antunes and myself became increasingly associated with him. The man initially paralyzed by the accident used to stir up a lot of political unrest and his relations with the Sabanê elder deteriorated to the level of the latter negating his identity as Indian and expressing personal dislike (the younger man was born of one Indian parent and used to live outside any indigenous area). In fact, the political situation profoundly dissatisfied Manézinho for a much longer time and these disagreements also include troubles with other Sabanê. Within this vexatious framework, the personal interests of the so-called educational agents also possibly turned against Manézinho and the researchers. In the nineties some changes in the national policy towards indigenous peoples implemented new rules and created new appointments with the purpose of altering some basic parameters regarding indigenous education. One of the novelties is the indication of local Indians as educational agents (as low-level teachers), and, more recently, the employment of bilingual monitors to further native language education. Although the intentions of such an undertaking are very laudable, this effort is inadequate and does little to further bilingualism (see Part I). During the first years the appointed agents exercised their professional activities in the school built in the village center. At any rate, their activities did not represent any form of bilingual education or even the teaching of any the native languages in Aroeira. In recent years the pressures of the Ministry of Education and the State Educational Board for Indigenous Education resulted in the appointment of native language educational agents and design language courses. In accordance with his traditional inclination, Manézinho (and most or all elders) asserts to have been attempted to stimulate the existing agents to learn the Sabanê language and commence classes to teach the younger generations. This is all the more imperative as the generations born in Aroeira do not master the Sabanê language in a fully competent active manner. Manézinho pursued the agent in question with this purpose in mind, willing to teach him Sabanê. Despeite not speaking the language, he never took up the offer and Manézinho abandoned his efforts. Unexpectedly, only a short time before Antunes’ return and my own visit, he requested Manézinho teach him the language. After all this time of fruitlessly insisting upon the importance of the language and courses for the children, Manézinho refused. During the community meeting with us, this agent persisted in questioning us about the utility of our research. He did not seem very friendly and in questioning us, he continuously emphasized his official position (as many low level bureaucrats emphasize their importance when possible). His opposition was clearly expressed in the letter and most likely had to do with his being officially responsible for native language education. Perhaps, in some way he felt threatened in his position by the linguistic research.

Antunes’ research had already started, and now it was being jeopardized by a number of leading figures who imposed a consensus on the community. If the monitor seemed to be one of them, this has to do with the value attached to the language by outsiders, combined with the knowledge of the official re-evaluation of native languages by national and state authorities. Not being able to pursue any study of the language with Manézinho, the Sabanê agent should still be motivated to invest in learning his ancestral language by procuring other teachers. Such new interest and effort is very much needed. So far the educational facilities in Aroeira never have been put at the service of the any serious teaching of the various languages of the distinct peoples. On the other hand, the schools’ curriculum includes Portuguese and other more common subjects. In itself, if the fieldwork aided in stimulating this kind of reaction it is a novelty for almost the entire younger Sabanê generations, including the agents, in Aroeira. Therefore, the very presence of researchers with the means to engage collaboration in the study of the language may revitalize the younger generations’ interest in the native language. This positive effect did not preclude that the contingent conditions and interests of some factions and of particular Sabanê impeded the continuity of research in the village itself. The potential contribution to Sabanê language revival and maintenance, in the appraisal of the opponents, did not outweigh other negative factors[xli]. However, while prohibited to pursue the research in the Indigenous Territory, people in the town and elsewhere did not feel obliged to comply with such rulings. With some orientation of FUNAI in Vilhena, partially an equivocation, we searched for native speakers in town and ended up at Dona Teresa’s house. The Funai agent told us she was Sabanê, but she immediately clarified that she was Lakondê. However, having learned Sabanê at a very early age, she speaks this language as a native speaker. Feeling very sad about the demise of Indian languages in general, and the Lakondê as a people with their own language in particular, she accepted to teach us Indian languages and the former ways of living. As Manézinho, Antunes’ language informant, was temporarily unavailable, Antunes took this opportunity to continue his research and work with Dona Teresa.

In the beginning I worked jointly with Antunes and later I worked alone on my specific research. A delegation from Aroeira tried to dissuade her continued involvement but Dona Teresa also felt too strongly about the incurred losses, the lack of any records about her people, and she also had her own troubles with the villagers. Furthermore, she derived a great satisfaction in expressing her worries and lamentations about the loss of language and culture to an attentive audience. Manézinho, whom we encountered later on, immediately was prepared to continue his collaboration and did not intend to let the village dictate his actions. Most of the information about the Sabanê and Northern Nambikwara in this Part derive from the conversations with these two elderly persons[xlii]. Their first-hand knowledge can help researchers better assess the seriousness of the state of the Sabanê language. Antunes (with some involvement by myself) used his data to a map the linguistic competences of the current Sabanê people, especially those in Aroeira at the time, as that should be the optimal viable social ambience favoring language maintenance. The census following below thus derives from the Indians who are now on sometimes difficult terms with the people in Aroeira and do not live there any more. Manézinho and his wife, however, lived for a long time in the area and know all of its inhabitants very well. Dona Teresa also lived there and regularly visits the village and re-established contact after some avoidance by the Indians caused by her refusal to interrupt our lessons. Therefore, the general picture provides us with a fair estimate of the state of the language and the language shift occurring. It permits the expectation that it will likely be extinct soon if nothing happens to motivate their traditional speakers to take it up again and guarantee transmission to the non-speaking younger generations. The summary below substantiates this unfortunate assessment.

Please note that for simplicity, I include information in the following format: Name (estimated year of birth, languages spoken). All birthdates are approximations as they are notoriously difficult to ascertain exactly and may be subject to future revision. Also, I employ the following abbreviations for languages: Sab for Sabanê, Lak for Lakondê, Taw for Tawaindê, and Por for Portuguese. I also use M for male and F for female. The following summary provides indication of the process of the intergenerational transmission of the native language. It was organized by taking the members of the older generations and their conjugal families as the focus. Each point draws a conclusion about native language transmission.

Family 1

• Dona Teresa (1945, Lak, Sab, Por)
• White ex-husband (Por)
• Two children by ex-husband who speak only Por
• Sabanê current husband (1930, orig. Sab)
  • Although his mother tongue is Sab, after his parents died, he was raised by Whites. He now claims to have forgotten Sab (although he occasionally remembers the language)
  • Too old to be active in language transmission

• Adopted Indian daughter (Por)

Diagnosis: No transmission

Family 2

• Manézinho (1942, Sab, Por, Taw, Mamaindê)
• Wife (1960, Northern Nambikwara Sowaintê, Por, Sab)
  • She learned Sowaintê from her father, and was young was she learned Por. She acquired Sab as an adolescent.
• All children were born in Aroeira. All other children apparently only Por
• Oldest Son (passive Sab)
• One Daughter (active or semi-speaker of Sab)
  • Her son was exposed to Sab when living with grandparents, but he was pre-linguistic.
    • Her son is spoken to in Sab at night and may learn some but as they live now in the Tubarão area (see Part I), transmission may be difficult.

Diagnosis: Very deficient transmission with a slight chance of some maintenance in youngest generation.

Family 3

• M (1945 , native Sab, some Por)
  • Presently physically disabled; one of the oldest Sabanê alive in Aroeira
• Lakondê wife-1
• Son of father and his Lakondê wife (1962, Por, passive Sab)
  • Considered Sabanê.
  • He was born prior to their arrival in Aroeira and must have some Sab ability to communicate with his father.
• Sabanê wife-2 (1960, Sab, Taw, Lak, Por)
  • Just because parents are polyglots, does not ensure that the children born in Aroeira have fluency in an indigenous language.
• Children of father and Sabanê wife (various ages, Por, most have passive Sab although the youngest (1988) has very little ability)
  • One child married a Mussolini’s Tawaindê son and her children are Tawaindê.
  • Two sons married a Manduka and there children will be Sabanê but all speak only Por.

Diagnosis: Transmission only to passive Sabanê competence to the second generation and no transmission for those born in Aroeira.

Family 4

• Tawaindê man (Taw)
  • Community elder
• Sabanê wife
• Oldest Daughter (1960, Sab, Por, Lak)
• Sabanê son (before 1970, mainly Por)
  • Son married to two women:
    • Wife1 (1970) mixed parentage (mother Lakondê, father Sabanê)
      • Children are Sabanê, but Portuguese speakers
        • The eldest already have children who are also Sabanê, but Portuguese speakers
      • Wife2, much younger, also mixed parentage (mother Lakondê, father Tawaindê)
    • Adopted Sabanê son (1970, Por)
      • Married Manézinho’s daughter (family 2)
        • All children only speak Por
      • This man spoke of his desire to learn Sab. As he has often heard the language, this may be possible, but it seems he has made no real effort to enlist the help of his father-in-law Manézinho. He is not officially engaged in education

Diagnosis: Transmission to children born prior to, but not after, moving to Aroeira. There is a slight possibility that the adopted Sabanê son may aid in recuperation.

Family 5

• The eldest son of the older couple in family 3
• The polyglot daughter from family 4
  • Although both speak Sab (he understands it), none of their children can.
  • The first child was born in 1980 in Aroeira.
  • All children speak only Por.

Diagnosis: No transmission.

Family 6

• Sabanê M (±1955, Sab, Taw, Mamaindê, some Por)
  • This elder was one of the few who remained in Espirro after 1968.
  • Father of the current cacique (as of 2001)
    • This suggests the tendency for leadership to be passed on, as this son is the grandchild of a famous cacique.
  • Sabanê (?) wife (1960)
    • This woman is the daughter of the murdered captain Paulo.
    • Generally she is considered as part of the Sabanê group, but some of the older people consider her to be of Sowaintê ascendancy.
  • Son (1973, Por)
    • Cacique has two wives:
    • Tawaindê Wife1
    • Sabanê Wife2
      • All children speak Por.
    • This son’s sister is married to the cacique’s brother-in-law (Por)
      • This husband (the cacique’s brother-in-law) has a Tawaindê mother and only came to live in the Indigenous Territory as an adult. This is the injured man

Diagnosis: No transmission

Family 7

• Sabanê woman (1956 Sab, Taw, Por)
• Tawaindê husband
• Sabanê children (the first of whom was born in 1972)
  • All children and grandchildren are monolingual Por speakers.

Diagnosis: No transmission

Family 8

• Sabanê man (1975 Por)
  • Mixed parentage: Lakondê mother, Sabanê father
  • Has two Tawainde sisters for wives
  • All children speak only Por.

Diagnosis: No transmission.

Family 9

• Sabanê (?) Mother (Lak, Por)
  • Sabanê father, Lakondê mother
  • Window of a Sabanê
  • One of the few good Lak speakers aside from Dona Teresa (her maternal aunt MZ)
• Brother1 (1971 Por)
  • Married to two Tawaindê
  • Tawaindê children
• Brother2 (1981 Por)
  • Married to Mamaindê
  • Sabanê children speak only Por
• Younger siblings of brothers speak only Por.

Diagnosis: No apparent transmission

Family 10

• Sabanê woman (1953 Sab, Taw, Lak, Por)
  • Sabanê mother, Negarotê father
• Tawaindê husband
• All children are Tawaindê.

Diagnosis: No transmission

Family 11

• Sabanê woman (1930 Sab, passive Por)
  • Oldest Sabanê woman living in Aroeira
  • Rarely leaves her home
  • Widow of the last Lakondê leader, Dona Teresa’s shaman brother.
• Children show the diachrony of language shift.
  • Eldest daughter (Sab, Por) married a White and then (after a divorce or becoming a widow) another.
    • Lives away from Indigenous Territories in the town of Pimenta Bueno and thus she lost most contact to the Sabanê and it is unlikely that her children will learn Sab.
  • Son 1(1962 Por, likely passive Sab)
    • Wife 1 (1965, Por, passive Sab)
    • Children all monolingual Por speakers
  • Son 2(1965 Por)
    • Married into the regional society and is not involved in indigenous life.

Diagnosis: Note that the first generation are speakers of the Indigenous language, the second has some degree of bilingualism, and the third is generally monolingual in Por. This points to language shift and no transmission.

This summary appraisal of the year 2000 provides the basic map of the Sabanê language in Aroeira and includes Manézinho’s family. Although they live outside of this particular indigenous area they maintain close ties to the village. Some information is be lacking but the overall tendency of language shift is obvious. Members of the younger generation are sometimes only mentioned in passing and a few have been omitted for simplicity and to avoid redundancy. All the of youngest generation are native speakers of Portuguese. Thus it is unnecessary to enumerate them. There remains the question of the important amount of Sabanê who live in the town of Vilhena (or in the region and in Rondônia). Two or three of the older people in this situation may be native Sabanê speakers. This dispersal draws away a relevant number of possible native speakers and very likely augments the number of Portuguese speakers in the more recent generations. A few of the latter group probably were on the way to complete assimilation but are now registered on a list of the Funai office. Although the people living in Aroeira know them, the Sabanê and their descendants in town and in the region tend to be immersed in the regional society. Pending further research, these people do not play a major role in language maintenance as Portuguese dominates and their network of social relations with Indians does not seem to be intense enough to counteract the dispersal (for example, living in different parts of the town adds to the material costs of relationship maintenance). Given that in the Indian village the shift is evident, in the town, where conditions probably demand a higher level of commitment to the traditional language for its maintenance, the demise of the Sabanê language is even more likely.

The survey permits some further observations. The oldest generations of Sabanê mainly consists of native Sabanê speakers, most of whom learned another Nambikwara language or Portuguese as a second (or even third) language. The habit of learning the native language first and a disposition to multiple language acquisition was very strong in this period. I noted above that several people born around 1960 still acquired more than one language, although there is already an exception to this generalization. The oldest members of the generation born in Aroeira are thought of as native speakers of Portuguese only. In fact, as expected from a linguistic situation in transition, when the older generations still speaks one or several languages marriages between Sabanê partners or mixed marriages between Sabanê and non-Sabanê partners may contribute to the maintenance of active or passive knowledge of the traditional language. Manézinho’s standards are high and, therefore, in his sense, all the generations born in Aroeira are not fully competent Sabanê speakers. However, at other moments, when he relaxes his austere norm, he sometimes concedes some limited measure of competence to the older part of the those born in Aroeira, like, for example, in the case of the cacique. Dona Teresa does the same. In other words, the generation that now has growing children (a few already have grandchildren) posses a certain familiarity with the language that could facilitate an eventual learning process. In principle, all accounts agree upon the fact that their children definitely do not enjoy this advantage and to them the implementation of a Sabanê language teaching program would be equivalent to learning a second, a foreign language. The measure to which the last generation has been exposed to native languages remains uncertain. Hence, if exposed to native language use by grandparents or, very occasionally, by their parents, the acquaintance with the sounds and perhaps the knowledge of a few words may occur. Additionally, this situation has only been ascertained indirectly and so there is still the possibility of an unexpected surprise. A more profound sociolinguistic research would have to take into account observation of linguistic interaction within the context of daily life, language proficiency tests and a more long term perspective (Dorian 1980). Nevertheless, the possibility of some fortunate surprise aside, the result of the survey is probably fairly accurate. To illustrate, Manézinho once used Sabanê to ask a young man returning from a hunt what he caught. The question “what did you hunt” was met with a blank stare.

The practice of interethnic marriages diminished the possibility of Sabanê language transmission. As the cases above show, the marriage with White men is consistently detrimental to the native language. A positive attitude towards their own and other native languages precluded the falling into disuse of the Sabanê language until the sixties. It was around this time that Portuguese became the language of contact with the increasingly impinging surrounding regional society but it did not yet not predominate absolutely in the sphere of internal interactions (where, in analogous cases, native languages were also still being learned). The traditional point of view about multilingualism was driven home by an important Tawaindê elder (according to my notes, this is likely Federico) who on our first visit to Aroeira candidly expounded: you must know languages to explain yourself to other peoples in order to be able not to go to war with them (approximate transcription). According to the template of alliance, in order to establish real friendship some people of each distinct group begin to learn the other’s language. In a way this is what happened to Portuguese, tying an alliance with the people of Rondon implied learning their language. In this sense, Brazilian Portuguese did not pose a threat to the original languages. The reciprocal occurrence of the Whites learning any Indian language never happens and the normal Brazilian attitude is to regard the Indian languages as primitive, possibly not even fully human. They believe that they are of too little value and mostly too difficult to bother. All in all, these inferior languages are considered to be superfluous and not worthy of any effort of preservation. Afonso França did not prohibit the native languages in Espirro but it is unlikely that he held them in any high esteem and it is certain that all interactions with the inferior Indians were in Portuguese. The tappers present in the Indigenous Territory disdained the indigenous languages, a feeling that the Indians doubtlessly noticed. The labor regime did not prohibit the native languages and overall sociocultural change, except work discipline, did not seem to be that high on the agenda. Yet it is obvious that the most common language of all was Portuguese, the lingua franca used for economic and social purposes in the social center. It also became the language of domination and the language which the reality of colonial rule promoted as the superior language. The decade of the sixties was a crucial phase for the language shift and the fate of Sabanê. After the arrival of the road, the dismantlement of the telegraph station, the epidemics, the end of the autonomous village(s) and the abrupt ending of the camp regime generated the fragmentation of indigenous social life and an elevated degree of contact with the booming and increasingly overwhelming regional society. In the 1970s the encirclement of Rondon was more than finished, its effects multiplied and the impact of the colonization of Rondônia became more strongly felt.

In the end, the Northern Nambikwara and the Sabanê lost all their original lands and went to live in Aroeira, the homeland of a Southern Nambikwara group, the only place where these diverse peoples united to create an Indian village (to put it in Brazilian geographical terms, they were expelled from Rondônia and exiled in Mato Grosso). The relocation in Aroeira also signified a flight or a retreat from the insecurity resulting from the pressures and heightened contact with the encompassing regional society. The choice of accepting the offer of the Nambiquara Project derived from the larger framework of the expropriation of their lands. The Indians probably perceived this forced alienation as an inescapable fact. If the people in the Seringal do Faustino officially were on someone else’s land, the people in Marco Rondon may also not have been certain about their land rights[xliii]. Furthermore, the extended duration of a variant of conquest and colonial rule of the sociocultural and economic development regime that many Sabanê and Northern Nambikwara suffered left as its structural effects previously unknown notions about the world and new sociocultural dispositions. This long term context with the inculcation of the social classification of the opposing ethnic groups with the pair superiority/inferiority was reinforced by the metal instruments (and more violently by the metal parts of the shotgun). The ‘Ax People’s’ imposition of sociocultural superiority is a necessary condition for the comprehension of the language shift among the generations born in Aroeira. Take as an example Manézinho, his spouse, and their children raised in Aroeira. This was one of the few families where both parents spoke Sabanê. Both parents reiterated on various occasions that they attribute a great importance to their cultural tradition and native language. Their children perhaps perform some degree of language competence, the best being possibly a semi-speaker. This compares favorably with similar families. They actively promote maintenance (like with their grandchild) combined with the general disposition to multilingualism (of which they are the very example). They confessed being disappointed with their children’s competency. Not even with the retraction within the sphere of the family, functioning as a separated context of domestic language maintenance, did the parents retain the capacity to resist the external pressures. The domestic domain was ineffectual to full traditional language maintenance. One of the children’s answers to the mother’s push to learn Sabanê was to say that it is too difficult. They are not convinced by their mothers’ argument that she herself learned Sabanê as a second language from her stepmother when she was a young. In fact, this answer resembles the stereotype circulating in the national society about the complexity of Indian dialects, reinforced by belief that these are not worth the investment in time and energy. It bespeaks of the influence of national stereotypes within the natural locus of the language maintenance of languages other than the predominant national language.

Manézinho also holds his cultural heritage in high regard. For example, although he is not a practicing shaman anymore, he still exercises some shamanic powers. One such ability includes dreaming to visit to other places, a skill that allows him to investigate the health situation of people far away. He recounted the myths and other histories to his children, with the provision that he did not have a complete knowledge of the repertoire of stories or the complete version of these myths. Perhaps in some of the myths an additional explanation may be found about the apparent efficacy of outside definition of the native language as inferior. After all, research reveals that children up to seven easily absorb two languages as native speakers[xliv]. Therefore, the parent’s disposition to language maintenance and multilingualism could have produced a bilingualism in separated spheres of social interaction. Apart from the external impingement of inferiority of language and culture, it would be logical that some elements of the traditional Sabanê culture provide an internal dimension of the transformation (Gow 2001). One of the myths Manézinho told his children refers to a concept that may elucidate some of the internal conceptions at play. It is a myth about the origin of animals where some trace of the indigenous notion of transformation may be discerned (edited here for clarity from two versions; even so, again, sometimes the subject referred to is unclear):
 Some young adults used to go visit the neighboring village of an old man and enjoy food like meat and fish, just like in the old days up to now. Well, not really until now, today they don’t do that any more, those people in Aroeira seem to have turned into Whites already. When one lives in the forest, one hunts a lot, catches fish, collects honey, there are these good things, that is the way it used to be[xlv].

Let’s go and get a necklace. The two young men went to take a bath with the two beautiful young granddaughters of the old man but they were smart and did not sleep with them. If you slept with them you would became drunk, tipsy, and then he [the old man] would kill and eat you. The young men stayed for the feast but they did not fall asleep. If you slept you would die. They killed [the guests] for eating, even if they hunted [too] because they were shameless. At night the men ate, got a necklace, and went home. Another man observed them but they did not tell anyone about the visit [in their own village]. Then the other man [from the village of the young men] made up his mind to go by himself. When he went to bathe with the girls, he slept with them and he went sleepy, quite weak, and the people [of the other village] said, well, we are already in for it. The old man was glad. He told some stories by the fireside and the other man laid down his head to rest on the buttocks of the old man[xlvi]. When the young man slept, they took a pestle and cut his neck. Everybody joined in, happy, and went to the plaza. There were many people and so they cut him into small pieces and ate all of him. The two villagers observed that this man did not return and knew that he had gone to other village without saying anything and had been eaten. When it was around midday, they went to the other village again. They liked to go around visiting, gathering feathers, eating. When they arrived the other man really had been killed. The old man was beating the bones to pulverize them, to eat the powder with manioc cake. He hid the bones and they talked. By this time the girls had already gone to the forest out of shame, out of fear. What are you eating? Nothing, I am just playing, cracking nuts. Where are the others? Ooh they went to gather patawa palm fruits. Well I want them to gather lots and to turn into animals [seems to be visitors speaking]. After talking, they left and went to get something to eat. When they were chewing something like meat and manioc cake in the houses they hear toc toc toc. Then one said to the other, let’s turn them all into animals, put them out [out of the village into the surroundings]. When they returned to the old man, the old man ran out into the savanna and turned into a seriema [a bird that lives and runs on the ground]. Go and run, from now on your food shall be grasshoppers [injunction by the visitors who now are the subjects who direct all actions]. They went up to the sit on the main beams of the house and one blew fuuu towards the Indians in the forest and they called them to the village. He blew on all of them, fuuu [this sound indicates blowing tobacco smoke, a shamanic act], they turned into animals, I don’t want anyone around here anymore. The other one told him to blow into the heart, all of them had eaten this other man. They called them to the village but they already were animals, tapir, pigs, anteater, monkeys, everyone from the village, without exception. The monkey first was people. The young men were intelligent, both were shamans, they transformed them into animals, snake, jaguar, all kinds. From the village they all spread out, you go that way and you that way to go and live in the wild. Before there were no animals in the wild.

These people were all turned into animals. Everyone with his name, they told them their names. I will tell this rapidly [an example about the process naming and the determination of each one’s food]. A bee. His name, to make chicha for a feast [chicha is a special drink known in other parts of Amazonia as caxiri or caissoma]. Aah, I want them to make lots of honey. I too want to drink honey [one of the people to be transformed]. They misled him, he turned into an irara. You shall eat only honey [this is a weasel-like animal that loves honey]. He yelled two times to call them and a little later they arrived, the tapir in front, everyone arrived filling up the plaza. When they were all gathered on the plaza, they sent them all on their way. You shall eat filth, rotten things, raw patawa [a palm], all sorts of ants, that’s what you shall eat. Don’t be shameless anymore. They were transformed and never will turn into humans again. He told each what to eat. They went away, the young men descended and returned to their village. This is what my father told me.[xlvii]

The myth deals with the internal sociocultural parameters of what constitutes disapproved conduct and the consequences of such behavior. The key notion that transforms the villagers into animals (in the case of the girls even before the action of the two shamans from the other village), is shame. In these small scale communities the major force of social control is usually conveyed by the public opinion and the threat of ostracism. Shunning someone implies in the negation or retrieval of recognition of the other as a person, a social persona, the ignoring of his social existence or even his presence (particularly within the kin group; see, for example, Fiorini 2000: 100-1; 105). Shame signifies here the assumption by the perpetrator that the conduct broke an injunction and anticipates the public rejection and withdrawal of approval. Shame is more generally thought of as to contain an emotional content of “(…) a kind of lowering of one’s own feeling of self-worth. Ashamed of oneself as a result of having one’s action rejected, one experiences oneself as being of lower social value than one had previously assumed”(Honneth 2001: 44). Or as Marx (1975: 200) already observed in 1843: “Shame is a kind of anger turned in on itself”. This shame can concern oneself but essentially is produced in interaction with others. Although in the story the old man of the myth does not seem very sensitive to the moral norm, all the others retreat into the forest. Old people among the Valley Nambikwara are considered to be closer to the spirits, on a continuum between old age and the world of the spirits. The old people may consume foods not eaten by young people (Fiorini 2000). Thus, if, as is likely, the same idea prevails here, in a sense the old man is already less human. His transformation is, in a way, to be expected, but, by remaining in the village, he seems to feel less shame than others.

While the Nambikwara of the Guaporé Valley, and in particular the Wasusu, do not socially value the enfeebled elderly, they do treasure their knowledge. The old are seen as being ambivalent humans, less human than the young are. For the younger people, vigorous and fully human, the mythical template attributes shame to the consumers of human flesh and this subsequent shame of the villagers induces them to a lower self-esteem that precedes their transformation into animals. In this myth, shame is associated with transformation into another ontological being. Interestingly, the concept of shame, or in Portuguese, vergonha, is a relevant issue in Brazilian, Portuguese, and Mediterranean culture, and recurs in the literature. In these cases, shame intertwines with notions like honor in a configuration of concepts that mutually determine each other’s significance. The Sabanê lack such a sociocultural semantic configuration but the possibility of the analogy and the translation of the Sabanê concept with this word by Manézinho in Portuguese is quite interesting. An important difference is likely to be that shame, like the personal actions taken because of it in the myth, is personal and no one is responsible for the shame of someone else. If the notion prevails that every person is responsible for himself – as noted in myths and history (see also Part III) – than individual action causes shame and may lead to collective shaming and shunning of a particular person (Kensinger 1995: ch. 5). Shunning and social ostracism entails the same exclusion from collective social life as turning into animals[xlviii]. It does not seem accidental that the most frequent answers by elders about the reason for their children not learning the traditional languages is that they are ashamed. Speaking Sabanê might be like the audible token of transformation into an inferior being, of being like the animals today; those beings have their own characteristic sounds but have lost the use of human language. And, as this is the personal experience of the young people, the individual will not be prevailed upon by the elders.

It is not totally clear how and why the language is continually understood to be inferior within this Indian village. It is uncertain what are all of the reasons that such negative message affected the domestic sphere or, in general, the Indian backstage. Some reasons may be adduced. From the beginning in Aroeira the language of contact was Portuguese. In that sense it always was the dominant language of the Post, of the symbolic and material core of the Indian Land and of the people who had provided the opportunity to build a village here. This was the place and the language of the buildings of the Funai and of the goods and commodities regularly distributed as donations or under the guise of projects. The education started in this period only employed the dominant language. Portuguese was the language associated with power, with the mediation with the external powers, and it gained further ascendancy with the completion of the encirclement: the transformation of all of the physical and social landscape around the Indigenous Territory into towns and large farms. The Indians even had to struggle for a while to remove invaders from the reserved area. Also, the village gained a much easier access to town facilitated by the donation of a car. Portuguese in all of this period must have appeared to the younger generations born in the village as the language of dominance and prestige. It was a language full of potential for their personal future, contrary to the traditional languages. The overwhelming material power of the dominant outsiders and their disdain for the indigenous culture, ultimately led to the feeling of inferiority, which is, also according to students of another continent, at the basis of their resistance towards the maintenance of the language of their parents: “The decision to abandon the own language always derives from a change in the self esteem of the community” (Brenzinger, M., B.Heine and G.Sommer 1991: 42). However, this conclusion still is contradictory with the prestige attached to tradition and language by the elders which is still visible today. All elders in Aroeira, as far as known to us, are traditionally minded and stress the necessity of their cultural and linguistic heritage, even when this is to be realized in the new setting within which the multifaceted community now finds itself constrained. Other observations indicate that the same process of linguistic loss happens among the Tawaindê[xlix]. Among the Manduka, as commented upon by our interlocutors, language extinction appears to be immanent.

The preliminary impression one gets from the political process as it takes place within the community testifies to a predominant role of the informal council of elders. As in the case of the consult about anthropological fieldwork (by a man with daughter going through seclusion), the younger men, even when officially the appointed leaders, always defer to the opinion reached by the old men. If this is true, the predominant influence of the oldest men stands out as deviant from the normal pattern of Nambikwara leadership. Normally the old men partake of the ambivalence of the prestige of knowledge and the devalued physical vigour and the leaders are the younger mature competent men of vitality and vivaciousness (see Part III). Maybe the fragmented and complicated nature of the different people’s history explain this predominance[l]. Be that as it may, in this sense the language death in course is more remarkable as it happens against the wishes of the old people: a change contrary to their desires is not comprehensible by external factors alone, although in one similar case a much more thorough analysis of the general sociocultural premises and actual behavior explained why this could occur (Kulick 1997)[li]. The message of the myth and the pressure exerted by shame provides an additional social force to the external coercion to speak Portuguese well. In a way, the younger generation thus imitates a template of transformation: being ashamed of being a backward Indian, of speaking an inferior language, and being sensitive to the risk of speaking a broken Portuguese with Brazilians. Speaking the Portuguese language well relieves, in the eyes of the regional society, the Indian of a salient part of his negative stigma. Not to mention the practical fact that fluent mastery diminishes the risk of being deceived and tricked. The Sabanê’s history is replete with various manifestations of reprehensible disrespect. Perhaps most serious is the physical abuse they suffered (a concept particularly foreign to a people who never so much as hit their children). One may suppose such invasion of the person and his autonomy to affect one’s confidence in oneself. There was also the moral disrespect in the negation of land rights and structural domination as well as the evaluative disrespect as evident in the belittling of their way of life and attendant language (Honneth 2001). Shame sums up the situation of the extraneous attack on the value of one’s self and its primordial identification with a people. It is a sentiment that causes a palpable generational gap between those who grew up before contact and those who did after. Being a native Portuguese speaker partially resolves the search for the experience of social recognition as a human being. This accomplishment elevates the status of the speaker because he performs at the same level as his interlocutor. A common phrase like he is Indian but speaks Portuguese well, attests to this partial recuperation of esteem and self-esteem. It certainly takes away the shame of not being able express oneself properly in the dominant language. In effect, speaking Portuguese well avoids not just a source of shame but eliminates one of the foremost chances to suffer humiliation in interaction with regional Brazilians. One of the worst effects caused by colonial conquest and domination is a mode of repression and cultural alienation that generates a particular kind of shame: (…) those who, subjected to whatever form of symbolic domination, are doomed to this supreme form of dispossession that is the shame of the self” (Bourdieu 2004: 619).

Perhaps we can extend this analysis. Anthropophagy denotes treating humans as game, eating the wrong food, as if the human Sabanê neighbors were animals to be killed and eaten. This equation in fact concerns an error of perspective because human beings hunt and consume animals and never mistake humans for game whereas animals eat other animals. A very common assumption in Indian societies concerns the shared tenet that personhood is produced through the consumption of determinate foods and it comprises a very salient dimension in the production of bodily substance. The food consumed thus constructs the substance of the person and “you are what you eat” (but you do not eat what you are). Consuming humans is the consumption of one’s own kind and thus incompatible with social life. Hence the solution in the myth to flee to the forest and the intervention by the shamans transforming the faulty people into animals (note that this occured in the time when humans and animals were not neatly separate and animals were still both human/animal Persons)[lii]. The result of the myth avoids the consumption of identity and restores the essential difference between consumer and consumed. Then the shamans condemned the flawed humans to be transformed into non-humans and determined that they shall eat only their own inferior foods. This transformation implies transubstantiation, a change in internal substance; effectively highlighting the strict correlation between what one is and what one eats. Eating different food literally substantiates a new bodily substance of the animals, liberating their flesh to be fit for human consumption. The food consumed is a fundamental statement of the kind of being one is. This is exactly what Manézinho said in his critique about Aroeira in his prelude to the myth, to him hunting and consuming game is essential to the very being of a Sabanê, even to being Indian. The Whites, by comparison, are composed of their dietary staples, rice and beans (and meat from domestic animals), and as the Aroeira Indians are similarly nourished, they become less Indian. Poor in game, as is Aroeira, means being poor in proper food of the traditional way of life. From the time of Espirro, the Indians consume much Brazilian foods and the notion of food applies here too to the non-traditional foods (as seen above in Part I). Despite his childrens’ preference for Brazilian fare, Manézinho opts for the traditional diet of game and manioc in line with the substantive logic of his sociocultural origin.

According to the myth’s logic, shame impels a massive transformation into another external bodily form; and changed food habits could be indexical to transubstantiation, the change of the internal content. Accordingly, in the actual flow of life of the subjectivity of the people in Aroeira transpire elements that characterize them as transformed in the direction of the image of what it means to be White. The adoption of the Portuguese language in this way might be interpreted as the most significant feature of a transformation along the parameters set by Sabanê culture. On the other hand, this remains an uncompleted transformation, unlike the origin of animals who are beings at a position of one degree removed from mankind. Assimilation, in the sense of the dissolution of difference, is out of the question. Unlike the mythical fluidity of former times the Whites do not change their iron nature and the Indians are socially in a double bind. Even though they adopted Portuguese and in their own cultural sense modified their nature, diminishing the cultural distance with the regional society and reducing the visibility of the outer signs of stigmatization, the Whites refuse to consider them equals: for them the substantial nature of indianidade did not change and the Indians remain others. Worse, while the extinction of native languages has always been actively pursued, when a group switches to the Portuguese language, they become vulnerable to the charge of not being sufficiently Indian, and unworthy of the State assistance and protection.

For Aroeira this danger is less than has been verified historically for the Indians in the Northeast of Brazil but the accusation is never far away (Reesink 1983). The danger of interruption is less for a number of cultural practices, especially religious conceptions and rituals persist and may serve as diacritical features (despite a prior decline observed by the Sabanê of the seclusion of girls reaching menstruation, a practice being partially reassumed; cf. Price 1989a). As for the Sabanê side, maybe the hypothesis about the conception of an uncompleted transformation needs a complement too. In spite of the transformational processes construed, the final conception of themselves might not be a notion of the complete transformation into another being. In fact, the people in Aroeira still hunt and, as far as I know, still love to eat game. Game, as noted, is the primary food of human beings. Possibly, if the opportunity presented itself, people prefer to consume foods like rice and beans in combination with game (as the Latundê). Game is now especially hunted for rituals, like at the occasion of the exuberant meals of the young woman’s first night after ritual seclusion. Such observations could imply a preference for the consumption of the key symbolical foods of both peoples (game and beans; in the next Part I will discuss the Southern Nambikwara denomination of the Whites as the Bean People). Perhaps, then, the actual conception is not only one of no total transformation but of the partial transformation into Whites while retaining some aspect of Sabanê identity. This leads to the new prevailing possibility of simultaneously being Sabanê and White. Viewed in the larger context, the hypothesis matches a larger sociocultural perspective on Indian societies which lends some weight to its confirmation.[liii]. When Manézinho characterized the Indians in Aroeira as no longer Indians, he may be emphasizing one part of the equation. It is interesting to note that while the assertion matches the Whites’ type of accusation, the symbolic premises differ profoundly. The existence of identical concepts like shame in the two languages is very unlikely. Such a translation may mask the true meaning of each concept. Concepts signify in the context of their respective symbolic logic and these differ greatly from one another. Although it is possible or even likely the Indians and the Brazilians think they are saying the same word with the same meaning and connotations, they are not. The use of Portuguese may facilitate communication but it still may be partially miscommunication.

When the Sabanê ex-captain who led the construction of Aroeira, Manézinho, complained about the indianidade of his former community, this must be seen as the expression of longstanding dissatisfaction with the course of events in the village. One of the consequences of uniting fractions of different peoples in the same community is that the subsequent demographic recuperation enlarges the population far beyond the normal pre-contact standards, which averaged around 25 to 30 people per village, with the possible exception of larger Sabanê villages in the remoter past. Such quantitative concentration creates tension that adds to the ethnic oppositions. The official Aroeira cacique, Paulo, once proudly told me that around 220 people live in Aroeira, the majority of whom are considered Sabanê. Rumors and gossip flourish in this sort of environment, often with negative consequences, as occurred after the death of the child mentioned earlier. Some of the gossip accused the mother of negligence. Such occurrences contributed to a gloomy public mood that did not predispose the community to accept outside strange visitors. Manézinho dislikes this crowded atmosphere, the frictions caused by different ethnic origins and the resulting convoluted politics. Overall, he disapproved of the current living situation in this village. This, added to the poor ecological conditions of an area that puts the Sabanê on foreign territory, was an impetus of his plan to return to his homeland. The land of his birth, youth, and the territory of his people called him back after a prolonged exile. After moving out of Aroeira this project assumed a further significance. Backed up by his son living in town, he got Funai to negotiate a return to the land between the Roosevelt and Tenente Marques Rivers[liv]. This land already is the southernmost tip of the Aripuanã Indigenous Park occupied by Sabanê’s customary enemies, the Cinta Larga. At the time of my fieldwork, the prospects of succeeding were fairly good but still uncertain (in 2001). In reality this vision encompasses a design for a Sabanê revival. It was not just a return to land where his father and grandfather died, and where he was born, a land that he rightfully apprehends as his homeland from which only the adverse circumstances of history drove him away but, simultaneously, envisioning a Sabanê community that not just reclaims the land but also recreates a viable, ethnically Sabanê, village. In other words, if realized it signifies the rebirth of a predominately Sabanê village in traditional Sabanê territory[lv].

It is unclear how such events may influence the future. The timid signals captured in Aroeira to improve Sabanê language competence both on individual and on a educational basis are insufficient to expect language revival. The “dead weight of history” (to use another famous expression) suggests that the sediment of many years of domination and language shift cannot be undone without a very strong internal counterforce and an impulse from the same dominant society. The major risk is that the bilingual education now actively stimulated is not geared to turn the language into a living language but into a decorous usage of a vocabulary, with perhaps a few catch phrases, subordinated to the impression management of being dutiful teachers and real Indians[lvi]. Still, the new settlement in the old Sabanê territory could create a entirely new situation if a few of latest native speakers contribute to a critical mass of speakers to keep the language alive. Manézinho and his wife serve as an example in educating their grandson during his stay in their house. Unfortunately, a series of factors militate against such a positive outcome: some kind of Sabanê linguistic and cultural revival embedded within the lived micro-world of everyday life of a Sabanê village. Although initially the Aroeira community decided to participate in the return from exile and important families promised to relocate to the Roosevelt River, the plans fell through after some political complications that dangerously increased the rift between Manézinho and the community (mid-2002; personal communication by Antunes). When the community decided to disallow the research, they took the trouble to visit Dona Teresa and Manézinho (both of whom lived outside the village). Both refused to take this advice and this further strained relations, but not irreversibly. The different life experiences in White society prepared them to look with a different eye and, autonomously, to pursue their own agenda. Later, further tensions led to a break that represented a near-rupture in ties. For some time only very few families and individuals from Aroeira still adhered to the project of founding the new village and some of them were not Sabanê. Some of the children and families of the leader were amongst those engaged and scheduled to participate.

Prospective exercises comprise the attempt to projection along the lines of various probabilities. For the moment I assume as the most likely scenario that the conditions arousing the interest in the Sabanê language are very unlikely to produce more than a revival of Sabanê as a symbolically significant language in interethnic relations, as a token of indianidade, but not as a fully socially operative living language. Manézinho almost single-handedly pursued his dream of the Sabanê village, believing in its feasibility. For a time the leading couple was homeless, later on they lived on and cultivated a piece of land adjacent to the Aripuanã Park bordering the Roosevelt. Here they decided on the site of the new village within the limits of the Indian Land. In August or September 2002 they transferred to the Indigenous Park and began building their house and felling trees for gardens in order to settle definitively in their homeland. With their firm intent and the support of the Funai now (end of 2002, beginning of 2003) the new village promises to be a permanent settlement. Several unfolding scenarios are now possible. The future of the language is largely tied in with the ability of the Sabanê couple to attract other Sabanê speakers and aggregate these people into a viable village[lvii]. The problem concerns not so much the existence and permanence of the village, after a slow start the increasingly favorable conditions encouraged a number of families to join. The chances of survival of Sabanê depend, however, on the presence of Sabanê Indians and the capacity of these people to speak the traditional language. The village may prosper in its own specific way, but the effect of this success for language maintenance still may not suffice. A situation inducive to language maintenance demands a reasonable group, a social core of older Sabanê speakers amidst the majority of non-speakers, of passive or partially competent speakers. The language must be spoken in daily life, reinforcing any favourable attitude towards the perpetuity of peoples’ linguistic and cultural heritage. The renaming of this village from Roosevelt to Sowaintê signifies the aspiration to place the new village as the successor of the villages encountered by Rondon and an attempt to shape the future with the memory of the past.

Unfortunately, Antunes observed in the course of recurrent visits at the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003, no ‘critical mass’ of Sabanê native speakers exists and the language is hardly spoken in the normal interactions of daily life. Little communication in the native language takes place when any non-speakers are present and, consequently, the Portuguese language is the easiest and most efficient medium of expression understood by all participants. Therefore, up until today the sociocultural conditions exclude a reversal of language loss among the younger generations. The objective of language maintenance necessitates additional appropriate measures to raise the prestige attached to the native language to a level that motivates the younger generations to learn the language and attain a higher degree of its usage in daily village life. The reversal from disdain for other languages to the exigency of the Indian language on the part of significant social actors in national society and the presence of a few Sabanê speakers is lacking. Only considerable educational and symbolic investments by the group itself, aided by the proper national institutions could possibly change the tendency. Even under these more fortunate circumstances it takes a concerted and determined effort to maintain the language as a living language. The realization of any optimistic scenario requires the presence of a number of native speakers, the gradual construction of local infrastructure with educational facilities, learning material for bilingual education (produced jointly by linguists and the Indians), a complete resurgence of collective self esteem, self confidence and the conviction of the value of own culture and language. The autonomy of inhabiting their own village and managing their own affairs while occupying the Sabanê homeland creates the necessary conditions for the actualization of this scenario. Only after these objectives are achieved can the younger generation be expected to invest seriously in their ancestral language.

The most likely scenarios for the future predict language death. The final most recent information by Antunes (2004: 3-4) is most serious. He reports that from the eight native speakers in 2000 the number decreased to three in 2004[lviii]. As the only method to save the Sabanê language is outlined in the previous paragraph, and most Sabanê Indians of the community of Aroeira withdrew from participation in the new village, the possibility of revival is extremely unlikely. The political division of the factions in the old village is possibly at a high point. A sign of internal turmoil is the fact that in 2002 hardly anyone in Aroeira cleared gardens and planted as usual[lix]. Ethnic allegiances are shifting too. In the absence of clear rules on ethnic affiliation the children of mixed marriages in a mixed village becomes a matter depending on a variety of factors. One of the Indians affirmed that the boys join the fathers’ group, the girls that of their mother. However, in reality ethnic affiliation is more complex than this apparently unique idea of double parallel descent (as among the Nambikwara do Campo, also without a fixed rule and subject to political considerations; Costa 1992: 8). As a result, submerged identities may resurface. To the surprise of Manézinho, one man he considers as belonging to his own people, a speaker of Sabanê, according to his son (the cacique who also adheres to his fathers’ identity), asserts to be Iakakolorê[lx]. In other words, this concerns the historical subsumption by some peoples of formerly independent other groups, i.e. individuals or small groups of people originally belonging to other peoples that became incorporated in the larger surviving peoples (like the case of Sabanê and Sowaintê, habitually by marriage). The lack of definite rules of ethnic affiliation leaves space for reclaiming previously subsumed identities and the very magnitude and the cohesion of the Sabanê group may be affected by fracturing into different ethnic segments. At this moment in history, Aroeira passes through a phase of a precarious sociopolitical situation and a fluidity in the sociocultural field. For now, Aroeira continues to be a village of strife, tension and sociocultural modification.

The occupancy of the Roosevelt homeland has been initiated with few Sabanê Indians in the composition of the village, yet jointly with their spouses and people of other groups the village has roughly forty inhabitants (as of 2004; note 117)[lxi]. The tenacity of Manézinho to found a Sabanê village in the psychological comfort of their homeland, paid off with the abundant game and fertile soil. Despite the presence of people from other groups, the village conceptually belongs to the Sabanê. Soon after the Tawaindê of Aroeira followed suit. They too were tired of living in Aroeira and had many of the same complaints as the Sabanê. Thus, they solicited Funai to elaborate an expert report about their right to occupancy in the same region of the Roosevelt River because of their traditional homeland in the Northern Nambikwara region. They perceive the advantages and possibly conceive the same project of cultural and linguistic revitalization in an ethnically more homogeneous village. There is no doubt that the Sabanê efforts in Sowaintê are necessary to strengthen their sociocultural and linguistic lived micro-world and encourage language maintenance. Regrettably, such an outcome is not likely[lxii]. Only a very propitious conjunction of contingencies can precipitate the maintenance of the Sabanê language as an effective and fully operative sociocultural medium. A massive and sustained effort will be necessary to save the Sabanê language, and the correlated unique sociocultural worldmaking, to borrow Goodman’s (1978) term again.

Notes
[i] The SIL is a controversial organization because the linguistic work is de facto subordinated to religious aims and a desire to translate the Bible into every language. A strongly ethnocentric bias of American culture also permeates their actions. The scientific work, the official face represented to outsiders, normally is at best mediocre, with a few notable exceptions. Most linguists are suspicious of outsiders. An exception is David Eberhard who permitted the use of the SIL library in Cuiabá to Stella Telles and myself and gracefully permitted the copy of material on the Mamaindê language he himself also studies.
[ii] Although the Indians did have an occasionally wear a tassel made of buriti fiber (a palm tree) that covered the genital area. Most or perhaps all Nambikwara possessed similar attire but did not require its use and some men simply went about bare.
[iii] In one myth a shaman utilizes a wooden sword to decapitate the evil spirit, so, in a way, one could see a parallel with the decapitation practiced by the American and consider that he acts is if the Sabanê are the evil spirits (Pereira 1983: 49). And, perhaps, in the light of recent ‘perspectivism’ of Lowland South America, from his point of view this may hold true because the Indians also killed the Americans and thus may appear as his bad spirits. Given the Christian belief associating pagans with spirits and the devil, an interpretation of these people as ‘evil spirits’ may not be so unexpected.
[iv] As seen, the incident happened in the savanna, and, it seems to me, in the territory of the Nambikwara. And thus the location of the Sabanê to the north and their alliance with this group coincides with the rendering of the event as a part of Sabanê oral tradition. In fact, the incident found its way in other Northern mythologies. This is something that needs an explanation rather than being thought of simply as an indistinctively generalized Nambikwara ensemble event.
[v] Such killings were not always committed with bullets. Manézinho described an event when people suffering from severe headaches were killed by the personnel of the engineer Rondon, whom later buried the ill (apparently these people were Indians). In fact, Roosevelt explains that a negro of the Commission induced by the Paresi reacted violently to a Nambikwara raid on a Paresi village when he killed one of the assailants (1914: 187). He also clearly expresses that not even Rondon succeeded in clearing up all of the details of the affair for the Paresi did not answer all his questions by which Rondon attempted to verify if the rule of restraint had been followed. Rondon actually faced passive resistance to his famous rule and not even his dominating figure insured compliance.
[vi] Gow (2001) addresses these problems in a very stimulating manner for the Piro but his main method cannot be replicated here except for a few tentative observations. He is particularly interesting in his demonstration of the meaning of the SIL and the gringos (of which the Americans are emblematic) as construed by the Piro themselves and the role these conceptions played in the active construction of their own history.
[vii] The problem is the assumption of different voices by the narrator and the possible pronominal confusion about whom he is speaking. Saying that “he” is living here and “he” over there is the acting person is sometimes an unclear reference as to the identity of the actor.
[viii] God, as is very common in post-contact cosmologies, is a supernatural figure that plays a pre-eminent role in the mythology that underpins the current cosmological foundation of the universe. In this case it is not Thunder (what would be an equivalent to the famous Tupã now found around Brazil even in non-Tupi peoples), but it remains to be seen who this conspicuous personage can be. From probing the issue it seems that it may be the Moon (Ela), an inhabitant of the upper floor of the sky and the Sun’s father. The Sun lives with his own family at the other side of the same tier. God is called Sasakanawi.
[ix] Much later, in a short additional comment Manézinho emphasized that the cannibalism justified all revenge and that the younger brother insisting on taking the ax was more “intelligent”. The negligence of the older man was responsible for the White people as the younger man pointed out afterwards: ‘I told you so’. Perhaps because of this Manézinho added something not told before: the Indians involved decided to go up and live in the sky, still close to the earth at this time, and turn into some kind of supernatural beings.
[x] Again, for an ample analysis and the foundations of these assertions, see Lima 1995.
[xi] Keep in mind the strongly hierarchical nature of Brazilian society during most or, probably, all of its history, and the never changing subordinated place of Indians in the natural scheme of things (in a Dumontian sense of the encompassing whole made up of integrated structured parts and founded on inequality). Both Rondon’s relations to civilians, his protective ideology and Afonso’s concrete actions reflect the same premise.
[xii] For a summary of the regimented way of life, the discipline, the assignment of tasks and the molding by the institutions of the inmate into a new self (his moral career), the stereotyping and surveillance by the superior bureaucrats maintaining a great distance and inequality and the subordinates’ reaction with the creation of a hidden social life, see Hannerz (1980: 214-7).
[xiii] Not to mention the tension generated by living on the land of their former enemies and some continuing episodes of war on other groups like the Mamaindê who hid in the forest (according to the Sabanê). The Sabanê did not chase after them with the design to kill the assailants because the Nambikwara did not let them (the events left some injured people and the enemy pursued the women).
[xiv] Price was horrified by these stories. However, at the time of the Nambiquara Project he concluded that the accusations could not be verified. In this period he was too busy trying to deal with the horrors of the present (but see Price 1975-6).
[xv] Discounting the forced labor character of this production, in itself the abundance proves the Sabanê’s abilities and the normal under-production of the actual potential production noted for this mode of production among Indian peoples (notably as the domestic mode of production by Sahlins). This is why I call it a ‘sustenance mode of production’ instead of subsistence production. Sustenance refers to the socially determined level of production set by the standards of desired consumption.
[xvi] Lima analyzed this in the papers produced by SPI and drew a similar conclusion regarding the implementation of the ideology. This case study demonstrates the point to which this internally consistent policy can develop into a local totalitarian and violent regime of the colonial rule. This result is not always the end of the development of a local instance but does appear to be the final stage as its most accomplished form.
[xvii] Note how the myth itself stresses the overwhelming numbers of the Whites and its relation to steel.
[xviii] In Tristes Tropiques Lévi-Strauss observed how people from Cuiabá loathed the Line because of their disappointment with the lack of promised riches that the Line ought to have brought them.
[xix] There was a very suspicious fire during the time of SPI’s disintegration that destroyed many documents. França used to keep a diary but this too has disappeared.
[xx] A copy of the service record exists in the Funai archives of Cuiabá which were being organized at the time of my visit but a copy was found thanks to the courtesy of Anna Maria Moreira da Costa.
[xxi] From the beginning of the conquest this has been the pattern. It has to do with the sociocultural conceptions of masculinity and femininity that conceive the man as active and comprehensively dominant (even to imprint his race) and the woman as passive receptacles. Their own women should thus be guarded against inferiors but the men can take an inferior woman as a concubine or, less common, a wife (see Reesink 2001). This is actually the process implicitly foreseen by Rondon about the genetic contribution the Nambikwara could make to Brazil.
[xxii] What is equality in so-called egalitarian societies is no longer accepted as obvious and needs to be demonstrated, as cited earlier (Flannagan 1989). But recall when Lévi-Strauss ended up finding people, he meant that although in the sense a few differentiating dimensions existed (especially gender) in a fundamental way a basic principle of equality prevailed where this dimension could be played out in the elaboration of personal characteristics by the individual members of the group. Here the point is that the person, the group and the people are seen as predicated on a primary being of autonomy (that must be realized and complemented within the mesh of kin but not in a way profoundly subordinated to each other; see Part III).
[xxiii] Subjectivity may be defined as “the felt experience of the person that includes his or her positions in a field of relational power” (Das and Kleinman (2000: 1); see their introduction for a summary of current ideas on the anthropology of violence).
[xxiv] He died some years after the move and his heirs remained. They have since deceased.
[xxv] My notion would be that the clearings and its produce belong to them as long as they work there but that the owner did not transfer any property rights. At the most he promised some land to be inherited.
[xxvi] They did, however, complete a survey on land properties and excepted a number of farms in several of the numerated blocs. Thus many possessions were recognized along the road, including as far as can be seen on the maps discussed in Part I, the property where the Tawaindê lived.
[xxvii] Pending documentary confirmation, I cannot affirm his strategy included the retreat to the Pyreneus de Souza Indigenous Land from the outset, although it is clear from the Funai documents that Price did not dispose of all of the relevant information when he started the job. Afterwards, it is certain the Project did get involved and around 1977 one of his main assistants spent some time as head of the Post.
[xxviii] In Espirro interethnic relations existed as the wife of Manézinho, Ivone was baptized by a White man that prevented the murder of her father. However, godparent relations often straddle social divides and do not imply equality. The effect of the removal of one woman can be serious in small groups and severely limit the choice of partners from outside immediate family. This happened to an Aikaná whose wife ran away with a White man and another who was divorced for years. The first married a daughter of Manézinho, the second married the youngest Latundê sister Fatima (Part I). In a group like the Kwazá with at the most twenty-five speakers most of whom married Aikaná and do not use the language as primary language, the recent loss of one of the very few young women of an all Kwazá family to an older White man represents the increasing likelihood of language extinction.
[xxix] As always in these cases, this is an unanswerable historical question. One runs the risk of abstracting too much from the individual to his social category or from the collective to the individual.
[xxx] The emphasis occurs in the quote. The regrouping referred to is the colonial government’s forced dislocation of villages aiming to empty the countryside and thus to preempt the guerrilla movement. This comparison is not far-fetched. At about this time the federal government created rather magnanimously a large Indigenous Territory, the Nambikwara Area, but all of it on the higher parts of the Parecis Plateau, considered by the government to be nearly worthless land. Amongst others, the Southern Mamaindê were forcefully resettled in this strange and ecologically different region, to liberate the Guaporé valley. It was only at great cost that they succeeded in returning (I will return to this in Part III).
[xxxi] Information by Marcelo dos Santos, formerly Price’s collaborator who stayed on and lived in the region as a FUNAI agent, working in various functions until recently (2001, personal communication). The coordinator hence used his own capital to practice this charity.
[xxxii] The employees do realize this (one of them told me about it), but as this particular institution is technically obliged to fund the expenses made for the transport, there is little they can do.
[xxxiii] Pensions are one small but reliable source of monthly income (see Part I and also Part III). In compensation to the small tricks played to obtain relief for the car’s expenses, and quite the contrary to most other Nambikwara communities, they did not sell their timber. In part, I think, this is because the political power is still in the hands of an informal council of elders. A new leader who descends from a mixed Indian-White parentage, a contested man, with this different sociocultural background is said to be campaigning to sell to the White logging firms.
[xxxiv] In this case (2000), the post chief is an amiable person whose personal interests lie with not being perturbed with too much work. His job is easy enough. It permits him to live in Vilhena and take care of his individual activities that sometimes seem to predominate above anything else. Among the latter figures prominently his own farm for which, according to some Indians, he sometimes hires the Indians under his charge. About two years later he was dismissed from his duties under pressure from the Indians. They alleged that not only he did not dedicate much attention to the area and did not pay the Indians for their work on his farm. They accuse him of not paying any salary because he frames the work as his teaching the laborers to work (Antunes 2002, personal communication). In other words, old justifications also die hard. Whether used by the employee or as political accusation by the Indians.
[xxxv] This parallels a much older accusation by a faction of ethnocentric Funai agents who want to eliminate from the indigenist field any researcher critical of their authoritarianism. The anthropologist is accused of never rendering any concrete retribution to the community but in reality it is his critique of ethnocentric practices and his activities in national society in favor of a different policy that bothers this faction. That the notion of research has become something intrinsically suspicious could be used by FUNAI functionaries to avoid any outsiders in their region. In this case, I am suspicious this has happened at times but I do not have firm evidence. A precedent exists. Some years ago a female researcher was boycotted by local FUNAI people and had to discontinue her project.
[xxxvi] I did not have access to the thesis until after writing this chapter. Once more, this could be a practice shared by the Nambikwara ensemble but such suggestion is subject to further confirmation. The idea seems to be never to deny a request immediately to the face of the person.
[xxxvii] As nobody had informed me of this injunction, I was unaware of proper behavior. Moreover, even if they were offended, the conduct criticized did not deviate from standard Brazilian behavior to which they were accustomed (I inadvertently raised my voice in order to be heard by everyone; the cacique, for example, otherwise would not have heard me). During the meeting nobody called my attention to the supposed fault but it was, in my view, gratefully explored. The reaction scared the functionary so much he dissociated completely from us, unwilling in any way to endanger his position by lending support in any way. His superiors did not agree but could not intervene effectively. After such an incident, the more important people from the area shunned the Vilhena FUNAI head for some time, again avoiding direct confrontations.
[xxxviii] Again a very common phenomenon in village councils (Hannerz 1980: 207). Kinship is politics too. Politics is always closely related in daily life with the constitution of community. The strategy of the major actors in politics is to obtain the delegation of the representation of the group in order to symbolically collectivize private interests and symbolically appropriate official interests (Bourdieu 2000: 120-1).
[xxxix] This is my provisional description and not a discussion of the just and fair retribution a researcher is ethically obliged to offer in return. Here I want to illustrate the feeling of fear of exploitation, the ensuing total lack of initial trust, where mentioning the possibility of land sale attests to imaging its possibility. The person who traveled with us suspected that some Funai employees were instigating the Indians to act like this because, he commented, the majority of lower functionaries would be against research. For various reasons (one being mismanagement or even corruption), they were highly suspicious of outsiders on their terrain and especially of anthropologists. The Nambikwara are also the main field research site of a couple of SIL linguists with many years of contact so the Indians know what linguistic research entails. The same circumstance may contribute to a commodification of language and most SIL linguist are not charmed by the presence of colleagues in their village who may influence the Indians (a possessiveness not exclusive to them of course).
[xl] I tried at some points to expose this project and engage the elders in expressing their memories and giving voice to an experience rarely spoken about Espirro and the past. Not being able to expound the proposal personally also hampered communication severely. Conversely, perhaps it is a memory socially classified as unspeakable to strangers (cf. Pollak 2000).
[xli] Although I cannot substantiate this claim, I have the feeling that one of the reasons is exactly the fact the village is not united but full of strife. Fieldworkers at the ‘backstage’, snooping around as it were in their own protected sphere of social practice, might reveal too much to outsiders of the real internal social dynamics.
[xlii] Dona Teresa’s information on the Lakondê will be the subject of a future publication. On our advice, Telles, who was working with the Latundê, later visited Dona Teresa, who had expressed a wish to discontinue collaborating on Sabanê and to work with her own Lakondê language. The fruits of their successful collaboration is evident in her 2002 thesis on Lakondê and Latundê.
[xliii] Dona Teresa lived near Acre when this happened. When she returned to the region and learned of the relinquishing of the lands of Marco Rondon, she tried to stop the relocation. In her view, the Indians had clear rights, conferred at the time of the company that constructed the dirt road in 1960. She used to have a closer contact to the responsible manager of the firm than the other Indians and thus was far more convinced of the claim than the others.
[xliv] The ease of becoming bilingual enters into current European debates on migration and integration: “Because young children possess many braincells it also possible that two language systems are constructed and anchored in the brain. A condition for this realisation is that the two languages must be offered clearly differentiated to the child”. That is, for example, at home and at school. “Two languages fit very well in the head of a child”. Prof. Dr. S. Goorhuis-Brouwer, in the daily paper Trouw 24/05/2002:19; my translation).
[xlv] This is a critique on the change in lifestyle. In Aroeira game is scarce, and so the traditional sharing and exchanging that went on within the group is hindered
[xlvi] Recall that Rondon showed his confidence on the plaza laying down his head on the leg of one of his interlocutors who were conversing animatedly all around him. Manézinho may have meant the upper leg but incorrectly used the word for buttocks.
[xlvii] It may be noted in passing that the corollary myth among the Savanna and Valley Nambikwara differs considerably in a number of relevant features. The latter two resemble each other much more than either is close to the Sabanê myth (see Part III for a short discussion of the first by Price 1981; the elaborate and very well told Valley Myth is reproduced in Fiorini 2000: 83-8; of course, such closenes is to be expected due to their closer linguistic and cultural affinity).
[xlviii] Shame may a useful notion to investigate further. For example, the concept “shame” in Sikuani is always semantically related to some particular person and does not occur independently. Shame makes one return to the norm by recognizing the social norm. Or else, if not repentant (no ‘essential’ recognition), one leaves society in the direction of nature (Queixalós 1990). One must be cautious with such a comparison but certain parallels are obvious.
[xlix] Perhaps in a mode that slows down the language shift. If corroborated, I think the reason lies with the fact that this people traversed the previous periods much less dispersed and more united than the Sabanê.
[l] The phenomenon already noted by Price in the seventies that the pensions of the old may change the balance of power towards the older men. Such a source of regular income is scarce and elevates, so to speak, the value of older people (apt to redistribute commodities, prestige would accrue to them).
[li] Here our aims coincide and fieldwork should be in the interest of the elders. I also proposed to assist in the possible claim to extend the Indigenous Territory for which an anthropological report is required, but this offer provoked no response among the Indians. The fact that I participate for twenty years in a civil association that contributes to the civil struggle of Indian rights also did not seem to impress anyone. For some reason such credentials or offers for collective retribution failed to be convincing or even taken into account at the crucial moment. In part the unfortunate prior circumstances expounded explain the lack of dialogue but the actual reasoning still is speculation. Ironically, without fieldwork or dialogue no more profound explanation is possible. Maybe Bourdieu (2004: 619) has got a point for us to think about: “The final cunning of dominant culture resides perhaps in the fact that the revolt it elicits risks to forbid the one from appropriating the instruments, such as ethnology, whose mastery is the condition for the recovery of the culture of which it fostered the disavowal”.
[lii] See the hypothesis of Vilaça (2000: 88) which (…) is that ingestion is a fundamental classificatory operator, one intrinsically bound to the notion of predation, understood here as a relation between predator and prey. Given the basic identity between humans and animals, predation has as its aim the marking of a difference in a human continuum, or the explication of this difference which in another mode would remain masked”.
[liii] With due reservations for future research, this supports Vilaça’s hypothesis (1999) for the Wari and other Amazonian peoples about a physiology of contact. She reviews the showing of a video to some Nambikwara of the Indians performing a ritual (actually Mamaindê). The Nambikwara watching complained that the ritual participants were wearing too many clothes. The ritual was later redone with less non-traditional clothing (ib.: 242). Clothing among the Sabanê in rituals, from a few indications, also may be reduced to minimal use. Consequently and in agreement with her understanding, rituals may be a time of being Indian. Something by the way, that holds true for several Indian peoples in the Northeast where, according to my hypothesis, religion and ritual are the privileged domains of persisting indianidade (Reesink 2000). This possible coincidence permits the hypothesis that the structural constraints and the cultural reaction of Indian peoples tend to favor this development as the result of both the framing conditions of constraining enclosure by the national society and of the particularities of indigenous agency.
[liv] This is fragile link, as the change of the correlation of forces in Funai can alter the administrators that now are partial to the project and nothing guarantees a administrative continuity in projects.
[lv] In 2002 we wrote a linguistic and anthropological report in support of this plan, if necessary to be presented to the bureaucratic authorities and lend weight to the claim (Reesink and Antunes 2002). It functioned very well to underscore the validity of the claim by Funai in negotiation with the reluctant Cinta Larga.
[lvi] Even in the United States where there are Indian schools which are very much ahead of Brazil in this aspect, schools and institutions are still absolutely dominated by English (Zepeda and Hill 1991).
[lvii] The Manduka attempt to found a separate village practically floundered by 2002: the latest reports assert only two families still live there.
[lviii] He adds that the Sowaintê village is inhabited by some forty Sabanê and three Tawaindê. In total the Sabanê number around a hundred people in Aroeira. Of all these people only two have learnt the language fluently (Dona Tereza who is not even Sabanê and Manézinho’s wife). Fewer than ten are known to have some limited proficiency but are not real speakers.
[lix] It is unclear why. Speculation by outsiders mention the arrival of a large sum of money for a development project on the bank account of an Indian and that people discuss how to spend the money disregarding the Project’s official aims – when the harvest proves insufficient the claim for help shall be directed to the impoverished Funai. It must be noted too that a person working for the agency responsible for Indian healthcare commented that Aroeira is the only Indian village where the institution occasionally verifies cases of malnutrition.
[lx] There are several new cases of people registered by Funai as Sabanê who now wish to correct their identity card and officially assume another ethnic identity.
[lxi] The fact of the people of Aroeira withdrew participation will decrease willingness to let certain of them to settle there in the future.
[lxii] Barring the possibility of some sudden unforeseen change, the last native speakers will die in less than two decades. There will be very few semi-speakers and the language will technically be extinct.

Peoples with histories[i]
To best understand the situation with the Latundê, it is essential to have as much historical understanding as possible to comprehend the basis of the present and to more clearly see these people as but one thread in the myriad of local groups and peoples that comprise the Nambikwara fabric. The documentary history of the Latundê showed the contingencies that amounted to a tragic destiny. The field research discussed afterwards demonstrated that the destiny and viability of their social group, ethnic identity, and language is unclear. For the small group of people now called Latundê, we have can only get a fleeting glimpse of their history and only of a short amount of time. This is in part because of communication difficulties, but owes also to the Indians’ reticence to discuss the past. It is quite obvious that they parted ways with the main body of the Northern Nambikwara not too long ago. Linguistically, the Lakondê dialect is very similar, aside from a number of syntactic and lexical differences. The major leader of the latter group, the one who was responsible for contact, and who is the brother of Dona Tereza, claimed that the two languages were the same. Therefore the small group of Latundê must have participated in the northern network described for the history of the Sabanê. As to the Sabanê, they were documented to be in the Roosevelt/Tenente Marques area at the time of Rondon’s incursion and initial expropriation. Additionally, they have stories about prior migrations. Thus, the historical time depth has gradually been extended and now with the Sararé comes to include an even larger time frame. The Sararé, as the group is most commonly known currently, inhabit the southernmost part of all the region once pertaining to the Nambikwara ensemble. Similar to the Latundê they only made contact in the sixties and live in an area separate from the main Nambikwara Indigenous Territory occupied by the bulk of the surviving groups of the Guaporé Valley. Like the Sabanê, the information about their history includes much more depth than that of the Latundê.

The Sararé form a sub-set of the sub-cluster of the branch of the Nambikwara linguistic family that is best known because of the linguistic missionary work among the Nambikwara do Campo. The Southern Nambikwara cluster includes the Campo and Valley sets within which one distinguishes the southernmost Sararé as a sub-set. The Nambikwara do Campo have a different historical record because of the Telegraph Line, the concomitant penetration by others this Line permitted, and the rubber expansion from lower rivers reaching out up to the high rivers of their heartland on the Parecis Plateau[ii]. The Guaporé valley was mostly spared from the expropriating effects the incursion of the Telegraph Line was to have, but by the time of the Second World War the renewed impulse of the regional encroaching society attained some peoples in the Valley too. The western border of the Valley Nambikwara was the Guaporé River, a river that had historical importance as early as the seventeenth century. By coincidence the river marks the expansion of the Portuguese beyond the original treaty of Tordesillas that pre-established the dividing line with the Spanish. At the time of the treaty no one actually knew the extension of the territories which each state was allowed to “legitimately” conquer in the so-called New World. The so-called Paulistas (from the state and capital of São Paulo that at one time formally comprised an enormous territory of various other contemporary states), also known as the bandeirantes (after the expeditions, bandeira, from São Paulo organized by the Paulistas, roamed ever further into the vast hinterland in search of Indians to be enslaved, gold, precious metals and diamonds. “Red gold” (Hemming 1995) constituted one of the mainstays of the labor force in São Paulo during a large part of the seventeenth century (see Monteiro 1994). Easy riches were supposed for the largely unknown interior and very much coveted as a fast way to wealth. In Brazilian historical mythology the bandeirantes figure prominently as those principally responsible for the territorial expansion of Brazil. In the process they depleted enormous areas of their inhabitants, also displacing and exterminating Indians. In the end, in the middle of the eighteenth century, the Guaporé River became a major frontier with Spanish America, nowadays called Bolivia, consisting of the major part of the actual exterior border of Rondônia.

To secure their expansion, the Portuguese built a famous fortress on the Guaporé meant to consolidate their new frontier in the whole of this large region (called Principe da Beira; middle course of the Guaporé, now Rondônia). They founded a new capital on the upper Guaporé, close to where the river bends to the north. This place was called city of Mato Grosso. The Guaporé River thus took on a strategic importance in the expansion and consolidation of Portuguese America. Coincidently the same river serves as an approximate boundary for the Southern Nambikwara cluster on the part of its southern and eastern extension. The original division of “jurisdiction” of the Tordesillas treaty would have contained all of the Nambikwara well within the bounds of Spanish America. Now the frontier passes directly to the east of their territories and the colonial efforts to secure the frontier established in treaties from 1750 and 1777 brought military and colonist neighbors to the Southern Nambikwara. After the latest treaty, the Portuguese Crown established one of its demarcation commissions “on Mato Grosso” (Hemming 1995: 28). Therefore, the Nambikwara ensemble started to feel the infringement on their territories as early as the eighteenth century. By this time the frontier amounted to a very sparsely populated region of limited extension that left very large areas under the control of the Indian peoples. The colonists held a very low opinion of the Indians and considered their bodies, land, and resources to be used as they saw fit. The colonist conquered, subdued, or expelled the Indians and, without suffering any penalty, used to violate the official laws. To maintain the letter of the law and order in these remote backlands was almost impossible as there were few officials present, none of whom had much regard for Indian rights as many were recruited from the regional society.

The colonizing Portuguese felt completely secure about their right to the land, the subjugation of the savages, and felt entitled to all of the riches offered in this environment. In other words, contact with the Nambikwara must have taken place and resulted in a state of war. At the end of the eighteenth century the colonized territories in Mato Grosso amounted to areas around Cuiabá and Vila Bela, as the city of Mato Grosso became known, but did not extend “(…) far to the north or north-west of them to the Parecis hills” (Hemming 1995: 174). This implied a permanent battle for land and resources, ultimately leaving the Indian peoples with only two options: surrender to de facto subjugation and loss of autonomy, or war to expel the intruders and safeguard their independence. It seems as if the Nambikwara ensemble always chose to fight for freedom (unless they recognized no chance of winning). Such an observation does not preclude any peaceful contact, but any instances of such contact must have conformed to the Nambikwara template of alliance relation, which, as discussed above, entails a conception of exchange and friendship between autonomous and equal parties. A clash of opposing views of self and other, and of autonomy and hierarchy, must have ensued after the establishment of any such peaceful relationship and this clash was inherent in any more profound development of concrete mutual dealings. For their part, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the Portuguese government set up a Directorate system to provide a model for Indian incorporation into the colony. The model granted the Indians lands and some protection but under the benign governance of an appointed village director. A taste of the real impact of this proposal can be glimpsed from the words of a proponent of peaceful pacification at the behest of the provincial governor of Goiás when, at the end of this century, they convinced the Xavante of their good and diplomatic intentions, and persuaded them to settle in reserved lands: ““Our great captain [Queen Maria]”, he declared, “pitied your miseries and sent us to your lands to invite you to leave the nomadic life in which you lived untamed, and come among us to enjoy the comforts of civilized society”” (Hemming 1995: 72). The very primitive Nambikwara would make an excellent subject for a similar speech. Such a superior attitude in actual practice can only result in domination, Indian revolt, or escape. The model villages in Goiás turned into prisons or concentration camps with the harsh discipline backed by violence (ib.: 74). The overwhelming majority of the Xavante choose freedom and, after migrating to Mato Grosso, they felt so terrorized that this experience motivated them to wage a long war against the Whites.

No such attempts to apply this model are known for the Nambikwara. However, their lands were being penetrated in search of run-away slaves, new slaves, and gold. A large part of the reason for the settlement on the upper Guaporé stemmed from the discovery of gold, just like the later capital Cuiabá also was founded in the 1720s because of this coveted mineral (Hemming 1995: 192). In time Cuiabá became a larger and more active center than Mato Grosso. In fact, after the gold rush, Mato Grosso began to decline in importance, dwindling away because of the distance to other more dynamic places, whereas Cuiabá participated in the cattle frontier spreading out from Goiás and which gradually occupied the dryer and more savanna like plains (cerrado). This left the Nambikwara in a remote frontier region that did not attract the more slowly expanding albeit permanent frontier of the occupation by cattle ranches connected to the distant markets of coastal Brazil. A gold rush brings in the greed and the concomitant violence intrinsic in the possibility of relatively fast and easy wealth. The search for gold localizes the actions at the place where the metal is to be found and in that sense involves less the rest of the region. In the past, for this particular area the distances to the civilized centers and the simple technology based on slave manpower of digging and sifting through the alluvial soils of small rivers limited the number of people involved and lessened the environmental impact. A cattle invasion continues to reflect a take-over of the total region. Then the conflict becomes a permanent competition for the same resource base and the outcome is always forced displacement of one of the contending populations. In this sort of conquest, if the conquerors apply sufficient energy and force, the Indians will be slayed or displaced. Some, usually a small minority, may be incorporated into the labor force employed by the conquerors occupying the very lands the Indians owned before.

This occurred in many places, including the plains and forested plateau near Cuiabá stretching out to the east where, for over a century, the eastern Bororo violently fought against the invasion of their territory, much to the frustration of the ranchers and the provincial government. For a long time the violent retaliation and repression of the so-called Indian aggressions using the Bandeira punitive expeditions failed[iii]. Some Bororo attached themselves to the bandeirante who discovered the gold fields of Cuiabá in the early eighteenth century and even went to live in Minas Gerais along the route to São Paulo (note that the exact ethnic relations between these different partialities called “Bororo” by outsiders are very difficult to reconstruct). Other Bororo stayed and for a long time resisted the advance of the cattle ranchers (who substituted gold prospectors), and in the years after 1839 they impeded easy access to the main road from Cuiabá to Goiás (the road passed straight through their homelands). These Indians attacked locations that were, at times, alarmingly close to the capital. A different approach finally convinced them to seek peace. One 1886 expedition included several Bororo women prisoners that had been educated in Cuiabá to be used by the Whites to communicate their peaceful intentions to the people of their origin. The women convinced the people, and the Bororo made peace with the expedition leader and visited Cuiabá. Here they were pompously received by the provincial President and other local authorities. An auspicious beginning for the Bororo of an alliance occurred when the president offered them presents, meals, and the freedom to wander through the city. However, the reality of the new alliance in their home territories turned out quite differently. The situation rapidly deteriorated as many Indians became addicted to cachaça (a strong alcoholic drink made of sugar cane). One of the women who intermediated the new peaceful relationship later expressed her deep regrets and advised her son (chief in the Bakairi village she then lived in): “‘Do not trust the whites. They are men who control the lightning, who live without a homeland, who wander to satisfy their thirst for gold. They are kind to us when they need us, for the land on which they tread and the plains and rivers which they assault are ours. Once they have achieved their goals they are false and treacherous’” (“Rosa Bororo” as cited in Hemming 1995: 393; he dedicates two chapters (11, 20) to the different trajectories of the branches of the Bororo, observing that the most belligerent and hostile people are the only survivors). In the aforementioned quote note the keen observation that the Whites are homeless wanderers, they are the nomads (see also Brody 2001). They, in effect, always seek new lands and resources (including people). The underlying factor that united European expansion was hegemony, Whites never sought a genuine alliance.

The story of the Bororo woman, Hemming noted, also was one of the favorites of Rondon who told it in his conferences in the country’s capital in 1915. Maybe he, just like Hemming, did not know that the children of the women were held as hostages in Cuiabá during the expedition. Apparently the Whites did not trust the women without means of coercion (Bordignon and Fernandes Silva 1987: 58). Moreover, Rosa Bororo was praised as a willing intermediary in a well known laudatory published account and is still known for this role (Bucker and Bucker 2005: 247). The leader of the expedition, on the contrary, in his unpublished manuscript actually observed she attempted to “sow discord between the Indians” (Almeida 2005: 6). Instead of a willing maker of the peace, she may have very well been highly distrustful of civilization from the beginning. Going to live in a distant Bakairi village may also indicate her resistance to domination. Maybe all partialities of the Bororo actually surrendered only when forced by the circumstances (cf. Langfur 1999). At this time other parts of her nation (or related nations) did not abide to enter civilization – as was the interpretation by the Whites of the day – and these, or at least some of these, are the Bororo villages Rondon encountered as a young officer in his first efforts to aid his country in constructing a telegraph line from Cuiabá to the border (still during the time of the Empire). According to one biographer, Rondon’s great-grandmother was a Bororo and he was raised by a grandfather with Indian blood. Rondon even learned to speak some Bororo (Bigio 2000). This is one much publicized aspect of Rondon’s family and is always stressed in hagiographies. This genealogy is exemplar in that the Indian ascendant in Brazil practically always concerns a woman and very rarely a man. This is in accordance with a series of associations related to gender construction and is part of the ideal type of the legitimate conquest of the land and people (see Reesink 2001). Although this kind of ascendancy might entail some sympathy for the Indians, it hardly ever develops into active protection and the elaboration of humanist positivist ideas. Hemming portrays Rondon’s superior officer in this first venture as his source of inspiration towards Indians. His commander accepted being the intruder up to the point of not only prohibiting hostilities but categorically avoiding to shoot at the Bororo under any circumstance. Rondon greatly admired his superior officer and his confident notion that they were invading the land and it would be unjust to fight the inhabitants. The belief combined well with the idea that conflict was counterproductive to the aim of the expedition. Here, according to Rondon, he learned to “love the Indians” (Hemming 1995: 394-5). Apparently he did learn a more respectful approach to unknown Indians and accepted the legitimacy of their self-defense. In the end, the approach generated the collaboration of a large Bororo group in the construction of this line and he formed a lifelong bond with this people.

Still, legal protection goes back a long time in a series of affirmative and constructive Portuguese laws and Crown regulations of an incontrovertible protective nature which, naturally, as under the Directorate, always included the guidance of a civilizing agent. At the independence of Brazil – sometimes wrongly called a decolonization although the land was never given back to its original owners – several proposals for a more humanitarian integration into the nation were launched. The statesman José Bonifácio, often cited by Rondon, was among the authors of such proposals. The very example of the Bororo attracted before by peaceful intentions and non-violence demonstrates that the belief in protective civilizing prevailed in certain circles against the image of the violent, uncorrectable, and intractable savage held by the vast majority of the frontier population. Rondon, in this sense, stood at the apex of the thread of thought of a more humane treatment of the Indian peoples. This explains the naming of the telegraph station after José Bonifácio and Rondon thus acknowledged the intellectual debts to his own culture heroes. In light of these observations, we can see Rondon as more than a fortuity, but as the result of a progression of ideas and concepts linked to the social climate of the time. Two humanitarian European philosophies influenced Rondon’s life, Christianity and the positivist evolutionary dogma of humanity. In some ways these beliefs also founded European imperialism. Yet, the sociopolitical climate seems to have been ripe for the advent of his brand of benign fraternal protection[iv]. The major outlines of this model thus predated Rondon but his great merit lies in applying these ideas in a consistent and permanent manner to all Indian peoples in Brazil.

Simultaneously, usually unmentioned, his predilection for the search of the mines of Urucumacuan appears to be another intrinsic dimension of his upbringing in a State always preoccupied with gold. In this respect, Rondon followed in the footsteps of his bandeirante ancestor because, as discussed above, he did not relent in his search for almost forty years. When the Rondon Commission traversed the region of Vilhena, Rondon sent out people to investigate the area near the upper Apiadá River (now Pimenta Bueno). In the forties, as seen, he secured funds for the expedition in which Dequech participated. One widely unknown fact is that in 1934 Rondon claimed the right to these mines as he believed he had found them in 1909 (this document is reproduced in Pinto 1993: annex 2). Rondon claims to have found the mine with guidance from the 1771 bandeirante narrative[v]. Rondon affirms in his claim that he sent the engineer Moritz, from the Roosevelt-Rondon expedition in 1912, to verify the extent of the gold fields (report published in 1916). Later, in 1930, he explored the area even further. Two things stand out. First, the area described includes the Latundê territory, their small rivers running to the Pimenta Bueno River are explicitly mentioned (the document even mentions discovering the upper Pimenta Bueno, known in 1912 and another river with doubts about its course, later the Apiadá River of the Massacá). Secondly, Rondon stated the intention to register the same claim in Mato Grosso to safeguard his right. Furthermore, he already had participated as a technical director in firms that had claimed land rights to public lands in the same region but whose claims had already expired. Claims to a gold mine and participating in firms positing large land claims reveals a very little know facet of Rondon’s life, the possibility he envisaged to put his expeditions and efforts into what can only be presumed to be personal gain (rumors I have not been able to confirm accuse his son of having done this; the Corumbiara Project may also have its precedents). Rondon’s stated aim concerned prospecting and rational exploration. In fact, the expedition in the forties, with government funds, seems to have been just that and the result did not confirm expectations. In spite of the doubtful nature of their reality, the appeal of the mysterious mines continued up till the days Price traveled and worked in the region. Many Brazilians continue to take stock in this belief. Numerous people in Vilhena crisscrossed the whole region and its rivers in their search for gold.

The mines in question give us another perspective of the history of the region and the relation to the Indian peoples. Not only Vila Bela (as Mato Grosso) arose in response to gold and even acceded to being the capital but its fortunes declined when the gold ran out. Cuiabá took over after it experienced its own gold rush and was far better placed geographically with respect to national contacts. Almost a century ago Roquette-Pinto attempted to get a clearer picture of the early history of the Nambikwara region. He searched for documents about the incursions of the initial search for Indian slaves and gold and the subsequent founding of Mato Grosso. He found that around 1723 a bandeira from São Paulo wrote an account of an expedition that journeyed through the Parecis Plateau, met with the Paresi, and possibly even a Nambikwara group. This Roquette-Pinto surmised from the description of the houses, which to him resembled those of the Parecís but actually is similar to a type of Nambikwara house. Additionally, he supposed that the Cavihis of the account are the contemporary Uáintaçu who descended from the Guaporé Valley to attack Vila Bela (Roquette-Pinto 1919: 16-8). All these observations are open for discussion. Primarily, it is possible that the Cavihi are Kabixí. This would mean that some names are given to the same people at different historical moments. This, however, is a matter of uncertainty and is taken up by Price. Secondly, it is unclear what kind of houses was seen. Fuerst (1971), after visiting the Sararé, suggested that perhaps the houses of the Nambikwara had been copied from the Paresi style. When Roquette-Pinto made this observation, he had not seen any such authentic indigenous houses[vi]. In other words, historical records of this time almost always allow for multiple interpretations and it remains difficult to decide between them. Take, as a parallel example, the circulation of the news of the mines of Urucumacuan. Their discovery is almost as old as the first registered passage (or near passage) through Nambikwara territory. In 1757, the news of its discovery situated the abundant mines between the Juruena and Jamarí Rivers (in effect, in all likelihood, a large region more or less around Vilhena; cf. Price 1972: 3). But the route to the mines was never clearly given. In this way the inherent uncertainty created a legend of gold mines always to be rediscovered by later generations. The certainty of its riches fueled the desire to find them, a task that seems simple at face value. The vastness of the predicted region gave much hope to explorers, even after various expeditions proved fruitless. Roquette-Pinto also suggested that the time may have come to initiate the exploration of gold. After all, the legendary ferocity of the savages had abated and the region was accessible to gold prospectors. Old gold fantasies die hard. History not only fosters multiple views but here also the continual return of certain sociocultural desiderata (analogous to certain religions, it seems to be an ‘eternal return’ in Brazilian cosmology).

The reputation of the savages in this case refers to Nambikwara belligerence, a quality that assisted them in being saved from conquest in the preceding centuries. The presupposition of Roquette-Pinto is that the change to peace, which enabled him to proceed with his research around 1910, would last and permit the search for and exploration of the fabled mines. The notion of savagery reveals a clear continuity with the past even with the more optimistic view of Rondon’s epoch. In the latter view, the recognition of humanity to the savages conveys that these people are worthy of compassionate treatment. Yet, the bandeirantes and the people at Rondon’s time share the long-term constant that peace opens up the resources of the vanquished, or to-be-civilized, to the exploitation and total benefit of the conquerors, or civilizing agents. Late in the eighteenth century the call of gold stimulated the captain general of the province of Mato Grosso to send two expeditions (1776, 1779) to explore the lands where the mines were supposed to be. In 1795 he wrote from Vila Bela to the royal government about the attempt to repress the communities of runaway slaves (quilombos). His first sentence leaves little doubt about the motives for the prior searches for the mines: “the current decline of the mines of Mato Grosso” (transcription in Roquette-Pinto 1919: 19-36). In the same sentence he stresses the aggravating loss of many slaves that tranquilly go to live in the quilombos of the escarpments of the Parecis Plateau in the area of the sources of the Pindatuba, Sararé, Galera and Piolho rivers (locations given from south to north, eventually approximately the current location of the main road through the Guaporé Valley). These communities were flourishing from the southern tip of the Parecis Plateau a long way up the Guaporé Valley towards Vilhena, as these rivers all spring from the southwestern ridge of the highland. If this is correct, and not somewhat exaggerated to justify both the military expedition and diminishing returns of gold (supposedly taxed by his government but preferably smuggled), then this occupation would be more or less in the middle of several peoples, at the borders of the Guaporé Valley Nambikwara, the Paresi (the segment later called Kabixí) and the Nambikwara do Campo. Again, this hypothesis relies on available knowledge of the distribution of Indian peoples at later times, not all of which is easily verifiable for the more distant past[vii].

Wedged in between some of the major Nambikwara ensemble divisions, the string of quilombos would be strategically positioned at the border line of the basin of the watershed that separates the northern bound major rivers like the Juruena on the Parecis Plateau and the smaller southern bound rivers tributaries of the Guaporé. The rivers were the axes of the Nambikwara do Campo regional sets of related groups, in principle along one river one used to find one regional set. For the other Nambikwara clusters, we lack information but the same organization along rivers and river basins probably stands. Such a position in-between major river basins might have been advantageous to such maroon communities. On the other hand, the presence of a significant number of communities in the middle of Nambikwara territory sounds somewhat unexpected amongst Indians who were known for their forceful reaction to invasions. Although this remains mysterious, the description of the route pursued by the bandeira shows some interesting features that are worth observing. Firstly, the accompanying map portrays the routes of 1794 and 1795 and clearly manifests the crossing of the Sararé River near the onset of the Serra da Borda and the circumventing of the mountainous range that runs more or less from the south to the north. This region is the heartland of the current Sararé and one route clearly traverses the modern-day Indigenous Territory. Moreover, the map displays the location of a village, the Arraial de São Vicente, either slightly to the north of the very same range or next to the northern tip. The route right through the current Indigenous Territory shows a well-trodden trail because several place names are marked along the way. In other words, as far as can be deduced from this map, in the 18^th century, the Sararé lands had been penetrated, invaded and even settled with small villages. If previously present in this region before the invasion, the Southern Nambikwara groups must have withdrawn from these positions and either tolerated the foreign presence or did not gather sufficient forces to expel the intruders. It must be remembered that the colonial population attained only small numbers and did not pose a threat in the wider sense of claiming the occupancy of all of the lands northeast of Vila Bela.

The impulse for this White occupation derived from the presence of gold. One can trace the archaeological remains in the present Indigenous Territory. Within easy walking distance of the modern Indian village in the Sararé Indigenous Territory called Serra da Borda (located at the edge of the mountain range of the same name) a number of ruins can be found near the side of a small stream. Several areas have been excavated; creating man sized holes and amassed heaps of stones and small boulders extracted from the earth that has been removed. It is fairly certain, deducible from the way that these piles of rocks are overgrown with plants, that these activities occurred a long time ago and are the remains of mining. Given the fact that mining is not mentioned after its abandonment in the nineteenth century, it seems likely that these material evidences date back at least 150 or 200 years. In sum, part of the southern part of the Guaporé Valley nearest to the capital Mato Grosso was penetrated, gold was found and some permanent settlement took place. Explorations that led to cartography of the region depicted it on the map in a way that confers fairly well with a modern map. This indicates a reasonable knowledge of the region. In that sense certain information from the old reports appears and other questions arise. One of the expeditions cited above went along a route that supposedly would bring them close to the aforementioned quilombo communities. They found only one of them, however, near the river Piolho, the northernmost affluent before the Cabixi River that springs from the Parecis Plateau where Vilhena is now[viii]. The expedition encountered the settlement comprising for the most part of Indians and persons of mixed Indian-black descent. The majority of these people were born and raised at this location and they wanted to stay in their birthplace and village. The commander granted the inhabitants permission to return to the village after most of them were baptized in Vila Bela. The ex-maroons also promised to assist in establishing relations with some non-hostile Indian villages and to reduce them to our society (reduction suggests a sense of ‘bringing them down to’, reducing their territory and autonomy). The same official surmised that this peaceful reduction could be easily achieved by means of the gifts given to the inhabitants for this purpose. At the same time, he argued to the royal government that his permission to resettle the community under the aegis of the colony and with a new name served the strategic aim of relating Vila Bela by a land route to the fort Principe da Beira on the middle Guaporé River. The new route was also said to permit that new mineral lands [gold deposits] will be discovered. The prisoners were released for a variety of reasons, but most prominently seem to feature the search for gold and the strategic occupation of the land. The search for escaped slaves had ulterior motives.

The commander released the blacks and other prisoners because he believed that they had families with the Indians and that the former slaves could teach the Indians how to cultivate the land. Curiously, the commander considered the ex-slaves better qualified to till the earth than the Indians. Probably this was an additional reason to justify his apparently irrational behaviour of releasing the maroons or, perhaps simultaneously, expressing the preconception of the nomadic Indian. No word is written about which nation the Indians of the mixed community actually belong to. In the eighteenth century bandeirantes wandered in the larger region of the Parecis Plateau and generally it is thought that the Paresi suffered greatly from their slave-raids. Thus these Indians could have been Paresi and slaves themselves, but the law officially prohibited Indian slavery and so no mention could be made of it in this kind of correspondence. Furthermore, no other reference is made to the tame Indians with whom the population allegedly had succeeded in maintaining some favorable alliance. It is possible that the gifts included metal instruments and that for some time the surrounding Indians gained access to these coveted goods. Maybe even the alleged reason for the quilombo’s original success had something to do with kind of exchange relation and the ensuing good neighborly relations. At least, this would be the conclusion if such alliances really occurred and did not serve merely to embellish the real kind of relations with the neighbors. In other words, they may have been presented to validate the inhabitants’ justifications to claim the value of their return or the official’s reasons given to convince the Crown of the propriety of his decision.

Speculations aside, the presence of the quilombo confirms the entry of intruding outsiders and some forms of relationships built up within the Nambikwara territories. Today the region around the middle and upper Piolho River is occupied by the Negarotê, the southernmost branch of the Northern Nambikwara. They, however, claim that they used to inhabit more a northern region closer to the heartland of the Northern Nambikwara language cluster (Figueroa 1987). Therefore, it remains to be seen which Indian peoples or local groups actually maintained the occupancy of this particular region, the middle and lower Guaporé Valley, then. In the end, perhaps, we can not even be absolutely certain about their being Nambikwara in the most general sense, although it is extremely likely, at least for those in the middle Guaporé Valley. This is corroborated by the Wasusu stories about these mixed communities, whose Indian inhabitants they held in contempt as being no longer real Indians and with whom a certain category of warriors and enterprising wanderers actively fought to expel (Fiorini 2000). The Wasusu occupied the higher courses of the adjacent rivers in the Guaporé Valley (south of the Piolho River) and their current position places them in the strip along the Parecis Plateau that was supposed to be occupied by the quilombos. Again, this raises doubts about the accuracy of this affirmation. Regardless, the oral tradition of the Wasusu confirms the presence of the quilombos but denies the establishment of any kind of alliance between them and the strangers and people no longer Indians. The picture painted by these historical memories stress conflict and incompatibility, although Fiorini hypothesizes that some of these enterprising individuals may have been incorporated into the enemy. As a people, on the other hand, and with respect to the majority of this special category of wandering and warring men, the relation with the intruding maroon communities remained inimical and very unlike any kind of alliance as was asserted by the maroons, according to the report in the official document.

The commander’s missive transmits an imagery that emphasizes the conquest of the quilombo at Piolho, while his consent to its resettlement was more controversial. The report mentions the limited number of slaves recaptured, mentioning the number as if only relevant with respect to the size of the former quilombo (and hardly to their owners). The mention of Indians only refers to them in the generalized sense and does not specify any origin. The diary of the bandeira in an attachment to the documents allows for an interesting interpretation somewhat different from what the official report put in the foreground (lamentably reports by any other expeditions were not recovered by Roquette-Pinto). The diary suggests that the true motive for this expedition was not recovery of runaway slaves, but rather the search for gold. The military official in charge remarks that the captured population from the Piolho quilombo also promised to come to trade in the town of Vila Bela and to report any gold findings that could attract some Portuguese colonists to this important place (their village)[ix]. His account of the Indians and the quilombo alters the strategic arrangement of the facts of the document discussed. First, he mentions that another military official who apprehended many slaves but also left many others hidden in the forest had destroyed the same quilombo 25 years before. These slaves later re-established the community. The manuscript establishes that afterwards: “Of these slaves newly established in the quilombo many died, some of old age, and others at the hands of the pagan Cabixês with whom they were permanently at war with the objective to steal their women and with whom they had children of mixed blood[x] that the list shows” (the list of captured people followed; in Roquette-Pinto 1919: 28). The annex thus admits to a state of war in flagrant contradiction to the main document but in agreement with the Wasusu stories. Therefore, here the Cabixês are very likely the Nambikwara and the village is not allied with the surrounding peoples.

Some additional information about the people and location of the maroon community may be useful here. From the older generation only six people were alive but they formed the leaders, spiritual and medical experts and the fathers and grandfathers of the small settlement. The expeditionary head appreciated both the very beautiful high ground of good soil and the abundant high forest, both superior at this river in comparison to other lands: “(…) at the excellent and currently cultivated margins of the Galera, Sararé and Guaporé Rivers: abundant in game and a river of much fish, a river of the same size as the Rio Branco” (ib.: id.). This was an old settlement with its own large and diversified horticulture at the point of producing their cotton for the confection of strong clothing. By this report the community in question appears to date back from before the year 1770 and the occupation of the land seems to be the oldest permanent village fully documented definitively within the Nambikwara territories. From the description its organized character as a holistic lived microcosm with a firm subsistence base and its own modalities of spiritual and material sociocultural practices is evident. Interestingly the black people spoke Portuguese as did the Indians, whom they taught. It is reported that even the adults spoke the language with ability equal to their teachers. Furthermore, even the Indians acquired some knowledge of the Christian doctrine which they perfected before they all received their baptism in town. In other words, a reconstructed lived micro-world with a strong cultural influence from the dominant colonial society and not solely an African-Indian re-creation. Clearly though, such idyllic descriptions must not be accepted easily. One need only think of the motivations of the inhabitants to present the dominant society with a positive image to gain the relative latitude the contemporary constraining sociopolitical structures allowed them. Yet, both religion and language are significant indices of civilization, and are an ideal face to present to the outside, but some practices cannot be invented at the spur of the moment[xi]. A certain latitude of the own inventiveness of culture (Sahlins 1999), on the other hand, is naturally possible and even very probable when the presence of their own priests and medics are noted. No such data are given for the other ex-slaves encountered. In effect, the expedition did find some tracks and houses of runaway slaves between the Galera River and São Vicente village but they had fled before their arrival. The abandoned houses were burnt. During the passage through São Vicente they sent the 54 captured people to Vila Bela by the road called Guilherme. The expedition itself went on along the road of the Arraial da Chapada (on the western side of the mountain range) until crossing the bridge over the Sararé River and awaited instructions. All of these observations confirm the regularity of the occupancy of these lands. The other more dense occupation by run-away slaves, however, occurred on the Pindaituba River, an eastern affluent of the upper Sararé[xii]. They even constituted two small villages located near each other. Here the party captured a number of slaves and blacks that were returned to their masters. Other run-away slaves are said to have returned on their own initiative, a fact depicted as the consequence of the destruction of their houses and fields.

The more striking and credible observation concerns the relation with the surrounding Indians. The nature of this relationship differs considerably from the one in the previous document, of which one might have supposed to have served as its source. Now the Indians are named Cabixê, evidently prefiguring the later denomination of Cabixi and the relationship was classified as one of a continuous war concerning the shortage of women. The shortage of women makes sense in a mining district where the main labor force is male. The subsequent need to assure the reproduction of the escaped slaves in the forests then would impose this theft, and thereby structurally configure the relation with the surrounding Indian villages as necessarily and durably hostile. Stealing local women also excludes the Paresi as participants[xiii]. Here then we are back to the warlike and belligerent image of the Nambikwara. This rings more true than the suggestion of allied tamable Indian villages. The expedition did come across the marks and traces of what they judged to be pagan communities not thought to be quilombos. At the organization of the bandeira by the captain general, the argument for the deployment of a large force to secure a safe passage is justified appealing to the necessity of passage through backlands in which live many savages. The expedition registered Indian tracks at the Piolho River. A search-party found many signs of the pagans’ many fires in the vicinity when scouting the upper Rio Branco, and so they withdraw after many days of activity. This river being given as the first river north of the Piolho, I assume that it is the current river Cabixi (as does Price (1972: 2) who reproduces these maps). In that case the numerous fires should be the fires of the Cabixi river branch of the Mamaindê. No Indian presence is reported at the upper Sararé and the lower part of the river seems to be frequented by the Whites (as also seen on the map).

Names and places
Based on this information and after comparing the historical account to the available Cabixi ethnographic material, it is understandable how Roquette-Pinto concluded that the Cabixi were actually Nambikwara. David Price, the most eminent of the students of the Nambikwara delved into these difficulties of identification and, in particular, into the locations of the various denominations used for the different peoples and segments of peoples in and around the northwest of Mato Grosso and adjacent areas of Rondônia. In his dissertation, true to his intellectual tradition to compile as many data as feasible, he expanded on the documentary material presented by the previous scholars. Even then he assembled a number of publications and older hard-to-find references and did a search in the FUNAI archives of Cuiabá[xiv]. Price notes that after the discovery of gold in Cuiabá in 1719 the new discovery of deposits in the Chapada de São Francisco precipitated a new rush in a region nicknamed Mato Grosso. Later the name of Mato Grosso came to designate the whole region and the captaincy. The Chapada today is known as the Serra da Borda (at least in the Indigenous Territory) but at earlier times was also known by other names like the Serra de São Vicente (the first name appears in Price’s dissertation (1972: 2), the other on the map in his later book (Price 1989b: 73) on the World Bank). It is remarkable in itself that the Portuguese discovered the new gold deposits when one considers the distance to Cuiabá and the presence of the autonomous native peoples still presumably hardly affected by the foreign incursions and foreign diseases[xv]. The lure of gold prevailed over the tremendous difficulties and dangers and here, again, one discerns how such appeal is historically imbued in the inhabitants of Mato Grosso, characterizing Rondon as a son of the earth (a native son, literally translating the Brazilian expression).

The subsequent discovery of gold in the region of the Arinos River in 1746, further north/northwest of Vila Bela, almost dealt a deathblow to the only too recent Mato Grosso (Coelho 1850 apud Price 1972: 3). The itinerant cycle of gold discovery – rush, exhaustion, and new discovery – is quite old in Amazonia. Quite rightly, Price remarks that the entire region must have been sampled at every stream before 1750, although, as seen, the hopes and prospecting never ceased until the expeditions of the end of the eighteenth century analyzed above. In fact, the bandeirante leading of the expedition of 1717 started his career in 1673, at the age of 14, participating in the bandeira of his father (Pinto 1993:13). In time, the rumor of the mines persisted, contrary to the lack of luck of finding them and so, “There is no way of knowing how many adventurers in search of these mines have entered the Nambiquara region over the last two centuries” (Price 1972: 3). He could well have said the last three centuries but may have discounted the twentieth century after the precarious conquest by Rondon’s telegraph line or the forty years before 1770. Overall, this largely undocumented activity of slave raiding of Indians, gold rushes and slave mining activities expanded the colonial frontier of what has been called Portuguese America. As Hemming noted the Indians were considered Red Gold, it is coherent to extend this analogy to Black Gold as epitomized by the slavery and, of course, the Yellow Gold itself, the mineral responsible for the cruelty and domination systematically suffered by Indians and blacks. Red and black gold served as the means to find yellow gold to the benefit of their owners and the affluence of the Crown.

As noted, some of the activity in the seventeenth and eighteenth century derived from the strategic needs of the consolidation of this golden frontier. Thus the third captain general (the military commander of the province) cited by Price as arriving in the region in 1769 and the first for whom he found reasonably adequate documentation, soon sent an expedition to travel overland to the fort on the Guaporé River. This occupation opposed the Spanish presence as materialized in the Jesuit missions in present-day Bolivia and prepared the establishment of a definite path. This party encountered several groups of Indians, many of these names given disappeared from the literature. Then the Cabixis lived between the upper Cabixi, the Iquê and lower Juína and the Pareci lived on the upper Juruena. Contrary to what might be expected as this geographic location concerns the southern rim of the heartland of the Northern Nambikwara (the Mamaindê) while also encompassing the northern part of the current savanna area of Southern Nambikwara (including the Manduka of the Aroeira area and further on in the direction of the Juína river), Price proposes that this group probably was Nambikwara but does not name any of these peoples. He suggests, very tentatively, that these people may be related to the Sabanê. The Cahivi of around 1723 mentioned above as a candidate for being Nambikwara are, as Price reports in a note (1972: 5-6), described as exhibiting customs quite unlike the present day Nambikwara and remind him of Tupian cultural practices. The name itself may be derived from a Tupi word for people (Kaghahív; and the name turns up in other times in Rondônia). Therefore, he seems to conclude, the only Nambikwara eligible for this part of the region would be the socioculturally and linguistically most differentiated people of the Nambikwara ensemble. Hence his opinion about these early Kabixi differs from Roquette-Pinto. On the other hand, Price knew very little about the Sabanê and he prudently raised the possibility only as a very remote one. The same account reports two other groups, the Tamarés and Guaritérés of whom the former don’t wear clothing and sleep on the bare ground. Such an epithet is characteristic of the Nambikwara and always refers to a unique distinctive feature. Therefore, these Tamaré seem to be the only people certain to be Nambikwara in this century. Price supposes the name of the other group to be similar to the northern designation of the Southern Nambikwara cluster (wélêteré) as this could be a transcription of this name by the Portuguese. This is considerably more speculative than the identification of the Tamaré.

From the discussion in Part II I feel confident in asserting that the Cabixi at this stage are unlikely Sabanê but still might be Nambikwara. As Price observes, the naming of two other groups of Nambikwara indexes an approximation to these peoples that, if truly Nambikwara, demonstrates a later lost ability to discriminate between populations of some cultural or ethnic differences. The party took prisoners among the populations met on the way to serve as guides and later released them. Slightly afterwards, the government established an Indian village in the valley of the Sararé River (1781). This village consisted of 56 Indians of the Pareci, Maimbaré (probably one of the three major branches of the Pareci) and Cabixi, only one of these names potentially referring to what became known as Nambikwara and then of an unknown number of people. In 1783, the village director Cardoso abused his position. He acted to separate a man from his new wife (his first wife’s sister) whom the latter had just brought in from the interior. The arbitrariness of this act revolted the Indians. They killed the man, the other seven Whites and burned the village. Given the experiences of settling down mentioned above, such behavior is expected and the whole attempt lasted only two years. No other effort to reduce the Cabixi is known. If the Cabixi Indians in question really belonged to the Nambikwara ensemble, than this could have been the first time some Nambikwara entered into peaceful relations with the intruders. Even if this is not the case, the outcome must have spread and may have taught the Nambikwara a lesson with respect to the treatment to be expected from such an alliance. Taking prisoners along the way also does not connote a very friendly attitude. The trail itself, as becomes clear from the necessity to repeat the journey at the end of the same century, was abandoned under allegations of the large distance involved and the numerous pagans infesting the countryside (apud Price 1972: 9). In other words, the conclusion is justified that the eighteenth century mostly generated hostility among a populous people later called Nambikwara, and that war rather than peace between them and the mining villages and gold discovery expeditions prevailed.

The importance of the black slaves in these enterprises comes to the fore in a letter to the king dated 1752. On the eastern side of the Serra da Borda – hence possibly either on the fringe or within the immemorial Nambikwara territories – two mining villages existed. Between the two of them fewer than seventy White men lived there, of whom just seven were married. The presence of these men denote the frontier situation and shapes the reason of discord with the director of the failed settlement due to the conduct of the director who insisted on trading his old wife for a newlywed woman who just arrived in the village. By implication, without explicitly saying so, the first woman certainly was Indian too[xvi]. The dispute of women caused the uprising and this shortage is shown by the disproportionate numbers of the White population, a proportion that increases much more when considering the 1170 slaves (and the presence of some free blacks and mulatos). The relative proportion of over 16 slaves per White man, considering they were all potential owners, expounds clearly the importance of this regimented labor-force and the permanent need to safeguard this property. The sheer numbers explain to some extent how the slaves could have decided to try their luck to found free quilombo communities. In contradiction with the discussed account written afterwards, quilombos almost sprung up simultaneously with the mines, the community repressed in 1770 is given as located on the Galera River. Interestingly, the social organization of the dismantled community possessed some distinct sociocultural form of governance. They had a widowed queen and a parliament presided by a governor. Seventy nine blacks and thirty Indians of both sexes inhabited the community. They grew food and cotton and even had two blacksmith shops (Coelho apud Price 1972:10-1). This suggests a self-sufficient and well-established autonomous village.

From this limited information it is practically impossible to deduce who were the Indians and what relations procured with the surrounding neighboring Indian villages. On the other hand, the information about the blacksmith’s competency and the ascribed practice of killing deserters point to a community with the means to hold its own in a potentially hostile environment. Also, the Indian point of view of the occupation of quilombos in the region can be further explored with fragments of the Sararé oral tradition. As already quoted above for the Wasusu, in contrast to the common belief, Indian peoples sometimes do have an astonishing historical memory. That is, not only the mythical memory, in the respectful technical anthropological sense not in the popular sense of whimsical untrue stories, but also partially in the sense of the history in the western tradition of selected, retained, and presumably factual knowledge about the past. Price reproduces a recorded interview with the leader of the Sararé that demonstrates both an unexpected time depth and confirms the idea that the Brazilian penetration of the Nambikwara homelands consisted of the very significant participation of black people. Although these events happened a considerable time ago the memory of some of them was told and passed to the next generation. The question that prompted this response concerned the finding of potsherds near a Nambikwara village on the Plateau by Price and a fellow anthropologist, Cook[xvii]. The Sararé leader Américo had this to say:
“Now, if you look at the Brazilians, you will notice that some of them have pretty hair, like that of the Indians. This is because Brazilians killed some of the inhabitants of these sites and carried others away. The descendants of their offspring are the Brazilians with straight hair, who are still around. That’s how it is.

 I don’t know much about it, but this is what my father told me, and I also, learned it. What he said was that the people of whom I have speaking lived in the places where you find the potsherds today; and moreover, that these other people, these Brazilians with heads like macucos [Monticula Boie, Saxatilis (lin)] – these black Brazilians – were very warlike. He said that first Brazilians were very warlike and that they carried off the inhabitants of these sites. He said that the Brazilians of today are good people however.

 “Today,” he said, “only the pots remain. However, formerly, people like that one – young men and young women, like that one – they killed all their old mothers, and killed all their old fathers, and they carried the children away with them. And when they were grown, they had children by them. Now these Brazilians, who are beautiful, and who have hair like Indians, are their descendants.” ” (Price 1972: 16).

This oral tradition confirms the slave raiding genocidal practices and the competition for the bodies of the young Indians, both as a workforce and, for the women, as sexual objects too, with the concomitant assassination of the older, less useful and less pliable generation. Moreover, this places the forefathers of the Sararé squarely in the Guaporé Valley at the time of this particular form of Western predation. Noteworthy is the idea that the Indians of these places gave birth to a special kind of Brazilian, with Indian hair. The aesthetics of the Sararé do not diverge completely from the Brazilian ideal because the latter appreciate straight hair as good hair. However, this convergence is partial, as the Brazilian ideal for the vast majority still concerns being White and blond or moreno, despite relatively recent efforts to improve the appreciation of black characteristics, a difficult project in spite of Brazil’s sizable moreno population (see Reesink 2001). The Brazilian descendants esteemed by Américo differ from Whites and he falls back on his own culture’s judgements: the Brazilian ameliorated their racial stock by the forced infusion of captured Indian children and their pretty black straight hair (valued in mixed blood mestiços). It is not without irony that this notion concurs with the racial upgrading of the Brazilian people proposed for the Nambikwara by Rondon (with a certain appreciation of mixed ancestry). This is especially true because of the implication that this improvement depended upon the Indian influx and thus would result entirely from their involuntary contribution. A contribution, in this case, not necessarily by Nambikwara, as the identity of the potsherd makers remains unspecified. This story in addition to the Wasusu version of these events helped Fiorini (2002) conclude that the Indian producers of the ceramics must be Paresi.

Based on a few occasional remarks made to me, I believe that the present day Sararé take pride in their physical appearance and do not share the Brazilian predilection for whiteness, blondness, or even moreno mixed ancestry. It is quite certain they totally reject their own mixture with Brazilians, at least as far as their women are concerned. The admixture of their type, in this view, could only have occurred by raiders and not by alliance. Contrary to the Sabanê, the permanence of the strong in-group feeling and the fact of remaining together on a part of their homelands allow the Sararé to maintain a high level of autonomy. A young woman who delivered a child by a civilized man found herself in dire straits and only with great difficulty succeeded in raising him. Even today some of the old men have not really accepted the presence of the child and it is commented that some still advocate the killing of the young boy. Depopulation may have contributed to this attitude but if this story is remotely similar to the historical Sararé peoples than they could hardly have allowed the assimilation of run away slaves or other strangers. Américo also recounted an unrecorded story about two bands waging a battle which initiates with the derogatory statement that the enemy living in the Guaporé Valley “were raised among civilizados” (Price 1972: 16). Thus his people, later fused with others into the Sararé, cherished its own culture and body. War definitely appears the major mode of relationship with the self-styled civilized. Among them neither blacks nor Whites are beautiful, only the Brazilians who are of Indian descent. And it is hardly astounding that the others are described as Brazilians, as profoundly other. Contrary to the common-sense notion about the Earth people as primitive, naked sleepers on the ground (Price 1981a), these indications demonstrate that the Nambikwara esteem their culture and aesthetics. As all peoples, unless thoroughly dominated and conditioned by symbolic violence, they consider themselves superior to the strangers (cf. Bourdieu 2000).

From these early times of contact the Nambikwara obtained a number of cultigens that they acquired in an unknown way but incorporated into their stock of edible plants. In the myth of origin a number of domesticated plants figure on the list of the transformation of the body parts of a boy into the edible plants and flutes, and the more recent plants are distinguished clearly from the mythical origins of the plants of the horticultural gardens (Price 1972: 16). In other words, both the idea of some type of change of one’s own society and of exchange with others leads to the adoption of new material items very likely occurred among the historical Sararé, even if war was the predominant mode of contact with the intruders. In this sense, as the other side of the coin of the feeling of superiority might imply the rejection of change or foreign objects, the peoples of the Nambikwara ensemble do not seem to have been adverse to useful innovations. The readiness to adopt such items as labor saving instruments or new crops denotes a practical attitude. On their own terms these peoples are neither extremely supportive of nor particularly averse to assimilating the material culture or sociocultural practices of others. Even Rondon encountered on the Parecis Plateau in the region never before treaded by white men stumps of trees cut by steel axes[xviii]. The espousal of practical tools or plants also may be taken as a token of self-esteem if the people and the group itself decided and chose what to accept and what to reject. Simultaneously, the firm belief in one’s own worth and the value of personal autonomy are impediments to the idea of an easy acceptance of slavery.

This returns us to the question of who were the Cabixi of the eighteenth century. As seen, the Cabixi participated in the constitution of the ill fated Indian village. Up to this moment I hypothesized that the Cabixi (especially the Cabixê) are part of the Nambikwara and Price admits the idea of the intruders distinguishing between three different local groups or peoples of the Nambikwara ensemble a few years before the village was founded. However, upon later reflection, he was not satisfied with this conclusion and ten years later returned to the subject. In a case study about western classification of indigenous peoples he addresses the intellectual puzzle of naming practices of the Portuguese colonial enterprise where successive waves of intruders not always built on the names left by previous raiders. The main question revolves around who, in over 250 years of interethnic relations, were the sequential groups referenced by the terms Cabixi and, and much later, Nambikwara. Price revises his opinion taking into consideration additional sources and reviewing the already cited excerpts [xix]. Citing the first bandeirante on the Paresi of the Parecis Plateau, Price quotes him on how the explorer noticed the region to be heavily populated and how the Indians dedicated themselves tirelessly to agriculture. Evidently, the Indians exhibited the further characteristics of egalitarianism and non-aggressiveness. They were, therefore, the perfect candidates for slaves and serfdom. No wonder that at the end of the eighteenth century Ricardo Franco writes of the Paresi as if they were a people of the past and suffering near extinction. Price also cites a new testimony of a royal official in Cuiabá, reporting to Portugal in 1738, who acknowledges the illegal practice of using Indian slaves for the laborious process of washing and panning the gold contained in the gravel of the new mines of Mato Grosso. Here the functionary discusses the enslavement of the Paryci, Cabexy, Mambaré, and Waccayiri. The Crown, according to this official, would lose income and could not support the cost of an expensive measure like releasing the Indian slaves and setting up the villages for these Indians if, in effect, it commanded compliance with the law. This is an obvious instance of justifying disobedience to an inapplicable law on the frontiers of the realm. In order not to promote a full frank contradiction of the law, he suggested that disinfecting the countryside of Indians should be a service to be rewarded with the disposing of the lifelong labor service of the Indians captured.

Colonial society and especially the interior always were in conflict with the written law. The almost completely unprotected Indian peoples became fair prey and thus the prior speculations about the presence of Indian slaves and run-aways in the region of Mato Grosso are quite legitimate. In that sense, the presence of the Cabixi in the one reported attempt to install a legal Indian settlement in the Sararé region somewhat contradicts the picture of the Cabixi at war at the end of the century: if as non-aggressive and subject to slavery as stated for the Paresi, then the Indians in the village should be a division of the Paresi. But then again, even these peaceful Indians rose against the tyranny of the director and that contradicts the image of peacefulness, reminding instead of Nambikwara propensities. Furthermore, a few of the Wasusu warrior adventurers mentioned by Fiorini might have participated in this venture, either as part of the Paresi contingent with which they probably maintained a special relationship (as warriors, hunters, even leaders), or else a small number of Nambikwara people settled there as captives issued from civilized forays. Some Nambikwara may have been in the Paresi villages as either prisoners or simply people attracted by the presence of steal tools. The presence of Cabixi in the village administrated by a civilized director does not necessarily exclude the identification of Cabixi as Southern Nambikwara: they could be Paresi, Paresi mixed with Wasusu warrior-hunters (or possibly other neighboring Valley Nambikwara) or even captured Nambikwara (as is possible in the quilombo).

Price concludes that Cabixí are Paresi – disregarding the state of war with the quilombo to countervail the notion of the peaceful disposition of all groups to which the name was attributed – with the idea that around the time of Rondon the two other major branches of the Paresi called the third branch Cabixi. These people thought the name Cabixi was pejorative. At that time the Nambikwara were the wild Cabixi and the Paresi branch the tame Cabixi. I would add the placement of the Paresi on the upper Juruena and the extension of Cabixi territory until the lower Juína (far beyond the Northern Nambikwara homelands) strengthens the argument that the Cabixi mentioned first are Paresi. These indications reveal the occupancy of the Parecis Plateau by the people whose name it bears, very likely predecessors to the presence on the larger part of the highlands by the Nambikwara do Campo. Price finishes this part of his review with a citation from the end of eighteenth century by Ricardo Franco, a part he did not cite before and now quoted in favor of the proposed new identification (the almost extinguished Paresi mixing with the Mambare and Cabixi) and most of all delineating the contours of the territory: “a nation that wanders in the savannas of the Pareci; they live at the sources and in the forests of the Rivers Guaporé, Sararé, Piolho and Branco [that is, the Cabixi]” (apud Price 1983b: 133). This latter affirmation defines a territory that extends from the high Plateau but spills over into the adjacent (and more forested) part of the Guaporé valley. Today the Nambikwara do not occupy the higher grounds of the southern tip of the Plateau and towards a northerly direction until the Wasusu (that is, the high lands opposite the current Sararé territory). But the Sararé did point out to me a village site well within the foothills leading up to the Plateau, located, presently, outside of their Indigenous Territory and on the other side of the highway. The question is if the Cabixi of the eighteenth century occupied the headwaters of these rivers – from the Sararé up till the Cabixi River – and how far their dominion reached the lands downstream. Price’s map shows that the main part of the Guaporé Valley belonged to the Nambikwara while later Nambikwara occupancy extended to include the entire Guaporé Valley. Franco claimed that the people of the Valley were Cabixi[xx]. If the Nambikwara occupied the escarpments and the map is valid, then a part of the former Cabixi territory overlaps with Nambikwara lands and they still could have been Nambikwara.

In review, the data thus far seem to indicate that the older Cabixi were a branch of the Paresi – but note that there is some counterevidence. One contradiction still raised by Price is the placement of the Tamaré, a label that likely refers to a Nambikwara people. At the end of the eighteenth century they lived almost exactly on the spot of the 1769 territory of the Cabixi. Franco, somewhere between 1799 and 1804, attributed the lands from the upper Galera and on the Juína to the Tamaré. Price does not discuss the case further than observing that this contradicts the previous location of the Cabixi. Either in twenty five years the Nambikwara already expanded into lands of the Cabixi affected by slave raiding, or they were there the whole time and the Cabixi always occupied more southern areas on the Parecis Plateau and possibly on its more immediate flanks. Alternatively, the discriminative ability that Price discerned in 1972 did not really operate that well in this region – the Portuguese were more interested in the gold than the people – and did not bother to clearly separate the Cabixi from the Tamaré at this time. Given the paucity of firm evidence, it seems to me that this debate is rather speculative and, barring the unlikely introduction of new information, can at best only result in more unverifiable conjectures. At this point in his article however, Price proposes an ingenious third possible solution. This hypothesis is based on the oral tradition from the Sararé region. He cites another part of Américo’s narrative quoted first above:
“A long time ago there were people, I’ve been told, who were just like the people of today. They were called neyalhósú [the owners of the land[xxi]]. Long ago they lived in the place where you now see the potsherds. … Once some people went to a neayalhósú [sic] village and asked for food. The neayalhósú said, “Listen. If you kill a paca or an armadillo, I will give you produce in payment for this meat, and we will eat each other’s food.”

 The men did not understand. … One said, “I think he wants some pitumbas [a fruit].”But another man, who understood the language, disagreed. “That’s not what he wants at all. He didn’t ask for pitumbas; he asked for meat – either armadillo or paca.”

But after he had left, the other man rejected this. “What he wants,” he said, “is pitumbas.” Nobody else wanted to make an issue out of the matter. “That’s right,” they said, “He asked for pitumbas. Pick some and give them to him.”

 So the man went and took some pitumbas and took them to trade. But the neyalhósú refused to accept them. He turned his back and put his produce away. “I asked you for meat, “he said, “Paca or armadillo. So why have you brought me fruit?” Then the man who understood the language said, “That’s just what I told you. He didn’t ask you for fruit. I told you what he wanted; now you must take the blame.”

 That’s how they spoke to each other. That’s how it was a long time ago” (Price 1983b: 139).

This complement of the first fragment of the historical narrative describes the people in question as speaking a different language, living on the Parecis Plateau near then current village site of the Nambikwara do Campo and within their contemporary territory. These unknown people preceded the Nambikwara who named them as the owners of the land. When Price lived among the Nambikwara of the Plateau they called the Paresi savanna dwellers. The Nambikwara naming of another people, according to Price, appeals to a characteristic trait, usually a reference to what calls special attention to the observer. In other words, they view and refer to others in terms of what they themselves are and do not and of that what in other people’s practices calls their attention. This justifies the conclusion that in these times the Parecis Plateau was occupied by the Paresi and the savanna, or at least most of it, the southern part, only became the territory of Nambikwara after the enormous population losses sustained by the Paresi as the preferential target of the slave raiding. The Nambikwara probably escaped the raider’s attention because they did not live in the high open savanna that favors pillaging but in the forest bordering the Plateau, “perhaps in the Guaporé Valley” (ib: 139)[xxii]. Although caution is justified, Price seems to be somewhat excessively cautious here. Living in the Guaporé Valley is supported by the oral tradition and the summarized indications. The whole problem has been to establish how far this occupancy extended towards the highlands and towards the south. It is clear from the story that the two peoples knew of each other, as one of the men even speaks the language and a visit to the village can only occur if there were some friendly relations prior to the event. It is, by the way, characteristic of the Nambikwara notion of the autonomy of the person that the error is not corrected and the stubborn man is left alone to find out for himself. No fruit but meat is desired, and then the foods can be exchanged. In effect, the suggestion hinted here concerns a complementarity of grown vegetable food and wild meat to create a proper meal. Moreover, the statement clarifies that each food identifies with the giver. As a metonymic gift relation prevails between producer and food, the hunter supplements his meat and the horticulturist his manioc.

Price did not analyze the transaction in these terms but emphasized the symbiotic relation. This exchange should be thought of as the exchange of socially esteemed foods. In fact, if the testimony of the first extraneous account by the bandeirante of the stress of the Paresi on their horticultural toils was correct, then the role of sedentary food producer is part of these peoples’ social values. Despite Rondon’s passing remark, Price probably was unaware that the Paresi village allocates the role of hunter to one or two men who hunt for all of them. The Nambikwara appreciate the hunter and value the meat he brings in. Therefore, the notion of a complementary division of activities and cooperation in the exploitation of the environment as the mode of coexistence between, for example, the Cabixi (as Paresi) and the Tamaré (as Nambikwara) makes sense. The Southern Nambikwara, for most or all the Northern brethren lived too distant, or the part of them inhabiting a parallel line with the fringe of the Parecis Plateau might have entertained this exchange of sociocultural preferences and specific competences for many years (even though the quoted bandeirante complimented the Paresi as being experts in a special collective hunt). Price notes the existence in other ethnographic regions of similar arrangements in Amazonia (for instance the Maku and the Tukanoans), but he does not expand upon the proposition. This may be because owing to Rondon’s publicity of the Nambikwara do Campo, this group is often taken to be representative of all Nambikwara. Price also spent much of his fieldwork time in the savanna. Without further discussion he amplifies his hypothesis to encompass all of the Tamaré as involved in this kind of system. Pending further research it would have been more prudent to confine the alternative to the southern set of peoples and villages pertaining to the Southern Nambikwara language cluster[xxiii]. In this sense, the category of wandering Wasusu men, as explained by Fiorini (2000), leads this anthropologist to postulate that these men not only fought against invaders but gained positions of hunter-warrior and even leadership roles among the Paresi. Hence the notion that these men and other Nambikwara attracted by them could live among the Paresi, or even that these peoples might have had partially overlapping territories.

Price, unaware of the Wasusu wanderers, also goes on to propose some kind of co-existence. The conclusion drawn also pertains to the nature of the relation that food production has to the land and what, exactly, occupancy of a land entails. Price does not elaborate the point but remarks that an early observer considered the two peoples to intermingle. From this narrative he judges that the peoples “may have lived in the same region” (Price 1983b: 139). He does not explicitly clarify this by suggesting, for example, that the peoples partially overlapped in village locations but by implication, this appears to be his conclusion. Implicit too remains the suggestion that the partial overlapping of territory partly explains the confusions in the oldest literature about the exact locations and the group label: Cabixi may have been an ambiguous label since the beginning. Alternatively, the current Nambikwara do Campo spend half of their yearly time in the village and the other half traveling on a network of strong clean trails worn deep in the ground radiating from the permanent village in all directions and consisting of “long, steady paths that wind through the savanna; and barely discernible passages through the forest where the hunter soundlessly stalks his quarry” (Price 1981a: 17). Journeying for days and weeks means a normal mobility for these people, although one not to be confused with aimless wandering. At least, the Wasusu do not like to roam without purpose and normally set out to travel with a clear objective in mind (Fiorini 2000). Thus a temporary residence of a hunter alone or, more likely, with his family in or near a Paresi Cabixi village falls perfectly well within the pattern of normal itinerancy. Through their vast fund of knowledge the Nambikwara do Campo hunter overcomes “the disadvantage of dependency on a dispersed resource” (Price 1981a: 17). The desire for meat even gains a specific expression in the Southern Nambikwara language of the Sararé: hesanawa denotes a general hunger that can be satisfied with all sorts of foods but hesanawa kaiuha inyainatuwa signifies hunger to eat meat (Santos 2000: 32). The division of labor of hunting and gardening could even be supplemented with the usual female activity of gathering in the same countryside: the wife of the hunter could gather other unusual food either for her own family or the Paresi. As to the customary corresponding female practice of gathering, it is important to clarify again the common conception that these peoples are only hunters and gatherers. The Nambikwara have been for countless years horticultural peoples, a fact validated by history and myth[xxiv].

A mode of exchange and co-existence makes practical and symbolic sense. Notwithstanding close contact, this mode of relation does not exclude a reciprocal ethnocentric attitude between the partners involved in the exchange. The hunter qualities of the Nambikwara and their mobility may be a source of pride not shared with a people that went to so much trouble to till the land and to weave hammocks. The Paresi looked down on a people who preferred sleeping on fine white sand to sleeping in hammocks. This dislike is palpable in Price’s translation of the Paresi name for the Nambikwara, Earth People, those sleeping on the ground. It was not for lack of knowledge or ability that the Nambikwara did not make hammocks and remained in a kind of very ‘primitive poverty’, rather it was a question of preference and custom. Centuries after part of the Nambikwara ended their partnership with the Cabixi and Paresi, with the tremendous decline of this ensemble, a missionary resolved to fetch a Paresi hammock and challenged the people to replicate it. “They examined it with interest and began twining palm fibers, but when they discovered how much work was involved, they quit. They would rather spend their nights snuggled up to the warm ashes of a dying fire than spend their days making hammocks” (Price 1981a: 16). From this context it is not so much any imputed laziness but a question of measuring the costs of the investment in energy compared to any gains in comfort. Apparently, they believed that weaving a hammock is not worth the effort when the sand and the ashes offer a comfortable alternative. Moreover, Price suggests a Tupi influence on the Northern Nambikwara culture, particularly for those in Rondônia. He concludes that despite the inevitable knowledge of the hammock they still preferred to sleep on the white sand (Price’s observations are available in an undated FUNAI memo titled “O Projeto Nambiquara” available in the Instituto Socioambiental archives, São Paulo). Clearly the apparently patent superiority of the hammock is due to a particular presumption and the projection of a value not inherent in the object itself.

Thus Earth People is the title of the article Price wrote for the lay public. He might well have used Ash People, as illustrated in the authors’ own poetic description, as they slept close to the ashes of the dying fire and liked to paint themselves with ash residue. Sometimes as evinced by Cinzeiro’s name, they laid too close to the fired and got burnt. The Sararé, as was to be expected from the oral tradition quoted, not only prefer to sleep on the ground near a fire, but also know how to weave and have access to the necessary primary material for the fiber. Thus they could produce hammocks and mats: “They acquire the fiber for the bowstring and for the weaving of the strips sa’hlu to carry children form the savanna tucum [a palm tree] or else to fabricate woven arm ornaments (…) If they wanted to produce mats and hammocks the Katitauhlu would know how to do so, however, they don’t and say that it is the Paresi who have the custom to make them” (Santos 2000: 29). As such, the Katitauhlu, as Santos prefers to call the Sararé, not only are aware of the object and the technique but attribute its customary usage to their Paresi neighbors. The Paresi pride themselves with the intricate fabricated cloth of their hammocks and they consider this one of the artifacts that distinguishes them from other groups. Perhaps they could be called the Hammock People, in perfect opposition to their neighbors. On the savanna the Nambikwara prefer fine white sand on which to found their villages. They distinguish between red-sand savanna, white-sand savanna (with a somewhat higher vegetation than the previous), red-sand forest (small trees) and gallery forest with richer black soils (for horticultural gardens). Observers of the earth, a second sense of being Earth People, the Nambikwara do Campo recognize a specific strip of vegetation protecting the forest from encroachment[xxv]. On the edge of the savanna and the forest the village consists of “(…) two or three hatched huts on a little patch of sand that is kept clear of weeds. Children play in the sand; manioc bread is baked in the sand; and when people die, they are buried in the sand. A place is considered a village only if someone is buried there, and when people die far from an existing village, they are carried to a spot where the presence of nearby gardening lands means that a village can someday be founded. As a seed buried in the earth gives rise to a plant, the dead beneath the ground give rise to a community of the living” (Price 1981a: 17-8). Earth, Ash, or Sand People indeed.

The Empire’s unwilling retreat
The Guaporé River was officially discovered in 1737, at the time of the Mato Grosso gold rush and later constituted an important avenue of commerce with its connection to the Madeira River and subsequent route to Pará. By 1750 the Indians furnished at least some of the workforce for the mining activities, and one observer asserted that they also provided the mainstay of the labor at the plantations of the Guaporé. A friar’s testimony and outrage confirms the exact terms of Américo’s oral tradition: “They kill the old and bring the young in chains to be sold” (apud Price: 1983b: 132). A gradual decadence of the mines and an almost desperate search for new sources of gold ensued. After the repression of the quilombo and the thorough prospecting of the expedition of 1795, a number of prominent miners of Mato Grosso pursued the lead of gold deposits near the new village Carlota, the former quilombo. They spent their resources and took many slaves with them but were completely deceived in their expectations. Ricardo Franco, whose comments are quoted here (Price 1972: 15), affirms their reduction to penury and being isolated from normal communications. The decline set in could not be reversed. After 1800 the whole region of Vila Bela gradually became progressively less significant. The miners exhausted the main sources or these fell to modest levels, the attraction of the entire region faded. After 1805 the town of Diamantino was founded near the Arinos River. This river turned into the main artery for the commerce with Pará and an overland route to Rio de Janeiro also existed. This explains how the Guaporé River lost its main function and how Vila Bela became a largely superfluous town (its strategic frontier position aside). The Whites gradually abandoned the town leaving behind a black population to fend for itself. Economically, the town and surroundings did not loose all means of exchange after 1830, there was some commerce related to the gathering expeditions of the medicinal plant ipecac (Price 1972: 17-8).

The nineteenth century thus saw the retraction of the frontier and its pressure on the Nambikwara. Perhaps more accurately, the absence of immediate and attractive riches elevated the cost of maintaining an occupation of a territory disputed arduously by the Indians called Cabixi. The latter waged a war that eventually led to the abandonment of the villages in the interior and almost caused the withdrawal from the ex-capital itself. The interior colonialist expansion in itself did not halt, notwithstanding the dearth of major economic growth or new boom activities. Slowly, in some regions, the frontier moved on and some peoples had to surrender. Traces of these events can be followed in the official reports or speeches to open the yearly provincial parliamentary cycle made by the Presidents of the Province of Mato Grosso. After the central government’s neglected or circumvented laws, these statements are interesting because local governments gained in legal authority and, especially after 1834, interfered more directly in the fate of Indian peoples (Carneiro da Cunha 1992: 138; this article discusses the very similar situation for the entire country in the 19^th century). In Mato Grosso the Indian question is always addressed, if only with a few obligatory remarks. The problem is too large to pass over but the consensus too great and the difficulties eternal[xxvi]: the lack of means and men to bring the Indians to conversion and civilization “(…) for the interesting labor to recollect this numerous fraction of our countrymen to the Society and Religion, for which nothing is permitted to oppose itself, and that will continue their hostilities” (the President Pimenta Boeno in 1836; Boeno 1845: 10)[xxvii]. The shared common premises shape the unquestionable superiority of the Society and Religion opposed by the absence of the same principles among the inferior peoples, our Indians, who do not understand the immense and obvious advantages to integrate themselves and thus may insist in their hostilities. The possessive principle of being of the same country and being ours justifies the public policy to civilize the uncivilized. The efforts to settle the hostile Indians and to establish a peace never parted from any other assumption and, therefore, never responded to the Indian presuppositions of a veritable alliance between equals. The complaint of Rosa Bororo is the experience, irrespective of all their different perspectives, of all Indian peoples or villages accepting peace. The Whites never fail to attempt making peace via surrender, domination and serfdom. A remarkable constant already remarked on but which challenges the current Western self-image as a civilization produced by permanent historical change and progress (for the larger Western context of the impressive constancy of a variety of preconceptions about the so-called West and hunters-gatherers, see Brody 2001).

The addresses to the Assembly or the reports presented to it thus regularly inform about the hostilities and barbarous acts of the several Indian peoples and the actions taken. In this initial period one major worry concerned the Cabeçais Bororo who occupied the land on the upper Paraguay and the Jauru River until the upper Guaporé (see the map by Price (1983b: 140) named as Western Bororo). Southern neighbours to the northern Cabixi, they formed a buffer zone that, being closer to the capital and more populated, worried the government much more than the farther and apparently less economically important eastern bank of the Guaporé. Agriculturalists (Brazilian settlers) now inhabited the region between the capital and the village currently the town of Cáceres (on the Paraguay River), and beyond this place towards Vila Bela (observed by Castelnau during his trip in 1845, he commented on the impressive quantity of cattle; Hemming 1995: 200). The simple occupancy of Indian lands and the ecological and economic competition ensuing normally is never admitted in print to be a motivation for the Indians’ defense. Hence the conclusion: “The Cabeçaes Indians had not been provoked; no other measure was left but to beat them and inspire fear: all else would be illusionary, would attain the means of correspondence with Matto grosso [the town], or would sacrifice the lives of travelers and cultivators” (Bueno 1845: 11). A sad but necessary expediency followed, a bandeira from Cáceres, with instructions that attend to the duties to humanity. Humanitarian measures, a recurrent kind of phrase to appeal to the presumed superiority of civilization, still allowed for between 40 to 50 Indian casualties and the imprisonment of 28 others. The prisoners were later distributed among honorable people in the capital for education. In other words, people of sufficient social standing to exchange very cheap labor for room and board.

The hostilities ceased for the time being – a kind of war season was determined by the climate – as the Indian population was significantly reduced. Their war force was now estimated at only some 200 bows, inadequate for effective attacks and to express their “avenging nature” (ibid: 11). The colonizing society never retaliates, it usually only reacts to extraneous aggression and very rarely if ever presumes itself to act as the aggressor. The military expedition only returned because of the climatic conditions and stopped pursuing the Indians further. In the end, however, the war effort apparently exhausted the means of the Indians who were recurrently subjected to this kind of assaults. Consequently, these are the Bororo who accepted peace, who were settled by the Whites and then by 1863 became extinct (Hemming 1995: 201). An extinction contrasting with the persistence of the Eastern Bororo whose resistance, as mentioned above, was praised by Hemming when noting their survival until today. Ironically, according to the same writer, Rondon descended from the third branch, the Plains Bororo, whose territory extended to the west of Cuiabá and was situated to the south of the Cabeçal and also became extinct. The Cabeçal branch served for a long time as a buffer to the Nambikwara region. They fought, but unfortunately for them, their plains were ideal for cattle (Hemming 1995: ch.20). It is unclear if Rondon really identified in some manner with the somewhat remote ascendancy (a great-grandmother, according to Hemming 1995: 394; a great-grandmother (MFM) of mixed Cabaçal origin, according to Rondon’s biographer, Lima1990: 59), but he went to pacify the neighbors of his distant extinct relatives[xxviii]. Near simultaneously to the expedition against the Bororo, the government planned to mount a similar effort against the Parecis, who were perpetuating insults and thefts in Lavrinhas but here there were no murders. The bandeira went forth from Matto-grosso and the Indians retreated. There was no violence.

The Paresi being named as aggressors conflicts with their previous peaceful, tame, image. Then again, no known Indian people is completely peaceful and they may have appealed to violence to take vengeance for humiliations. Perhaps they tried to conceal their activities hiding behind the notion of being peaceful while the Cabixi were gradually being marked as the major disrupters of the peace in the region. Price hypothesized the possible intermingling of the Cabixi-Paresi with Nambikwara groups and then proposed that the Nambikwara expanded from their possible homeland in the Guaporé Valley to occupy lands abandoned by the Cabixi-Paresi. From the evidence he concludes that the eighteenth century Cabixi composed a part of the Paresi and that the near extinction of other parts of the more comprehensive ensemble opened up the space for the Nambikwara to expand east to the Parecis Plateau and south to the upper Guaporé. He founded the latter conviction on linguistic grounds. As this does not concern his major interest in this article, he does not elaborate or clearly says so, but this explanation does entail that the Sararé area should have been this region of later southern expansion. Thus, if correct, the Kitauhlu and other peoples occupied their contemporary territories on the Parecis Plateau after the Cabixi retreated and all references to the Cabixi of the seventeenth century discussed before would not apply to them. On the other hand, the references in the nineteenth century to the latter ethnonym denote the Sararé Nambikwara. He believed that his suggestion of the mixing of the two peoples defends his idea of the later passing on of the name from a segment of the Paresi to a component of the Nambikwara. Still, there are a few unresolved issues. The sketch of the division of territories as rendered by Ricardo Franco, for instance, might be thought to be already a result of the void created by the depopulation of the Paresi. The net result is not entirely convincing that the Cabixi cannot have simply been a confusing term even at the beginning of its application (this too might be a result of intermingling). If the frontier was already very much in upheaval after 1720 and particularly after the gold rush, then the term may have been unstable in denotation from the mid-century onwards. I tend to believe that the situation is more complex than Price suggests[xxix].

The speeches of the highest official of the province when set within their ideological parameters offer some information about the Cabixi and the situation of the Sararé region. Even early in the nineteenth century the Cabixi appear alongside the Paresi, as if a different people. In 1839 the speech of the provincial president raises “a not very pleasing subject”. He claimed that “[t]he Cabixís Indians and Parecís, who inhabit almost the whole eastern margin of the Galera River, one of the tributaries of the Guaporé somewhat downwards from the city of Matto-Grosso, continue to be inimical in a cruel way to the village of São Vicente as well as the one of Pilar. These two nations have caused havoc there, murdering, stealing, and causing the abandonment of [some] Establishments, burning Sugar mills [.] [S]ince 1819, new incursions are growing, new sparse hostilities that are of their customary doing have laid everything to waste, bringing the dispirited people to flee to these villages”[xxx]. The report then describes government efforts to assert its innocence with this state of affairs even when in 1836 and 1837 they assaulted the installations of a Dona Antonia Torres and obliged her to forsake her property. The orders to retaliate had been too slow to be implemented in time. And, not being beaten and persecuted, next the Indians invaded Ouro Fino and behind the chapel, inhumanely attacked two people, killing one and mortally wounding the other. The years around1819 were a time of turmoil. It was not long before Vila Bela became definitely decadent when the capital shifted to Cuiabá. Doubtlessly, this decline and the progressive weakening of the population and its defenses were noted by the Indians. If the eastern bank of the Galera means the northern margin of the river then the most likely candidate for the Cabixi in question are the Nambikwara of the Guaporé Valley either pressing to recuperate lost territory, or else to gain new lands or access to material goods. They are distinguished from the Paresi but mentioned as if co-authors of the events. This description confirms the relatively dense occupancy and the presence of larger properties that followed the mining concessions and industries. A map of the Mines of Mato Grosso shows these villages and mining camps all over the mountainous area and the upper courses of the streams springing from it. It leaves the upper Sararé unmarked and indicates the western region in the direction of the Guaporé as uninhabited. As such, these areas might have been refuge areas for the previous inhabitants and bases from which the attacks may have been launched[xxxi].

In 1845, Castelnau reported the same combination of groups as menacing and frightening the regional population, in particular the mining villages São Vicente and Pilar in the interior, in the Serra area (Price 1972: 18). In 1840 the president of the province described the Bororo do Cabaçal as aggressive, and capable of murder and depredations. He added that the Cabixiz who occupy almost the entire eastern margin of the Galera River pose the same threat (Rezende 1840: 16). This remark strengthens Price’s claim that the Nambikwara moved south. However, the other possibility that the region had been strategically abandoned in order to recoup and proceed to a kind of guerilla warfare to regain the lands cannot be ruled out. Indeed, the firm attachment the Nambikwara have to their territory makes this a possible scenario. If, as Price notes, buried Indians lend a village its authenticity, the inhabitants have a special attachment to certain locations via the burial grounds of their ancestors. Residents of Vila Bela believed too that the Southern Nambikwara were a nomadic people in spite of evidence to the contrary apparent in destroyed indigenous communities (Santos 2000: 56). Just as the presidential reports cited above, Santos accepts the validity of this statement. However, the Indians’ assiduous presence all over the region speaks otherwise and, even if at the height of mining the Indians might have retreated from the core mining area, in this century they eventually reoccupied the land and resettled the villages. If the map depicts the situation in the Sararé region at the apex of invasion, then the possibility of withdrawal to the more distant recesses of the same region, under protection of the dense forests, was an available option to the original inhabitants.

Price’s remark on the Nambikwara practice of burying the dead near a promising village site was noted earlier. This can be thought of as yet another sociocultural way in which the Nambikwara relate to the earth, not only in an attachment to immediate village territory, but to potential land as well. Bearing this in mind, it is interesting that the oldest living Sararé recalled how the Indians often relocated their villages and gardens to more remote areas when threatened by White expansion (paths for mules, for example) so as to live in relative peace on their own land. Again, being nomadic is an external image but one that may have its source in the movements of peoples during times of strife. A strategy of refuge areas was necessary to disappear from the eyes of intruders, given the impression of not inhabiting the land while still occupying their own territory (Santos 2000: 56)[xxxii]. As this happened in the twentieth century, there is no reason to believe that this did not begin in the eighteenth century. Invisibility and supposed nomadism proved useful defense mechanisms. Unlike the Paresi, who were a sedentary people, the Nambikwara would be thought of as not easily confined in a definite space and firmly localized in villages. Surely, the tendency of the Nambikwara to go on treks may have also contributed to outsiders’ credence that they were nomads. Yet, after suffering from the prolonged war in the 1950s and 1960s and only recently contacted, the Sararé were no nomads when visited by an anthropologist named Fuerst. In contrast to the accepted beliefs, he labelled these people as sedentary horticulturalists (Fuerst 1971)[xxxiii]. Price, as seen, was more interested in the central Nambikwara, the savanna people (Nambikwara do Campo) on the high Parecis Plateau. He claimed that he was unable to see evidence of these local groups’ occupation of the Chapada in the wake of the receding Cabixi and Paresi. In fact, the current Cabixi-Paresi narrate a retreat to the south, from the middle Juína downwards[xxxiv]. From this observation arose his suggestion that the Nambikwara took over the empty space unnoticed by the Brazilian outsiders, after the latter effectively decimated the Cabixi and Paresi. Furthermore, as if the substitution of one people for another also caused the passing on of the name of the people associated with the place, the Tamaré also took over the name of the people they usurped because it was a catch-all term for wild Indians (Price 1983b: 140). Even if this hypothesis proves correct, the emphasis still falls on the savanna and begs the question of how the southern groups also gained this name. If the category Cabixi is primarily associated with wildness, then, of course, the other Southern Nambikwara cluster could be included.

Price notes that the dichotomy of wildness and tameness were the key descriptive elements used in classifying any indigenous people (ib.: 143). This classification continues today, only under the more politically correct division between the arredio (withdrawn, unapproachable) and the contacted. Such a split still suggests that rejection of outsiders is something done wholly by the Indians to the Whites, and never vice-versa. Such categorization predominated in the official speeches in the nineteenth century which allude to the Cabixi and the problems they cause. An 1837 address suggested that civilization must continue to grow and expand, and while the wild adults may never completely lose their barbarian customs if they remain together, the impressionable children may easily assimilate our customs (Boeno 1845: 20-1). The oration continues and touches on the topic of foreign immigration in terms of the government’s plans to stimulate foreign colonization. This entailed the notion of importing civilized people to populate the vastness of the interior, totaling 65 thousand square leagues (conservatively taking a league to be 6 km, this is close to 2,340,000 km²). The notion of a void, of enormous empty topological spaces to be settled, is not a new one. Such a view does little to strengthen the Indians’ status as fellow countrymen, actually they were not considered to be settlers or even Brazilians. The speech also mentions that the decline of mining, especially evident in the São Vicente settlement, is not because of lack of manpower (as originally suggested). Rather, it has to do with the deficiency of proper machinery. Put differently, although people were interested in gold deposits that could be panned easily by slaves, they were not interested in investing in deposits to be harvested mechanically. If true, this explains the decline of importance of the Sararé region and suggests that the region’s history would be radically different if there had been more economic interest in these operations. It also confirms that other economic interests could have made a notable difference. Note in comparison the dismal fate of the bordering Bororo territory that was comprised of plains ideal for cattle.

It was true that the province officially contained a very low number of inhabitants and this fact diminished the pressure for the internal expansion of the empire. In 1845 the President affirmed that no census was taken but the parochial figures furnished by the priests the year before (who tallied populations) added up to 37,826 people, of which 8,868 were baptized Indians (although two other places did not include such data). This implies that the Indian population was near a quarter of the population size. The savage Indians, however, remained uncounted. While not exhaustive, these data draw attention to some interesting issues. First, there is the large number of evangelized Indians compared to Brazilians. Also noteworthy is the very low density, even taking into consideration the influx of migrants from Minas Gerais. On average, there were 0.012 inhabitant/km. Considering the fact that large regions of the provinces remained unpopulated because of free Indians peoples, and assuming conservatively that only a quarter of the province had 0.2 Indian inhabitants/km, one could estimate the presence of 117,000 Indian people[xxxv]. Thus, the attention given to the Indian population is no surprise. This also explains why the President of the Province advocates more than the usual domestication of the Indians, but proposes that it is one of the most important obligations of government at all levels. He adds that they should not be abandoned at the stage of imperfect Christians but that “(…) it is necessary to fixate them further in civil life, and make them contract the habit of work, to which they are averse, proportioning them the means to be regularly and profitably employed” (Jardim 1845: 28). A year later, the same politician observed that mining started to suffer from the lack of “African labor”, a euphemism for slavery (Jardim 1946: 25). In light of the meager population, the Indian (and slave) labor would be beneficial to civilization. The president then observed that the Cabeçal Bororo are now settled and domesticated and the road to Mato Grosso is safely defended. The entry to civilization as a landless or near-landless laborer to be useful to the civilized also had a respectable history before Rondon appealed to practically the same pragmatic arguments.

In 1846 the same president reported on the various official Indian villages. Among his proposals he argued the usefulness of the union in one village near the Jauru River of all of the Cabaçães Bororo. The idea demonstrates both the perceived likelihood of population decline after settlement and the further restriction of their land resource. He also proposed the creation of three new villages, including one at the village of São Vicente Ferreira “for the Cabixis and Ajururis” (Jardim 1846: 33; the Ajururis are unknown and do not appear on the general overview of Indian nations and tribes of 1849 although he does repeat the same Uajururi in his proposal to create the Directory of Indians; apud Price 1983b: 135). By this time the emperor, in his paternal and most serious consideration on the fate of the Indians warned several times that their simplicity must not be abused, and the year before issued a decree to regulate the settlements in the regime of aldeias. No mention is made of the proposal by the next president, but, on the contrary, it is evident that he did not have many qualms about forcibly countering the frequent Cabixi attacks on the villages of São Vicente and Pilar. He ordered the chief of police to organize a bandeira with the necessary force to defeat the Indians (Oliveira: 1848: 4). The speech given the following year makes two main observations. The first concerns the necessity of more effective official support for missionaries operating within the region and the second observes the low level of food production in what should be an agricultural province. As another president complained, Mato Grosso was far from the dominating political and economic regions of the empire. Indeed, such distance to commerce and financial centers is part of the reason that the growth of the frontier lost a lot of momentum and the highly thought of project of conversion and settlement of Indians decelerated.

By this time the Cabixi had regained their strength and continued harassing the intruders’ villages. “It is not without hurt feelings, gentlemen, that I communicate the aggressions that the inhabitants of the places of the town of Mato grosso [sic] have suffered by the Indians. The Cabixi wandering at the headwaters and margins of the Galera attacked the Cubatão sugar mill on the general road to Fort Principe to rob it; and the Pareciz did the same to the villages of S. Vicente and Pilar and both caused some damages; and if at the first two points no one perished, it is certain that at the last, one man and one woman were murdered, as the police official of this city communicated to the presidency in a communiqué dated last December 22. The Nambiquaras, [as is also stated] on the official record, attacked the commercial boats of the traders from Diamantino José Alves Ribeiro and Gabriel José das Neves at the mouth of the Tapanhunas River and these attacks resulted in some deaths among them and one gravely injured person” (Ribeiro 1848). In one paragraph the Cabixi are accused of the assaults in the interior, near the Galera River, the Pareciz of the onslaught in the Sararé region and the death of two people, and finally the Nambiquara of operating a raid on passing commercial boats. Note that this document attests that the Paresi are to blame for the Sararé deaths. The Cabixi were located further northwest, in the Guaporé Valley, and the Nambiquara on the eastern bank of the Arinos River (the largest river after the Juruena), far to the northeast of the current Nambikwara. To complicate further the possible inconsistency of names, places, and groups, Tapanhuna not only indicates a river but also a people that Price located at the northern margin of this tributary of the Arinos (Price 1983b: 134). The Cabixi here most likely are Nambikwara of the Valley but the Paresi are accused of the crimes in the Sararé. The Nambiquara (as noted, a Tupi compound of the words ear and hole, probably referring the earplugs characteristically worn in their ears), definitely were not yet the same people known as Nambikwara today. Price suggested that they moved southward, and became known as the Iranxe[xxxvi]. The Paresi associated the Nambikwara and Iranxe because neither sleeps in hammocks. Accordingly, the Paresi assigned them the same name[xxxvii]. Following the tenuous Paresi’s link, towards the end of the century the local Brazilians also began to call both groups with the same name. Whatever the connection, it is a fact that by the beginning of the twentieth century within this region, local people called the “Earth People” Nambikwara (Price 1983b: 142).

The re-conquest
Juggling the names attached to groups and peoples is customary in Brazilian practice and, following Price’s argument (1983b: 143), may be dependent on the degree of interest in the categorizing by the characteristics or properties of the classified. Names can also be forgotten with the ebbs and flows of the frontier, as in the case in the 19^th century. Alternatively, the self-styled victims of the peoples that initiated the re-conquest of the occupancy of the Sararé region had their own political reasons for accusing at certain times the Paresi, and at other times to blame and stigmatize the Cabixi. Perhaps the president of the Province had his own reasons for not clarifying the confusions. The raid of 1848 provoked the local population of Vila Bela to get assistance to mount a retaliatory expedition. However, the town police chief contradicted the presidential address that supposedly was based on his correspondences when he wrote that the gathered force of 240 men searched for the Indians entering the Galera and going up the river, starting from its mouth. Up this river lived the Cabixi, the same group that in 1848 another writer condemned as making yearly raids on the mining camps while the Paresi are depicted as a shy, trading, and peaceful people (Ferreira apud Price 1983b: 135). Either out of habit mentioning Paresi and Cabixi jointly, or else due to the general idea of wildness associated with the latter, perhaps the local people usually did attribute their predicament to the Cabixi even when the provincial government or others might still implicate the Paresi (the 1847 president aside, who affirmed that the Paresi were a nonviolent people; Jardim apud Price 1983b: 135). Thus, at different times distinct social categories or people had reasons to classify Indian groups, for generally unknown reasons. This demonstrates that it is not fair to attach any blame to the Cabixi or Paresi before knowing the motivations and understandings of the source of the complaint.

To the chagrin of the police official the bandeira did not apprehend any rebellious Indians and his troops practically disbanded after a short while in the forest. After regrouping, they asked for supplies and the police chief decided to take charge of the operation. The troops did not cooperate when the expedition wandered in various directions near São Vicente. The police chief accused the participants of malice and without the will to reach the dwelling place of the Indians, and that the soldiers revolted by reporting to be ill (Montemór apud Price 1983b: 136). Such behavior probably was affected by the terrible reputation of the Indians and such image probably influenced the choreography of violence and terror. Fear and caution go hand-in-hand, and these Indians and the Whites eyed one another very suspiciously. Both sides in a conflict shape their own imagery. Images mostly are more distant from the truth when only violence reigns relations. One French writer even imagined the Cabixi covered with tattoos and speaking Quechua (Moure cited in Price 1983b: 137). As seen in this example, their fierce reputation probably protected the Indians from more aggression, as the image of wildness sustained a fear that aided in the (re-)conquest of territory. In 1854, another man who had lived in Mato Grosso described the hatred and fear he harbored towards these Cabixi whom: “(…) beaten by the first settlers of this wilderness, can cause very great harm to a population, which, the way things are going, will shortly lack the necessary force to defend itself against this immense and powerful horde” (Moutinho 1869 apud Price 1983b: 136; note that this man familiar with the region equates the original inhabitants with the Cabixi and by extension to the Nambikwara). This probably underscores the prevalent ideology that settlers should deal with Indians as they do with other problems associated with the wilderness, that is, by vanquishing these obstacles. The man believed that it is unacceptable and unbearable to be beaten by wild savages. It seems he is not so concerned with various material losses, but more with the humiliation of losing to inferior wild men who should be incapable of such deeds. No doubt this explains why they must be an immense and powerful horde. The bitterness augments when the original dream of the foundation of Vila Bela was to create the town as the true heart of South America (Carelli and Severiano 1980: 7).The frustration involved with abandoning this plan and not actualizing the ingrained notion of superiority must have been most embarrassing and generated hatred and fear. In the beginning of the twentieth century, the Cabixi became an epitome of the wild Indian in the entire region of the Guaporé (as reported by travelers; Price 1983b: 136). Such a reputation does not call attention to the minutiae of their language and culture and encourages an umbrella category that encompasses many very different wild Indians.

In respect to the ambiguity and inconsistency of names and the movements of peoples, names crystallized at particular times and in specific sources. Hence, all historical description made prior a certain time is questionable. The province made a general overview of all the known Nations and Tribes of the indigenous population of Mato-Grosso in 1849. According to this source, there were only 100 Bororo Cabaçães and 250 Parecys remaining. As to the Mambarés (most likely a branch of the Paresi) there were 400. The Cabixis had an estimated population of 500 and purportedly lived in the same region as the Mambarés and Paresi. The Nambiquáras at the Arinos and Peixe Rivers are said to number 700. This brings the total to 15,800 people, a very conservative estimate and most certainly grossly underestimating the population of those peoples unknown to the pollsters. A guess is ventured for the Indians uncounted, 5,025 people. This increases the total to 21,725 Indians. The gradient exposes a kind of utility appraisal and corresponds analogically to contemporary stages of contact. The Bororo were settled in a village close to our villages (permanent contact); Paresi, and Mambaré have some relations with us but are in their primitive state of independence (intermittent contact); the Cabixi are characterized as hostile to us and not interested in our friendship (violently rejecting contact, in comparison to the peaceful Paresi) (Oliveira 1849:32). This draws a relevant gradient correlation between independency, intermediate contact and partial independence, and total subordination. At these times the official authorities did not yet hide behind words to recognize Indian peoples as nations and to apprehend their previous autonomy as independence, even if they officially pertain to the population of the province. Thus, it seems a relatively honest assessment of the institutional goals, although the idea of friendship must be read within the hierarchical key of Brazilian society of the time and not in any egalitarian sense. Independence is closely associated with inferiority and wildness. The elite circles have historically rejected such independence as unacceptable. Such people believed strongly in the superiority of higher classes and their right and obligation to control and civilize, educate, the lower segments of their own society and the Indian peoples.

The aldeia system did not prosper in Mato Grosso. In 1850 the funds of the imperial government were spent on the Eastern Bororo, and no proposal for the demarcation of Indian lands issued in conformity to the regiment of 1845. Many directors lived far away from the village they directed, and some never even visited it. There was no properly organized aldeia (Pimentel 1850: 11-2). In a report the following year, the author observed the insults committed by the Cabixis, though he declined to furnish any further information. The author admitted absolute ignorance of the immense regions between the Xingu, Araguaia and Rio das Mortes Rivers. Additionally, as a result of settling in a village, the population of the Cabeçaes diminished from 177 to 67 people in less then ten years (Leverger 1852: 47-8). After accomplishing nothing with the previous military punishment that was aimed to produce vengeance and avoid further similar actions, the new president of 1851 suggested other means to repress the Indians. His solution concerned a more regular deployment of forces in the affected regions ready to intervene at any moment. By this time, he was aware of the attack of the Cabixís living at the margins of the Galera River on a mill seven leagues away from the City of Mato Grosso. The Mato Grosso man’s fear of an attack by an immense and powerful horde became more real as the Indians were close to the town. The only difference is that instead of mentioning the Cabixi and Paresi, this time there is worry about the Cabixi and Maimbaré (Leverger 1852: 6)[xxxviii]. A year later, in 1852, Leverger, a man who originally was a marine officer and at this time was the president of Mato Grosso, noted that the measles epidemics in Mato Grosso caused few casualties. Perhaps the thorough avoidance between the two opposing peoples spared the Indians a disastrous epidemic, if not the damages must have been tremendous but unnoticed. The government also supported a private initiative to organize a settlement of Guarayo on the Guaporé River, with an aim to calm the people on the boats in transit from the fear of the Cabixi (Leverger 1853a: 29, 32). The next year he authorized a bandeira against the Cabixi because they caused a lot of damage at a short distance of the town. However, for some reason this never materialized (Leverger 1853b: 5).

In 1854 Leverger again claimed only to take recourse to violence when absolutely necessary. He claimed isolated facts must not be attributed to decidedly hostile intentions of the whole tribe and do not impose the necessity of a military expedition. In this logic, he did not authorize punishing expeditions to the Coroados because he believed that the attacked inhabitant may have provoked the situation. Leverger treated the case of the District of Mato-Grosso differently, however, as one urged by necessity. For three years the inhabitants pleaded for military intervention “(…) against the depredations perpetuated by the Cabixís (amongst whom they say are a number of Parecis) in the villages and establishments of that District. Yielding to the repeated clamors, I ordered the mounting of a bandeira that, conveniently armed and with ammunition and instruction for its commander to avoid whenever possible a massacre and to aim at the capture of adult Indians for whom I set a bounty, departed in September. After many days of pursuing the savages, whom according to some amounted to over a thousand – a number that seems exaggerated to me, the bandeira returned without catching them” (Leverger 1854: 7-8). An unsuccessful attempt to deal with the situation violently tempered with the instructions to be more humane to the offenders. A constant relatively advanced position for those days but, in the last instance, resorting to violence always ends up underpinning the colonial order. The people perceived the Cabixí to be a totally hostile tribe and convinced the president, who by this time no longer took stock in the Paresi’s participation. Violence finally was justified, but the Indians, very likely well trained in a kind of guerrilla warfare, successfully evaded these forces. Thus, in 1856 he authorized another bandeira against the killings, thefts and fires committed close to the capital. Two other expeditions only wasted the excessive expenditure and did not succeed in averting the danger. He then suggested, not for the first time, to put into place a larger number of military garrisons sufficiently manned “to oblige the Indians, sooner or later, to interact with us in a friendly and cooperative way (…)” (Leverger 1856: 6). Force and military power founds the conquest of friendship. Friendship, as seen, means being assigned a specific locus in social space and acceptance of the normal pre-ordained subordinate niche in the structural hierarchy of Society.

In the following year, 1857, another president reported that a bandeira to another people also failed and only seemed to have instigated the Indians to more cruelties (judging from their location, they were likely Bororo). This president also did not grasp or admit the concept of the spiral of violence, and appeared to be only interested in the victimized ranchers, settlers, and travelers: “(…) I don’t see any other means to halt the killings, fires and thefts performed (…) by the Indians than an appeal to force to repel their aggressions” (Osório 1857: 9). The formula for the damages now seems to have become a ritualistic litany. The reason for these organized assaults on the Indians is simple, these barbarians have been hostile to us for over a hundred years and do not permit the tilling of extraordinarily fertile land close to the city. Hostility and aggression by any Indian people plainly justifies violence when they hinder access to such valuable economic resources. In this year, as in the previous one, the official policy of creating Indian settlements and of stimulating missionaries to direct missions with the support of the province continued to be contemplated. We don’t have missionaries and only very little money. The lack of money to sponsor the missionaries and finance their work contributed to ineffectual policy. The central government had dictated several rules regarding missions and official Indian villages since the beginnings of the conquest. In that sense there were very few real aldeias. The explicit or implicit complaint that the aldeia system did not work or could not work out in accordance to the applicable rules was repeated until the end of the period of the Empire. One of the few efforts to apply the system was made with the Guarayo, also esteemed to serve as an example for the wild Indians. However, the director who initiated the village departed at the end of 1854 and the Indians were left on their own. The effort really consisted in securing the traffic on the river and the communication between Mato Grosso and Fort Principe against the barbarian Cabixi[xxxix]. The only way to accept that such a village might encourage the Nambikwara to seek the same shelter and advantages is if one is already profoundly convinced of the attractions of civilization (see citation in Santos 2000: 43).

A civilization that, apart from an almost ritual appeal to the perpetual lack of funds that hinders the range of governmental action, sometimes transpired to be not as perfect as one would like. Of course, in the Empire’s first decades, there were many popular revolts in several regions that instilled a deep sense of the paucity of civilization of the lower classes among the elite. In 1858 the president denounced these actions and blamed them on “(…) the scarcity of religion in the lowest class of society, the part from which derive the majority of criminals, on the large extension of almost completely unpopulated territory, on the shortage of personnel in the districts on whom to award the posts of police official, and above all on the impunity prevalent at the occasion of jury court holdings” (Lamare 1858: 5). Of eleven indictments in trials, only three of the accused were found guilty. Thus the right to property is not to be as respected as would be desirable, especially small-scale thefts and an astonishing amount of stolen cattle never appearing in the records because the victims face a respectable number of difficulties to seek the cooperation of the competent authorities. As the president knew well, the impediments to justice originate in the segmented structure of the clientelistic state and the power base of the local potentates. In this admission, the political compromises of the regional and national society with the local level reveal the failure of the central state to impose a uniform system of justice with its corollary near-total inability to exercise its claims as the sole legitimate source of violence. At the frontier these defects of the model of a modern nation-state – the notion that increasingly became the ideal of civilization – were even more pronounced. The elite considered the poor as ‘the savages within’, and the Indians as ‘the savages without’. Both, therefore, are to be included in and controlled by the state. The correspondence between Indians and rural workers is less fortuitous than might appear at first sight. Simultaneously, the use of local and uncontrolled violence mainly by the locally and regionally powerful escapes our notice. Although such incidents are unmentioned, it is safe to assume that there were hostile clashes, retaliation and incalculable Indian deaths.

The conflict continued to harass the district’s inhabitants. At the end of 1858 the Cabixi killed a civilian near São Vicente and a soldier near Pilar (Lamare 1859: 5). As this president did not believe in reprisal, he did not lend his support to military vengeance of the primitive sons of nature. Outside civilization, the Indians pertain to the natural domain, both are primitive and to be vanquished and dominated, but his belief in a more fundamental humanity engendered his preference for evangelization. The good and hardworking Guarayo Indians of the river serve as a most convenient counterpoint, especially as they are sedentary, horticulturalist, hammock weavers and canoe makers, and the strongest and most handsome of the province. They are, above of all, tame and of the multitudinous tribes the author visited, they are the most well disposed to civilization. They epitomize the exact opposite of the characterization of the Cabixi. As both the prime example of what should be the future for the Indians and useful as the shield to the inferior Indians, another settlement was proposed on the middle Guaporé. The end of the settlement was marked by the death of the last Guarayo in 1929, killed by a Nambikwara arrow (according to Villas Boas cited in Santos 2000: 43). Perhaps it is no coincidence that these Indians live now in Bolivia and are unknown in Brazil (Price and Cook (1969: 688) even presumed that the Guarayo were probably extinct). In fact, in an 1872 report Cardozo claimed that these Indians originally came from a Bolivian village (1873: 146). Apparently, under certain historical conditions being something like a primitive, uncompromising, recalcitrant and unrepentant nomadic warrior people has its advantages. One of the conditions in which it may pay to not be peaceful is when dealing with the small population of a district as large as Mato Grosso. In 1859 the district was comprised of the smallest population of eleven parishes of the province, a mere 1,703 people according to the count executed by the head of the provincial police (although the census was incomplete when the figures were published with five more parishes to be included; Alencastro: 1861).

The military detachment placed at the Indian village on the Guaporé succeeded in aiding the Cubatão mill when the Indians besieged it and succeeded in hitting someone with an arrow. Later in the same month of January, a man enrolled in the National Guard left the city on his way to his country property on the Guaporé and at a distance of one league outside the town confronted a party of Parecis who fired eight arrows. He died instantly and was found by two men searching for cattle (the region between the mountain range of the Sararé, Serra de São Vincente or Serra da Borda, and the river is mostly flat lowland with grassy vegetation). Once again, even at this late stage, the report assigned the blame to the Paresi. It is tempting to conclude that the outsiders frequently confused the Nambikwara with all of their closest neighbors, not just the Cabixi sub-group. The proximity to town is remarkable, this occurred closer than the previous incidents described. The town could not ignore such impertinence without taking some prompt action. The military commander immediately sent out a group to search the savannas and woods in the area. The party did not come across the Indians, but noticed their tracks near the fatal event. The National Guard raised forty men and pursued the offenders, but as they lacked a tracker, they had no success. The military commander wrote that in his opinion the Indians must have taken refuge away from the road and villages. The Municipal Council thought otherwise, they argued that the Indians supposedly lodged near the extinct village of Pilar had crossed the Sararé River and occupied the savanna and the woods near the town. From here, they easily traveled close to the outskirts of the City, endangering all who venture out of its perimeter, like washerwomen, cattle handlers and those who gather wood to burn. After Pilar (in the Sararé region near the mountains), was abandoned, the Indians re-conquered almost all the space previously lost, and so the City itself was at risk. If the commander was right, the strategy of internal refuge bore its fruits. If the city council was right, the occupancy of the Cabixi proves that they already re-conquered most of the region.

The municipality painted a convincing picture of its lamentable situation and pleaded to receive military reinforcements. Not surprisingly, this plea ended in a request for the authorization to organize an expedition to capture the Indians. The president in this period, however, learned from his predecessors that this action usually did not deliver the desired results but instead apparently influenced the perpetrators to repeat their ferocity. Moreover, when consulted, the Ministry of Agriculture reminded the province of the 1863 prohibition of violence except in defense (Penna 1864: 64-6)[xl]. The notion of not taking revenge and of no pre-emptive violence must have disconcerted the inhabitants. The way out is to hide any vengeance, with the certainty of any discovery to be irrelevant because no one would ever be brought to court for killing a wild Indian. This approach only very recently shows signs of some real change but even today, except in particular and notorious cases, the very large majority of Indian murderers are not convicted. Despite the military power based in the city, the countryside proved more vulnerable than the Whites probably thought possible. In 1865 the president laconically dedicated one short paragraph to address the problem: “In October the Cabixis and the Parecis produced an aggression: a quarter of a league from the City of Matto-Grosso they killed a peasant and his wife and burned the bridge over the Guaporé River which became unusable” (1865: 71)[xli]. Note again the mention of both the Pareci and the Cabixi, even though the event in question is unlikely to involve the two groups, perhaps by now this is simply a matter of a long tradition. Maybe the fact that in the forties the Paresi preferred dealing with the people in Diamantino and were entirely hostile to those in Mato Grosso derived from the accusation now being leveled at them by those citizens[xlii]. Regardless, the burning of the bridge on the road to the capital meant a severe blow to regional Brazilians and emphasized the fears evident in the previously mentioned quote by a settler regarding the necessity of reinforcements and the dangers of the wicked Cabixi (Moutinho cited in Price 1983b: 134). Cutting the transport lines of the enemy is a classic wartime maneuver and is especially efficient when it also severs communication with the outside.

The constant naming of the Paresi as aggressors contradicts the image of peacefulness mentioned in other times. In 1872 appeared the most extensive report available to me that discusses the then known Indian peoples. All are characterized by their most salient aspects. The Parecis are surprisingly claimed to be renowned for their warring abilities. They roam from Diamantino to Mato Grosso and a few speak the national language. “It is noted that they have not been openly hostile to landowners and travelers but, it is said, sometimes they join forces with the Cabixi to perpetrate violence” (Cardoso 1873: 144). For much longer than Price’s sources indicated, the Paresi did get some blame for the siege of the Sararé region. Their neighbors were the Maiambares, a group with a large population, but reduced to 200 and with little interaction with the Brazilians. The Maiambares visit them sometimes in the company of the same Paresi. Here too the association is clear and the two peoples form two of the subsets of the wider ensemble that eventually became known as Paresi. The Cabixi, once the third subset of the Paresi, very likely designate some other people by this time:
“The family of the Cabixis is numerous.

They occupy various settlements on the savannas of the Parecis to the northeast of the village of São Vicente, with an area of 15 to 20 leagues. Until today, they preserve themselves indomitably. The Cabixis always manifested hostile dispositions towards the society from which they flee. The villages and the inhabitants of the district of Mato-Grosso constantly suffer from the assaults and raids of these savages who, in the wake of their passage, leave destruction, fire, death, and theft” (Cardoso 1873: 145).

Thus, they were savage criminals competing with the Coroado (Bororo) for what might be called the title of most savage Indians of the Province. The Bororo’s greater prominence arose mainly because of their proximity to the capital and the stronger interests involved. The northeast of São Vicente situates the Indians in the region from the upper Galera River up to the highlands of the Parecis Plateau. In other words, from the northern part of the Sararé lands in the Guaporé Valley onto the highlands to the north of the area of the former Cabixi who, according to their oral tradition, withdrew from the northern to the southern part of the Parecis Plateau. The distance of the area occupied reaches the current Nambikwara Indigenous Land but is indicative of the lack of real information as the true occupancy of the Nambikwara ensemble extended far more to the north. As seen, before Rondon most of the immense region returned to the condition of terra incognita. It is notable how the report contains information about Indians who refuse to have anything to do with the regional society[xliii]. The Nambiquaras reject any contact and yet the president confidently asserts this horde enlists a population of 600 people living at the confluence of the Peixe and Arinos Rivers. Apart from hunting and fishing, they work the land, contrary to the image of the current Nambikwara. Moreover, further along the Arinos River, the Tapanhumas are said to be quite similar in manners and customs to these Nambiquaras. How this knowledge came to be acquired is not explicitly mentioned and such statements must be taken cautiously. These peoples’ image differs considerably from the Cabixi-Nambikwara construed by the same opposing ethnic group. These previous Nambiquara used to attack the canoes on the river, but if these attacks were launched from their own canoes than it is relevant that the current Nambikwara (like the Sararé) have only recently acquired some practice of canoeing and fishing with hooks[xliv]. The Nambikwara are not a riverine people, they are much more earthly, much more attached to the land.

This president firmly believed in progress by means of evangelization to bring the savages of the wandering families to the bosom of civilization and reap the rewards of their cheap labor. From his comments on the thirty savage families (i.e. peoples), of the province he applied the easy and familiar scheme of good tame Indians and those of bad character and disposed to violent resistance. These predicates are quite familiar by now but some changes in emphasis can be discerned in later presidents. The next president, general Hermes da Fonseca, was a prominent person who had quite a significant role in the future republic. The issues of the lack of missionaries for a tribe like the wandering Cabixi and their raids and depredations diverged little from that of his predecessors. He did adopt the word tribe, a change of idiom here likely related to positivism and its particular brand of progress, a belief partially represented in the notion of preparing the children for social communion and entailed taking them away from the families for education (Fonseca 1876: 19-20). He allied himself with the more humane line of evangelization, in contrast to the hardliners for whom violence was justified as the sole means for effective results. The president of the province (and future president of the republic) countered that force only tranquilizes the inhabitants, makes the Indians run, and is neither a humanitarian principle congruent with this century nor convenient for the empire (ib.: 21). In other words, contact should be made in good manners to inspire confidence and gratitude and bring these unhappy people to civil communion for their original state of this part of the human race is: “(…) wandering and ignorance, without notions of civilization, live according to their instinct, but still with social rules that qualify them to civilize themselves easily when entering in good relations with us” (ib.: 21). Here one finds the clearest recognition of the difference between the official policies and the reality on the frontier conjoined with the positivist belief of the perfectibility of humans, and their equal status as fellow members of the human race:
“Unfortunately in the interior of the Province many of our fellow citizens do not think so, and no doubt isolated in remote places they attempt to avoid the Indians by repelling them with force, with threats, and even with weapons.

It is necessarily encouraged by old preventions, by bad and uncorrected customs, that these Indians show themselves irritable and revengeful: it is no doubt in reprisal because of these treatments that they, when possible, assault, rob, kill, devastate and destroy” (Fonseca 1873: 22).

In his opinion these unenlightened citizens live mostly in remote places, but this is more likely an understatement as even some of his own predecessors believed more in force than persuasion. The general appealed to the sentiment that Western civilization is superior and hence should furnish the principles of action for the regional, civilized elite of this remote province.[xlv]. By virtue of the humane treatment of Indians as the royal road to civilization for their own benefit, as experience has demonstrated, the bad customs can be corrected and peace secured. The examples of various friendly Indian peoples are raised to illustrate the argument before ending with the strong recommendation to his esteemed fellow politicians that they cooperate in the effort to civilize the totality of the interior, although this is not explicitly said. He followed this with a request that if any news about an offensive against the life or liberty of the Indians reaches them, they should notify the competent authorities in order to bring the delinquent party to justice (ib.: 22). This was a highly utopian thought, the same politicians often are implicated in the conquest of Indian land and resources. The notion of equal protection under the law, even for the savages, is far from being realized even today. The expression of these ideals distinguishes the speaker as someone with a positivist influence and the speech exposes a framework that is reminiscent of the ideas and concepts later expressed by Rondon. Some basic notions are shared with the humanist military who preceded him and prefigured his own conceptions. Perhaps the stated government policy by such a high ranking officer in his native province, even if never actualized, somehow shaped Rondon’s political stance. At the time, however, such ideas must have had very little impact on the reality of native peoples in Mato Grosso.

The directory and its deficiencies took up most of the policy reports on the civilizing efforts in the last years of the Brazilian empire. Some of these concur with the delineated framework. As stated by another president in 1879, to evangelize the Indians it is necessary to know the Indians, their customs, language and disposition, to impress on them being friends and so “(…) to, in the end, recognize in their own inferiority the advantages of civilization” (Pedrosa 1879: 81). This conveys an absolutely fundamental tenet that has been a constant in all variants of the ethnocentric conceptions to justify the entrance of the inferior Indians into civilization and history, and, as discussed in Part II, one that extends to all actions taken by Rondon and SPI. Different peoples retain different intellectual cultures and the total ignorance of some peoples should instill patience in the superiors so as best to persuade the savages to change their habits with caution, without anyone constraining them. The point is that the effective locus of power and decision in the commanding of the process of contact and posterior change never is accepted to be on the side of the inferiors. The touchstone is the obviousness of the disparity between inferiority and superiority. Here lies a sort of trans-cultural bridge that not even Rondon crossed (indeed, it is very rarely ever crossed). In fact, in this president’s eyes, the totally ignorant do not really deserve the soft hand of persuasion. The inhuman bandeiras may have disappeared but the wild savages who assail the agriculturalists create such hatred between the two races that the evangelization may be unfruitful and “(…) an implacable fight, without any suspension, will ensue” (Pedrosa 1879: 82).

The Cabixi fall into such a category. The Paricys and Cabixys living in the state of savagery on the Parecis Plateau gained a directorship in the 1880s after the to-be-nominated director casually encountered some villages, talked to the inhabitants and found they had friendly dispositions. This must have been seen as quite useful as the same Paricys and Cabixys are accused of various murders committed on the road between Caceres and Mato Grosso; as usual the Paresi were seen as allies of the fierce Cabixis – another early conception of a fierce people – who victimized so many travelers on the road (Relatório 1881: 27). This nomination is commonly bestowed upon to a more important man in the vicinity of the Indian villages and it is no accident that the report candidly added that the captain and discoverer in question already employed some of the Indians in his rubber extraction business. Such a remark highlights the initial movements of the socioeconomic exploitation of the Paresi and, with the rise of the rubber boom, forebodes the attempts to forcefully integrate the Nambikwara into production activities. Rubber will provide the stimulus not just for the conquest of land but also for the forced integration of native people as exploitable workers.

The savage Indians continued to inflict damages to the province. In 1886 the Parecis of the bank of the Guaporé again attacked five agricultural establishments near Matto-Grosso, destroying the fields and obliging the owners to flee to the town. Later the same year, the Parecis arrived in the city, killed two people and wounded one soldier. Once more the government accused the Paresi, and if this in any way reflects the local feelings, then it appears that the Nambikwara were being confused with the Paresi. At various moments in this century, the blame was assigned to the Paresi while it is fairly certain the actors were Southern Nambikwara. I can only conjecture about the motives for this confusion, but in the capital the guilty party sometimes was the Paresi and not just the Cabixi. This time, the central government rejected the deployment of the public armed forces to exterminate the wild Indians, even when an expedition was necessary. By this period civilization began to be more hesitant to permit the pure force of arms and simple destruction. This occurred during the term of the president who sent six civilized Indian women and one man with an armed expedition to persuade the Bororo to accept peace. They brought presents and promises of friendship in order to prove that war did not benefit even these primitive Brazilians (Pimentel 1886: 13-4). An erratic but, in the long run, gradual shift from outright military genocide to the implicit forceful imposition of a humane friendship slowly emerged in the discourse of the province’s highest official authorities. This trend reflects a drift in values and conceptions in turn dependent on the changes in the dominating framework of thoughts and practices in the distinguished centers of western civilization[xlvi]. The results of this friendship for the indomitable Bororo transpire from the admirable words of Rosa Bororo. The Cabixi, in a marginal and increasingly peripherical region with hardly any persistent attractions for the national society except its pride and prejudice, and a few resources for a limited number of people, did not accept any truce or so-called friendship. Other sources collected by Price (1983b: 134-5) credit them with the burning of São Vicente in 1877 and the massacre of eight people (including five soldiers and two women) near the pass through the mountains that extends to the south of the Serra da Borda. In this mode of absolute rejection and permanent warfare these Indians reconquered the land and almost turned the tables to the point of threatening to destroy the town of Mato Grosso (later renamed Vila Bela).

The foregoing speeches and reports represent a fair sample of the parameters, premises, concepts, language, justifications, and actions that governed the relation of the Brazilian society with the Nambikwara in this period. During practically the entirety of the 19^th century ideas about civilization and its comforts in opposition to both the good tame Indians (supposedly accepting inferiority) and the bad, savagely wild Indians (rejecting amity) prevailed. The goodness or badness, the peaceful inclination or intrinsically bad nature, the agricultural or hunting character of the Indians always seem much more the work of the imagination, the diverse interests, and the classificatory principles of the Brazilian society then founded on firm objective, impartial, and empirical grounds. Although it is possible to trace the re-conquest of the Sararé region fairly well there remains some doubt as to the Indians who committed such atrocities and, in a war effort continued throughout the entire period of the Brazilian Empire, finally were almost successful in entirely expelling the descendants of the conquering intruders from the previous century. The rebellion that began with the discovery of gold and resulted in command of territory up to the outskirts of Vila Bela is a testament to persistence, tenacity and willpower. Even if Nambikwara peoples did not detain the original occupancy of the region, the re-conquest as Indian territory is a feat rarely admitted as such or passed over as an incident in national history. It took almost a century of counter-attack, but the Brazilians abandoned the region and ceded the land to a number of local groups of Nambikwara peoples. By the time of the republic and before the construction of the Telegraph Line, the Nambikwara peoples became the uncontested masters of the territory and of the whole Guaporé Valley.

The original inhabitants (an expression of limited value as no one knows how long this former occupancy lasted anyway) either were Cabixi pertaining to the Paresi cluster, groups belonging to the Nambikwara cluster, or a Paresi aggregate in some way blended with Nambikwara in the exchange relationship described by oral tradition. Of the uncertainties of naming and classification the most poignant example is evident in the manner in which the Paresi continue to be blamed during most of the period of the empire when they definitely were not the assailants responsible for the majority (or all) of the assaults. Therefore the records do not yet rule out the possibility that the Cabixi of olden times settled in the major part of the Sararé region really were part of the Nambikwara cluster. From the historical documents produced by the conquering people no clear conclusion can be drawn. Perhaps Price’s intuition in his dissertation is more accurate than what he described in his revision. It is quite possible that the major occupancy of the Sararé region pertained to a Southern Nambikwara sub-set who, subsequently to the waning of the force of conquest, employed their own means to recover the lost territory. In this hypothesis the commonality of this re-conquest with the occupancy of the savanna resides only in the Nambikwara capacity to expansion because in the latter case they entered into the void left by the Paresi (Cabixi)[xlvii]. The only certainty is that the Nambikwara traditionally occupy the major part of the Guaporé Valley, and, by the end of the 19^th century, they dominated the entire valley from the Sararé up to the Cabixi River and the area northeast of this river.

Notes
[i] This title is a reference to Wolf’s “Peoples without History”, but then his title was meant to be ironical (Wolf 1992: 107). The recognition simply affirms that “They are part of our history and we are part of theirs”; and, in that sense certainly does not deny the existence of history previous to contact (ib.: 107). Wolf’s objective – what he called the processual study of the intertwining of convergent fields of interaction – is here mine too.
[ii] Fiorini (2000 and 2001, personal communication) defends the thesis that this occupation is relatively recent at the expense of the retraction of the Paresi themselves. This question will be addressed later.
[iii] As we shall see below, reading the presidential addresses to the Provincial Assembly almost invariably mentioned these problems. Several times the President of the Province recognized this failure and even hinted that conducting military action – although strongly favored by the local population – did not scare the Indians into peace, but only provoked them more. Yet, usually they fail to mention the fact that the Indians are not customarily the aggressors but are merely defending their lands. The common view was that most of the barbarous tribes were considered errant, hence supposed to be with no particular attachment to the land.
[iv] And is his personal history and trajectory of social ascension not a perfect example of the synthesis of both the fruitful combination of different racial origins and the perfectibility of the human being with education? In a way he envisaged a kind of collective trajectory for Indian peoples analogous to his own humble, racial and ethnic origins.
[v] The gold in the same or adjacent region of Corumbijara had already been explored since 1742 (Pinto 1993: 23).
[vi] Fuerst (ib.) even supposes the Waintesu to be Mamaindê probably because the Mamaindê lived near the Cabixi River and thus may be identified with the name. Given the distance and the interposed Valley peoples, this is unlikely.
[vii] On his map Roquette-Pinto draws the Northern Nambikwara (his Uáinteçu and in that sense Fuerst may be right to identify them with the Mamaindê) along the Guaporé and in the Guaporé Valley until the Parecis Plateau, but not as south as the Sararé River (probably the next river, the Galera). Provided this is accurate, the Nambikwara expanded southward towards the Sararé in later years. However, the Guaporé valley was not explored at the time of Rondon and his map must be guesswork. Today Southern Nambikwara inhabit the lower part of the Guaporé valley and it is an interesting question whether this was so at the time of the gold rush. I will address this presently.
[viii] This leaves doubts about the veracity of the string of communities exactly in the area of the other upper rivers.
[ix] The effort to domesticate and incorporate the newly gained lands starts from the naming and, here, the renaming of places and geographical features. The commander also changed the name of the Piolho River, as piolho is Portuguese for flea. This name did not garner much enthusiasm for official approval and he renamed the river after Saint John, São João. In the end this attempt did not prevail against the vox populi, probably because the settlement did not prosper far into the nineteenth century.
[x] In the racial idiom of the time such children were called caboré.
[xi] The quilombo was destroyed and later rebuilt. A long time of occupancy and the lack of later punitive expeditions suggest that townspeople knew of the village. It may even have entertained some illegal relations with the colonial settlements in the region. Portuguese then becomes a logical language choice. The language of the quilombo also would depend on the origins of the slaves but when these are diverse and already taught Portuguese, the obvious choice is the colonial language.
[xii] Here the information came from two captured run-away slaves who even visited town to buy provisions and invited other slaves to join them in the forest. This area is mostly given on the border or as outside Sararé or Nambikwara territory (see, for instance, the map in Price 1978: 17).
[xiii] The presence on the list of the quilombo people of eight persons called Indians (men) besides the nineteen Indian women remains unclear. Perhaps they were captured as children together with their mothers. Otherwise these men may actually have been runaway slaves who could not be described so.
[xiv] For two reasons I myself couldn’t do this. Not only did I lack the time and resources necessary to go to the relevant libraries but the FUNAI archives in Cuiabá were being reorganized.
[xv] The number of documents is limited and the information conveyed scarce. It would be very possible that epidemics did ravage after these long term incursions of Indian Territory of unknown quantities and the invasions by temporary mining settlements but such facts are never mentioned in this type of document. It is certain, however, that epidemics did rage in these regions among the White population. At the end of 1789 and the beginning of 1790 an epidemic of the “pest of the dry season” ravaged the mining region of São Vicente and killed many people, work animals and even wild animals like deer, tapirs and pigs (Anzai 2005: 270). The proximity of the camps and villages and the raiding of Indian villages suggest contamination was already a very real threat (and imported slaves brought their diseases too, like a dangerous form of malaria, to add to this precarious situation; ib.: 265). After all, epidemics frequently ravaged what deceptively are called isolated peoples.
[xvi] This is true in all layers of society. Ricardo Franco, the man sent at the end of the century by the captain general to map the Chapada dos Parecis and the headwaters of rivers like the Sararé and the Juruena and always lived and traveled in the interior, remained unmarried but had two children with a Terena companion (Hemming 1995: 466).
[xvii] This anthropologist guided Price through his first moves in the field and later provided access to the village where he had just finished his own studies. They published one article together (Price and Cook 1969) but I never discovered anything else published by him. Neither does the Nambikwara expert Marcelo Fiorini (personal communication 2001). This is very unfortunate as the man studied the Nambikwara religion and seems to have a thorough knowledge of the culture.
[xviii] Even as stone axes were the most common. Presumably they obtained these instruments from rubber tappers on the lower rivers who advanced northward at the impulse of the rubber boom. These contacts usually meant enmity; a short time before Rondon’s entry in the region rubber gatherers perpetuated a massacre on a river high on the northern part of the Parecis Plateau and in the direction of the Papagaio River (cited in Price 1972: 24). Lévi-Strauss confirms this river as the border between the two ensembles of Nambikwara and Paresi but later the Nambikwara peoples in this border region lost much land and its fragments were recollected in Utiarity.
[xix] Price opens the article with the phrase that “Few people are entirely without history” (Price 1983b: 129). This remark he would never have made in the current anthropological climate and I am sure he did not mean to say that the Indians only entered history when hit by the people who would elevate history as the major explanation of the changes in their own society. Recently, the anthropologist Melatti reminded his public in a lecture of how his title of a early talk of how the Kraho entered history provoked a befriended colleague to imagine a long line of Indians at a ticket office buying a ticket to enter history (Melatti 2002: 206). Actually, Melatti felt the lack of possibility to reconstruct history with any semblance of correspondence to the truth. He also encountered a class of narratives of a more historical content, most about war. They were published after his major work on interethnic contact.
[xx] As he is much more familiar with the Southern Nambikwara set, his map is conservative with respect to the Northern cluster. In fact, from the routes discussed, the Portuguese did not cross their main lands in the North. Here he calls them under the more certain designation of Tamaré (Price 1983b: 130).
[xxi] In a note Price explains that the narrator Américo differentiated them from the Nambikwara people of the same name. He refers to his very early co-authored article (Price and Cook 1969: 690-1): the term nì ya lhó sú means owners of the land and is given as the self-designation of the Manduka (later Price never again speaks of self-naming as the Nambikwara do not name themselves in this way).
[xxii] An apparent slight problem with this assertion concerns the Nambikwara predilection to live in the open savannas within the more forested areas. The forest, on the other hand, protects against easy detection while the open inhabited areas provide an open space to scan and perceive a foreign advance. Both circumstances facilitate evasion in their own way. Also, small savanna-like areas interrupt the forest where the predilection for open space can realize itself.
[xxiii] Significantly he does not cite any narrative from his major fieldwork with the Kithaulu, who now live in the large Nambikwara Indigenous Territory on the Parecis Plateau. FUNAI officials confirm that some of the peoples inhabiting this land are not only regionally called Nambikwara but also feel entitled to be the Nambikwara par excellence. In a well written, concise and unfortunately rather unknown article by Price, the excellent summary of the lifestyle of the Nambikwara applies much more to the Savanna than to the Valley. At the same time he is very much aware of the differences in culture and language and of, as he reminds the reader, the arbitrariness of the ethnic label (Price 1981a).
[xxiv] Price (1972) first thought the Nambikwara were firmly established as horticulturalist, like when the myth of origin distinguishes between theirs and acquired plants and consequently divides traditional and new plants. Later he questioned the presumption based on a report that in the Guaporé Valley the myth does not exist and there is no horticulture. However, Santos (2000: 21), the most experienced agent among the Sararé, confirms the mythical narrative here. I will come back to this question as Price later reviewed his own position again when discovered why the other Valley peoples interrupted horticulture.
[xxv] One might ask if the obviously extensive environmental knowledge also implied in some sort of conscious intervention towards these parameters, just like the Kayapó and Ka’apor of the studies of Posey and Balée. A remark by Serafim (2000: 133) on the Wasusu evinces this possibility. He observed how a mother showed her child an edible plant growing along the path in the forest, a plant said to have been planted by her ancestors. In other words, there exists the possibility of an active management of forestry resources outside of the far more visible round gardens of horticulture.
[xxvi] The Indian policy, if one may call that the historical accumulation of contradictory and revisionist laws, always seems to have suffered from insufficient means to be implemented as proposed. This continues today and is evident in FUNAI’s funding shortage. This correlates to the value and political weight attributed to the problem.
[xxvii] The published inaugural speeches and reports of the presidents of the province run from 1837 until about the end of the Empire. I discuss the part I have access to.
[xxviii] This manuscript does not specify how far the distinction between these different branches is based on the settler’s notions or on any divisions recognized by the Bororo themselves. The eastern branch (currently known as Bororo) used a specific name for itself but the other two, Plains and Cabeçal, are very much ethnographically unknown.
[xxix] Price’s ex-collaborator and foremost expert on the Sararé, Ariovaldo Santos, did not doubt the permanent occupancy of the southern Valley, but he read only the thesis and not about the posterior doubts and reconsideration (Santos 2000).
[xxx] Some of this translation is somewhat difficult to read and subject to revision as this concerns a manuscript and not a transcribed and published report. It is available at –http://wwecrl-jukebox.uchicago.edu/bsd/bsd/u427/000063.html (accessed in 2001). All other related documents discussed in this section may be found at this site, too, from Pimenta Bueno onward.
[xxxi] Map apud Ferreira (1885) and reproduced in Santos (2000: 12). The president also mentioned the persistent hostilities by the Cabaçal Bororo and their obstruction of the beautiful pastures. Here security measures were taken and a proposal to settle them by attracting the Indians with gifts was implemented. This method of attraction does have a respectable history. The ecological conflict is evident.
[xxxii] Therefore Santos suggests the deliberate effort on the part of the Indians to elevate the smoke screen of a nomadic lifestyle. In fact, strenuous efforts to conceal the village and gardens and obscure permanency occurred but the notion of nomadic people does not seem to be an indigenous idea. The Wasusu today, for instance, are not only basically sedentary and horticultural, their frequent treks do not exceed a week and someone always remains in the village (Serafim 2000: 44). Of course, this post-contact case should not be thought of as definitely representative of past custom.
[xxxiii] It may be noted in advance that the Sararé in 1968 were also proficient hunters with their bows and arrows: “(…) on some occasions the meat spoiled before they could it all.” (Price 1996: 427).
[xxxiv] This implies that the Nambikwara originally could have occupied the northernmost part of the Parecis Plateau, at the headwaters of the Camararé River. Price resolves the oral history statement with the reference to the already established idea of the extension of their lands to include the Cabixi River. Plotting the occupations on the map raises some questions. Firstly, oral history does not agree with this idea and may be more reliable than the hazy seventeenth century sources. Secondly, a corridor from the south to the Cabixi River is still possible while leaving out the northern tip of the Chapada for the Nambikwara.
[xxxv] As Pimenta Bueno said in 1837: “Many different Nations of Indians wander in the uncultivated and very vast backlands of the Province, to a large measure still not treaded by our part [note the characteristic opposition between us and them]: of some we have news, and about others who certainly do exist we have well founded conjectures. There are 53 diverse Nations recognized, and only 40 of them are domesticated, some have been only heard of” (1845: 18). He offers a picture of the rivers and immense lands still under the dominion of these primitive occupants. Opening these lands should bring all sorts of riches and the proper Indians could serve as guides. Thus, Rondon’s employment of Paresi guides on Nambikwara land is an act founded on local tradition.
[xxxvi] This group was so closely allied with the Paresi that Rondon assumed they were a branch of that people (see Leopoldi (annex in Pivatta and Bandeira 1983: 174) in which he described the difficult and lamentable history of this people). In the twentieth century, they secured good relations with the Nambikwara do Campo, too (ib.: 59). Later, these relations were characterized as not peaceful, one report cited from Utiariti accuses the Nambikwara of killing and eating the mother of two Iranxe (ib.: 56).
[xxxvii] Still, the connection seems a bit odd, the Iranxe are not known to sleep on the ground, and even if they do not use hammocks, why they would receive the same name is mysterious. The Iranxe, and a related group, the Mynky, do speak an isolate language too but one quite different from Nambikwara. Price’s assertion is not very convincing.
[xxxviii] Leverger also noted the decline of mining activities and the appearance of ipecac alongside the growth of cattle raising as one of the few profitable economic activities.
[xxxix] Some years later, there was an attempt to reinvigorate the settlement under the Directorate system and the initiator is given as deceased. The aim to safeguard the traffic on the river is then clearly stated (Penna 1864: 121; on 1862).
[xl] This again refers to the idea already cited to man several posts throughout the countryside and villages to show strength and strike back in case of attack. The idea is to impress the Indians with restrained power to the point of pressing them into accepting an end to hostilities. This philosophy sometimes also appears in today’s discourse.
[xli] The heading Wild Indians is fittingly hemmed in between Notable Facts (the suicide of a female slave and one free person) and Prisons (the best constructed building for this purpose is the one in the capital, the rest are small and need urgent repairs). That is, between the extraordinary of the normal order and the place outside of normal society reserved for those breaking the law.
[xlii] Castelnau wondered about this fact but could not explain it either (cited in Price 1983b: 135).
[xliii] In the case of the Mequen the president admits this lack of acquaintance and manifests surprise at the cause an inexplicable avoidance makes them flee from civilized people (Cardoso 1873: 146). They never pursued or assaulted anyone and did not accept any kind of gift left in the forest. This was another tactic to avoid any contamination with a people who likely already experienced civilized ways earlier. Again, the rhetoric of incomprehension presupposes the absolute conviction in civilization and moral and material progress.
[xliv] Of course it is unnecessary to use canoes to attack boats. The Katitauhlu recently learned some of these skills with the people who live or pass through the vigilance post on the Sararé River.
[xlv] At this time, Mato Grosso, as glimpsed by the references to the dearth of economic growth and population, was generally considered as a backwater of the country. It was sometimes used as a kind of internal exile for military who the central government wanted to punish.
[xlvi] The West is a problematic abstraction that unifies a number of subfields (roughly social categories between and within countries) clearly distinguished in their power to define the sociocultural reality of the world (in the sense of the struggle for definition and division of reality of Bourdieu). The notion of the Western World is not only an abstraction but is part of the imposition of meaning from a center that defines others as outsiders and then classifies them entirely in relation to itself. Thus the rest of the world is everything the center, according to itself, is not: underdeveloped, foreign, uncivilized, and primitive. This operates by subsuming all diversity within one enormous category; a category defined by what it is not, by absence, and never by a positive quality. This is a vantage point akin to the notion of Indians in Brazil. Naturally, the notion of Brazil, although Western from its own perspective, remains ambiguous by virtue of its location extraneous to the center. Appropriate in a way, for it stands midway between the Indians and the civilized center. The elite and the state have always considered Brazil to be part of European civilization currently translated as Western and constantly imagined ways to actively promote this belief and sentiment. Hence the education of their own and other peoples.
[xlvii] The only way to accommodate both processes in one mode of expansion would be to suppose the rapid retreat of the Paresi-Cabixi and their replacement by Nambikwara before conquest.

For the glory of labor, country and liberty: the recurrence of the intrusion of civilization in the republic

The previous chapter discussed the documentary sources about the Southern Nambikwara mostly from the conquering society’s perspective. On a few occasions the other point of view, coming from the contemporary Sararé oral tradition, brought out some contrasts and coincidences. One such coincidence worth remembering concerns the new tactic developed by Nambikwara local groups when pressures built up within their own territory. By the 20th century they adapted by concealing villages and gardens in remote places or even may have abandoned horticulture for some time and reverted to a hunting and gathering mode of production. The Nambikwara peoples or local groups may have been temporarily forced to be nomadic and, even when they were not, they appeared to be. Thus the imagery projected to the national society of being nomadic hunters without a fixed abode may simultaneously be a partial truth and a tactical deception. The result of partial conquest (as documentary sources indicate areas not occupied) and the active ruse of the conquered combine in the image of the nomadic and elusive Indians disappearing when pursued. From the early years of the century until the end of the empire, this image must have contributed to relinquishing the conquered territory to the warfare practiced by the formally and formerly vanquished. The Nambikwara probably adapted to the presence of the mining villages and the quilombos by creatively designing a new form of occupancy and a new mode of war. The war of conquest waged before provoked a reflexive response from the Indian peoples, and in the end they prevailed. To clarify, the lack of strong economic interest, the attention diverted to more urgent Indian problems, the dearth of government resources, and the diminished general strategic and political importance of a peripheral region all contributed to the relenting attitude taken by the provincial government and the lack of commitment to stronger local initiative. In the meantime, the re-conquest fueled the hatred and humiliation, at least on the part of the local society of Vila Bela, a fact even expressed in writing. The Cabixi offended the sense of natural supremacy of the locals but support in the wider provincial and national context failed to come forward with respect to the necessary investment to resist the continuous and persistent Indian campaign to recover the lost ground. The town of Vila Bela itself probably could not be reconquered by the new modality of Indian warfare[i].

A blank spot on the map and the absence of the state in a very large region it purportedly owns, is in itself a symbolically forceful reason to expand its tentacles into the unknown and savage land and its people. On the other hand, it is with good reason that FUNAI’s policy towards the uncontacted or groups uninterested in contact now is to let them be and not to subject them to a pacification campaign (unless the encroachment of the regional society endangers them)[ii]. At first, after the initial years of the republic commenced and dominated by the positivist military, hardly a change occurred with respect to the treatment of Indians and their placement in the scheme of things. Another head of the new state of Mato Grosso explained that the Indians should be treated humanely but that the more recalcitrant Indians might need to brought into line forcibly and then learn the principles of civilization. The Cabixi posed such a savage threat to the civilized presence in the region of Vila Bela, that they would have qualified perfectly for such a overt domination to transform their “miserable and degrading life” by “the fear of punishment” and “a regime of order and discipline” (Costa 1897: 31)[iii]. The formal change of the institutional framework of the state hardly made any difference in the beginning of what is now generally known as the Old Republic. The Southern Nambikwara of the Valley, therefore, did not enjoy any new privilege in the beginning of the century before the SPI came into existence in the wake of making a limited contact with some of the Nambikwara do Campo groups. Only after the Nambikwara experience of Rondon, when the rules set out by the military positivists began to produce amicable contacts on the Parecis Plateau with the Northern Nambikwara, did some change occur. After SPI’s inauguration, the province president of Mato Grosso mentioned that the task of this federal organization would be to care for these unfortunate uncivilized fellow citizens. Old habits die hard, and many political and general interests were involved, so the governors of Mato Grosso always tried to interfere with such a sensitive subject[iv].

The territory in question was larger than Argentina and had an estimated population of two million. With a figure of this size, even a large margin of error leaves a number larger than many of our provinces and should be conquered for civilization. In 1899, the less harsh current of thought that conceived the Indians as being in the childhood of mankind that reminds us of the first signs of our own society in the evolutionary framework took firmer hold. The Salesians’ attempt to subdue the Bororo was rejected as it tried to mould the Indians into “a passive, obedient and suffering labor machine as in colonial times” (Figueredo 1899: 35). The author proposed “(…) to accept the adult savage as he is, without aiming at changing him except if useful for his own activities; educate the children, but educate him very well in order to return to the villages to live with the savages and dominate them by superiority of education” (ib.: 35). It is vain to try to modify Indian customs and religious beliefs when the nomadic life is the manifestation of an atavist law, a second nature. But the territory and its useful hands can be transformed into powerful elements for progress and civilization by directly intervening in the education of the children. Expectably, the author is a colonel and was no doubt affiliated with the positivist faction that dominated the army and, although they were limited in number, they exercised a large influence in national politics long after the regime change. The arguments now were fixed, the unfortunate Indians left behind by progress and previously subjected to inhuman processes by civilized conquerors foster the compassionate and economic duty to intervene. A humane evangelization must incorporate them, their labor, and their ecological knowledge in the march towards progress (Costa 1909: 10).

A year later, the same colonel wrote of the secular usurpation of their rights to be corrected (Costa 1910: 9). Notwithstanding the partial recognition of rights, the right to humane interaction is the right to be pacified. By this time the Rondon’s Mission crossed Nambikwara territory and had acquired fame in the distant coastal states where the federal policy was being decided in favor of what may be called the relative superiority variant of Indian policy. In 1911 this colonel spoke at the opening of the state parliament and mentioned the new charge the federal government had adopted, possibly hastening their incorporation into national society[v]. Yet he also noticed that that a few indigenous tribes showed peaceful intentions with rubber tappers and the Telegraph Line personnel only to betray them later (suggesting a trick to murder the civilized; Costa 1911: 21).The Indian Protection Service and the Bureau of Worker Relocation (Instalação de Trabalhadores Nacionais) did not, however, win an easy victory (Lima 1995). In fact mentioning in the same breath the rubber tappers and the telegraph personnel mixes exactly the locally prevalent proponents of absolute superiority with the supposed executors of Rondon’s approach. Documents from the next year refer to SPI’s establishment in Cuiabá (very appropriately on the national independence day) and under the general direction of Rondon, who was born in this state. His success was eulogized,
“The great tribe of Nhambiquaras and others that until recently create terror amongst our people in the backlands recently entered amicable relations with the personnel of the telegraph commission due to our illustrious compatriot and his dignified and self-effacing auxiliaries. It is expected that they do not return to the life of hostilities and persecutions which they were leading and, on the contrary, will transform themselves into peaceful inhabitants of these backlands and join the civilized in order to make use of the riches that exist over there and conserve the telegraph line now under construction” (Campos 1912: 46).

The fame of the Nambikwara rested firmly on the reputation of terror, as the quintessential fierceness of wild savage Indians. Rondon’s fame is founded on that of the Nambikwara.

The immediate relation between the opening up of the land’s riches, the integration of the labor force, and the use of the Indian’s knowledge is an all too familiar refrain that also recurred in Rondon’s arguments. The major difference voiced by Rondon concerns the sensibility to allow an inverted perspective. As he said once after his contact with the peoples near the line: “They evaded us; they did not allow us to meet them, by virtue of a natural mistrust which they had of the first invaders and violators of their homes. Perhaps they hated us, too, because, from the viewpoint of their civilization, we were all members of that warlike tribe which had caused them so many misfortunes since time immemorial” (apud, translated in Price 1972: 29). Although the aggression in a few rare instances had been acknowledged before, the recognition of their civilization and us being like a warlike tribe constitutes a quite rare empathy to put evolution between brackets and to invert the perspectival stance. In the end, Rondon did not overcome the basic tenets of natural evolution and superiority. After all, he firmly promoted interning the young Indians (mostly Paresi and a few Nambikwara) in a boarding school in order to actualize the indigenous education plan developed by the previously mentioned province president. Rondon’s efforts to solve the Indian Problem garnered prestige. In this period the two major configurations of attitudes and values towards the Indian Problem disputed the hegemony of government policy. The nature of his approach to the Nambikwara figured prominently as to prove its practical feasibility. To that aim the rhetorical style emphasized exactly the terror and the fierceness of this tribe. Incidentally, this relates to the major point of contention with respect to the treatment of the Kaingang in São Paulo, a people who mounted a strong resistance to the invasion. The foremost issue revolved around the question of whether peaceful contact could be established or if the only language applicable was violence. The Nambikwara thus became a prime example in the symbolic definition of the humanity or racial inferiority of the Indians and the very possibility of perfecting this rebellious and evolutionary left behind people. The argument came down to the affirmation that if they could be pacified, any people could be treated thus.

The pacification operated in this case merits attention. In two articles, Price discussed three perspectives on what was supposedly the same first contact made with the Nambikwara by Rondon’s people. The juxtaposition of two civilized accounts and one Indian narrative show not only how the Indians differed in their rendering of the events, but also how the process was fraught with guesswork, misunderstandings, and projections from each one’s unique perspective. First, I will approach the representation portrayed on the national scene. One of Rondon’s men published an article in a newspaper in the capital to show how even the most stubborn savages should be treated humanely, and not like animals. Alípio Bandeira wrote:
“The Nambiquara are a nation native to Mato Grosso held and considered to be intractable – a timorous species of barbarians who, like sentinels in the forest, cunning and vigilant, stood steadfast on their post, as indomitable in their ferocity as inflexible in their hatred for civilization. Mistrustful in the face of continued treachery, suspicious after innumerable disloyalties, fleeing from the whites as from wild beasts, they interned themselves ever more into the distant center, and only when the echo of an unknown voice, some noise or foreign signal reached the door of their huts – only then did they venture forth to defend their frontiers” (apud Price 1984: 41)[vi].

Therefore, the did not Nambiquara people revolt but, vigilant of their land and in defense of their families, they reacted to the penetration” [in the same artistic style the author fancifully continued to describe how the Indians followed the expedition in order to choose the moment of attack; my translation Price 1983a: 612]

“Thus was the Rondon commission received when it first stepped on the lands of this fearless tribe” (Price 1984: 41).

The commission did not plan to plan to do any harm, but countless adventurers came before them and did not bring the “generous peace of civilization but the miserable war of avarice” (ib.: id.). The self-image of the Rondon Commission as the vanguard of real civilization, and not the rubber tappers reported to have attempted earlier incursions shortly before, agrees with the general civilizing mission entrusted to the positivist military. In the same sentence, Rondon’s positivist idiom drew the opposition between the fraternal embrace and a betraying attitude. This was a precursor to the fraternal protection the officers planned for SPI. It is no shock that, “The Nambiquara took vengeance and, as it is, vengeance is the nectar of gods and savages” (Price 1983a: 612). The savages just like the pagan gods are without the civilized restraint exercised by the Commission’s military participants. Bandeira does not yet use the famous commandment “to die, if necessary, but not to kill”. However, the next scene firmly established the difference between the sweet taste of revenge and the exceptional peace of Colonel Rondon compared to other Whites. “Well, colonel Rondon was an exception, he really was at peace with his spirit, as well as with his heart and his actions” (Price 1983a: 613). This was an exception in more than one way; only a man at peace with his thoughts, sentiments and actions, his whole being engaged in this venture would react so civilized to the next incident. Rondon changed directions after the first bellicose contact when the Indians defended their lands. The Indians obstinately followed his tracks, and when they thought the expedition penetrated too far in their territories, they attacked again. This time Rondon escaped miraculously and famously nearly took an arrow in the heart. This is the incident when the arrow was deflected by a bandolier that caused his fame among Sabanê and Northern Nambikwara. Nevertheless, the valiant colonel Rondon did not allow any reprisal against the Nambikwara. For all the justification of the reaction of the Indians, the attitude of the colonel is impressive. Then, he changed directions again. Note, incidentally, the epithet valiant applied to Rondon above. This usage preempted any weakness or cowardice on Rondon’s part. After all, according to the more general mores, a man must react to an attack on his physical integrity.

In fact, the position of the savage reads like the inverse, the mirror image of the predicates attributed to one’s civilized characteristics. In that sense, as shown by the future of the Nhambiquara, the evident superiority so obviously displayed tends to shift the fraternal embrace towards a fatal embrace[vii]; or, perhaps more aptly, from encirclement to entrapment. The article continued in the rhetorical style characteristic of the time with all sorts of embellishments regarding details of the events the writer did not verify but supposed he can safely get away with in an article for the educated public in the large city. Take as an example the adjective fearless applied to the Indians. This could not possibly have been objectively verified by December 1910. In reality, this reflected projections by the author and his colleagues, rather than information revealed by ethnographic examination. While the nudity, sleeping in the sand, or stone axes are not imagined, they are interpreted in a pre-conceived framework of evaluating the actions and objects of the savages. This rhetoric agrees with hawkish hard-liners advocates of the legitimacy of violence to subdue the fierce tribes. Both camps concur on these distinguishing traits and the advocate of the notion of all peoples being of ‘one single humanity’ even stresses them to cast the making of contact into a favorable light. Thus, the strong emphasis on fearless warriors is relevant. On the other hand, by laying the blame on the intruders and justifying the violent response as the defense of their home and land, the savages acquire a different character that is understandable to westerners. They are, after all, not so distinct in their ways. If the strange Indians are human, then a common ground must exist. The commonality of humanity apparently justified the free interpretation of the sentiments and thoughts of this strange people. Therefore, the Indians comprehend Rondon’s actions and adopt an attitude of expectation allowing the Commission to work in peace. These observations were only the prelude to the main episode Bandeira wants “to call to the attention of reader” (Price 1983a: 613).

The initial events set the stage and provide the major notions which will be applied to the events that lead to contact. The example and leadership of Rondon must be established beforehand as he did not play the role of the protagonist of first contact himself. One day two military men rode out too far away from the main body of the expedition and ended up severely wounded by arrows. One arrow pierced the graduated officer Lt. Bueno Horta Barbosa in his lungs. Another one stuck in a tree, just as was the bullet fired by the lieutenant to frighten away the assailants. Some workers nearby rushed to their aid, but the wounded officer forbade any retaliation. The tree remained there as the monument testifying to the situation, an arrow and a bullet – the two potentially mortal objects of the opposing sides – lodged in its trunk. The very place for a “touching scene of reconciliation” (Price 1984: 42). Then “(…) the loveliest passage of this sylvan epic, in which the generous sentiments of a truly civilized man and the ingenuous affection of the uncultured sons of the forest will swiftly meet in a moving exchange of tender friendship – as soon as he managed to recover” (ib.42). When the gravely injured officer recuperated, he acted gallantly, in a way worthy of his rank. He returned, cleared all of the vegetation around the sacred tree of his martyrdom and left gifts for the irresponsible malefactors. Then he emphasized what he thought was a corresponding Indian action, and stressed that they fully comprehended the nobility of his act, swapping the delicacies under the tree with food. At first sight both the reference to aristocratic values and religious simile may seem out of place but, the positivist influence in the army aside, the vast majority of the elite were Catholics and the country recently emerged from an empire with a politically dominant nobility. The non-converted elite needed convincing, at least partly in its own terms. Rondon’s prestige needed to be couched in a symbolic language accessible to the intellectuals and to the powerful in the federal capital who shared in the shaping of federal policy.

Lt. Barbosa believed that the Indians’ countergift demonstrated that they understood his gallant intentions. He left unexplained how he could be so sure of his interpretation of this gesture. This Indian behavior resembles closely the delayed reciprocity prevailing between allied groups or the commencement of the process of alliance. One party proposing to reach an amicable relation with the foreign group leaves gifts and waits for the opposite side to act. If the strangers return the gift likewise, then this is considered a first move to alter the prevalent state of actual or potential violence. Notably in the initial gift of the delicacies the question of the interpretation by the Indians is resumed to his own standard of evaluating food. The Indians, on the other hand, left manioc, a staple that was not considered specially valued food. They also deposed arrows, probably a medium of stating both good intentions and the wish to exchange the non-food goods habitually traded between allies. It seems possible that part of the interpretation correctly assumed the action to be the first overture to a non-hostile relationship even when exaggerating the Indian’s positive attitude. The notion of the noble savage underscores the idea that the generous sentiment of the truly civilized man was recognized, as only the noble correctly infer and could recognize this generous sentiment, exchange gifts and accept contact. This was not just an example to the Indians, but to everybody. Rondon’s men were the paradigm of civilized men even in national society. The savages, on the other hand, corresponded as the junior partners in this sylvan epic with the ingenuous affection of uncultured sons of the forest. Good savages are simple, sentimental people without real culture and close to nature. Implicitly their position resembles the civilized child, a natural product to be transformed by education into a son of civilization of which the other protagonist is the icon. Therefore, ‘the sons of nature’ demonstrate comprehensible behavior to the ‘bearers of culture’ and still are to be classified as irresponsible, just like immature ‘sons of civilization’. The foreshadowed implication about the status of evolutionary rebellious children to be coaxed to civilization is obvious. Nature is always to be transformed by the civilized action of culture. This applies to children and savages, as both need tutelage.

The lieutenant collected the tokens and left new gifts. “The natives similarly returned, and on this occasion they left – for there is nothing else which adventurers require in their dominions – balls of smoked latex, they naively thought that this was the best gift they could make” (Price 1984: 42). In effect, this exchange is quite remarkable. Firstly, by virtue of the evident knowledge the Indians display of the frontier closing up on them. They knew what interested the Whites and, more significantly, knew how to smoke rubber. In this epoch the milk gathered had to be smoked for storage and transported in the form of rubber balls. If this was the gift, the Indians learned the tapper’s way of producing rubber, a notable feat for a supposedly isolated and totally uncontacted tribe. The gift eloquently demonstrates the extent of their knowledge. There are certainly not as naïve as the author presumes, and this act is almost premonitory. The SPI later promoted rubber production and later, corresponding to American demand, even founded the Espirro Indian Post with a contract to secure the collection of this resource. This offer leads to the reasonable implication that the previous contact with rubber gatherers somehow earned the Indians metal tools. The Indians took the initiative and invested in the demand for economic material exchange of particular goods to obtain more. Around this time it was written that from a hidden vantage point the Indians observed, the fraternal maneuvers of their friend. Surely though, the Indians did not consider the fraternal movements as more than a phase in the construction of friendship. Then they entered into the second phase of this process:
“(…) they appeared and confidently approached speaking. Unfortunately the language of the Nambiquara is excessively strange, wherefore the two sides could only trade gestures intelligible as affectionate and reciprocal comradeship.

Well, these beginnings, beyond being sufficiently promising in their own right, prove magnificently that the Nambiquara are not, as was believed, indomitable. It is already realistic to expect from them not only loyal friendship, but more, their full cooperation, which is of incomparable use in these remote localities, as in the case of the Pareci employed by Colonel Rondon in the construction of the telegraph line” (Price 1984: 42).

“Therefore, the myth of their ferocity of this noble nation is unproven, as was to be expected. There is only one obvious thing, never before have courageous and principled men used appropriate methods in their relations with the natives” (Price 1983a: 614).

History revealed the author’s confidence about these very tenuous beginnings to be unjustified. The optimism of the story and the projection of sentiments and feelings into the opposing party constitute part of the rhetoric of a hero tale, or, more precisely, a tale of two heroes. If an Indian told this narrative, it would have been classified, to use an older scientific concept, as a civilizing hero myth. The whole factual story to be told is much more a supporting tale to the present conclusion, invoking its own ancestral spirits: “Colonel Rondon’s school, inspired by the wise council of José Bonifácio, Azeredo Coutinho, and other great spirits, is thus consecrated once again by its practical results”. As always, the results count, and hence the optimism of finally overcoming the unconquerable. Again, if the Nambikwara can be conquered by these brave methodical men, they can deal with all already settled or still wandering tribes and everything indicates that this great task will shortly be accomplished. As if all the most indomitable peoples originally were nomadic. The indigenous peoples, the innumerable tribes on our vast plains, in this still grandiloquent style, will be called to social fellowship by the prominent hero, the illustrious chief. This incorrectly suggests that they do not participate in any social congregation with other peoples and the civilizing hero will foster true social life. Finally, this project merits all the more support due to the qualities of the people brought to the bosom of society: just as adapted as anyone else, as sober, hardy, acquiescent and close to the soil as the best foreigner (contra the proponents of the superiority of the racially better qualified Europeans) and a lovely race, too. In referring to the Indians as the legitimate sons of Brazil he implied the right to a humane treatment as well as the usual symbolic misappropriation of identity and autonomy. Jointly the ecological, racial, and aesthetic dimensions are promised to produce a relief for the interior deserts (extinguishing them), so as to till the soil, and encourage industry[viii]. This undeniable capacity is not only posed in definite terms as it is generalized as the acceptable stereotypes applicable to all Indians. The Indians were more alike than different despite belonging to different peoples. The positive qualities predominantly state more about the wishes and projections of the author and his group than about the created class of people. Thus, an enormously favorable imagery was fashioned mainly to please the citizens of the city who were interested in the utility of the Indians, and, consequently, of the Rondon School which was embodied in the new Service[ix].

The positivist military needed more to champion their cause than to report research. Even if SPI had been inaugurated a few months earlier, one of its founders still employed all the habitual rhetorical means of the time to convince the literate higher classes more thoroughly of the utility, efficacy, and future of both Indians and SPI led by the hero Rondon. Important in this respect, once again demonstrating that things change but remarkably stay the same, was the international pressure when the Kaingang killings were denounced in international forums like the 1908 Americanist Congress (by people like Fric; Price 1984: 37). The Nambikwara, in this sense, were more instrumental to the cause than the object of any concern in themselves. A very appropriate example, due to the fame firstly acquired locally and now reaching the national level. They were a prime example of what the poetry and history of the tree doubly stricken by human discord transformed into “an altar of alliance with an aboriginal people, who – exploited and persecuted, without land in their own land and without a country in their own country – rise again for the glory of labor, civilization, and liberty” (Price 1984: 42-3). That is the final phrase and final stroke. The Nambikwara were not without land or country, in the larger sense of the word. Yet, only after not conceding them their own land and country, they can be taken up in the glory of labour, civilization and liberty, all concepts entirely distinct from their own. This was done by taking away their particular sociocultural mode of labor, civilization and liberty. With such lofty and high ideals, the facts did not matter much. Price contrasted these prior assertions about the heroic story of the celebration of transcendence of death and discord by means of the human capacity to understanding with other accounts from the Commission. From these it appears that the first contact really took place by another officer a year earlier and on another river. This factual error does not diminish the sincere thrust of the argument though (Price 1983a: 611). It does show the prevalence of the cause over the limitations of the facts, consistently discernible in the exaggerations and embellishments. This is a more symbolic and pragmatic beginning to the relationship between the Nambikwara and SPI. First, the beautiful promises about civilizing the Indians and the subsequent contribution to society never materialized. Second, as Price (1983a: 616) carefully pointed out, the Nambikwara mainly gained nothing but neglect. Only a handful of Indians were treated in the course of the epidemics, the only enduring Indian Post served the express purpose of producing rubber and the first land was set aside only in 1961, consisting of 258 km² of a territory originally two hundred times larger. The promise of a bright future turned out to be a miserable failure for one of the parties involved. The history of SPI ended in disgrace.

Of the first peaceful contact no narrative seems to exist, despite Price’s efforts in collecting all the material of Rondon’s commission. In 1909, Rondon chose the base camp in Campos Novos to construct a permanent point of support with buildings, pastures and animals. A year later, the manager of Campos Novos gradually succeeded in approaching the Indians that visited the gardens. The manager, by the way, wrote his report in a very simple and direct language that the Commission corrected before publication. This indicates that the manager had minimal formal education but certainly was no officer. The tone is descriptive, narrating the sequence of events without pretension and with no heroes. The Indians visited the gardens, took food, and the manager immediately left gifts like tools, in accordance with Rondon’s strict instructions. The steel implements produced a tremendous success among the different groups of visitors. The two parties also respectively shot arrows and fired in the air at a few opportunities. The Indians killed some mules and an ox. This caused the manager to reprimand the offenders, attempting to make them understand this was behaving badly. He did not mind the digging up of garden produce but later on the Indians did compensate with objects like arrows, artifacts, and food. Some even left a message the manager did not understand: seven arrows stuck in the ground and thirty-two scratches in the dirt. The arrow symbolized each man and the scratches the number of days until their return. Incidentally, this demonstrates that even though their language lacked number words this large, they easily and creatively bypassed this linguistic limitation. Maybe this is part of the reason that the manager failed to decipher the message; he never expected the Indians capable of such detailed communicational abilities.

The entire process is replete with misunderstandings. He could not know, of course, that the Nambikwara saw the mules and oxen as atasu, usually translated as bad spirits but more like potentially evil beings that can take the form of large animals (already confirmed by Lévi-Strauss 1948:363). The Sararé or Katitauhlu and the Wasusu, for instance, now describe the hatasu as a gorilla (the aspirant is a small dialectal difference of the Sararé with the Nambikwara do Campo and Wasusu). Moreover, the author, in the beginning proudly stated that he succeeded in embracing and immediately clothing twelve Indians. Price observed that for the Nambikwara this physical contact was extremely uncommon except between potential or actual brothers-in-law. To them, this is a joking relationship between men who may marry each other’s sister and, incidentally, contrary to what Lévi-Strauss believed, such acts have no homosexual connotation. The direct intimate physical contact in Brazilian usage signals the friendly relations between the two parties. Hence, the manager happily reported the fact convinced him that such a feat opened the way to a full alliance. To him, his insistence on clothing the Indians also signified something like being the civilizing benefactor of the poor. The second thing he immediately set out to do was name the man he took to be the leader with the title captain. Therefore, by generously handing out gifts (tools and even sugar occasionally), and clothing and naming the leader at the first opportunity, he followed the template of pacification almost to the letter. In the report he confidently transcribed the Indians’ utterances. Price disagreed with the translations he offered, and claimed some are indecipherable or unrecognizable as Nambikwara language (Price 1984: 36-8). Unwittingly the Brazilian may have facilitated the process of approximation by singing and playing the flute. Later a group responded by likewise singing and dancing. Singing is very important among the Nambikwara, probably among the whole ensemble. Songs help bring about desired results and are conducive to all sorts of activities. There are songs for hunting, war, and spirits (research among the Mamaindê; Avery 1977). Singing and dancing are done for the benefit of allies to enhance the alliance. Almost seventy years later, the Latundê danced on the first night in the presence of the previously unknown visitors, Fonseca and the Indian partners.

From this account, the clash of interpretations at times can be discerned, and at times only reasonably inferred or guessed at. From the short commentary of Price and the general knowledge of the Nambikwara, the same events emerge as evincing the two quite distinct sociocultural perspectives applied to their interpretation. The Brazilian side was too confident in interpreting the acts, sentiments, and thoughts of the opposing party. In this way, on a much more modest scale, the protagonist of the events echoes the swollen rhetorical exuberant confidence of the military officer writing in the city’s daily paper. The gulf between the opposing parties was larger then they actually imagined and they both filled it with their own imagery imbued with general preconceptions of the savages. However, it is difficult to interpret some incidents. One of the Indians witnessed very attentively something being written down. He asked for the pencil and copied the movement: “(…) and having traced a tortuous line he showed himself satisfied, as if he, too, had written something. I made him a present of the pencil and paper, which he received with special pleasure, scratching at the paper all the time” (Price 1984: 38). This happened almost thirty years before the famous incident described by Lévi-Strauss in Tristes Tropiques in which a Nambikwara also wrote something down, making the author read it afterwards. The scene provoked Lévi-Strauss to ponder the implications of writing as an instrument of power (Lévi-Strauss 1984). The early precedent apparently denotes an immense and focused curiosity. What the person thought and how he interpreted the drawing wavy lines will remain unknown. Even Price, who naturally recognized the similarity, did not suggest an interpretation (Price 1983a: 622). The illustrations of objects collected by Roquette-Pinto show, at least for the more northern peoples of the Savanna and for the Northern cluster, they painted calabashes with realist and wavy lines motifs. So, in that sense, the medium and canvas may have been strange but there people were already familiar with a similar practice[x].

Meeting the Bean People: the first encounter and conceptions of exchange
In his articles on the pacification of the Nambikwara, as represented by Rondon in the Savanna, Price organized three different narratives to demonstrate the style and content by the implicit contrasts, with few direct comparisons or profound analyses. His aim seems to be to present the distinct versions of the contact, grounded within their separate contexts, and especially to give voice to the Indians’ point of view. As he published in Natural History (1984), he purposefully restricted the amount of jargon and analysis and saved more detailed remarks for the expanded version of a more scholarly journal (1983a). He began by outlining the issues involved in pacification, discussed above. This was published much later by the Commission as another factual example of the efficacy of the approach. Then he set the national scene to expound the role of the Nambikwara in persuading the public of the utility of Rondon’s School and prestige to frame the local context. Finally, after completing such rhetoric culminating in its impact to the reader unfamiliar with the other’s point of view, he transcribed the narrative of the oldest living Nambikwara do Campo when Price did fieldwork for his thesis. It is probably one of the earliest attempts to reveal to the non-familiar western reader an understanding of the other side of the story. As his narrator was the oldest living Indian in the savanna at the time, Price asked him about his recollections of Rondon and the first Brazilians penetrating their territory. By now Rondon “(…) was a semi-legendary figure known locally as the general” (Price 1984:43). Just like the Sabanê and other Northern Nambikwara it is very possible Rondon entered into their mythical history. The narrative of the old man concerns the arrival of the Brazilians. Although he knew about skirmishes and violence, with the current peace he refrained from mentioning any of these incidents in a story about the commencement of friendly relations. Of course, if for the Whites hostility was the main reason to pacify this fearless tribe, this narrator believed that his people absolutely did not require taming by the strange Bean People. On the contrary, they must be taught to behave as people who may be allies.

Price suggests the Bean People probably received this name in recognition of the beans grown in the garden of the appointed manager in Campos Novos. It is likely that the consumption of the beans contributed to the designation, different as it was from the Nambikwara notion of proper food (meat and manioc; the Wasusu never eat meat without manioc; Serafim 2000: 49). This is current throughout the region even today, and even the Latundê use it in a somewhat pejorative way[xi]. Simultaneously, the narrator uses the name Salt People, “(…) the Nambiquara, who did not use this substance, found the Brazilian food disgustingly salty” (Price 1984: 43). Indeed, Brazilian food was, and continues to be, eaten with an abundance of salt. Price suspected the Salt People to be an old, probably somewhat archaic term (1983a: 625). Just as with salt, coffee and juice were commonly drunk with much sugar. Both usages must have been noticed immediately by the Nambikwara after consuming anything given to them by the telegraph personnel. In the initial times of contact some Nambikwara already had a taste of salty food, as the manager offered the visitors some food (after taking a bite to allay any fears of poisoning). Interestingly, the Sabanê made a kind of salt for their food from a vegetal source, but the salt consumed by the Brazilians was much more poignant and used in greater quantities in their food. In time the Nambikwara developed a liking for salt, almost as easily as they did for sugar. Sugar, of course, did not need much getting used to, and continues to destroy Nambikwara teeth even in small and newly contacted communities like the Latundê. In these observations the typical Nambikwara mode of naming occurs. As with the naming of the neighboring local groups, the villages and village-sets and peoples, a particular feature strikes the observer and is used for designation. Larger more distanced units appear to be named after their ecological setting: Savanna People, Jungle People (for the Valley seen from the Savanna), or else something more specific in the environment and, probably somewhat likelier to occur for lower levels: People of the Pequi Fruit, People of the Buriti Palm, and Alligator People (all examples from Price 1981a: 16). Ecology determines food and hence the names circumscribes the kind of consumable foods available. The Bean or Salt People’s name thus derives from the Nambikwara style of naming where the kind of food is a significant distinguishing feature. Incidentally, Lévi-Strauss (1948: 363) even in his time noticed the impact the salt made and stated the Nambikwara “(…) cannot bear to eat salt”. Food is the substance of making people and the food consumed creates the substance of the person. A similar argument was made for of the Sabanê and the general principle accords with recent research (Viveiros de Castro 1992; Gow 2001). Hence eating different food fabricates distinctiveness and intrinsically divides different people. Intensive sharing within the villages pools the consumption and, in this sense, founds their being made of the same food. Aspelin (1979) took the Mamaindê to their word and, measuring the actual redistribution, discovered the hunted meat really was distributed fairly according to the estimated size of the families.

From the beginning the intruders were fundamentally different[xii]. The very distant strangers, what the Brazilians and Cinta Larga were, and in a way still are, belong to the most distant category to which a human being can pertain, hàitsú, that is foreigners or barbarians (Price 1987: 14). The civilized or Whites, as they themselves prefer to be known, refer, it may be said, to both their own conception of their identity and their particular relation of genetically transmitted substance. In their case the genetic constitution of the person contains family characteristics that influence the person’s behavior. The genetic substance functions as a sociomoral vector determined by family background acting on individual behavior (Reesink 2001). Different substances, different people; but with the former it concerns bonds created in time, with the latter content in part transmitted by inheritance (and then joined with personal input). The notion of being the barbarian, outside of the Nambikwara social universe, is such a radical inversion to Brazilians that it must seem entirely preposterous coming from a naked savage who sleeps in the sand. It would be simply too outrageous to believe. The wide gulf of profound misunderstanding possibly was larger than most protagonists involved realized. The Indian side tried to decipher the invaders from its own frame of reference and constructed their own particular interpretation. Some indication of the initial profoundness of the ethnic chiasm can be discerned from the translated narrative of the Nambikwara elder. At the time of the events, the narrator was an adolescent and not part of the older men who decided on what actions to take. Comparatively, as an adult storyteller, now also known by the Brazilian name Vitorino, the other Indians saw him as a repository of traditional lore and myths. Vitorino was also an excellent speaker and had what was described as a beautiful and rich style characteristic of older respected men. In a way, he had become one of the older men he mentioned in the account as the ones interpreting and deciding on the course of events. This set of men probably is the group of adult men that discussed and attempted to reach consensus on group decisions (Price 1983: 624). Their problem was founded on the uncertainty of what to make of the strangers. The translated narrative loses much of its linguistic flavor because the language has many grammatical categories absent in European languages (Price 1983a: 616). Still, a hint of the cognitive challenges can be detected (following is an English translation supplemented with excerpts from the enlarged Spanish version):
“The Bean People who made the road did not put up the posts in a hurry. Before there was any wire our people walked and walked and walked and walked, crossing bridges and going along the trail (…)” (Price 1984: 43). “(…) As there were few older men, they worried if the constructors of the road might be dangerous. In the beginning there was no cable and we waited while the road was advancing” (Price 1983a: 617). “We noticed that the owners of the road didn’t use it very much, and we thought they must be dangerous. The owners had crests like birds and wrappings of various colors with stripes on them. So people said they must be dangerous” (Price 1984: 43).

“Well, after they made the road they only went by one more time, placing the cable on post after post. The older men went over there but did not encounter anyone despite the fact that the general at various opportunities camped at the site where the telegraph line crosses the headwaters of the Hakkatá. The general’s people made something similar to a trail right through the Mata das Cangas and they went on, went on, went on, went on, constructing a way for the posts that keep up the posts” (Price 1983a: 617).

The observations of the construction of the Line closely confer with the rhythm of work and the extended period it took to penetrate the region. This was because they only worked during the dry season and took care especially to avoid surprise Indian attacks. Such incidents, Price noted, are conspicuously absent. He suggested that these are purposefully left out for diplomatic reasons, in light of the alliance between the Indian peoples and the state. Still, it merits closer examination. The Nambikwara do Campo had already suffered from the encroachment of the rubber tappers, and conditions worsened when WWII refuelled demand. The land appropriation, the debt system which more closely resembled debt slavery with the attendant negative effects of diseases and problems over lack of women, left an indelible mark on the region’s Indians. So much so that when an investigator proposed to register their past and they jointly decided what would be the subject, the Nambikwara in question chose to recollect the time of rubber collection, and not, for example, the time of the penetration of the road BR364 through the highlands. The road brought its own series of problems, as is obvious, but the army liberated the local groups from the hands of the rubber patrons and thus are recalled more positively than one might expect (Costa 2000). To them closing the dark epoch of rubber extraction and dominance counted more than the negative effects the road builders propitiated by the further opening up of the region. Possibly this means that the army is remembered for its actions in favor of the Indians and is not held accountable for the effects caused by the road. Alternatively, in this conception, accountability may be usually individual, based on the set of direct personal actions. This is the same conclusion as surfaces above in the Sararé historical story of their contact with the villagers on the edge of the Parecis Plateau.

Moreover, there is no mention of any previous historical experience with the strange or even weird people who resembled birds by the odd things in which they encased themselves. To people who did not wear clothes and whose distinctive features concerned piercing their nose and lips, the clothing seemed quite outlandish. The previous experience of the other Southern Nambikwara does not filter into this account as clarifying knowledge. Either the Sararé local groups were in little contact with the Nambikwara do Campo or their experience in the continuous state of war also did not permit witnessing anything much different. The bird simile derives from the exterior aspect of the Whites and alludes to the gaudily colored military uniforms worn by officials. The Nambikwara do not generally wear any clothing, aside from specific attire used during rituals, so perhaps it reminded them of people always too fully dressed for ritual. And male birds usually show themselves most conspicuously in order to attract the less adorned females. Note also that birds are some of the least desirable hunted animals. On the whole, however, I cannot be certain that the bird metaphor implies some derogatory connotation in the Nambikwara classification of beings[xiii]. Regardless, such garments insinuated dangerousness. One hypothesis would be that, in accordance with the tendency of stressing knowledge rather than appearance or the material objects that create a covered body, this external visible difference did not indicate a friendly disposition. Of course, anyone coming in from the outer fringes already is presupposed to be dangerous and considered so until proven otherwise. The gradual process of approximation can be accounted for as the proof of the Whites as being more human than birdlike and less dangerous than initially thought.

There is still another exclusion worthy of attention. The narrative does not venture the possibility that the intruders might have initially been considered by some as the dangerous spiritual entity atasu. Perhaps this too was omitted for politeness. The primary atasu of the savanna, for example, is a simulacrum of a human and in myths disguised himself so few recognized him for what he really was, and those who did not died (Pereira 1983: 47-50). The mules were thought to be evil spirits. Even at the end of the 1960s Price (1981b: 698) witnessed a Sararé man kill a strayed cow as an evil spirit. The people in the Guaporé Valley continued to kill stray cattle until the beginning of the 1970s. Those in the central Valley eventually became so enveloped by the new fazendas that in one case they insisted in firing arrows and killing cattle because the animals not only were left free to invade their gardens but, at the Zilo Ranch, the cows viewed “(…) the Indian house as food” (Agostinho 1996: 645). This did little to convince the Indians that the cattle were not destructive spirits (ib.). For a long time the Indians believed that the meat was inedible because the animal did not pertain to the domain of the forest and was not similar to any recognizable game. When Price suggested that they bore a similarity with deer, the Sararé answered that the anatomy of its stomach was too different. Therefore, the cow seemed to be a bizarre animal, it was neither a pet (normally never eaten), nor a wild edible animal (Price 1989b: 34; and the Wasusu myth about the origin of animals is quite different from the Sabanê myth discussed earlier and Harpy Eagle plays a major role). Today, by the way, the situation is different. The people of Aroeira buy beef and the Sararé sometimes get the head of an animal at the adjacent ranch. Still, as far as known for all the peoples examined here, no one prefers this meat to the wild animals. Thus, the strangeness of these unclassifiable animals initially caused concern. Little could they surmise that the peoples and the villages of the Guaporé Valley would come to be seen as the obstacle to the transformation of their territory into valuable property populated by cattle. The goal of the frontier’s expansion was the displacement of the Indians to make space for these strange animals. Without knowing it, for more than one reason the utmost care was called for.

“They made the road big, almost like a clearing where it passed through the forest. Then they went along in the middle, taking out the stumps. They only took out the stumps in the middle of the road, leaving all the rest; and they didn’t set fire to them. On the way home, on the trail to Taikíyená, we stopped to rest. We laid down and talked. “They’re not doing anything very fast about those posts on the road. They’re all just lying along the trail”.

“The older men didn’t know what to make of it. “What do you think is going on? Could they be opening this trail to make a road? Could it be? I really don’t know what they’re up to.” That’s what we kept saying to each other. We kept wondering. “What on earth are they doing?”

We waited and rested in Taikíyená, and then we went back again. The road was burned; where it passes through the Mata das Cangas they had gone along setting fire to it, and it was covered with ashes. Well, then, it had been burnt, and so we asked ourselves. “What are they about? Do they want to plant manioc? But it doesn’t seem like much of a gardening place.” Thus we wondered and talked together.

Time passed (…)” (Price 1984: 43). “(…) When the work was halfway done, the general came to see it.[according to Price in 1911 (1983a: 618; 624); the group went to Campos Novos and returned to their village once again without seeing him] (…) As he had been here, we thought there were people living at Campos Novos” (Price 1983a: 618). “We had gone to look at the road of the wire, but we simply did not understand it. We asked ourselves, “What is it for? Why have they hung this vine along the road?” We met no one. We went to Campos Novos, but we didn’t see anyone at all. Nor did we see how the wire was put up” (Price 1984: 43-4). “Later, when we were resting at the village, the general went along the road of the vine” (Price 1983a: 618).

“Well, we went to look again, and found something new. “Could these be houses?” we asked. They had gone ahead of us, but there were these sheets of canvas, leaking where puddles of rain had formed on them. They were houses made of huge sheets. They had two sides that went down to the ground, and they were fastened to the ground with ropes along the edges” (Price 1984: 44). “So there was a lot of space inside. It was not crowded, even though there were many Brazilians” (Price 1983a: 618). “We wondered about these huge sheets that could be opened to make a house – a house so big that it could be seen from a great distance” (Price 1984: 44). “After the general went away, another man whom I ended up knowing passed along the road of the vine. The general had been camping at the Juruena, but we only knew this afterwards” (Price 1983a: 618-9).

“After we visited Campos Novos and returned to the village, the general passed through. We only saw his people – although perhaps we saw him in the distance, at a place where there was a high hill in the savanna, with lots of broken stones. But he didn’t stop; he seemed to be in hurry. And we continued on our way.

So you see, I never knew the general. He passed through ahead of me, and I never met him. There was another man, a colonel who talked a lot. He was big and fat. His words were big, and he was big” (Price 1984: 44). “I knew this colonel quite well. The general went on; afterwards the colonel camped at Campos Novos. This is where we met. A long time ago we met the colonel while he was in Campos Novos, but he went away too” (Price 1983a: 619). “He never appeared again. I wonder if he is still alive” (Price 1984: 44).

The Indian men had no idea what the purpose of this activity was. They speculated often and returned frequently to the road of the vine to study it. Of course, all present discourse is informed by the events after the occurrences recited. The use of the posts, the putting up of the vine, all cast the enterprise into a different light seen from the knowledge of hindsight. Some things receive names only comprehensible from the current perspective. Therefore, for instance, the general is systematically called by one of his later patents and not his rank at that time (first major, then colonel). By virtue of his later fame, all the comings and goings of the group and the recurrent failure to encounter the general form a significant part of the narrative[xiv]. Observing everything at that time, some observations, with all due reservations, seem to be more synchronic, for example it was unclear why they would clear and burn a path if not for a garden (especially because the soil seemed suboptimal), and why only part of the stumps would be removed. The straightness of the path was also confusing, as the Nambikwara typically make gardens in round clearings (reported for the North, Campo, Wasusu and Sararé). So they continued to speculate and observe. Then, as the narrator discussed the general, he anticipated contact and mentioned the colonel. By contrast, this man he came to know well. Price suspected that this big talkative man might very well be the ex-president Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt indeed stayed for two days at Campos Novos in February 1914. Roosevelt, as his book corroborates, was a man of big words. The pictures in his book and the one reproduced in the Price’s article (1984: 48) show someone not only confident but also someone who had what might be called a ‘heavy presence’, owing to his size. The characterization of Roosevelt merely by observation confers quite well with his features and again manifests the Indian’s descriptive and mnemonic abilities. Both of these capacities in each person and personal memory are a socially emphasized quality by this people. Typically, the memory sparks the question of whether the person in question is still alive. The tendency is to speak about specific persons and less about more collectivities.

Then he described the richly detailed account of the first meeting, not only establishing who the protagonists were but also on whose authority he renders a narration of this event. In the Nambikwara language, the differences in direct and indirect witnessing are obligatory.

“But the first meeting, came about unexpectedly” (Price 1984: 44). “It happened in the savanna, near Halathìná, where the brothers-in-law of Watyyahlá used to live. Halaikkahlá had the honor and it occurred at Halathìna. Since the encounter took place there, the Manduca were those involved. Those Manduca were the sons-in-law of Yûwasutyalá and the brother of Wayântsá. The son-in-law of Yûwasutyalá used to speak of this.

These two used to hunt together, walking through the savanna near the place where the trail needs to be reopened (The trail is not there any longer, as I said before). One of them was carrying an animal that had been killed arriving at the trail which he had not known was there” (Price 1983a: 619) [xv]. “That’s where the meeting took place. He who carried the game was afraid. His companion had gone on ahead, and he didn’t know what to do.

There were tobacco and matches. The Bean Person said, “These are matches and tobacco. With the tobacco, I roll a cigarette; with the matches, I light it; and then I smoke it.” He gave the Indian his handiwork: a long knife and a shirt. The two of them were afraid of each other. The Bean Person said, “If you’re afraid of me, then don’t be” (…)” (Price 1984: 44-5). “(He gave the knife, a long and pointed one, to his brother)” (Price 1983a: 619).

“The Bean Person said, “I’ve brought brush-hooks, which we use to clear the trail; and I’ve brought axes, which we use to make logs. You don’t know about these things. I give you all tobacco to smoke. But we have also brought other things for you: knives to work with, to prepare your food; axes to clear the brush, to chop down trees, and to cut firewood; and matches, to light your fires and to burn off the savanna. “Then the Indian said, “I will give you things to eat, and game, and roasted meat. “Thus they spoke to each other while they were together. That’s what I heard about the first meeting” (Price 1984: 45).

The first meeting as told by the Nambikwara differs starkly from first close encounters mentioned in the Bean People’s literature. It is definitely unlike the embellished story published in the paper. It is also unlike the sequence of movements cited by the manager of Campos Novos, although the narrative does mention this interaction subsequently. The introduction serves to certify the participants and their affiliation (initially called Nené by the Brazilians, here in the narrative called Neneyahlosu; presently this group and two others are known as Manduka, Price 1984: 44; 1983a: 625). The reference to the place also locates the action in a very specific site, the coordinates of time and space and the participants are carefully stated. The protagonists not only are named, the reason of their passing through makes explicit both their territorial claims (the village) and the social kin and alliance relationship between the two hunters in their social field of the village. The son-in-law, very probably a younger man who hunted for the father of his wife in an uxorilocal situation, is the privileged authorized source of the story. In other words, a married man and in this sense one of the older men who are socially expected to be responsible persons. The reference of the men’s names indicate the tendency for the principal men to be the primary social reference points, just as happens in the focal names to designate kin-groups of a village or whole villages[xvi]. The names map the relations metonymically where the village is characterized as the descending kin of key older ascendant or as the leader who represents the aggregate kin group surrounding him. The leader can be said to be an elder sibling, a caretaker of his kin rather than strictly speaking a leader, “(…) a recognition of the fact that it is in his own best interests to be his brother’s keeper” (Price 1981b: 703). This man may also be called the owner of the land, not in the sense of exclusive ownership but as holding it on behalf of the group, as its representative. “By placing this land in the name of the leader, the group appropriately uses metonymy to symbolize its unity with respect to territory” (Price 1982b: 182). For the Nambikwara listeners the citation must disclose something about the internal and external social relations involved. Even when prompted by the outsider mapping the social coordinates remains imperative as without these the story is almost meaningless.

The contact was an unexpected event for both parties. Although the suddenness frightened the two sides, it is clear that without this accident there would be no such encounter. The Indian did not know what to do. The civilized apparently took the initiative and, inspired by Rondon’s council, showed the Indian tobacco and matches. At this point, the narrator quotes the story he heard and the phrases the Bean Person spoke to the Indian. The intercultural and inter-linguistic inference by the participant is, at first sight, astonishing. If the Whites thought the Nambikwara language very strange, no doubt the reciprocal was true too. Indeed, it would be astounding if the manager and Indian actually communicated with such ease. Yet according to the story, the two understand each other perfectly and the Indian understands the Bean Person who talks about some items he supposedly still was unfamiliar with, namely the matches. Of course, the Nambikwara brushed off some previous encounters with rubber gatherers and they acquired some knowledge of them[xvii]. The unknown frightened the Indian but the gestures and talk of the other party reassured him of friendly intentions. Here the template of alliance which was more or less followed by the manager and the Nambikwara near Campos Novos could not apply. Perhaps a pragmatic versatility can discerned in the course of the interaction, reading the body language of mutual fear and negation of hostile intentions. After the initial hesitation, the actual plan by the Bean Person as interpreted by the Manduka fell into a template he understood; giving, seemingly demonstrating the use of tobacco (as the native variant of tobacco differs so much that the manager did not recognize the powder he was offered), the civilized man offered a nice gift that had the additional advantage of being immediately consumable by both protagonists. The first act thus created a comprehensible transaction to both sides and the possibility to enjoy the cigarette in each other’s company, a classical social act of companionship. Therefore, the first move extended a clear sociability towards the unknown other without the necessity of communicating a single intelligible word.

This first friendly interaction provided some mutual commonality and opened the door for more, similarly relaxed interactions. The Indian’s reference to receiving a knife and how he gave it to his brother emphasizes the sharing social character of Nambikwara values. The subsequent conversation is more understandable in consideration of the previously existing experience with the Paresi. The Bean Person enumerated the commodities his people brought and Anúsú, the Nambikwara person, responded with the return gifts. This brings to mind the story of the Nambikwara exchange with their Paresi neighbors (or the historical people who may have lived on the Parecis Plateau before the Nambikwara). In this exchange, the Nambikwara often gave the Paresi meat. Likewise, the Whites gave the Nambikwara tools they could use to obtain, produce, harvest and prepare food: matches burn the savanna for hunting and lights the cooking fire; tools to clear the bush, care for the garden and collect crops. This gives the encounter a comprehensible familiar mode of relation, as each people gives the other a special representative gift. In a way, the exchange should initiate a metonymic gift relation. It is likely that the Nambikwara associate their gifts in this way, so they would give meat just as like they previous did in the relation with the Paresi (perhaps this would make them the Game People). Similarly, so did the Whites give tools (making them perhaps the Steel People). The act of the immediate personal exchange in this event laid the foundation for a more sincere friendship and opened the way for a more permanent relationship. Hence it may even have been the overture to what happened in Campos Novos. That is, as a fortuitous but definitely facilitating precondition to found the relationship at Campos Novos of what, in accordance with the manager’s view, consisted of a process of gradual pacification.

“When the news arrived, we Kithaulá-People[xviii] decided to finish resting and go to Campos Novos to meet the Bean People” (Price 1984: 45). “The older men decided to unite a group to go over there. The owner of the handicrafts was different from Alfonso[xix], who was large and had white hair, and some knowledge. He was quite young with light skin and had boxes of axes and boxes with trade beads. The Manduca said: “he brought small, square boxes of beads, whole necklaces of trade beads, and cotton strings, and boxes of matches” (Price 1983a: 620). “We gave him our handiwork – raffia tassels painted red – and corn. We left him raffia ornaments and manioc dough in exchange for axes and knives. We traded food for axes, and we traded our respective handiwork. We also got dogs, Brazilian dogs, and we gave him honey; sometimes the people set down only half a gourdful, or again, a tin can or kerosene can full, and the payment was an ax or a dog. That’s how we had traded. “This had not happened before. Therefore we wanted to know him too. So we went. He left out tobacco for us, which we took; and he opened boxes of trade beads and took out the beads. He had red ones, in which the older men took great delight; and boxes of blue beads and yellow beads and orange beads. The Salt People had brought many such handicrafts for us” (Price 1984: 45). “We were not afraid of this people, but the rubber tappers were different. The first Bean People that appeared over here, it seems they all died. They went home, to Cuiabá, and once gone, they must be dead. Could this have happened? At least we never saw them again” (Price 1983a: 620).

At first, we traded raffia ornaments, manioc dough, and corn to get the things we wanted. Then, when we asked for something, we had to work for it. “If you don’t work, I can’t give you anything,” is what they said (…)” (Price 1984: 45).

Is this what you wanted to know? I have explained to you how things were. Since I lost the opportunity to see the general I have only known other Bean Persons, who lived alone. They lived there and there and there and there[xx]. The older men took raffia, manioc dough and maize and exchanged these for the axes and dogs they brought. But I never saw the general with my own eyes. He went along in front of me, making the road of the vine. I only saw other Bean People. They said, “I am so-and-so” or “I am so-and-so” but nobody presented himself as the general. That is the truth.

A long time ago, we didn’t sell our handiwork and the produce of our gardens. Today you bring us firearms and other things. In the beginning Watyahlá, Yxulkalxxakxènjahlá and Suwákahalá had double barrel shotguns, a rear loader and a revolver. They weren’t old and ugly when they got them. But then the Mamaindê took them away[xxi]. It is a long time ago, the time we are speaking about, and that was all there was, a long time ago because this is what the general brought us.

But when he passed, we did not see him. We only heard the rumors that he did so and, not having seen him ourselves, they asked themselves if he really had done so. None of us saw him” (Price 1983a: 621). “There were only vague reports that when he first arrived he stayed on the Juruena. I wanted to meet him – we all did – but he passed through very fast, and then disappeared. I never knew the general.

 I have told you how it was, and that’s all I have to say” (Price 1984: 46).

The Kithaulhu did not meet the general nor were they involved in the first events that laid the foundation for a peaceful relationship. They lived close by and, being both as curious as the other peoples and allied with the more directly affected people, they also wanted to participate. They thus sought their own contact in the wake of the knowledge and observations shared by the other people. Notably, the first things told revealed the owner to be well observed and described. The notion of owner is also a native concept. The myth of the master of the animals as told by a Kithaulhu man explains how the owner of the game acted as the guardian of the animals who all lived in a huge hole in the ground. The master knew how to release a few animals at a time for the Indians to hunt and eat. He temporarily trusted his animals to an Indian caretaker who was unsatisfied with the game he succeeded in releasing from the hole and ended up causing all of the animals to rush out. As a result of this mythical Indian’s impatience and imprudence, the Indians are condemned to hunt all over the earth for game. In contrast to the Sabanê myth, the greed of two Indians[xxii] resulted in the loss of an easy and steady source of game. Price, in an effort to stress the danger of turning the Guaporé Valley into a sandy infertile arid area by misuse of the invading large properties, finished his article with the message of the Guardian of the animals: “I left you with a good thing and you ruined it” (1981a: 16). This was an ecological warning advocating against overexploitation that should remind not only the Indians but their conquering successors too (a message especially relevant in the early 1980s). The Nambikwara overcame the dependency on a dispersed resource by their “vast fund of knowledge” (Price 1981a: 17). The idea of an ecological knowledge to replace the mythical reliability on one secure supply of meat is a source of pride. Thus, the proposal to reciprocate with food and especially meat relates to the profound pool of knowledge created after the dispersal of the animals. Hence the food he offers in return must be thought of as more than just some material object but as the result of the application of a prided resourcefulness. Furthermore, the Nambikwara view excessive accumulation very disapprovingly and most mythological owners of certain objects or natural resources end up losing their monopoly, generally after some action by the have-nots. Nambikwara social philosophy militates against monopolies and advocates equal access and the free circulation of goods.

Typical exchanges between different local groups involved objects and handicrafts that everyone or most of them knew how to manufacture or obtain. Some resources were located in different territories and absent in others. There was no product so valuable or rare that it lent power to the owners – this seems to have occurred when, for example, the Sararé mentioned that some type of stone for axes came from far away. This differs from the relationship established by the new outsiders. At first, the Bean People affirmed they brought the goods for the Nambikwara, as if they simply came over to give the commodities without expecting any necessary counter-gift. This is the pacification mould of the commencement of giving without any expectation of retribution. In reality, when the wild Indians accept the presents they begin to return the gifts. An exchange, as Mauss emphasized, that social norms mandate. The Indians thought they were reciprocating and the Whites thought of this as a payment (literally in Portuguese). Nobody really understood the presents as free unreciprocated gifts. This is precisely the issue of the first exchange as reported by the Nambikwara, the mutual proposal of a fair exchange relation. However, for the manager, as for other Whites, it was not as much of a joint social construct as it was for the Indians. The outsiders believed they gave more than they received and the relation constructed being much more their doing. The Whites felt that the steel instruments epitomize both sociocultural and economic superiority and value, a fact illustrated when the manager mentioned a very happy Nambikwara Indian walking away hacking at every tree he passed with his new metal blade (it is hardly surprising he should be glad, the tremendous difference in energy investment is shown in Carneiro (1974) who also cites observations by Roquette-Pinto). All of the different Nambikwara peoples, as far as known, understood the terms of the interrelationship in this manner. The Kithaulhu, followed the advice of their more experienced allies and, after observing the customs of the owner, traded objects and food. Sometimes very little was needed to get a valuable return. This inconstancy caused them some surprise and to them may have evinced an unequal exchange equation. The Indians had generally shared notions about fair trade, although sometimes a disagreement would arise, and that could result in an escalating conflict between the parties. Silent trade, as Lévi-Strauss called it, has its risks, and trade with the new intruders also proved to have its unknown dangers.

Consequently, despite the sometimes odd terms of trade, the imposition of work must have been a major surprise. The usual trade continued well and closely resembled the familiar mode between different Nambikwara local groups, as can be discerned in the narrative. Although at times the White men sometimes traded to their own disadvantage, the change in their disposition concerns more than just possibly redressing an imbalance. The idea that someone should work implies the disposal of his time and body during a period by somebody else who gives him orders. Such notion of an authority over another person runs completely counter to all that was bound in the conception of autonomy related to the Anúsú, the Nambikwara Person. This Person disposes of himself, his attention and efforts but also makes these efforts and attentions available autonomously to others. In congruence with good sense slowly acquired in childhood, a true Person always assumes a social responsibility for the closest fellow Nambikwara. A Nambikwara is always mindful of others, especially his wife and children, and does not intrude on the ultimate sphere of personhood of others. People normally do not force their interpretations onto others or order them around. In the interpretation of Fiorini (2000), the Wasusu leader constantly distributed gifts in exchange for the acceptance of his definition of the situation by other people who, after all, might disagree with his explanation. Even today there seems to be a resistance to work for others in this civilized sense of the concept. Returning to the Sabanê myth, the Whites should not be so proud of their possession of steel instruments as it was because of a Sabanê action that the people and their tools were engendered and the ownership results from a mythical accident (a variant of the common theme of the bad choice). Therefore, the labor as means of procurement of these manufactured objects probably was only accepted because of the extreme use value of these instruments. In other words, what might be called the trap of pacification contains the future change from a comprehensible and basically equitable exchange model of objects: it is followed by the imposition of a particular mode of valuing material objects and people initially unconceivable to the Indians, to be actualized by the dependency created by the manufactured goods. Henceforth an unequal access determined a previously unacceptable subjugation (for an analogous analysis on the Cinta Larga, see Chiappino 1975). Some of these aspects are prefigured in a few pre-existing social relations among the Nambikwara, but none prepared the people for this change. For example, a son-in-law owes his father-in-law and hunts for him to provide him with meat. This is a social obligation, accepted as a payment, voluntarily executed and not perceived as relating to a hierarchical command structure. The only time something akin to power and hierarchy seems to have existed was in times of war when some leaders imposed their will with more than the usual authority (Price 1981b).

It is clear that the semi-legendary fame of the general concerns the fact that he belongs to the first material exchange period, signified by the things he brought for us. The general never returned, just as many men of the initial phase. The men that later manned the stations are all seen as specific Bean People, never mentioned as having some relation with their general. Without this notion of hierarchical structure the Nambikwara never connected Afonso França or the young owner of the goods with the organization headed by or, in fact, unofficially led by the colonel slowly rising in rank. Seen as an individual person, the absence of the general never was ensued by the linkage of his responsibility for what happened to the Nambikwara he named and for whom he apparently never could succeed in guaranteeing any part of their territory[xxiii]. Little did they know he planned to transform them into useful laborers. Thus the owner of the goods appeared to them as an individual person and the narrator asks about the destiny of all the people he met, being under the impression that all of them came and went back to Cuiabá. The notion of Brazil and Indian Service (the old and the new) is not present yet. These people, especially the owner of the goods acted correctly in exchanging generously the goods he and the general, as representatives of the Salt People, brought to give to us. After that, the rubber tappers behaved rather differently and the outfit at Espirro with Afonso França and his imposition of work also gained notoriety. Moreover, they sold garden produce and objects like necklaces, which is a reference to the attempts of concerned anthropologists like Price to sell Indian handicrafts and generate income for the necessary industrial commodities at the end of the 1960s. Overall, several periods with different social categories and actors are counterpoised to underpin some of the distinguishing features of each.

As to the Vitorino’s story about Rondon, to the Nambikwara the personal meeting and exchange that followed characterized the first contact and established a pattern of interpretation and action they likely understood from historical experience. The first meeting prepared for the exchange template gradually built up by both parties and the Nambikwara involved observed the opposite behavior and verified the Bean Person’s intentions. To them this is both a personal and a collective story set within their social coordinates of founding an alliance relationship of symmetrical reciprocity. Before the story of the Bean Person in charge at Campos Novos a personal exchange paved the way for the gradual building up of the relation between the Manduka and the manager. The manager’s story is a pacification narrative from the civilized point of view that contains its own interpretative errors from a somewhat lower class perspective. His version was edited to conform to the higher standards of the Rondon Commission but still faithfully reproduces the paradigm. The higher class version of this account is the least credible in factual terms if proposed as the real first encounter, but mirrors the rhetorical canons of the day and represents one little aspect of the fabrication of the cultural hero Rondon. Each party had their own framework, interpretation, and myth building. The Nambikwara esteem the elderly like the narrator Vitorino as repositories of tradition, history and myth. The encounter is reproduced in the transformed mode of a dialogue that cannot have taken place yet translates the event in the metaphorically accurate manner of myth. Such myths are unwritten and are mentally stored by the elders and transmitted orally, the Nambikwara perspective is not inferior to the published documents. The role of the old men in the cohesion of the group as its memory – hence its historical experience and thus its repertoire to confront the future – is expressed in the Southern Nambikwara do Campo word, Yalanewitesu meaning memory, composed of as yala – old man and newitesu – head. As one younger man said, the old ones do not forget (Costa 2000: 16). Unfortunately, the Nambikwara suffered another impact that greatly threatened this mode of transmission and maintenance of experience and knowledge. Few old men survived until Price began to record their stories. Contact brought official neglect and western diseases for the following decades.

Extinguished fires: death, population and the reconstruction of life
The contact of Indian peoples and fragments of peoples with Rondon’s people caused some unexpected consequences. The German ethnologist Max Schmidt traveled through the Serra dos Parecis in 1910 and reports a region in turmoil (Schmidt 1917 (especially: 37-40; 52-3; 68-70; 74-5); amply cited from a manuscript translation in Machado 2006: 18-21). When he visited the region around 1910, the frontier between Paresi and Nambikwara peoples was the Juruena River. Surprisingly, however, some time before the Southern Nambikwara extended considerably further to the east, at the least reaching the region from the headwaters of the Juruena River towards the headwaters of the Jauru, Cabeçal and Guaporé Rivers: that is to the east of the Wasusu and Sararé in the Valley, more or less a continuation to the south of the occupation from the Plateau west of the Juruena River. The Paresi then conquered this region, apparently moving from a more northerly or northeastern position. Schmidt mentions one incident when the Paressi-Kabishi attacked and destroyed a Nambikwara village on these headwaters, taking some children with them. In an attack on another village with two houses, this time localized at the headwaters of the Juruena, two men were killed and the women and children taken away. One of the reasons for their success was access to firearms. For example, one Paresi-Kabixi, actually himself originating from one of these kind of replenishing population raids, was looking forward to be able to use his gun again with the funds earned by working for Schmidt. Despite these odds, the conquering Paresi, including the incorporated ‘stolen people’, still feared the Nambikwara and their counter-raids from the other side of the Juruena. At the same time, the Paresi-Kabixi were pressured by the other two Paresi segments, disputing the formers’ territory. The two segments called the other one “tame Kabixí”, in opposition to the “wild Kabixí”, the “Guaiguakuré”, i.e. peoples from the Nambikwara cluster. The same segments used Kabixi as deprecatory term and stigmatized the Paresi-Kabixi. Conversely, the latter reacted strongly to any suggestion by Schmidt about being really Kabixi and not Paresi.

Several points not well known to Price stand out. First of all, the report by Schmidt shows how the Paresi acted anything but peaceful. In effect, the Paresi-Kabixi stole a large number of women and children from their neighbors and the latter constituted a large “working class” among them. Though treated as inferiors and as workers for their superior captors, the captured were well treated and actually, by adoption, slowly incorporated into the kin groups of their owners. Assimilation seems to have been the end of the process. The other two endogamous Paresi units considered themselves, as seen, as superior to the third unit (Kozárini or Kodárene) and disdained to participate in this mutual predation of people. Although it is unclear how long this conquest by a part of the Paresi has been going on, it is quite clear that the Paresi-Kabixi were a mixed people with a small superior class of Paresi (“Herrscherklasse”) and a very large working class of people extracted by force from neighboring Nambikwara peoples. The precise relation of these Nambikwara being transformed into Paresi does not concern us here, but at least one analogous situation occurred not too far to the south, between the Guaná and Guaikuru (Machado 2006: 21-2).What may be noted in passing is another incident of the power of literacy long before the famous incident observed by Lévi-Strauss. The foremost original Paresi on the Jauru River told Schmidt that they, both being patrão – in the sense of “employers” and “bosses” – occupied analogous positions. The dominated people were like the Brazilian camarada, i.e. probably like landless dependent laborers. Hence the Paresi demanded to be treated as an equal to Schmidt in front of other people: he pretended to write and read just like him and required of his ‘colleague’ confirmation of his literacy. Schmidt (1917: 68) clearly attributed this dramatic presentation to be the result of the Indians’ conception of the power of dominance inherent in literacy. In fact, the quantity of incorporated Nambikwara impressed Schmidt so much that he considered the Paresi-Kabixi as being actually Nambikwara by “blood”. Yet they identified strongly with the people originally their “oppressors”.

It seems likely that the contacts with the Rondon Commission strengthened the Paresi by providing for “presents” that included firearms. Rondon, by the way, apparently does not mention this situation anywhere, but the Line went through areas to the north of the Paresi-Kabixi. Furthermore, one of his most esteemed collaborators, before his lamented death, was Toloiri, a Paresi-Kabixi. That is, Rondon might have or might not have known about captured Nambikwara, but certainly provided indirect support in favor of the Paresi. And, as seen above, one incident of retaliating Paresi also already has shown the disparity between the image of pacifist Indians and the capacity and the will to employ force. According to Schmidt the two superior Paresi segments, possibly because of the process of assimilating Nambikwara, classified the Kozárini pejoratively as tame Kabisi, and the Nambikwara as the wild Kabisi. From their point of view both were inferior and similarly prone to violence. In other words, apparently unlike themselves, for they allegedly did not do harm to anyone (Machado 2006 15; 20). Maybe so, but Schmidt not only reports them pressuring the Kozárini but also that the latter performed a similar role, mainly to the Waimare segment, as the captured Nambikwara performed for the Kozárini! In this way, they would be replicating the subordination to which they themselves had been or partially were subjected. This subordination within the Paresi would happen despite the fact that the Kozárini pertain to the Halíti: the encompassing Paresi notion of one people that recognizes all three segments as being descended from a mythological set of brothers, ancestors of each specific subgroup. Moreover, the origin myth of the Halíti distributes the segments in their own different territories and that appears to exclude a simple mythological legitimated subordination of any of the separate segments (Gonçalves 1990).

Whatever the origin or truth of the subordination of one segment, as this distinction between “wild” and “tame” Kabixi has been mentioned in the historical documents cited above, and as the Paresi-Kabixi used to be in contact for a long time already, possibly this Paresi conquest had been going on for some time. It would also explain the mentioning of violence by some Paresi in the previous century as well as the confusion about the Cabixi. In effect, the Paresi were not peaceful towards another people and that already could explain why they sometimes appear as agents of violence. Then, while it made sense to separate wild and tame Cabixi, the simultaneous use of the same term for free and for subjugated and ‘inferior’ Nambikwara may have been confusing to outsiders or a useful confusion to their own purposes. In sum, it very likely that this came about after the arrival of the strangers and that the other modes of relationships mentioned before are much more likely to have existed before more profound changes induced by the new frontier society. The Nambikwara ensemble may have occupied the vacated spaces of the dwindling Paresi, but, if Schmidt is correct, part of them also suffered something like a re-conquest by Paresi to constitute the Paresi-Kabixi. All the more reason for Rondon, if he knew, to change the name of the not subordinated wild Kabixi related to this amalgamated tame Paresi-Kabixi people, separating them clearly and giving them a name not related to the Paresi and associated with independence[xxiv].

Direct contact with the Bean People themselves brought about a variety of other diversified consequences. First of all, the Rondonian prophesy of overall peace between Whites and Indians and progress for the now pacified Nambikwara did not materialize. One of the major impacts concerns the epidemics that the incoming intruders unwittingly spread to the entire region. The impact was terrible and eventually affected each people and local group of the Nambikwara ensemble, even the most recently contacted Latundê. The Latundê did not wish to describe the deaths caused by epidemics deriving from the lack of effective assistance by their legal tutor. Strong emotions about the loss of most of the older generations who were not actually so aged (the causes of death among the elderly is not of much concern), the ripping apart of the fabric of life in a small group where each life counts, combined with the interdiction of saying the names of the dead contributed to a muted voice about this turn in the history of a formerly autonomous and lively group of independent people. The Sabanê in particular, and the Northern Nambikwara in general, suffered such high population losses, that they were unable to maintain an independent mode of life against the pressure of the raiding Tupi Mondé. They too did not elaborate on the theme of the disastrous effects of epidemics although Manézinho Sabanê hinted at the enormous emotional and social costs of losing many healthy socially significant people in a very short period. As far as is known, every single original people and local group of the Nambikwara ensemble felt the impact and the subsequent far-reaching consequences of one or more epidemics. Price shows the effects in numbers, when he attempted to estimate the devastating Brazilian encroachment on the Guaporé Valley and found that from 1966 to 1976 (the commencement of the Nambiquara Project) “(…) two thirds of the population had died of imported diseases and the small and scattered survivors found themselves treated as a minor nuisance by multimillion-dollar corporations racing for a piece of the pie” (Price 1982b: 192). In order to compose his genealogies in former villages he questioned the Indians, one “(…) became ill from remembering so many dead people” (ib.: 199). Recollecting the dead is a psychologically charged and potentially dangerous enterprise. Silence, incidentally, does not imply a lack of sentiments but may be a way to avoid negative effects and find the energy for emotional renewal and social reconstruction (cf. Jackson 2004).

One account stands out as an exceptional rendering of these very dramatic events. Perhaps the prolonged contact and the years of building up an intimate knowledge of the Nambikwara do Campo of the current Nambikwara Indigenous Territory permitted the linguist-missionary Menno Kroeker (later joined by his wife) of the Protestant evangelical institution, the Summer Institute of Linguistics, to gather diverse narratives of this event[xxv]. The Kroekers, with their more thorough command of the language and much longer relations with one or two specific villages unfortunately rarely publish. When, on the other hand, they wanted to emphasize the immense human drama involved, they reproduced a most significant narrative of an old Nambikwara lady who, moved to tears, recounted to them the terrifying epidemic that almost annihilated her people:

“All my family was dead. In the huts, around the now cold fires, were dead bodies. I did not have the energy to bury anyone. I did not have the energy to grieve. I alone was left. I thought I would die too. (…) As the sun began to disappear from the sky, I crawled to the stream and let the cool water soothe my burning face and refresh my dry mouth. Deep inside I felt an urgency, I must warn my other relatives about the evil that has happened here, I thought. I rested in the cool night and long before the sun appeared I began my journey. Too weak to walk, I crawled. For how long I do not know. At last I came to the stream bordering a neighboring village. My heart filled with hope. Here I would find help, encouragement and the shaman’s healing powers. But where was the smoke of the fires? Dragging my weary body, now with bleeding hands and knees, I saw the same horrible scene. All were dead. No, I heard a faint sound, an indistinguishable noise. I found them barely alive, my uncle and his daughter. Somehow we survived and after our strength returned, we walked to the next village. Only a few remained alive. We all joined together and walked on to all the villages looking for other survivors. The burning curse with the red spots destroyed us. It consumed our people. Only a few remained” (Kroeker and Kroeker 1999: 1).

The devastating effects of the 1945 measles epidemics once more evince the absolute necessity of protective measures of health to be taken every time a new group comes into contact with the regional society, though, the disease is not so fatal amongst Whites and is considered a relatively innocuous children’s disease. The lack of previous contagion in an indigenous population causes many deaths. The Line’s penetration into the region and the war effort’s stimulation of rubber production in Amazonia were both partly to blame. During WWII, the rubber tappers infiltrated the region from the north, using access made possible by the Line. After some time, they managed to subdue or expel groups and terminate the autonomous lifestyle that prevailed after Rondon’s expeditions. Earlier incursions of the savanna possibly did not cause epidemics or if they did, were not recorded. Lévi-Strauss discussed the fate of the Sabanê clearly with the evident depopulation just before the war. The presence of outside rubber gatherers, however, worsened the risk for epidemics of several deadly diseases and intruders must have brought measles to the savanna. But when the epidemic affected this generation, the survivors may have withheld their experiences from Lévi-Strauss. It is also not clear how such information entered into the oral tradition of the Sabanê, Manézinho’s generation apparently did not know all the horrible details (by the silence of the survivors unwilling to elaborate; or else he complied with a possible ban on speaking about these disastrous deaths to outsiders). The Espirro Post and the population with which it maintained contacts took a very severe blow just a few years after it was founded. In that sense, the concentration of people jointly with the presence of civilized incoming officials (and probably laborers too) to aid in the war effort for the Rubber Development Corporation was a potential health hazard in itself. The epidemic reached villages like those of the narrative which were not adjacent to the Line or the Post. Afonso França either witnessed the heavy losses the disease caused or else heard about the gruesome toll taken and reported it. As the survivors were weakened, they were incapable of providing a decent burial. Consequently, the souls could not arrive at their communal dwelling place. Instead, the dead were eaten by dogs and vultures (cited in Price und.: 4). For the Nambikwara do Campo, leaving the dead unburied means that the enormous supernatural Hawk nesting at the celestial wild fig tree descends to eat their flesh and carry off their bones to furnish his nest (Pereira 1983: 48). Only after proper burial can the wind of the dry season carry the spirit-force of the dead to the sky. As noted earlier, the resting place of the dead makes a site a village, plus anonymous ancestors protect the living. The unburied dead can do neither and in that sense are socially unproductive. Worse, to the Valley Wasusu the dead who are not properly buried “(…) become spectrums and phantasms that assail the living” (Fiorini 2000: 117).

Other disasters happened before the epidemic of 1945[xxvi]. It is interesting to note that there is no mention in the earlier reports of any preventive measures taken by the Rondon expeditions or the later SPI. Although any such engagement may have escaped my notice, the known dangers of epidemics apparently did not lead to any consistent program of inoculations or long term extended medical assistance. Of course, the later frank decline of the Telegraph Line contributed to the dearth of any real investment in the Line or with respect to the peoples whose lands it crossed. The invention of radio in 1922 meant the end of the telegraph (Fuerst 1971). Before that occurred, the Mamaindê recall that SPI undertook the construction of a port on the Cabixí river in 1921, built with the aim of providing a route to furnish a larger amount of goods at a lesser cost by providing a more efficient access to the Line (by boat and then by mule to Vilhena). The Mamaindê established a friendly relationship with the settlement located in the middle of their territory and some Indians visited the place. Many of them, still according to the Mamaindê, contracted measles, which spread to the entire group and quickly killed many people (Aspelin 1975: 23; this kind of impact suggests that the epidemic probably affected the Northern Nambikwara and Sabanê too). Before the final onset of decline, SPI’s penetration caused a disaster in this area. The whole 20th century saw a series of epidemics reaching different groups at different times but with equally disastrous results. The presence of the Post in Espirro may have mitigated some of the deleterious effects for some segments of the Nambikwara ensemble because of individual efforts to provide medicines, care and advice to the suffering population. Such praiseworthy actions nonetheless can only have limited efficacy and did not represent the systemic and consistent approach needed. The narrative of the old woman who lived outside its immediate reach attests to this.

The elderly savanna woman’s horror might represent the general experience of all Nambikwara groups. The characterization of the plague as an evil concurs with the conception that no death is a natural accident. The evil approaches from the outside, pervades the universe and used to be curable by the shaman unless the attacking forces exceeded the powers of his aiding spirits, the souls of the dead (spirits come from either the sky (Sabanê) or the sacred caves of each people (the Wasusu (Fiorini 1997); this seems to be true for the Sararé too). She set out to warn the neighboring people and sought solace in another village. In her village her entire family was lying dead by the equally dead fires. This expression suggests that the entire village was kin, a result of the local group shaping the feeling of closeness and solidarity with all inhabitants. No burial means the imposed total lack of the habitual human concern of the destiny of the corpses and their souls that are very important in Nambikwara cosmology. Worse, as seen above, among the Wasusu the spirit of unburied people also transforms into an atasu, so dead kin transform into a potentially evil spirit (Fiorini 1997: 31). But she also had her other relatives, apparently a second category of people. Price actually found that in the savanna the co-resident kinsman in the same village were distinguished from the kin in other village by special kinship terms. Everyone outside the own village is separate and different and of potentially hostile propensity mitigated by modes of exchange. The kin in other neighboring villages were customarily allies of the home village between which delayed trading exchange relations constituted the mode of relationship possibly extending to marriage partners when in the preferably endogamous village no suitable spouse existed (Price 1982b: 184). The absence of the smoke that characteristically denotes a normal villages (arising from the rarely-extinguished hearths that symbolize the core of a married couple’s family) indicated a similar situation had befallen that community. There was no shaman to cure her, and as the village was populated only by corpses, there was not even anything to eat. Only later on the Nambikwara introduced the notion of the Whites’ diseases to be treated with their medicines and separated from Indians’ diseases to be treated by their own shaman (curer is the local term). The burning curse of red spots was irresponsive to the efforts of to shamans. With no other help aside from two very ill relatives, recuperation was arduous but somehow they all pulled through. The combined populations of the two villages was likely near fifty (according to Price’s estimate of medium village populations in the savanna at about 25; 1982b: 182), and the fact that three people survived is a powerful tribute to their strength and resilience in the face of an estimated 94% mortality rate.

One might have expected that the gruesome epidemic left the few survivors too despondent and miserable to continue living. However, the tough courageous character of these people materialized in their journey to the next village to gather those survivors, and then onto the next until they had amassed the survivors of all the villages. The reference to all the villages in probably connotes the regional bloc of villages, in this case the string of villages occupying the edges of the forests of the headwater streams of the major streams and river basins flowing through the savanna of the Parecis Plateau[xxvii]. If the village used to be the basic unit conceived of as the conjoined and not different people who live together with the imperative of sharing and mutuality, to paraphrase Price, still it did not exist without an open web of dynamic relations with identical villages cemented on the premise of delayed equal reciprocity. Ecological conditions thus favor the constitution of a cluster of allied villages based upon the leaf-like network of streams and rivers on the Parecis Plateau. All these villages cluster into a more ample, regional unit, where people generally were, in some way, related as kin and at least the names of the adult men were mutually known (Price 1982b: 185). As such, despite the conception of a certain mistrust and slight dialectical differences, the regional cluster tended towards a fair measure of linguistic and cultural commonality, hence providing the most natural way to the emergency of a new amalgam for the reconstruction of social life. The disease consumed our people and few remained but the survivors grouped together and started anew, refashioning their mode of life from the remnants. This resilience surfaces almost as a matter of course in the narrative and perhaps the Nambikwara conception of personal autonomy enmeshed within the web of social group obligations plays a part in this remarkable strength. Faced with near annihilation the very few remaining people of the previous diverse local groups joined to reconstitute a new viable sociocultural entity consisting of the combination of a number of formerly independent allied villages.

The major ecological divisions play a role in the modes of occupancy of the various blocs Price and others distinguished. By partaking in the larger ecological zones the particular preferences of the adaptive Nambikwara modality of inhabiting a patch of savanna near a stream and a forest area even when in the largely forested area of the Guaporé Valley and the north with its predominating forest (with the possible exception of the Sabanê before migration). It is likely, although not definite that the higher fertility and concentration of forest also led to higher population densities. Price was in no position to acquire a more extensive knowledge of the Northern Nambikwara area and he underestimated their numbers, the region they occupied (Aspelin 1975: 16) and their resilience. His necessarily rough calculations of the areas occupied by the clusters demonstrate how the ecological conditions correlated with a mode of occupancy that privileges profound environmental knowledge over other equipment like the Whites or some Indians use to farm, creating a varying social carrying capacity of which the Nambikwara were very proud. So much so that, in his circular letter (undated, no place) to raise support for the Nambikwara against the funding by the World Bank of the initially implicitly genocidal Project Polonoroeste Price wrote, although they were usually numbered among the most primitive Indians, on the other hand: “They are, however, extremely proud of their ability to live comfortably where Westerners can only survive with the aid of cumbersome equipment, by employing a profound knowledge of their environment rather than material possessions”[xxviii]. The much proclaimed primitiveness of the Nambikwara stems especially from the typically Western appreciation of material goods, an arbitrary value which the Indians used to invert. In clarifying some topics related to the debate on nomadism Price reminded readers of exactly the same difficulty of perception when the material presence of houses may be confounded with the existence of a village. Villages, after all, derive their status not from the presence of a certain number of houses, but from their status of a burial ground, “[h]ouses are rendered ephemeral by the vagaries of the material world, but villages are as permanent as memory and tradition can make them” (Price 1978: 154). Just as the lack of the hammock does not denote poverty or lack of knowledge, a temporary absence of houses does not imply the nonexistence of a village. Price once observed that the Nambikwara “seem to be proud of the simplicity of their culture, and laugh at the elaborated rituals of other tribes, and the complicated equipment a “civilized” needs to survive in the jungle”[xxix]. A ‘simple life’ with a less possessive attitude to material goods and less complexity may be still a highly appreciated value. The complexity of the Nambikwara lies in the memory and tradition, not in the easier discernible material or enacted objectifications of culture.

By the time after the Nambiquara Project practically floundered and passed on under other leadership, Price examined the overall situation and further investigated the entirety of the Nambikwara ensemble to decide on policy measures. Afterwards, he was the person best situated to evaluate the population and its distribution. He arrived at the following rough estimates: six clusters in the Guaporé Valley have an average area of 700 km² while in the Savanna seven clusters use about 1400 km². He was most familiar with the Savanna and estimated four or five villages to a cluster. By this account the Savanna cluster contained a maximum of 125 people and the entire region had around 875 people. This suggests a low population density (±0.09 people/km²). He did not offer any estimates about the clusters of the Guaporé Valley where ecological conditions should permit a higher density, a fact expressed in the occupancy of much less land per cluster. He stated that the number of village clusters in the Savanna seems to have been valid between 1937 and 1947. It is unclear if this estimate concerns the Savanna before or after the 1945 epidemic (or any other possible previous outbreaks). I will not elaborate on population estimates but these figures might very well be inadequate for the figures before contact. Price characterized the northern cluster reported by Rondon in 1911 as consisting of fifteen unusually large villages (1982b: 198). That may be unusual from the point of view of the savanna in a later period. However, it is possible that the number of villages in the cluster is large but in population numbers representative of pre-contact standards. In that case, the usual estimate for the total population around the beginning of the 20th century first propounded by Rondon, 10,000 people (a much-repeated figure) is likely a gross underestimate. Perhaps by presuming them to be nomads, the expectations were lowered. Assuming somewhat other parameters of density, particularly demonstrated by the northern cluster but even in the villages close to the Line that used to cross the Savanna clusters at the their lowest width, the population may have been much significantly larger[xxx].

Another sociocultural feature that is initially complicated for outsiders is not just that local groups lack auto-denominations, but more broadly that the exact notion of a group is ambiguous. The local group as a unit of primordial significance with the internal generalized sharing and the equilibrium of delayed reciprocity with other local groups sustained the identity of its members but these people did not name this social organization. The village is named after a geographical attribute or an illustrious ancestor (Price 1978: 153). The word Anúsú, the Nambikwara People, also given in the sense of person or human being, is the expression in Southern Nambikwara (Price 1981a: 16)[xxxi]. This simple designation seems to put these people in the center of the universe. This concurs with fact that the Person and then his family are unmarked, the other Persons or peoples are marked (see Hage 1998). Concentric circles surround the Nambikwara Person. In the hub the person is inserted in the sharing set of his kin in the village – therefore the individual and familial property exist but remain encompassed by the destiny and necessity of all. Immediately outside this is the kin in other villages, that may be related and consider themselves as belonging to the same people, a village cluster. In another article, Price gave the size of such a village cluster “sixty-five to one hundred and seventy square kilometers” (1981a:16). This places the cluster within one of the regional social and geographical aggregates mentioned[xxxii]. In the third concentric circle would be allies with whom they exchanged mostly similar objects, in a delayed reciprocity, for reasons more social than material. In the same way that sharing within the group is an expression of mutuality and disregard of possessions and accumulation, these exchanges between more distant people were important in that they served the diplomatic function of a statement on the state of relationships. Further from the center still were the more distant village clusters where exchanges of women or goods were rare and easily inimical relations could occur. Next were the distant villages and clusters where although facial piercings might be a sign of some affinity (Price 1972), these mistrusted peoples may perpetuate in shamanic attacks and warrior raids. Lastly, at an extreme social distance would be the other Indian peoples and the civilized Brazilians. The placing of the civilized at the extreme denotes that the Nambikwara attributed the characteristic of being inherently fierce to the Brazilians (at least those investigated by Price 1982b: 184). Such an attribution is rather ironic given the Nambikwara’s reputation amongst the Brazilians. The village or village set comes closest to being a self contained and self-defined ethnic unit. Outside of it, every one was separate and different. Such people were always potentially dangerous and could only become allies through social action. The exterior relations between different village sets were complicated and dynamic, the exchange of women at times may have necessary to encourage more peaceful relations.

The idea of a segment of a village within the web of a set of close villages within the larger composite regional cluster with neighboring similar clusters – surmising the possible recognition of some Nambikwara commonality between the more proximate linguistically related clusters – is a type of segmentary model no longer extant. The epidemics destroyed the demographic basis of most if not all villages and village sets. As the dramatic narrative makes abundantly clear, population decreased tremendously and the inevitable result was the merger of village sets into one village and even the coalescence of a regional cluster into one or a few villages. The Sabanê attempt to exchange with the Sowaintê thus was more the rule than the exception and only more remarkable because the two sides spoke two unintelligible languages. Hence the conclusion that after seventy years of exposure to epidemic disease: “All local groups have been reduced to a fraction of their former numbers; some are nearly extinct” (Price und.: 4). Take as an example the Negarotê, inhabitants of the Guaporé Valley and the most southerly of the Northern Nambikwara languages. The ethnographer Figueroa agreed with Price about the fragments reconstituting a viable unit (1989). In this case, she characterized the group as a conjunction of various families originating from a number of adjacent local groups formerly located within a common regional territory. The survivors recognized a certain level of commonality with the local groups in this area against other similar, but potentially hostile, sets considered being others. The relations with the Northern Mamaindê were strained and inimical, but became friendlier after the humanitarian disasters. The relations with their southern neighbors remain hostile with accusations of a history of many raids on their gardens (i.e. Central Valley peoples of the Southern Nambikwara). As producers of ceramics and stone axes, they traded stones and pots with the Savanna group Kithaulhu (studied by Price). Interestingly, this trading introduced a banana that is typical of the group but undoubtedly adopted from the historically close southern intruding quilombos. Finally, they even had violent encounters with the Salepndu, now identified as Cinta Larga, if this identification is correct, it demonstrates that they managed to travel remarkably far (Figueroa 1989: 18-9; although this may be due to an earlier more northern occupancy narrated in their oral history).

The old Negarotê village was once a circle of houses around a round plaza, just as Roquette-Pinto described the Northern villages and their round gardens or as Fiorini described the standard Wasusu pattern of two houses facing one another across a plaza (2000). This is conceptually equivalent to a belief in an unnamed center of people and endogamous kin surrounded by consecutively farther circles populated by increasingly different and separated others. The history of depopulation and inviability of devastated villages made for the decomposition of a traditional village by uniting all people of the village clusters or regional aggregates: re-composition by contraction. In the case of the Negarotê, the survivors had to gather everyone from a dialect area where the boundary of the dialect marked a primary frontier with the outside (Figueroa 1989: 18; 21). The multi-local continuity transformed the village into an arena of factional strife, especially if the contraction involved a regional cluster, then the members of the new village were an amalgam of different and separated groups that never would have chosen to live together. This turns the new village into a multiform continuity and the surviving men become the heads of potential factions based on the previous distinctions. This pattern holds for the Negarotê, where the most important leader complained that everyone belonged to the same group but this fact still did not prevail in the attitudes of other leaders and factions whom continued to value their own ascendancy. Price noted that in the larger villages (usually founded in response to some external influence), the more numerous faction represented the entire village via the cacique, an imposed Brazilian concept. The large villages, of course, are the result of a habitually conscious policy by external intervening agents. The missionaries, for example, are a representative group of such intervening agents, and they liked their potential flock to be close. When the missionaries attempted to found a community of faithful, they envisioned a reasonable number of members and so used outside goods to attract people there. Resultantly, the missionaries’ village tended to be larger than traditional villages. They also used to have an interest in multiplying the number of tribes, to create more units of conversion and create more room for personnel. Today the control of access to indigenous peoples by the state has been tightened, and now they customarily emphasize more their linguistic and educational work as the primary reason for acceptance. FUNAI habitually projected Indian Posts and also preferred to fix the Indians near where the chief of the Post can exercise some control, preferably over the entire group at the same time. FUNAI thought it simplest to join all groups into one tribe and deal with only one people instead of a multiplicity of ethnic groups (Price 1982b: 190). For the agency, a one people model simplifies the approach for everyone, and agents and bureaucrats alike preferred the Aroeira model of concentration that kept all these similar groups in one place.

In the beginning of the 1980s, the four Negarotê factions gathered around the four older male descendents each of a different local group. Each resultant kin-group had its own garden, rubber tapping area, and hunting and gathering trail (ib.: 53). This is an attempt to reconstruct the most basic historical units and allows for a recuperation of the culture and lifestyle of the previous peoples. The union of the four distinct units, on the other hand, was strengthened not only by FUNAI but also by common ritual and religious activities as well as inter-group marriage. Marriages in particular are a common way of cementing alliance, but backfire if there is any serious disagreement or divorce, as was common in the pre-contact situation. The foremost leader advocated an equality and solidarity between all of the Negarotê and promoted staying together in one large village (ib. 52-3). In other words, he acted politically to unite all in one new ethnic unit while the factions propose a disjunctive prospective future. As the consolidation of villages into one exo-named unit endures, many Indians believe that they belong to the union of fragments coalesced into a people known under a name given to the previous village cluster by its neighbors. However, given the opposing forces at work, the future outcome is uncertain and will probably differ in each particular case. In the past, no one could claim to be the leader of more than one village, but the new post-contact situation changed this and granted the chance of a sweeping leadership in a power merger especially related to the Post, FUNAI and the associated flow of goods and services with national society. FUNAI agents generally believe that a headman functioning as cacique should wield some power surpassing the authority granted to the capable one, as a primus inter pares of a band of peers (Price 1982b: 182). This reinterpretation of the role of cacique relates to Post access as a means of power and effectively redefines concepts like chief, cacique, and Indian.

As the Negarotê headmen correctly understood, the ‘Pax Brasilica’ changed relations between the former allies and enemies. The new peace slowly generated less tension in outside relations so fraught with dangers. His wording is interesting: the Hahaintesu (central Valley) now are being raised by the FUNAI, as are the Mamaindê, and now they are no longer wild (Figueroa 1989: 52)[xxxiii]. He uses the Brazilian idiom to explain his belief that FUNAI is taming his enemies. The use of this verb raise in Portuguese implies the bringing up of children and domestic animals. If this metaphor represented his actual thinking, and was not just a translation of language concepts into a mode of expression comprehensible to outsiders, then he understood the conquest of his enemies as a taming and educational process. Although possibly this means a conquest by the power of higher authority rather then the complacent authority of a parent. The leader was originally conceived of as the capable person and was usually the eldest of a set of brothers (by the nature of this kin term extended to include parallel cousins; Price 1982b: 182). The leader used to be someone who had the will to lead, could astutely manage people and resources, was generous, knowledgeable, and a gifted orator. This description agrees with Lévi-Strauss’ observations on the predicates of leaders even when they showed quite different leadership styles and personalities. Additionally, according to Price (1972) in Southern Nambikwara, the root of the word people is the same as that of the verb to share. If so, family and the mutuality of sharing (especially food) are practically coterminous and the generosity of food-giving may the foundation of the Person and his kin (this mirrors a similar reality with the Piro, see Gow 2001:7). In every closely-knit kin descent group, usually one person served as the central representative figure. As such groups had no names, they were referred to either as the grandchildren of a prominent named ancestor or as the people among whom the current leader shares his things (Price 1982b: 182). Note that the only person whose name Lévi-Strauss did not record was the group leader. This man was the focal point of the groups’ existence and traditionally must be unmarked and thus unnamed by the people who view him as the center of their contemporary social identity (cf. Fiorini 2000). Bearing this in mind, the centrifugal strength and unity of kin and ancestry is not surprising and the basis for potential fragmentation of current villages. Peace contributes to the reconstitution of the former local segments and if the countervailing centripetal outside forces relinquish control fragmentation may ensue.

This raises the basis for Price’s disagreement with Lévi-Strauss about the image of leadership. Given the range and import of the original article in political anthropology which immediately influenced his own views when he arrived in the field, Price dedicated a separate publication to this issue (Price 1981b). Although his predecessor certainly observed very astutely the indigenous situation, some of the general impressions offered at the time are inductive to some general interpretations that may have to be corrected. Leaders definitely exhibited some notable characteristics that Lévi-Strauss noted: generosity, knowledge, hard working and, especially, the acceptance of his authority by the group. Polygamy, contrary to what Lévi-Strauss sometimes asserted, is not the privilege of the leader as compensation for his efforts – as it is in the contractual theory of a primitive and historical group constitution often derived from this description[xxxiv]. Price agreed with this description of highly valued profound knowledge and the embodiment of the generosity of mutuality. The leader is the initiator of activities, collective and individual when the time is right by setting the hard-working example of the masculine social obligations. The Nambikwara metaphor stresses that the initiator is he who is the bottom of things while the events finish by coming to a head (ib.). Lévi-Strauss also added that the leader should also be of good humor and have a cheerful disposition, holding constant his emotions; preferably, he is a big and strong man. Although Price does not draw this conclusion, the outline of a capable, wise, strong, big, generous, cheerful, hard-working man taking initiatives sketched by him appears to be iconic of the ideal of masculinity and seems to represent what the most accomplished man should be. Among the Nambikwara in general a big (large) man tends to become a big man. If so, then that means the proposition that an ideal man is an autonomous and care-taking responsible man should be valid for all men, and hence one of them can only lead others by example (Price 1981b: 692-4). This also explains the tendency of deferring initiative in collective enterprises, an inclination that is based on the idea that the initiator is responsible for any consequences (see Fiorini 2000 for a detailed elaboration of all of these aspects, building on the work of the previous ethnographers and describing complexities that space limitations do not permit discussion of here).

Of key interest is a popular topic in and out of anthropological circles that addresses the nature of the relation between the leader and the group. If it is false that the leader’s power is supreme, it is also an error to think his group to be solely the result of his personal action. That is, as if the contingent result of self promotion and the acceptance of leadership by a number of followers who made individual choices and the leader generates his own following (group). In fact, it is usually the case that the village and the kin-group pre-exists before the leader was chosen. When a leader is unsatisfactory, the village may put another man into this position, even if this new chief never expressed such intentions (Price 1981b: 699). When a new village is founded, the group contains a number of close relatives, usually a set of brothers. The template of the capable leader as elder brother is reliant on the sociocultural notion of the capable elder brother (ib.: 693). But is relies more on capability than on age itself. Age is associated with knowledge, and, when a pre-adult, with physical size. An older sibling is thought more capable than his younger brothers and sisters are. There is a clear tendency towards an agnatic core with the eldest brother as the primary candidate to function as the leader. Social constraints do arise, therefore, contrary to the overly voluntaristic picture conveyed before. Of course, the Nambikwara are flexible and Price carefully pointed out that these are only tendencies, though his analysis of many leaders and groups substantiates this observations. The elder brother model essentially signifies the elaborated notion of a caretaker of his close kin, a family responsibility: “The Nambikwara leader is an elder brother who cares for his less competent siblings – that is the basic metaphor and often the actual fact” (Price 1981b: 703). More kinship than politics, the sibling set is the basic model of sociality creating a sharing in-group that has a strong sentiment of belonging to this local group/village (see also Fiorini 2000).

If this was the world of the villages and village-sets of the Nambikwara before foreign invaders conquered them, the impact of the epidemics becomes even more terrifying. The kin and allied in-marrying people as a closely-knit social entity led by a caring big man on the template of one large family practicing mutuality was suddenly destroyed. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the social and psychological impact. The disease destroyed a lived world and microcosm of is its own. In fact, being a sole survivor completely obliterates all social effort put into its constitution. All around leaders must have died and the death of caretakers worsened the chances for recuperation[xxxv]. Only the personal autonomy, a certain flexibility, and the wider web of less intimate kin in the village set or regional cluster could lessen the survivors’ shock or death wish. Despite the destruction, the survivors reconstructed their life and their population numbers regenerated. In one case, the leader of a local group in the central Guaporé Valley survived and gathered at his village the survivors of several former villages decimated by the epidemic. Calmão united in the Alantesu, the people called orphans. Deprived of caring parents is a kind of language congruent with the sociocultural picture of the village and the position of the people left without the close shelter of their kin-group. A more ambitious leader or a more caring man who viewed the disaster of his neighbors (not to mention the likely deaths in his own village) thus rounded up the fragments of the villages to constitute a new composite viable group. Various groups and villages later known to Price derived from such re-compositions (Waikatesu, Camararé village on the savanna and the Wasusu group/village in the Guaporé Valley). Predictably, the villages that coalesced under these stressful circumstances divided after the death or decline of the leader[xxxvi]. It seems likely that after recuperating from an epidemic, villages and village-sets tended to separate along the same lines, if there were enough survivors to allow for a viable group. Regardless, the tenacious attempts at recovery after enormous distress are a tribute to human will, of sociocultural reconstruction and the strength of the desire to continue a socioculturally complete and satisfactory mode of living.

The interregnum of the “Nambiquara Project”
During Price’s 1974 stint as a visiting professor in Brasília, he was surprised when FUNAI invited him to create a Nambikwara assistance program. The surprising development was due to relations with the anthropological community (via the ABA, the Brazilian Anthropology Association) that could at best be called strained. Various officials, however, confessed that the Nambikwara situation was the direst in the country, and that internal colonialist expansion had created a critical state of affairs. There was a very real possibility that most of the population would die out, with the exception of the groups living on the insufficient reservations (Price 1977: 603-4). In the days of near complete power and control by the champions of western Christian civilization, the military dictatorship, such near genocide (or, rather, various genocides from the point of view of the local villages or village-sets on the course to extinction) did not agree with the image of benign human development that it manufactured for internal and external use. It was, in fact, only later that Price discovered some of the previous efforts of FUNAI to deal with the Nambikwara as an obstacle to progress and its blatant failures. Before FUNAI, the Indian Protection Service (SPI) failed to prevent the outbreaks of contagious diseases, hardly assisted the ill, and only reserved a very small part of the Nambikwara territory for their exclusive use in 1961. After the change from SPI to FUNAI, no thorough re-orientation and reconstruction of the aims, methods, personnel and the workings of bureaucracy occurred, so business continued as usual. In the 1970s, in the midst of the so-called Brazilian miracle, FUNAI proved to be ineffective, insufficient, subordinate and unable to function within the development craze of the times. The Nambikwara were one of the main victims in this drama.

A first small reserve was set aside for the Nambikwara in 1961. The area was as insufficient as SPI’s protection. At the end of the sixties, the invasion caused by the construction of a dirt road in the beginning of the decade started to affect the Indians and a few people started to make some efforts to safeguard their rights. Price mentioned that in 1968 the SPI Regional Inspector attempted to create a reserve in the Guaporé Valley but nothing materialized (by Hélio Bucker; see Bucker and Bucker 2005: 13). Therefore, the first existing reserved parcel of land came into being around fifty years after the Rondon Commission. In effect, it probably finally emanated from Rondon’s efforts to assure some land for the Nambikwara in Mato Grosso. The actual measurement and demarcation of the reserved land was carried out by the state of Mato Grosso, meting out 25,780 ha. The origin of the land grant lay in “(…) the Legislative Resolution no. 761 of 26/06/1918 in the municipality of Diamantino of old Mato Grosso”[xxxvii]. That is, although a protective measure by the former state of Mato Grosso (before the subtraction of territory to form new states and territories, like Mato Grosso do Sul and Rondônia, respectively) taken forty years in the past, the resolution was only implemented when the gravel road was constructed. The protection of Indigenous Territory definitely should not be attribution of a state like Mato Grosso or Rondônia. In 1961, the Department of Land and Colonization issued a definitive title to the territory around the Pireneus de Souza Post, customarily known as Espirro. By the beginning of the 1980s, under pressure and with the financing of the World Bank, a FUNAI task force visited the area and concluded that the population of 79 Indians now also extracted rubber and made gardens in an adjacent area of 3800 ha (amounting to a total of 28.212 ha; Costa 2000: 55). Based on these findings the limits were redrawn in 1981. By then several groups had been settled in Aroeira but, as the visitors observed, the three residential areas and adjacent use areas were associated with different ethnic origins. Manézinho Sabanê’s area, with seven houses, was the largest quarter.

Compared to the enormity of the original Nambikwara land, this territory was not more than a drop in the bucket (or as depending on the metaphor, a crumb of the cake) [xxxviii]. The military dictatorship installed in 1964 did not differ in the objective of national development from the previous civilian governments. The same imagery and very much the same interests shaped and fueled policy. From 1960, the road had opened the possibility to appropriate the largest share of the cake, especially the ecologically richer Guaporé Valley region where the Indians had barely been contacted, if at all (the Sararé that were contacted had only met foreign missionaries). At the end of 1967, around the time the reputation of the SPI had been eroded by the eruption of a great many scandals and was about to be transformed into FUNAI, a seemingly protective and generous measure was taken to remedy this appalling discrepancy. In October 1968, the President of Brazil signed a law creating the Nambikuara Reservation for the permanent possession and exclusive usufruct of its natural resources. Officially amounting to 1,011,961 ha, this area covers 1/5 of the Nambikwara territory (Costa 2000: 55). In reality, this area is much less generous than it may seem. In the first place, it is located entirely on the Parecis Plateau and consists of at least 70% arid land, sand, and savanna. Secondly, only 1/10 of the Nambikwara population lived in this area (Carelli and Severiano 1980: 10). Before evaluating this policy, Price wrote in his dissertation that there was “(…) much dry savanna and very little arable land” (Price 1972: 41). Later he estimated that the population within its bounds at less than 1/6 of the total number of Nambiquara (Price 1982b: 190). Whatever the correct numbers, the savanna in question belonged to only a small number of people and a limited number of Nambikwara do Campo peoples. The real purpose of the decree was much less generous. It spelled out that, just as with other neighboring peoples FUNAI must “(…) take whatever steps may be necessary in order to create, in the reservations specified in Article 1., conditions such that indigenous groups belonging to the aforementioned tribes which are scattered outside of their limits may be localized within them” (Price 1982b: 190). This is the obvious advantage of considering the Nambikwara as one tribe, as if all of its components are the same and thus it would be perfectly reasonable to put them all into one large reserve. A fact that the international survey on the general situation of the Indians in Brazil carried out by Hanbury-Tennison cautioned the Brazilian authorities about in 1971. Hanbury-Tennison felt that it would be mistake to move them together as there are “(…) nearly a dozen groups involved, and they all hate and distrust each other” (Hanbury-Tennison 1973: 152).

When Price started his fieldwork among the Sararé in 1968 and later moved to the Kithaulhu on the Parecis Plateau, he was asked to assist in the study that should find the necessary data about the Nambikwara and their needs. He aided in preparing exhibits that showed the localizations of the real villages and living spaces of the Indians. They proposed small three reservations for the Guaporé Valley, areas correlated with the traditional territories of the groups in question. These measures were under study by the relevant FUNAI department. However, the presidency did not approve the measures (Price cited in Proceedings 1975: 9)[xxxix]. Had the administration addressed such qualified information, it might have avoided causing much suffering and deaths, and saved money, too. Instead, a special commission visited Cuiabá in order to inquire about these data and armed with the subsequent understanding proposed a general Reserve. The panel stayed in the city for three days and the decree was signed six days later. The short period between the two events initially astonished Price, but after he worked for FUNAI, he understood better the workings of federal bureaucracies and the process of creating Indigenous Territories, noticing how the actual procedure was very slow, hazardous and involved mountains of paperwork moving through a labyrinth of bureaucracy. It is nearly impossible that the decree was based on the panel’s report and the facts supplied by Price and the regional commissioner (Price 1989b: 12-3). The commission, regardless of its intent to do physical work or simply fact finding, could not have influenced the definition of the area. The fact that the panel was a smoke screen explains the obvious geographical errors (Price cited in Proceedings 1975: 10). To the military and bureaucracy, pretending to care for the Indians by supposedly generously apportioning a part of their former territory back to them, and treating equally the Nambikwara do Campo and the various uncontacted or hardly-contacted local groups of the much more fertile Guaporé Valley, was permissible and convenient. If all members of the class of Indians are all roughly the same, all groups of the sub-type Nambikwara must be more so. In reality, several of the Nambikwara do Campo groups were severely cheated in land rights and living conditions. They knew this very well too, at the end of 2000 a Sawentesu commented on these losses to Costa:

Erdo, Daniel, Milton, Lídio [Halotesu and Wakalitesu] were who really lost. From here to the Juína River, until the telegraph line on the other side of the Juruena River. Campos de Julio is the land of the Wakalitesu. Juína, Juruena is Indian land, really ours. We didn’t loose. Who really lost were Milton’s people. Halotesu and Wakalitesu really lost out! Julio‘s land was from the Utiarity towards the Juruena. Julio’s village really lost out. But, his graveyard I know. It lies at this side of the telegraph line, where there is no reserve. Halotesu calls us Sawentesu because we live in the forest. Who lost this land was Marieta. The Alligator Village, there towards the back is called Yaitulentsu village, over there is the Kithaulhu land, on the other side of the telegraph line. Joined, one on the side of the other, are the lands of the Kithaulhu and the Sawentesu. From Padronal[xl] this way, Sawentesu people, from Padronal to Twelve [Doze de Outubro River], towards the back, Kithaulhu (cited in Costa 2000: 48).

This Sawentesu man explained how some groups lost their lands by this demarcation and how they and the Kithaulhu ended up within its confines: the Kithaulhu basically adjacent to Aroeira and the Sawentesu to their southeast. He also mentioned how the name of his people derives from their ecological placement and was given to them by the neighboring Halotesu. Notably he was also clear on the question of the boundaries between the different groups. He explained that the Nambikwara do Campo consisted of a number of local groups whose names originate from the designation given by their neighbors and each local group had definite notions about the land they own. Or, perhaps more correctly, the land they belong to by virtue of the graveyards of their ancestors. In this sense, the decree ignored the indigenous reality of the savanna, and more broadly of all the peoples of the Guaporé Valley. The real aim of this bureaucratic measure was evidently the removal of all of the Nambikwara tribes to an overwhelmingly arid high plateau with gallery forest near the rivers. This region sustains fewer Indians per square kilometer than the Northern Nambikwara Area or the Guaporé Valley, even for those adapted to the habitat. Property owners immediately took advantage of the situation and petitioned for so-called negative certificates, a certification given out by FUNAI to attest to the absence of Indians necessary to obtain cheap subsidized financing to develop their lands. Similar to the complaint of Rondon about the titling of land irrespective of Indians or other occupants, the entire Guaporé Valley had been carved up and entirely titled by Mato Grosso and later INCRA (sometimes superposing titles)[xli]. Expropriating practices also demonstrate a respectable time depth. FUNAI began issuing negative certificates only nine days after issuing the decree in which it affirmed the presence of Indians (sic) but added that “(…) no restrictions need be imposed on the use of the specified area by the interested party, since this Foundation will undertake the transference of the remnants of the aforementioned tribe to the area destined as its reservation” (cited in Price 1982b: 190). Coincidence in this context hardly ever exists. The expression remnants is a somewhat cynical way to refer to the autonomous peoples in the Guaporé Valley who were just beginning to establish contact without any sizable assistance from SPI or, later, their legal caretaker FUNAI[xlii].

Ironically, perhaps by virtue of the old Telegraph Line going straight through lands and the fact that Rondon’s designation first applied to them, the Nambikwara do Campo are considered the Nambikwara and they are the principal inhabitants of the Reserve and some of their peoples are the legitimate occupants of the Nambikwara Reserve. FUNAI started its career for the whole ensemble as the official means of opening up all of the other Nambikwara territories for national colonization: as if the local Nambikwara really are iconic of all peoples of the ensemble. Despite the constitutional guarantees of the so-called right to a Reserve because of immemorial occupancy, in a way the government already was employing the new Indian Law which permits a series of transference or displacements because of a variety of national interests (but in the end only was promulgated in 1973). The national interests in this case consisted of the large landowners or companies who bought land in the valley. Contrary to the proposals made after 1970 when small holders’ colonization was thought to alleviate the pressure on land in other parts of Brazil, from 1950 onwards immense areas of supposedly untitled and public lands were handed out to some 18 private colonizing companies, totaling at least 200,000 ha. One such company acquired lands in Nambikwara region as early as 1954 (Costa 2000: 45). As was the historical practice with land appropriation, the situation was replete with speculation, fraud, and violence. In 1956, the Gleba Continental opened up an enormous part of the lands south of the Telegraph Line between the Juína and Camararé, roughly where the Sawentesu and Kithaulhu live. The project failed and only one settler moved in and the company did not meet its obligation to develop the region within five years (Price 1972: 40-1).

Previously, the Nambikwara do Campo’s main worry concerned the rubber tappers and the concomitant negative effects on their social life and ecological conditions. The development companies did not have a strong foothold in the savanna. The Parecis Plateau did not stir much interest because the aridness of the savanna could not provide lucrative agricultural activity (and for this reason I still prefer to call the region savanna and not grassland, as did Price; also I do not use Grassland Nambikwara as Fiorini (2000) did, anxious to avoid the association with African vegetation; after all, the image suggested by a grassland is one of a land ready for cattle grazing and so both terms may suggest an erroneous connotation). It is no accident that the only settler of the Continental company did not locate his main installation at Barracão Queimado on the Parecis Plateau but expanded his influence towards the rubber collecting areas in Guaporé Valley, affecting the Negarotê territory (Costa 2000: 136-46). The same expansion later turned into a large landholding as the WWII stimulated the invasion of the forests via the Line and the subsequent appropriation of the land using the road at the end of the 1960s. The evaluation of the ecological worthlessness determined the demarcation of the Nambikwara Reserve and the partial securing of a land base for the Nambikwara do Campo. It is notable that in this manner every invasion phase chooses its own preferences for ecological and economic competition. For example, in the 1980s some technological changes recognized part of the savanna – a central habitat known as cerrado – as the ideal soil and climate for the enormous expansion of soya.[xliii]. Somewhat ironically, by the way, when taking into account the hidden intentions of the creation of the Nambikwara Reserve. Rubber, cattle, and soya each coveted different resources and affected the ecosystems in their own specific modalities. The historical phases provoked diverse reactions and conceptions of the intruders, later invaders and dominators. Thus, the Campo (savanna) groups passed through a series of stages of relations and conceptions of the Bean People that complements the history narrated by Vitorino, an old man respected for his fund of knowledge who knew many stories about encounters. Price prompted the narrative above with a question about Rondon and the stories relating to his passing and the construction of the Telegraph Line. He added that Vitorino did not disclose other stories of armed clashes and events.

The Nambikwara do Campo to the south of his people recount another incident about the first time their fathers saw a Bean Person, kwajato, on their lands. Stories are customarily narrated at night and there is a festive air when the people recall the event; according to the literature and my own observations, the Nambikwara are a people who appreciate laughter. Accordingly, the following story provokes large smiles and gaiety. One time some people walked through the forest when they noticed someone’s presence. When they found a man, they were afraid because of his different appearance. They presumed he was a spirit and observed his ways to discover if he was friendly or not. When he noticed he was being watched, the man panicked, shouted and behaved wildly. The Indians thought he was possessed and tied him to a tree. When they gave fruits and honey, he calmed down. The Indians amused themselves with this strange man but a few days later, they released him. The man ran away desperately. The people were baffled. In this story, the Indians confronted someone entirely new and believed the strange man was a spirit, and therefore a likely dangerous entity (Costa 2000: 99). Later they saw the intruders differently. However, they did so by a curious twist and an interpretation Rondon’s respectable officers would not admire or find very amusing. Not only did the Nambikwara do Campo think that the Whites, their presents, and their devotion to the Line to be exceeding odd, they suspected that the Bean People were cannibals! While Rondon searched through the discard and offal of the villages, the Indians harbored their own suspicions:
When Rondon passed, my father told me. He [father] threw out sugar, salt. He threw everything away. That’s what my mother told me. My mother used to tell me about the days when Rondon passed by. They say he left dried meat. Mother threw it away. It scared them. They thought it was human flesh. Salt, I never saw. Sugar too, I never saw. They say that coffee [imitating his mother’s voice] – Ah! Throw that away, enemies of ours! That’s what they said. Cow’s milk? They thought it was human milk; they don’t drink it (interview of 2000 with Daniel Wakalitesu; Costa 2000: 62; italics in the original).

The Wakalitesu (lit. the Alligator People) refused what they did not know, especially foodstuffs like the purported delicacies offered as a goodwill token. The Indians’ cannibal suspicions mirrored the fears of barbarism of the Bean People who left them these gifts. This particular people inhabited the region first crossed by the Line when it entered into Nambikwara territory after Utiarity. This other Campo (savanna) group[xliv] posed the question of what the new beings were and first concluded that the intruders were like evil cannibalistic spirits. Some spirits also may eat human souls, effectively killing them. Therefore, on the savanna the first interpretations of the Bean People are analogous, highlighting a similar suspicion that outsiders are likely evil spirits. Although Rondon believed that the cannibal aspect of the Indians’ cultures could be ascertained by examining their refuse, he never questioned the variety, quantity and quality of the Indian food. He certainly did not refuse any. The Indians, for their part, did not initially accept the food offered for fear of contamination or inadvertent cannibalism. Rondon’s greatest problem was convincing his companions, and especially the regional people, of the basic humanity of the Nambikwara, that they were indeed more human than animal. Keep in mind that since the so-called discovery of Brazil the native people were unbaptized pagans, and hence not really human[xlv]. Little did he know that in the mind of these inferior beings the Bean People were suspected to be dangerous cannibalistic supernatural entities in human form. To Rondon the basic humanity and capacity of civilization of all human beings was a religion, to the Nambikwara the Whites might very well have been ogres and humanity a predicate to be proven. Maybe Vitorino’s Kithaulhu did not think the same way. However, the way these local groups communicated and participated in the same fund of cosmological knowledge, it is probable that he either refrained to mention anything of the kind out of politeness or because it was not the topic under discussion.

Laughing about the first White may be good entertainment and revelatory of a social wit that makes fun of the pretentious invaders (Basso 1979). Yet, the invasions from 1942 to take possession of the gallery forests of the Parecis Plateau gave little cause for merrymaking. No evil spirits but covetous, arrogant men invaded the forests necessary for the horticultural gardens. Even if the savanna, with its many fruits and populated with many animals considered edible, did not appeal to the rubber tappers, the damages springing from this competition were great. The rubber bosses, as shown by the map drawn by Costa (2000: 115), implemented their realms in important stretches of the river system running north through the cerrado landscape (the difference is immediately striking). Although the Rondon Commission helped the Parecis, a people Rondon had liberated from injustice, it failed to protect the Indians’ interests only a few decades later. Not restrained by the prestige of Rondon, the power of firearms and manpower was too much for the Nambikwara (there is a case on the record where the mere mentioning of some land being Rondon’s was enough for an invader to withdraw voluntarily)[xlvi]. A very uneasy relationship emerged where sometimes the Indians served as trackers or traded meat and vegetable food in exchange for arms and ammunition that is reminiscent of the exchange terms they may have been accustomed to before. The difference lies, of course, in being practically evicted from a vital part of their lands and being threatened with force in the ultimate (or not so ultimate) instance. The situation sometimes came to a head with the killing of a tapper and the burning of his house. The abuse of Indian women logically ensued from domination and some of them became pregnant. Even today, this is a source of embarrassment and profound distress. The worst enemies of all were the diseases like measles and influenza which killed much more than the violent skirmishes. The narrative of the old woman analyzed above very likely concerns the savanna in 1945. One testimony affirms that that all groups in a very wide region were affected severely, even in the Guaporé Valley, both of the Northern branch and the Southern cluster. The epidemic had a devastating impact on the Campo (savanna) groups leaving only a few people now white haired. Vitorino was the epitome of such very old and knowledgeable survivors. The change from the many to the few inspires such sadness that many people do not want to listen to the stories and leave when the subject comes up (Chapter 4 of Costa’s research (2000) is dedicated to this period the Nambikwara call the time of the past).

The epidemic also undermined any capacity to mount a substantial resistance against the numerous rubber tappers. The Indians continued to resist in a variety of ways, sometimes with the silent sabotage and a few times with outright raids. The rubber gradually declined in value and the business steadily became less enticing. The decline of rubber from the 1960s to the 1970s occurred simultaneously with the construction of the road and its gravel pavement in 1966 insured year-round usage (Costa 2000: 142). The reaction of the rubber patrons was predictable and a paradigm for what happened in Southern Amazonia. Most patrons took care to title the rubber estates as theirs and then sold the land to further investors. The one settler of Barracão Queimado was said to own about 1,400,000 ha of land, a significant part of it being Nambikwara. The central buildings now are located in the Nambikwara Indigenous Territory. Even in Brazil such a figure stands out as exceptionally large for one owner. The original Nambikwara reserve was smaller and a summation of the major areas of the Nambikwara ensemble (Guaporé Valley and small additions, Pyreneus de Souza, Sararé) reveals that the total is slightly less than the area claimed by this proprietor (excluding the shared regions around Utiarity and Tubarão/Latundê; if included than the total does not surpass the former so much; official figures are in Costa 2000: 55). Relevant issue here is that the property of one single Brazilian did not stir up as much attention and concern as the Nambikwara territory would cause later. The claim of much land for few Indians is an oft-repeated refrain that does not correspond to any reality but is fixed in a constellation of congealed truisms circulating about Indians within national society. The private property of one man, as one landholding or a set of rubber estates, is the measure of normality and the collective property of a people or a number of peoples is the deviance of the norm.

The Nambikuara Reserve attempted to conceal the loss and alienation of larger and ecologically far more coveted lands. The owner of the estates larger than the land set aside for the whole tribe continued to use his land and storehouse until the end of the 1960s when the rubber exploitation in the Guaporé Valley was in its final phase. After the official decree, in 1972 and 1973, he petitioned Mato Grosso for titles to the area. He then sold at least 250,000 ha to private agricultural commercial organizations and had already sold several other parcels as well (Costa 2000: 139). After 1968, one of these major owners proceeded to title these lands and sell them on the market. At the time, with the geopolitical worries of the military dictatorship in the region of the frontier, individuals could own no more than 2000 ha of land. This did not hinder the distribution of at least 216,000 ha in the Guaporé Valley and on the Parecis Plateau, nor did it impede the concentration of land to one owner or corporation. Despite the notion that in the end of the 1960s, the development company forfeited its rights (as Price thought in 1972), the Gleba Continental continued to take lands in what later was to be the southern part of the Nambikuara Reserve in the 1970s. This area was 58,800 ha and was measured and demarcated by engineers from Mato Grosso, registered at two official agencies, and titled in the name of single owner. The local Nambikwara did not like the invasion of their land but the situation did not end until 1977. The fact demonstrates that even the supposedly protected area of 1968 permitted a highly significant intrusion that lasted at least several years before effective action by FUNAI with the federal police finally recovered the area. The Indians took this victory personally and were pleased with the result, “(…) this is our land: We went there with the Federal Police. Frito [the sertanista Fritz Tolksdorf] arrived with the Federal Police from Cáceres. (…).We went with the Federal Police. Frito arrived, he said to him, Geraldino, leave. Leave the coffee, all leave. Federal police came to help us, support us. We removed Geraldino with Ari, Frito, two federal police. So we took the land. Their land my foot!” (Costa 2000: 144).

This shows the initial precariousness of the proposed core reserve. Even in the beginning of the 1970s, the removal of the settlers of Gleba Continental did not occur when the policy still was to concentrate all Indians in this reserve. Of course, the FUNAI occupied a subordinated role in the field of government agencies, as the very wording of the decree makes quite clear. The more proper and legal role for FUNAI should have commanded the recognition of the necessity to fix the limits of the Indians’ land of all these peoples in accordance with the constitutional right to immemorial possession. Actually, after its establishment on paper, FUNAI employed its major efforts to relocate the majority of the Nambikwara Indians in the new reserve[xlvii]. In August 1977, documents available in the FUNAI archives attest to Price’s agreement with this proposition when recounting his efforts to remove intruders. The documentation of one intruder totals 59,000 ha and showed that the old dates were written with new ink. The owner intended, in complete accordance with the spirit of the times, to give FUNAI a certain amount of time to remove the Indians from his land and take them north (this documentation was shown to Price as the response to his demand to comply with withdrawal). For over eight years the Indians waited to expel the other invader, a man from Minas Gerais who finally agreed to leave after the Indians painted themselves for war and the regional chief of the FUNAI office ordered him to do so. This man stalled in order to take the coffee harvest with him and stated his intention to petition for reimbursement of his investment. As he alleges good faith, he affirmed his right to receive this indemnity. He did not think about leaving before. Just a short time before, at the occasion of Pedro Agostinho’s visit (who was there to evaluate the Project), this man expressed his plan to bring in more people and settle more families on the land. He was tired of waiting for the promised disbursement of the indemnity and land which would allow him to resettle and continue similar production (he eventually received what he wanted; Agostinho 1996; 655).

Price reminded the bureaucracy that the owner already profited for over eight years from the richest part of the reservation, and suggested that this should be sufficient compensation. This is a good point, and I made a similar one in relation to the occupation and profiteering of the resources of Indigenous Territories in the Northeast Brazil for decades, and in some cases, for over a century. The good faith clause used for indemnities usually is applied without any such consideration and actually is sometimes used to compensate those who knew perfectly well what they were doing. To ease a tense situation and acting within a subordinate role, FUNAI was lenient with its legal interpretation and preferred to avoid the difficulties and opposition by simply paying out. It prefers the difficulty of obtaining funds for indemnity over the severe political problems of proving bad faith. Furthermore, individual FUNAI employees could not act directly as representatives of the law, and violence was, and still is, a possible recourse employed by landowners. This particular owner admonished the Indians about his land, a resistance partly due to FUNAI’s passive attitude and slowness in compensating him for the property. He considered Price to be his personal enemy and not merely an institutional representative. He threatened to kill Price if he dared to appear on his farm. The personalizing of the conflict follows from the common personalistic view of the Brazilian social universe (involving the notion that the law is a relative concept and not the ultimate measure in this mesh of relationships) and with the potential of violence always encountered in this situations where resolving these personal conflicts with murder was, and still is, an age-old means of conflict resolution. Justified by the customary stereotypes no doubt, but also partially shaped by FUNAI action and inaction. Price did not mention the threat in his terse paragraphs but the evaluation visit by Agostinho noted this awkward situation (Agostinho 1996: 654-5). As this particular owner was much more like a peasant (a person who tilled the land himself and produced on a modest scale), Agostinho considered a fair re-settlement a just measure. Agostinho thought so especially in comparison with what was happening in the Guaporé Valley. Here the large enterprises enjoyed a completely free reign to encroach on the Indigenous Territories, displacing the Indians even from their village sites and cemeteries. Large-scale capitalism raises tremendous difficulties. Due to the socioeconomic power they wield, their effective presence engenders enormous resistance to later attempts to correct the unlawful condition (Agostinho 1996: 655). By 1975 the neglect of the land rights in Guaporé Valley combined with the heavy investment of capitalist enterprises resulted in all sorts of buildings (houses, wood mills), and land occupancy (pastures, air strips) that devastated the forests and severely restricted and vitiated the traditional Indian way of economic sustenance (as verified by Agostinho (ib.: 646) in an air survey). Worse, like the cattle nibbling away at the houses of one of the villages, the encirclement affected their entire system of living: “(…) [the maps show] that the major civilized clearings are superimposed on the Indian villages and, if not so, at their door” (Agostinho ib.: 646).

As far as can be concluded from the indications available, the initial priority of FUNAI related to the removal of the Indians outside of the reserve and had less to do with the removal of the Whites within this area (the Whites sometimes even had valid titles). Such titles were (and still are) no guarantee in this case because the immemorial right precedes any title and therefore supersedes these claims. However, within the major climate of development at all costs, the titles will be brandished in papers and courts as legitimate, valid documents that override the Indian claims. Technically FUNAI should have furnished the mentioned negative certificate before validation of a title. In the rest of the Nambikwara ensemble’s territory, FUNAI attempted to realize the validity of negative certificates in areas where it recognized an Indian presence. The sertanista Frito, Fritz Tolksdorf, who was mentioned earlier in a discussion of the Latundê pacification when the statements of other participants casted some doubt on his character, plays another obscure role here. He commanded the attempts of the agency to fulfill what its certificates promised, liberation of the Guaporé Valley from these Nambikwara. Price reported that Tolksdorf solved the problem of the land development company on the Arinos River by pacifying the Erigpaktsa (1982b: 191)[xlviii]. This suggests that he did what the decree arbitrated to be the lot of the various peoples in northern Mato Grosso: to be dispossessed from a large part of their immemorial lands and confined to isolated islands whose size depended on the official evaluation of the economic worth of their lands, mostly within their former autonomous territory. These reservations are, to paraphrase Sahlins, a prominent proponent of structural historical anthropology, islands made by history. The task of a FUNAI so subordinated merely consisted in achieving the actualization of conquest. For example, sometime around 1975, Price estimated that the soils and vegetation appropriate to horticulture in the Nambikuara Reserve amounted to no more than 7.5% of its surface. Bearing this in mind, 1,000,000 ha would yield roughly 75,000 ha of land suitable for the shifting cultivation mode of food production that necessitates large areas for the sustenance of the population – this is the scarce resource that enlarges the local group areas on the Parecis Plateau in comparison to the Guaporé Valley[xlix] (cited in Agostinho 1996: 641). Worse still, the intrusion above was localized exactly in the major portion of such soils. At the end of 1968, the regional administration in Cuiabá authorized this man to remain in the indigenous area until his presence turned obnoxious or inconvenient to the assistance to the Indians’. In setting a bad precedent from the very beginning, the administration began on the wrong foot (Agostinho 1996: 654).

Although the military president issued the decree in 1968 and FUNAI expedited certificates very soon thereafter, a Project to clean the area of Indians only arose in 1971[l]. Action was finally taken the next year. Price recounted the difficulties of running his Nambiquara Project owing to the bureaucracy involved. In the end, he was left mentally exhausted (1989b: 5). Such bureaucracy probably caused the further delay. Armed with the help of two Protestant missionaries, Tolksdorf removed the Wasusu and the Alantesu of the Guaporé Valley to the southern part of the Nambiquara Reserve, placing them on Sawentesu lands. A few Wasusu refused to move and within a year all of the migrants returned to their homelands. The reasons first given for this unsuccessful attempt to displace these groups allude to the incompatibility between the ecological conditions of the much more arid region and the horticultural practices of the Guaporé Valley peoples who cultivate maize as a staple, while the Campo groups generally rely on manioc. Another local source added that there was a resultant strong friction between the local group and the incoming peoples (Price 1982b: 192). Price’s conclusion allows for the inference that the dislocated never left their area freely, and could only be persuaded under strong pressure. The sentiment of belonging to a particular territory is much too strong. The Wasusu village did not move for many years, an exception among the Nambikwara ensemble, by virtue of the vicinity of the sacred caves where the souls of their ancestors dwell. Doubtlessly, those who refused to leave did so out of respect to this belief and a strong tie to that land. Other local groups have their own similar sacred sites. The Campo Halotesu of the Tirecatinga Indigenous Territory (Utiariti), for example, are clear on their relation with the site of their ancestor’s souls: “They take care of the people of our earth, of the game and if they did not exist then there would be nothing, no food, light, water, nor any Nambikwara or anyone else. They take care of us and teach us to take care” (cited in Mancim and Lima 1981: 34; for more on how the dwelling place of ancestors’ souls is linked with the living, see Fiorini 2000). The souls’ village is within the rocks of an archaeological site with stone engravings and rock paintings, just like the Wasusu case[li] (a famous site known as the Abrigo do Sol; see Puttkamer 1979). This is yet another sociocultural explanation of how the Nambikwara have a greater connection to their lands than the customary image of nomads suggests (Price 1982b: 196). All peoples in the Guaporé Valley had their caves on the edge of the Parecis Plateau but not necessarily in the territory they occupied in daily life (Price 1989b: 129). The Sararé used caves near the Wasusu sacred site but stopped going there when the two peoples quarreled (Serafim 2000: 29-30).

Price did not appreciate the stereotype of nomads and wandering around and the concomitant presupposed dissociation between the people and their land. He believed that there was a firm attachment between a people and their territory. Nonetheless, he was no naïve and understood the difficulty of balancing established economic interests and their beneficial transformation of Indian forest into productive pastures. Accordingly, he believed that the forced dislocations of the Northern Nambikwara from the northern part of the Guaporé Valley as the least harmful because they would be supposedly resettled within (or very near to) their original territory. The movement displaced them into unfamiliar lands and, not theirs and being ecologically different, they returned to their homeland. It was, however, only after he became a World Bank consultant and tried to ascertain the traditional territories of the Guaporé Valley peoples, that he discovered that they denied that the dislocation occurred within their own territorial bounds (in 1980; Price 1982b: 196 mentions the original statement in the text when the article was written in 1977). As far as can be ascertained here, it seems Tolksdorf misinformed Price, or at least convinced him to accept that these dislocations were justified, as Tolksdorf alleged that the Nambikwara were not strongly attached to their homelands. Price stated this in weaker terms as a general attempt to legitimize the moves (Price 1982b: 200). He charges Tolksdorf as the person responsible with manipulating the facts. This explains the strange case of the pacification of the Latundê where Tolksdorf pretended to have been present and suggested to have been the leader of the expedition when in reality he delegated the task to the low-level unprepared functionary Fonseca. This irresponsibility can now be seen as part of a constant pattern of behavior. In fact, at an important 1975 meeting of the advisory council to FUNAI with a number of invited anthropologists and indigenistas to discuss the Nambikwara situation, Price listed a number of significant problems with Tolksdorf. Among others, he quoted proprietors who claimed that Tolksdorf authorized them to build within the reserve or allegations that he received kickbacks from indemnities that he arranged for landowners[lii].

Working hand-in-hand with some close military connections at FUNAI in Brasília, Tolksdorf succeeded in rapidly bypassing the paperwork for the reservation and official announcement of a new area: the one between the Nambikwara Reserve and Aroeira (1973). This constituted a significant growth because the new area incorporated somewhat more fertile soils. For the same reason, the region was coveted by an owner, Bamerindus, a southern Brazilian bank. Then Price and the field agents discovered that the bank was measuring the land and the manager affirmed he was authorized by Tolksdorf and the general in Brasília. Tolksdorf denied this, but a missionary confirmed that he had admitted this in a conversation. Price took what he thought were successful measures to convince Bamerindus to withdraw, but a field agent discovered otherwise. Later Price reported that the two officials met Bamerindus representatives in the beginning of the same year and assured them that they could change the decision in their favor. He then suspected a scheme of extortion playing on the need for negative certificates and the redrawing of boundaries. FUNAI never acted on the circumstantial evidence gathered to investigate the plan. This is no surprise, given the involvement of a high-placed and well-connected general at a time when the dictatorship hardly ever permitted criticism to be raised against the military. Price finally found some blatant indication of corruption, Tolksdorf drove a new jeep which rumor had it was a gift from a rancher. When Price checked the information, the car was registered in the name of a ranch in the Guaporé Valley. The ranch had received its negative certificate half a year before the jeep’s papers were issued (Price 1989b: 20-1). In this sense, Price and the people he worked with in the Nambikwara Project (Sílbene Almeida, Marcelo dos Santos, and Ariovaldo Santos) belonged to an unfortunately small minority of idealist and dedicated agents that really devoted their complete commitment to the Indian cause within a context fraught with corruption (see also Agostinho 1996).

When accepting to work for FUNAI and the welfare of the Nambikwara, Price did not have any real notion of the administrative performance and internal politics of the agency. He set out to study the land occupancy of the Indians, especially of the Guaporé Valley, and with these data, he wanted to assist in defining the alternatives to secure a land base for the several local groups who had no assistance and who were in the process of being overrun by cattle ranches. To his disappointment, FUNAI did not share Price’s sincere interests and tended to act irresponsibly. Only a few days before his appointment FUNAI issued a decree to interdict in the southernmost area of the Guaporé Valley between the Galera and Sararé River, an area of 296,000 ha (Santos 2000: 46). After the prior failure to entice the Northern Nambikwara to the Nambikwara Reserve, Tolksdorf completed a hasty survey of the Guaporé Valley and proposed to unite the Valley Nambikwara in one region, in its least developed part. The fact that this would liberate the rest of Guaporé Valley for development is so obvious a fact that Price did not elucidate further. It would reward the early invaders and avoid conflicts with powerful economic groups like the Bamerindus. Understandably, the decree aggravated Price because of the hasty work and lack of consultation with him. Furthermore, the interdicted area did not contain any villages, although the Indians hunted in the region[liii]. Evidently, it would be very hard for him to demand a reconsideration or simple withdrawal of the interdiction (Price 1989b: 19). Of course, the land in the Guaporé Valley should be all Indigenous Territory by virtue of legal immemorial right and this claim plainly justified the new interdiction. As one regional administrator candidly admitted to Price in 1980 after the major invasions and the concomitant reduction of effective Indian occupancy “(…) in reality, the whole [Guaporé] Valley undoubtedly belongs to the Indians” (Price 1989b: 94). Such plain admission of the facts and the supporting law hardly found its way into the actual implementation of concrete action by the agency. In fact, although conscious of the external pressures (and less so of the internal ones), Price understood he had been too optimistic and idealistic in accepting the area and the subsequent removal of two central Guaporé Valley groups (Price 1989b). This occurred because of Tolksdorf’s insistence and proved to be “(…) a dreadful mistake; they fought with the Sararé group, several people died of malaria, and eventually they all walked back home” (Price 1989b: 19). He then consistently changed his stance on any approval of all official planning regarding the transferal of any Nambikwara village to areas outside their original homelands.

Unaware of the consequences and impeded with the supposed presence of few settlers, Price decided to begin to work with the interdiction, but his anthropological knowledge did not save him from being persuaded by Tolksdorf on their first meeting to transfer the Guaporé Valley groups to the interdicted area. In agreeing, Price underestimated their attachment to their land. It was only in retrospect that he concluded that such movements never are successful, although this time the ecology did not differ so much as it did in moves between the Guaporé Valley and the Parecis Plateau. Nevertheless, he underestimated the relation between people and their land (Price 1982b: 196). The terrible encroachment suffered by the Central Guaporé Valley groups seemed to justify the relocation at a safe area. Again, it cannot be stressed enough that all of the Nambikwara peoples and local groups who were moved to a foreign place only did so under pressure, usually from FUNAI. Price attributed this error to the economic inclination of Western thought, when the land and its natural resources are interchangeable if of the same general quality (i.e. as a ranch and not a territory). Price rejected the nomadic hunter-gatherers stereotypes that bring to mind people without real connection to the land when, to the contrary, they had an immense, very intimate knowledge of their home territory (also relevant is the intrinsic nature towards expansion of Western agriculture which, contrary of the stereotype of being fixed, has shown an historic impetus to conquer new spaces; see Brody 2001). Price later noted that the hunting capacities of the Nambikwara must be based on a similar knowledge and particularized relationship to all of the aspects of the surroundings. The apparently poor Nambikwara, by being free of visible material burdens, acquire for the outside observers the association of being unattached to material resources in all aspects, including land. Old stereotypes die hard; and are hard to kill. Even in 1980, Price encountered a FUNAI medic in Brasilia entrusted with working out a health plan for the Nambikwara who candidly asserted the Indians to be nomads who did not produce any noteworthy horticulture. When he later saw the granaries of the Wasusu filled with maize, Price was reminded of the equivocal notion of insufficiency in the Indians’ own sustenance. The problem with such ignorance and preconceptions is that it leads to plans for correction to be carried out by FUNAI with World Bank funds (Polonoroeste; Price 1989b: 110). When the horticultural capacities are known, the idea of all agricultural traditions that one piece of soil has equal use as any similar plot, misled even an observer as sensitive as Price to underrate the strength of attachment to the land. In fact, this appears as the same common Brazilian notion that Indian lands are equivalent to fazendas[liv]. After the experience, Price (1982b: 196) concluded his article on relocations by remarking that the land and the people mutually define each other, which is, in effect, nothing else than suggesting the immaterial relationship that defines the territory of a people. The Nambikwara carry a strong bond to the land, in both material and immaterial aspects. Significantly, in most cases of relocation a few people or families remained behind on their own lands.

Thus, Price only later understood the repercussions for accepting the misconceptions of other agents and the strength of the counter-forces for the creation of an effective and just Nambikwara policy. In other ways, he was aware of the subordinated FUNAI role and the constraints imposed by the development trend of the economic miracle promoted by the dictatorship. At this time it was difficult to enforce the law. The real solution to the problems created by the ranches, roads, and personnel was simply the removal of the intruders from the Indian villages, graveyards, fields and homelands, not the other way around. Against the sometimes hostile bureaucracy, the internecine fighting of factionalism and the lack of funds, Price waged a heroic effort to study the native mode of occupancy, ascertain the size of their territories and securing a land-base while developing a practical and flexible system of health, educational and economic assistance. In these aspects, he succeeded against the odds. His study on the mode and extent of Indian occupancy did result in a large map of the numerous local groups and the names of the geographical features that mark their relationship to their lands (rivers, streams, places, villages)[lv]. As far as I know, these efforts are unpublished and do not seem to have been referenced in the subsequent expert reports on the Nambikwara peoples’ territories. Some efforts to secure the existent land-base such as deterring invasions, succeeded around this time. The main objective to create and formalize an official Indian Territory within the Guaporé Valley during the time of Price’s command of the Nambiquara Project did not succeed. Given the constraints, this is understandable. The literacy program, however, was adequate and many Indians would have learned to read and write had the program continued after Price’s dismissal. This dismissal was a consequence of political pressures of a group of ranchers, internal FUNAI strife, and policy changes (Price 1977).

Ultimately, his greatest achievement is the health program that he put into place with the field agents. This included available vehicles to reach doctors and hospitals, the employment of a nurse, and vaccination campaigns. These feats must be viewed within the context of severe budget limitations and the general political and humane necessity of maintaining a meaningful dialogue with a capable autonomous people, instead of imposing outside views on inferior wild childlike creatures cowed to subjugation. During the first year of the project, the people of the Nambiquara Project stabilized the population, and later they devoted their attention to lowering infant and child mortality rates. Subsequently, the population increased by 1.3%[lvi] Therefore the Nambiquara Project succeeded in avoiding a further population decrease and contributed to a slight rise. This effectively laid the foundation for the small, and now stable, population of 186 in the entire Guaporé Valley (Price 1989b: 37). The population stopped decreasing and started, very slowly, to rise. In this sense, the Nambiquara Project achieved a fundamental change, in contrast to a previous policy consisting of such neglect and corruption, that the only outcome would seem to have been indirect genocide. That is, actually practicing genocide without seeming to do so. After all, they would have died of natural causes[lvii]. It proved a successful, efficient and relatively inexpensive policy corroborated by the immediate positive response of the Nambikwara ensemble and their return from the edge of annihilation.

A final comment may be in order. As seen above, the practice of relocation might be seen as genocide according to the UN Convention. Of course, the arduous work of Price attempted to avoid genocide and he felt a heavy burden because of the unintended disastrous results. One discerns the enormous constraints Price had to deal with in his small article written shortly after his dismissal from FUNAI service, presented at the Congress of Americanists. Quite properly so, in a way: proven accusations of genocide in the beginning of the century at a previous Congress, in 1908 in Vienna, contributed to the founding of the SPI (and another foreigner, Fric, showing how external pressure has always been one of the few means to comply with respect for human rights; Hemming 1995: 456). The pressures of the job and the constraints to which he had been subjected probably were the cause of the fact that Price had not yet understood that, after the movement of the Guaporé villages to the Plateau “failed dismally”, the solution of relocating the Valley villages to the south – the Sararé area still unoccupied by invading ranches – would prove equally dissatisfactory (Price 1977: 605; this failure he discusses in his later article on relocation in 1982, and to which I will come back below). Price also listed a number of factors that constrained his actions, from appalling bureaucratic inefficiency to the lack of funds and political will, to the not yet proven possibility of outright corruption. Even if he himself did not understand all of what happened to him, he recognized that many of these constraints were persisting structural factors, as has been clear throughout this book (and see the frustration and lament made by an anthropologist once employed in an important FUNAI function; Pozzobon 1999). Understandably, the whole experience left Price quite dissatisfied, although he only very elegantly hints at any bitterness: “Thus I have made a necessary return to the academia, but I left my heart with the Nambiquara” (Price 1997: 607). But with a warning of genocide: “(…) powerful financial interests (…) who imagine that the very survival of the Indians might be prejudicial to them have come close to rendering the FUNAI impotent in the Nambiquara region (…)” (ib. : 606). And that the time should come for financing basic humanitarian action for persons who “(…) respect the right to self-determination of other cultures (…)” (ib.: 608). To finance persons like the highly altruistic people who served with him in the Project (ib.: id), but who, as modesty no doubt made him fail to mention, were undoubtedly inspired by his own example of unselfish dedication.

Barbarians at the gate: final moments of war and encirclement
The history of the Sararé region in the 20^th century began with the continuation of the relations prevalent in the previous one. The same state of war prevailed and the Indians of the several groups living in the southern region of the Guaporé Valley continued to resist the incursion of the strangers, most of whom came from Vila Bela. Inspired by the success enjoyed by the pacification achieved by Rondon’s men on the Parecis Plateau, in 1912 the SPI tried to repeat the propagandized feat by establishing an Indian Attraction Post at the southern border. In 1916 the post moved near Vila Bela, and later close to the mining area. Three years later it returned to Pontes e Lacerda on the upper Guaporé Valley. The people in Vila Bela, still scared with the constant appearances of the nomadic Indians near town, petitioned to relocate the Post to their region. In 1921 SPI constructed the Post at the mouth of the Sararé River, on the Guaporé, downstream from the town. With the help of some Paresi Indians, the officials cultivated some gardens and attempted in vain for eight years to approach the Sararé (Santos 2000: 44). Just as at the close of the previous century, the Indians dominated the countryside and refused to establish relations with SPI, the historical experiences of the southernmost components of the Nambikwara ensemble did not encourage the establishment of peaceful relations with SPI. Thus, the Service discontinued efforts to pacify the nomadic savages that maintained their autonomy and dominion over an extensive region. Even later in the 1930s, the construct of the nomadic Nambikwara predominated and reports of ipecac collectors confirmed a strong Indians presence in the region between the Guaporé Valley and Vila Bela during the dry season (Frederico Rondon cited in Santos 2000: 45). The Indians benefited from the abundant fish and game in the region.

The region below the Sararé River, to the north of the upper Guaporé belonged de facto to the Sararé groups. SPI’s abandonment of the region and the slow expansion of outside society began to encroach on this land. The presence of a medicinal root and abundant wildlife attracted the attention of the residents of Vila Bela and Pontes e Lacerda. There were definitely continued conflicts with the Indians, although only one in the beginning of the 1950s is mentioned. There is little known particularly about the occupancy on the southern tip of the Guaporé Valley, but there was surely interest amongst Whites in exploiting whatever resources were there. Both parties seem to have perpetuated a state of continual war. The central Guaporé Valley peoples suffered from the invasion of rubber tappers during WWII. These groups were alleged to lack horticulture and origin myths, a suspicion that the regional society readily adopted in light of their incorrect characterization of Nambikwara as hunters and gatherers. Price made note of this observation in an earlier article based on a Sílbene Almeida’s observation. Almeida was an Indian agent who worked within the project and remained behind at his post. Almeida was unique in his ability to acquire fluency in the Valley Nambikwara language. Both Price and this man noted the hunting and gathering emphasis in Nambikwara culture, a hypothesis strengthened with aerial photos take at the end of the 1960s. The photos showed many clusters of round clearings in the Sararé region, but hardly any in the central Guaporé Valley. Price here postulated that the Sararé learned horticulture from runaway slaves in the gold mining era. Conversely, when Price visited the Guaporé Valley as a World Bank consultant in 1980, the Indians pointed to a different scenario to explain this lifestyle and the lack of this mode of food production. These people claimed that their ancestors indeed cultivated large gardens and they too knew the principles well. The rubber tappers, however, massacred many of their families and robbed their gardens. Villages are locations that require some investment of energy and are not easy to hide; the smoke of burning the fields gave away the placements of gardens and invited attacks or the stealing of food. Therefore, out of fear they reverted to hunting and gathering, moving frequently (Price 1989b: 126-7).

It is likely that the Sararé region did not suffer this invasion because of there were no rubber trees there (the Amazonian Hileia really includes only the Northern Nambikwara area; Fiorini 2000). Perhaps, as noted, the local groups in this region practiced the same strategy during the mining explorations and when they recovered secure control they reverted to their normal ways. They are very unlikely to have forgotten the myth of the origin of agriculture as one early visitor saw the little flute house in 1964 and they play the forbidden flutes until today (Aytai 1966-7: 69). The absence of the strategy also substantiates that the peoples in the region felt sufficiently secure at the end of the 1960s to attempt to maintain the traditional lifestyle. On the other hand, research in the region, especially in Vila Bela, almost certainly will reveal a long history of clashes from the 1930s to the late 1950s. The record of this phase of the end of this war is not available to me, but in the 1950s the Indians decided it was time to establish peace. A few years before, in 1955, Bringsken a Dutch Protestant missionary arrived in Vila Bela and established residence there. His interest in Mato Grosso came about by accident but after his first leave he and his friends organized a foundation to raise funds and apply these in his work. The town struck him and his wife as so small that they referred to it a village[lviii]. This place was still mainly inhabited by the descendants of the slaves and free men left behind after the decline of mining and the departure of the Whites. The term Whites could be used for these black people, underscoring the ethnic character of this common label for Brazilians. On the first day of his arrival an Indian delegation visited the town and its inhabitants (visits apparently already occurring since 1953; Price 1982b: 194). The missionary received an animal skin hat from a chief during the visit. He interpreted this friendly encounter as a divine indication to bring them the happy gospel and save their souls[lix]. He decided to search for their unknown village. This proved difficult due to the absence of roads or clear paths, the first time his small group did not venture far enough; the second time they went too far; but on the third time they had success. The encounter occurred because the Indians showed themselves. When they explained that they had followed the second expedition for days without being noticed, the missionary realized his inexperience of moving into an unknown Indian territory. His commentaries evince the simple truth that the Sararé themselves permitted his passages and decided, by allowing him to view them, to make the contact. They definitely took the initiative and could have killed the strange men. No doubt these Indians believed that it was they who pacified the Whites.

In his publication geared toward the public abroad, the missionary did not reference any sort of pacification in usual Brazilian terms. Further details are lacking. Despite the fact that the fervor to serve the Lord took precedence over any materialistic objectives, the net result was the opening up of areas that were originally reserved exclusively for Indian use (Santos 2000: 45). Before the pacification the Indian wildness seems to have prevented a certain degree of invasion of Indian lands for fear of retaliations. After pacification this fear probably ceased to be an important factor and the Indian lands became a coveted object for invasion and the concomitant taming the wilderness. From this time on, the Mission retained missionaries in the Sararé region and for several years amongst the Wasusu and Manairisu in central Guaporé Valley. From 1960 onwards, the Sararé mostly were visited by Bringsken. Later, a colleague of his lived in the village. At first the trip to the Indians took about two weeks of travel but after 1961 Bringsken[lx] procured sufficient money in the Netherlands to buy an airplane. Thereafter, for 23 years he could arrive in Sararé territory in less than 20 minutes. In order to finance his work, he also made chartered flights for the ranches in the region. For some time the ranchers held him responsible for the establishment of the reserve and conspired to murder him. In the first attempt he was to be killed after landing his plane in the bush, but this fell through because the plane needed repairs. A second attempt also failed because a regional criminal boss restrained a hit man. This boss was impressed by the missionary’s religious faith when a plane they were in together almost crashed, and sent a message to the hit man’s employer, a rancher, not to harm the missionary. According to his testimony, forty-five to fifty people a month were murdered in this region alone during this time. This made the missionary sympathetic to the Indians and sensitive to their cause into an object of anger and frustration for those ranchers risking to lose their land; it marked him as a prime target for elimination. Only the fortuitous intervention saved his life. This event also highlights the dangers of anyone who stands up to the proprietors who do not wish to loose one single piece of their land (Bruijns 2001: chapter 5 and 6). Land was equated with wealth and power, two ends that mainly continue to be more important than lives of lower-class people (who – with the rare exceptions of human, ecological or social rights activists – are the chief victims of rural violence).

This explains why the major Katitaulhu expert asserted that the advance of the national frontier occurred without control (Santos 2000: 45). Obviously this is an understatement, as the peoples and local groups of these lands lost a large part of their territory. The ranches operated a veritable enclosure movement and appropriated the places and trails used by the Indians. Later on, at some places in the Guaporé Valley chemical defoliation devastated the forests to prepare the land for the planting of the productive pastures. Some dangerous chemicals like Agent Orange (Tordon) had been sprayed, and there is one documented case in the central Guaporé Valley in which the wind carried the poison to the indigenous gardens. The chemical affected the Indian crops and may have caused certain health problems that surfaced later (Price 1989b: 120-1; 184). Although there are no such accidents documented in the Sararé region, epidemics broke out in the 1960s that decimated various local groups. Traditionally these peoples lived dispersed in the whole region: one on the southern fringe (noted and named for its quantity of fish; direction of Vila Bela and Pontes e Lacerda); one up north towards the middle of the Guaporé Valley and bordering the Parecis Plateau where now the headquarters and holdings of the Sapé and Kaxanuê ranches are located (and the village of first contact and to which the other peoples gravitated); one bordering the former towards the south; another to the northwest of the Serra da Borda, in a region known as Piscina, a stream (it is now being demarcated under a Nambikwara name, “Paukali’rahjausu”; Fiorini und.). The latter circumstance concerns a boundary correction for some of the losses incurred by the definition of the current Sararé Indigenous Territory (that is, adjacent to the territory to the northwest). The mountain range Serra da Borda is the same as the Serra de São Vicente, the same name as historical records indicates to have been the major area of gold mining, although almost all of the invading villages settled on the eastern streams descending from the mountain range. The importance of the former territories comprehending the lands between the Plateau and the mountain range and to the north and south of the Sararé Area is no coincidence. The best land for horticulture in the Guaporé Valley runs from the south, the upper Guaporé, predominantly in a northern direction, consisting of a strip of about 30 km width adjacent to the Parecis Plateau. Accordingly, the ecological competition between the Nambikwara partialities of the Guaporé Valley and the Brazilian agricultural frontier concentrated on this strip running basically between Pontes e Lacerda in the south and Vilhena in the north (see also Agostinho 1996). The current headquarters of the Sapé and Kanaxuê ranches are situated there, near previous Sararé village sites, occupying the home ranges of the area of the different local groups where the asphalt road almost skirts the fringe of the Parecis Plateau. The major group of the contemporary village known as Sararé, located about 5 km east of the Sapé ranch, once had a village at the Parecis Plateau’s perimeter to the west of the ranch buildings, on the other side of the road.

Broadly the main outlines of various peoples in the region parallel the histories of the other peoples and local groups of the Nambikwara ensemble. The testimonies of the Sararé speak for themselves with respect to the history of war, contact, and the resulting depopulation and territorial losses. It seems legitimate to conclude from their stories that the several peoples and groups in the Sararé region constituted a sub-set within the Southern Nambikwara cluster. For example, the group living in the new Piscina area received a separate name from their neighbors, People of the Waterfall, and were considered a distinct local group, but the dialectal difference of their language is minimal with the adjoining villages of the Sararé River (Fiorini und.: 3-4). The distinctiveness of each local group was understood as a matter of fact, just as it was for the other sub-sets of the encompassing set. Fiorini (und.: 5) lists the names remembered by the Sararé as Kwalitesu, Wai’ratesu, Yali’ratesu, Yanali’ritesu, Nutantesu, and Ka’kaluh-waitesu[lxi]. One other name derives from the large village that ended up uniting the surviving fragments of the previous independent villages, Nutanjensu, related to the Nanatesu people. The inhabitants of other extraction refuse the name of Nutantesu as valid for all of them. From this perspective, several local autonomous groups lived in the Sararé. They did not unite into a large village until the ravages of epidemics and the attraction of the missionaries who were permanently established by 1968 necessitated this. When questioned further by Fiorini (the anthropologist who speaks the Wasusu language of Nambikwara), the Sararé also give the name Wãnai’risu (ib.: 5; a name given to them by the Nambikwara do Campo who now also usually call them Katitaulhu, Santos 2000:18). This was the Nambikwara do Campo term for the whole regional cluster in the Guaporé Valley (Fiorini 2000; he adopts the name for referring to the Wasusu and their neighbors in order to show that, although he worked mostly among the Wasusu, his research extended also to the Sararé and in some way included all Guaporé Valley groups). All of the names for groups derive therefore from external nomination and, contrary to what Price was led to believe as being the one exception for the Nambikwara ensemble, no obvious Sararé auto-denomination existed (1987: 23).

A collective identification is at least in part related to descent from a certain village. The current Sararé have some common background and forged a bond that the political leader of the main village exploited to create a political hegemony in the single village and now attempts to maintain over the contemporary outlying villages. Owing to their time living together in the same village and continuing to live on the same Indigenous Territory, all the people and peoples there consider themselves Sararé. FUNAI believed this name was too obviously extraneous and chose a more appropriate Indian name that conveys more indianidade (of being Indian; although one early writer – 1826; in Meirelles 1989: 126 – attributes the name to a neighboring Indian language). The idea here is to satisfy the demands for a minimum correlation between stereotypes and reality. A strange name of a non-Portuguese origin compounds the stereotypical image of real Indians. The motivation for using an apparently Nambikwara term instead of the regionally used Sararé drew from a need to vindicate the national classification and the derivative legal rights. The problem arises when FUNAI promoted this new name as the more correct one. The Indians, as far as I have been able to witness, present themselves customarily as Sararé. Such a decision seems to be best made by the Indians themselves, although they are aware of the alter classification they do not seem to care so much about it, just as they do not care about the Nambikwara term. A few young men even add the idea of being Sararé, Nambikwara, increasingly aware of the outside labeling of the entire ensemble with this term. Santos reported that the Sararé also believe that the Nambikwara label pertains to the specific group on the Parecis Plateau. The term Katitaulhu (alternatively spelled Katitaurlu as in the name of the private Association founded by the Indians, but inspired by FUNAI, to apply for development funds) is the name of a deceased major Sararé leader. The word actually means a person of large size and is reserved as a name for such people (and, as discussed above, possibly related to leadership qualities of a Wasusu leader; however, among the Sararé Fiorini did not find such connotation of size with leaders; Fiorini und.: 14; in personal communication (2001) he also mentions other linguistic and cultural differences). A few people, in Nambikwara fashion, identified themselves in this way, but, to me, no one really offered the term as auto-denomination. The choice of the term of only one part of the Sararé, originating with one person, came to encompass totally unrelated peoples. Fiorini consequently rejects the metonymic extension of Katitaulhu to all of the Sararé. As the FUNAI now still promotes the label Katitaulhu I sometimes still refer to the term.

Another more neutral label should be preferable, but finding such names is easier said than done. Fiorini suggested that the word for person would be a possible alternative. He noted that the word Anusu was probably used both within and between the various local groups. Fiorini also claimed that as the Indians did not mind any kind of external designation, they never rejected a name, even if it had some negative association. Fiorini, after painstakingly researching the subject of meanings and connotations of these names, concludes that every name carries some negative association. The Sararé gave the term Anunsu to the teacher as the word for Sararé Indian to be written at the blackboard of one of the schools. At some time Anunsu was given as a translation of village to the linguist Borella. In fact, if anusu may be a person (a human being), a real person only realizes his potential within the sharing village. Again, Price suspected that the root for person relates to the verb to share (1972). As mentioned above, Aspelin investigated whether the Mamaindê really shared the incoming food (especially game), as they asserted to be both ideal and true, and his work confirmed the generalized reciprocity of the in-group. Thus one might say that the person and the village can be practically one and the same, almost co-terminous. This would explain the ambiguity in translation. Such identity of the person with his kin within the village only emphasizes the remarkable resistance to go on with living after the epidemic destroyed so many families. In sum, normally the best solution would be to let the Indians decide what they want as an ethnonym. Taking into account the sociocultural stance on naming, no such initiative is likely to come forward. It seems the Indians don’t really attach much importance to this.

Fiorini’s thesis (2000) is fundamentally concerned with naming and the secrecy or the social mode of not addressing the person by his name. He elaborated on this complex relation of the constitution of name, person, and identity. No justice can be done here to his argument and the depth of his reasoning which recognized the process of naming as a complex social system. I believe that his material and reasoning lends support to the following less-intricate argument that differs slightly in its emphasis but does not contradict his analysis. It is interesting that if one equates person and family with local village, or notes the embedded nature of the person in his family group, this does more then just explain the notion of an Anusu or Anunsu immersed within his kin without a strong differentiation. Just as the group name is unmarked by the group itself and stands out in a hierarchical relationship to the marked others, the secrecy of the personal name is shared with the closest kin analogously. Not saying the name of one’s close kin, ‘unnaming’, creates an opposition with the free use of the name of more distant persons. Thus the names of family are unmarked, set apart by the sharing of secrecy and mutual non-enunciation of names generates sameness. However, the name itself results from the embodied individual history of each person. The name specifies the individual in his uniqueness and his own particular acquired attributes. As expected from a people who stress personal experience so strongly, a unique private name is created by particular life events. The name embodies personal history and marks the person. It is revealing that even the Brazilian names which are of free use, are never repeated within the same social unit. Here, finally, one could argue that this indexes the bounds of what, in contemporary parlance, should be called a people. Another index of the ethnic unit would be the common destination of the dead. In other words, who is carried to which caves or Abode of the Souls. Within the shared identity, the autonomous place of the individual is shaped by the name. Given that the normal gendered capabilities of a woman or a man covers more or less the whole spectrum of knowledge, the apparently immersed person gains a more general individual autonomy. This helps to explain both the surprising resilience of the survivors of epidemics to continue living, and the way in which their capacity was immediately put channeled into reconstructing the close sameness within a local group.

It is reasonable to assume that the current Sararé fall into this template and today constitute a single social unit shaped by the historical contingencies of the region. The Sararé region extended from the right margin of the Guaporé to the left bank of the Galera River (Santos 2000: 19). This large area provided the space for the six or seven peoples reported and the four descendant local groups commonly mentioned as still composing the Sararé (in a FUNAI report, Santos claimed that one was left so decimated that it merged with a somewhat larger local group). The region between these coordinates is large but it is probable that the occupancy by such a number of local groups engaged the whole of these lands. The center of gravity turned into the area of the Nutantesu, roughly between the Parecis Plateau and the Serra da Borda on the upper Sararé River, also near the central geographical point of the entire region. This too seems to be the result of the dynamics of the frontier of civilized encroachment from the border areas in the direction of the center. To the south of the Sararé River between Pontes e Lacerda and Vila Bela lies the territory of the Kwalitsu. Owing to the forceful invasion of Brazilians, this area is currently totally lost to this people. This is the group mentioned as the roaming and fishing people in the historical records. In fact, historical memories indicate that the Indians wandered right up to Lacerda when it still was the size of a fazenda headquarters. The region between the Sararé and the upper Guaporé of Pontes e Lacerda used to be forest. The contemporary stories also narrate incidents of killing some Whites bathing in the river and attempts to kill to avenge for murders by the Whites. The narrator who told me these stories always referred to the skirmishes that made up the state of war, the losses on both sides, and spoke of some close kin involved in the killing by the Whites. A few younger Portuguese speaking Indians told me that the White men do not like the Indians. They reciprocate the opposing animosity prevalent among the White people. After all, the stories they heard all tell of healthy, strong, and numerous ancestors who lived a free and enjoyable life until the attacks and the epidemics ended their peaceful autonomous existence. Moreover, contrary to an impression formed by Price that in the Guaporé Valley ecology permitted larger villages and that local groups were concentrated in one village (Agostinho 1996: 642), the accounts of both younger men, and a few of the elders who are still alive, not only always stress the presence of many people but also the existence of various villages, even for one people[lxii]. In 1968, the existence of at least two leaders of the Waterfall People demonstrates that even then their population was still great enough for the people to have two leaders (Fiorini und: 14).

In pre-contact times, all narratives depict a multiplicity of peoples and local groups of healthy and vigorous people living their own way of life. It is no coincidence either that the elders are said to have spoken little about the pre-contact times to the younger generations, sadness inhibited them. Descriptions of plenitude of the pre-contact sociocultural mode of life are common themes in the few stories known to me. The lack of rituals performed today can be heard to be attributed to the lack of people to participate. In this perspective, the vigor and normalcy of autonomous life only declined by virtue of the casualties inflicted by the prolonged state of war that did not end until the late 1960s. A protracted effort over such a long period could not be won by the small scale local villages or villages sets. Manpower and arms increasingly threatened their existence. Even after Bringsken’s first contact, it is reported that one still uncontacted group, and who refused contact, suffered a cold-blooded murder of six of its people by an assault perpetrated by a gang of men from Vila Bela in 1967 (somewhere between Vila Bela and the BR364 road; Carelli and Severiano 1981: 56-7). This of course, may be called a “genocidal massacre”[lxiii]. Other peoples or villages tried to continue the contact with Whites and a FUNAI official even visited the Sararé two years earlier, in 1965. Bringsken invited the official, Bucker, because the Indians had built a rudimentary landing strip and gestured for him to land. The Indians received them very well and showed them the village. One couple insisted on leaving with the visitors and themselves visited Cuiabá (Bucker and Bucker 2005: 230-40)[lxiv]. If, despite these antecedents, we follow Fiorini in considering the establishment of the mission in 1968 as the official onset of pacification, the Sararé numbered about 120 people at the time[lxv]. The inexperience of the missionaries also included the lack of the preparation of the Indians for the usual danger of post-contact epidemics. This does not denote any lack of good intentions, Bringsken often flew sick Indians to Vila Bela and cared for them there (Price mentioned such incidents in his reports; and Bucker was a Rondon inspired official who tried to establish reserves in the Valley). Notwithstanding goodwill, a measles epidemic hit the Sararé very hard in 1971 (Carelli and Severiano 1980: 12; 1973 according to Santos 2000: 20).

The epidemic, in a way, represents a watershed. Many people died and the surviving families fled to the forest[lxvi]. Needless to say that, just like the Latundê, official action only acted in an emergency and criminally late by several years. Now, finally, FUNAI, with the help of the army and air force, mounted an operation to provide medical assistance and to get them back together so, it was argued, they would not starve. Indeed, starvation was a real threat, but the Indians’ flight from the disease and the sources of contamination was logical. By chance, Hanbury-Tenison visited Cuiabá around this time. He admired the exceptional devotion of the head of the small hospital and the positive results her outstanding efforts created. Sadly, this head is one of the rare exceptions of eagerness within FUNAI and that the agency failed to provide the necessary material and staff. The people told him that for the Sararé “(…) it was estimated that half the tribe (twenty-five out of fifty) had died. Most of the deaths had been among women and children. This, of course, reduced the chances of the tribe surviving this disaster” (Hanbury-Tenison 1973: 137). He noticed, for example, one man who had lost his wife and two children just staring at the ceiling. Hanbury-Tenison was very moved about the attachment of another flown-in Indian to his wife. With unmistakable mimicry the same man displayed how much he missed his village and that he was prepared to carry his wife back home, even if it was necessary to walk for many days (ib.: 136-7). Here one senses the same strong attachments to the land and the people discussed above. These dispositions enabled the Sararé to survive the ordeal and continue to persist. When Price listed the villages in the Project Proposal of 1975, he asserted that three villages of three different local groups insisted to make a living on their own, each separately in its own village, but that the total population was less than 35 people[lxvii]. It is not entirely unjustified that the local Sararé blamed the missionary presence and attribute today their most terrible epidemic, in accordance with their own theory of illness, to missionary poisoning. Allegedly, all the Indians who drank a drink that Henrique, a resident missionary, offered fell ill. One leader nowadays quietly admits to have attempted to take revenge by counter poisoning the culprit. This attempt failed.

Illness is often attributed to human poisoning or malevolent spirits. Part of the affiliation to the territory came from the presence of the Hatasu, the cannibal spirit entities that cause illness and death by eating the spirit or body of their victims. Fiorini suggested it is difficult to know from where the Sararé Indians came into the region and surmised a connection with the Central Guaporé Valley to the north. In fact, three of the elder men have a relationship with the one of the three northern adjacent groups. He did not state any time frame for this probable conjecture (Fiorini und: 3; 14). Note that as differences in dialect and cosmology exist, a certain time must have elapsed. Fiorini did not express any definite opinion and it is unclear if he believes that there was an occupation before the gold miners’ invasion. On the other hand, the Wasusu fear the Hatasu (or, as they say, the atasu) of the part of the Sararé territory of the newly to-be-demarcated area. The inhabitants seem to put these entities at a larger distance from themselves and so apparently do not fear them any less than the neighbors, but hold them somewhat further at bay in order to be able to settle the land (ib.: 1). Essentially, they are familiar with the spirits of their own lands, and thus succeed in inhabiting the land and everyone very much fears the spirits of lands other than their own. The people of the place know not only the land, soil and nature, but also about the occupying supernatural phenomena. Knowledge of all aspects of the mode of life interferes in the judgment of inhabitability and respect for the creatures of this living space. Therefore, the Wasusu must not be inclined to settle this territory but the long-term occupancy of the Waterfall People provided them with the means to deal with the dangers and to resettle the area (by shamanism, all elder men tend to be shamans today; in effect they attempted not to abandon the area by insisting on occasional visits).

This argument indirectly provides another reason for the strong attachment to territory and little interest in ventures into the unknown. Again, if the Sararé region was inhabited before the White intrusion, this attachment strengthens the strong tie to the land and stimulates the willingness to stay and fight invaders. If a previous knowledge of the region aids to the expansion into strange dominions, then to postulate a hunter relationship to the Kabixí – similar to the Paresi of the Plateau – might explain the occupancy after the creation of an analogous void. Brody’s general observation regarding hunting peoples is pertinent. “A people’s confidence in their own territory comes from their understanding of and reliance on the spirits that belong there. Their stories about this place are part of what it makes it theirs, and establish how they can rely on it. Other places require different knowledge, have different stories, and are influenced by spirits they do not know. This makes a change of territory a dangerous matter” (2001: 246). The Sararé tell of the Hatasu that live in their territory, for example, in the mountain range of the Serra da Borda[lxviii]. In one story the very name of the main village refers to one entity that attacked the village and only was killed after a series of events (the Hatasu that appeared to the Indians looks very similar to a gorilla, and hence they, just like the Wasusu, tell outsiders that the spirit is a gorilla). These are the local Hatasu that inspired dread and respect but for whom the pre-contact and post-contact shamans could handle the diseases they caused. The White man’s diseases may have initially caused a conundrum, as a rift began to grow between what came to be known as Indian disease and White man’s disease, which was best handled with White medicine. Today the two perspectives regularly clash, sometimes unwittingly, as the Indian’s theory and competence is only beginning to be partially accepted by health agents. In the commencement of contact such considerations did not exist, as the Indians only very slowly became acquainted with the Brazilian point of view. There can be little doubt that the western diseases struck even before contact, possibly as early as the miner’s invasion but definitely in the 20^th century[lxix]. Raids on Lacerda had already been mentioned, as was the visit to Vila Bela witnessed by Bringsken. These unofficial encounters may have begun the spread of contagious diseases. Going to Vila Bela probably was an attempt to establish some sort of peace on the part of one of peoples after the long history of strife. In fact, in one story the Whites captured an Indian and put him in the town jail, but at night the prison door miraculously opened and he managed to flee to his home. Thus, the various local groups maintained a state of belligerency within different parts of the region and gained some partial knowledge of their foes. This further implies the strong possibility of epidemics before contact and the demoralization of the people and their shamans whose knowledge failed to provide solace[lxx].

In this sense, the visit to Vila Bela most likely represented a classical move towards dialogue with the enemy in his own village with the goal to secure an understanding due to population losses. The Hatasu of the land do not inspire that much fear, they are known entities. The setting is theirs, part of the Sararé knowledge system of their lived world. Yet the epidemics and losses of the permanently belligerent state created a problem of interpretation and depletion of forces. This is in addition to the enmity and clashes with other Nambikwara[lxxi] that extended into the 1970s because of the relocation within the interdicted area and Indians traveling home after treatment in Vila Bela. Different groups reacted distinctly to this situation and suffered the consequences in their own ways. In fact, the reduction from six or seven groups to three (or four, counting one group that fused with another) still struggling to maintain socioculturally viable lives, demonstrates the process in all its brutality. As Price suggested a population reduction to 10% of the pre-contact situation, and in consideration of the 120 survivors by contact, then the total population may have been somewhere around 1200 during their autonomous existence[lxxii]. When Bringsken dared to venture into the Indian lands, the account I have confirms that the Indians appreciated his courage, especially as the Indians had their reasons for hostility. At the time the ranches already were encroaching on the lands to the south of the Sararé River and the Sapé ranch was even approaching the territory of the major village now called Sararé[lxxiii]. What the missionary did not mention in his own adventurous account is that the Indians fired an arrow that missed him. In his inexperience the party left behind their weapons. He did not want to frighten the Indians (and suffered the consequences, he went hungry even with game in sight). Without arms he narrowly avoided death, more so than appears from his narrative. When he arrived, he entered first the Serra da Borda area and then asked to be taken to the next village, the Sararé village. Due to lack of communication, he first returned home without going on with Indian company and then went alone to the Sararé village. The people there did not know him and considered killing him. One comment I heard attributed his survival on the formation of a social consensus concluding that the war was over. When shortly thereafter a rancher and his henchmen encircled and wanted to kill the Indians, the minister intervened. He stopped the action by stressing the humanity of the Indians in comparison to the animalistic predicates attributed by the Brazilians. It seems he unwittingly repaid the Sararé for sparing his life by saving theirs.

The threat of massacring invading Whites or killing a missionary intruder are not empty words. One narrator explained something about the view of the major contemporary Sararé people (of the main village that claims political supremacy for all Sararé). In the 1960s, the long history of belligerence prepared the Sararé to attempt to expel the invading fazendas; they attacked households and killed some inhabitants. From the stories about the skirmishes with other Indian groups one infers a strong image of valiance, of putting up an audacious front of warriorship that intimidated the adversary into accepting their valor. Thus the Indians would accept peace over the impossibility of waging a successful war, that is, despite their own valor. In this self-image the Sararé, in particular those of the narrator’s own group, stood their ground and acted as intrepid warriors. When the need arose, they allied themselves with other local groups. For instance, they came to the aid of the people of Nilo in their fight against the Wasusu (who, as they lived in the northeast corner of the Sararé, were the immediate neighbors of the Wasusu and were dispossessed by the Kanaxuê ranch). In this view the Sararé as a whole did not suffer defeat. They could have killed the missionary but decided to accept dialogue. The decision was theirs. In the narrator’s rendering of the story of the killings of foreign intruders, the Indians were generally victorious. They vanquished the ranchers, expelling the ranches. However, when the current leader in the Sararé village was a small boy, the balance began to tip. Some fierce Indians of other villages did not relent, they boasted invincibility and won again. They even attacked a town where even the army could not prevent the annihilation of the Whites. Successive waves of Whites, in superior numbers and armament eventually exhausted the warrior potential of the brave men who, it seems, could not be defeated. Over time, many valiant, intrepid, and brave men, died from old age or were murdered by the Whites. Only then contact occurred. The ranches recovered the lost terrain and after FUNAI intervened the Sararé recuperated some of their territory. In this view the allied peoples of the Southern sub-set of Sararé resisted heroically, throwing out the ranchers various times and scarcely being defeated. It was only old age and diminishing forces that forced the people to yield to the unbearable pressures of unequal forces and resources. This history does not compromise their self-esteem and they apparently regard the final truce not as a conquest but as a kind of concession that they agreed on.

If this view is shared as an historical perspective among the Sararé sub-set, and it is consistent with the little I know about the reputation of fierceness of the Sararé among the other Valley and Campo groups, then the Indians have a positive opinion of themselves. Unfortunately their self-esteem and the warrior-image and ethos did not prepare them for the onslaught after the peace, but from the enemy’s point of view, contact became pacification. In 1968 Price and his wife set out to do fieldwork among the Sararé, despite the fact that this entailed many difficulties as contact was so recently established. Price described a people still proud and autonomous and not interested in teaching their language to a visiting White like himself (1972). Price found some support with a young boy whom he and his wife treated for a severe illness and of whom they grew fond. After an absence, the couple returned to the area and discovered that someone had broken into Price’s chests and burnt his new house for unclear reasons. Possible motivations include the previous state of war leading to a desire for vengeance and a suspected hoarding of wealth. Even today, many Nambikwara believe all Whites are somehow related (they always ask what kin relationships exist between Whites working in their territory), and this may explain why Price had to suffer for the cruelties perpetrated by his kin, i.e. previous actions by non-Indians. Additionally, as wealth is always shared within the group, appropriating his goods may have been seen as legitimate in a time of need. Or, maybe, it was seen as a compensation for the human and material costs of the many years of war. Interestingly, one leader claimed that this was done by the boy who the Prices helped. Intimidated and with no understanding of the motives, Price moved his work to the savanna where he finished his PhD research. Maybe this Sararé man interpreted their relation differently. Perhaps he adopted a ruse similar to the one Sararé leaders used when a larger Nambikwara group passed through their village; they would pretend to be friendly and then ambush them (this seems to be have occurred when Price and the Nambikwara Project relocated central Valley people south of the Sararé within the interdicted area, but they suffered in the strange lands and decided to return to their northern homelands in the central valley). This occurred at the very moment of permanent contact. However, Bringsken gradually built up his contact and brought goods as appreciated gifts before settling an affiliated missionary in Indian Territory. Slowly the initial contact blossomed into a firm relation. The missionary’s record of offering assistance convinced the Indians of his good intentions and this led to their continued support. When FUNAI later tried to prohibit missionary presence, the Indians opposed the agency and permitted him to stay. Even today representatives of the mission live in the village as teachers. FUNAI tolerates these people only because the Indians granted them permission to stay[lxxiv].

Although the inexperience may have hampered the missionary action, epidemics that happened later indicate he did not inoculate them, he did provide a considerable amount of practical and material help. The group thought that the missionary was helpful, and filled a void left by the conspicuous absence of FUNAI. With the exception of the previously mentioned operation of evacuating infected Sararé to Cuiabá (the later consequences of which are unknown) the first official action seems to have been the interdiction of the Sararé region. Based on available information, it seems that FUNAI only gave marginal assistance to the Sararé from the 1960s to the mid-1970s. Price remarked that some health actions were deployed by FUNAI before the Nambiquara Project, but the individual medical records in the filing cabinet of one of the buildings in a Sararé Indian village begin only in 1976. The first FUNAI official that the Indians claim to have lived in the area was an agent for the savanna region during the Nambiquara Project. This project had originally allocated another agent to be settled in the central Guaporé Valley. He also worked with the Sararé (as the Post was located to the north of the Sararé area, the agent and the nurses only made occasional stopovers; the records kept in the Post for individual Indians which I consulted show that visits during several years only gradually increased in frequency, later a Post in the Sararé was founded). It seems reasonable to conclude that the hard work completed with meager resources paid off in the Guaporé Valley and that the worst period for the Sararé was the early 1970s. The interdiction of their region was conducted without much research and came about as part of the miserable failure of the relocation policy rather than genuine concern for these peoples. Worse, one ranch was awarded a Negative Certificate which, in one and the same paragraph, acknowledged the existence of an Indian village and promised their removal. This owner later sold land to the Sapé ranch. Moreover, the interdicted area may purposively have excluded at least one Sararé village situated near the deforested clearings of the Sapé ranch. The headman of this village, whose village had suffered severe population losses from outbreaks, refused to accommodate the national society by moving into the area. At the time of the Project, Price was still confident that they could convince him to do so later, but in a FUNAI report he mentioned that Indians felt tricked by the establishment of the Sapé ranch on their territory. The interdiction encompassed the former lands on the sides of the Serra da Borda from which the Indian occupancy at that stage had mainly retreated (including the eastern flanks of the mountain range). To the strong disappointment of at least two groups, it excluded the fertile fringe along the Parecis Plateau where the ranches had already penetrated.

At the time of the Project the interdicted area was thought of as a refuge for the peoples of the Guaporé Valley. Under the structural constraints on the national level, Price worked out plans for the gradual and controlled relocations which at first appeared to be feasible as it was hoped this would gain acceptance among these local groups. However, this proved a little naïve. For example, later he discovered that one group he tried to resettle in the interdicted area just went along out of general curiosity and never really planned to stay[lxxv]. It appears, as mentioned above, that he learned something about the Indians’ territorial attachments. This was a costly process though, and many died of malaria and they fought with the Sararé because of the withdrawal of a promise to marry two women to Sararé men when they decided to return home alone (Price: 1982b). Of these elaborate plans nothing came about. Although there is no documentation of a Sararé population increase as a result of the Project’s efforts, this does seem likely, given the dedication and tremendous efforts of the agents. Furthermore, it seems that this people also benefited from a change in policy that resulted in resolution of some of their territorial complaints. The failed relocation of their Wasusu neighbors and the discovery of the placement of the Sararé in a relatively untouched forest contributed to FUNAI’s sudden decision to create a large interdicted area around the Sararé. It is reasonable to suggest that the choice of their region was indirectly shaped by their sustained resistance to the fazendas and the invasions that had preserved these forests. This struggle alone was insufficient for survival and the interdiction arose from the combination of the failure of the relocation policy and FUNAI’s persistent belief in the transferability of the Nambikwara (probably still couched in the notion of a wild nomadic people with little attachment to their land). The aim of dispossession in both policies of the groups of the central Guaporé Valley remains unchanged. The policy’s fiasco caused merely a partial review, but there were no serious changes aside from a downsizing, from inter-regional dislocation to intra-regional movements. Once again, the Sararé’s old reputation of wildness may have preserved them from more determined attempts of massacre in the 1960s and later when the contact situation also may have pre-empted more violence. It is clear that the contextual and coincidental contingent circumstances of the 1970s contributed to save them from total disaster and secured them a minimal land base. Violent resistance was inadequate to guarantee later survival. The Nambikwara, in more than one sense, are not eastern Bororo.

After contact: Sararé (Katitaulhu) socio-cultural and linguistic reactions to ‘peace’
From the moment the interdicted area came into being, men who contested the redistribution efforts of the region visited Price at FUNAI headquarters in Cuiabá. All the usual stereotypes are evident in the questioning of the measure put to Price by the lawyer for the Sapé ranch. The lawyer even went so far so as to negate any historical presence of Nambikwara Indians on their legitimate property. They were too nomadic anyway and brought in by FUNAI from the outside. Price once responded that he lived for a while in the upper Sararé, and if no Indians inhabited that area now, it must be because they had been either killed or removed by the ranch. The lawyer called attention to the Negative Certificate, but did not refer to the FUNAI obligation stated on this paper, to remove the existing Indians. Partaking in the same campaign against the Interdiction, in a letter to the Minister of the Interior, a Brazilian congressman (judging from his name, he may have been the owner of the Bamerindus bank) argued for the same lack of historical presence on top of the usual argument regarding the investments already made and the appeal to development rhetoric. In one sense, such denials and appeals are clearly nonsensical and the recent Law of 1973 protected the Nambikwara even when their occupancy should not be as immemorial as to extend to the epoch prior to the gold rush. At the time Price collected a number of historical sources to demonstrate the Indians’ historical occupancy and then furnished this material to the FUNAI lawyers. Of course, the Sararé occupied the lands in a way that proved their legal and genuine right to the territory. Therefore, even when trying to discredit the Indian occupancy with false information, the real problem of the campaign was political.

At this time, in the mid-1970s, Price modified his thesis with further data to demonstrate the historical presence of the Sararé. The summing up of historical evidence was meant as a tool for the FUNAI lawyers to be able to respond to these claims and substantiate Indian occupancy. At this moment he still was convinced of the hypothesis that the Cabixi mentioned in those early historical documents referred to the Nambikwara of the beginning of the 20^th century. As seen, he later revised his position and favored the hypothesis that the Paresi occupied the contemporary Sararé territory. In the later article quoted above, he decided in favor of the idea of a Paresi occupancy and the later expansion of Nambikwara. From my discussion of the problem above, I hold a small preference for an early Nambikwara occupancy, possibly mixed in some measure with Paresi near the escarpments of the Parecis Plateau. It is unclear how long such occupancy may have existed before the 18^th century, but without further evidence the question of the duration of Southern Nambikwara occupancy in the Sararé region will remain unknown. Such a discussion about occupancy, especially at the time of decision making about Indian rights in the 1970s, is not entirely academic. It could be used in a low level political campaign like those common at the time. This is one reason to insist on reviewing it here. Price’s and FUNAI’s real problem in the 1970s concerned the political clout wielded in the decision-making spheres of the Interior Ministry that both influence the proposal in process within FUNAI and disapprove of any proposals disagreeable to progress afterwards. In his paper in which he expounded on the conception of the Nambiquara Project, Price suggested that the presence of military administration and ownership of an invading fazenda in the Nambikwara Reserve probably entails the future exclusion of this area, in spite of the Indians’ totally legal claim of immemorial occupancy. Yet, probably, Price may have hoped that his observations would help convince the bureaucracy of his opinion about real justice.

Price may also have described his position as being utterly dependent on the legal defense prepared by the FUNAI bureaucracy and its lawyers. He believed that he failed in the crucial domain of land rights. In his Project design, Price predicted that if a solid policy should not be implemented in the Guaporé Valley, than five years later the world could belatedly mourn another genocide. For the Sararé sub-set, the disappearance of part of their composing villages or village-sets proved redressing wrongs mainly came about too late. With slightly over thirty survivors, the whole sub-set perilously came close to succumb to direct and indirect genocide. At this absolute low point in Sararé history the situation was critical and the interdiction probably rescued the Indians from some final battles. Jointly with the Nambiquara Project this was, in retrospect, a turning point. The counter forces of development, with all its magical and ideological connotations, certainly did not abide and had no scruples. Note that in the beginning of the 1970s, one of the co-proprietors of the Sapé ranch was the son of the Interior Minister. The thrust of the miracle and the political persecution at the height of the oppressive military dictatorship happened in the 1970s. Prospects were indeed grim. As an imperfect but protective law passed in this decade, not all was lost. Conscious of the law but more so of the constraints of the frame of reality, Price developed in his Project a number of measures to accommodate to the pressures. He felt certain that political pressure followed against his protective actions, bearing particularly on the decision makers on whom his own influence depended. As the Project advanced, he came to gradually suspect Tolksdorf more for dubious involvement in what he believed might be a smokescreen for a similar situation as the one involving the expansion of the Nambikwara reserve. The appearance of representatives of the ranchers and his own research on the owners did not allay his suspicions. His planned relocations failed and in the end he lacked time to pursue this or any alternative policy. After his withdrawal, and under Tolksdorf’s direction, the Project continued and within a few years, the interdicted area ceased to exist. In the absence of any documents about the disappearance of the interdiction, nothing can be asserted but despite the lack of documents the fact speaks for itself. In the later years of this decade, the FUNAI presidents terminated the special Projects and the general atmosphere deteriorated. By 1980, during his consultancy in Brazil, Price only found four small reservations for the entire Guaporé Valley, existing mainly on paper, and two of these in the central region were diminished in their proposed size due to pressures of ranchers (Price: 1989b: 79; at the time he supposed the areas were demarcated but not registered; ib.: 130, although the map on this page does not show any Sararé area, he wrote of an interdicted area of an unspecified size).

One last example is sufficient to demonstrate the spirit of the times. On November 5, 1976, the president of the Federation of Agriculture of the State of Mato Grosso wrote a missive to the Interior Minister[lxxvi]. The letter was sent to FUNAI and catalogued in the Sararé demarcation dossier (FUNAI Archives in Brasília). This is possibly a coincidence for the bureaucracy sometimes works in inscrutable ways, but its inclusion is not without some reason. The link is exactly the constant threat of interdictions hanging above the heads of the proprietors, or rural producers, code-names for fazendeiros and capitalist ranchers. It argued that in order to attend to isolated interests of Indians, FUNAI frequently interdicted lands legitimately titled area and of a long time of exploitation. The constant threat to their property generated pandemonium and retraction in this economic sector. The president argued, therefore, that FUNAI’s actions constitute a limiting factor of the processes of occupation, integration and production in legal amazonia. In other words, FUNAI hindered their interests in traditional legalized titles (before and after Rondon’s complaint about the frauds involved) and the renovated unlimited expansion to dispossess the Indian peoples of their lands (financed by very cheap public credit, further enriching the wealthier classes). Inhibited by the legal rights of the indigenous population and even aroused by the scandalously weak action of FUNAI, the proposed solution primed in the ingenuity to circumvent legal impediments on the farming and ranching business. The Federation (yet another code-name – this one represents the class of the owners with large land holdings and precludes peasantry) suggested a very convenient solution to harmonize the interests linked to the occupation of Amazonia and the preservation of areas destined to Indians. Another law stipulated the reservation of 50% of the land of each fazenda for forest preservation. Large and small landowners never appreciated any legal bounds on the use of their land, nor did they agree with legal protection for Indians but, nevertheless, they admitted to a “(…) national interest in securing the indigenous populations sufficient areas where, without their habitat, they can subsist with their peculiar culture”. The wording is significant; to subsist may be the opposite of to produce. The disqualification only grudgingly grants the human status to this mode of life and does not allow them any rights to their original habitat. The large landowners came up with a shrewd solution to both the conservation and the Indian problem by proposing to use the lands set apart because of the legal exigency of the conservation area on their large landholdings as the lands that would provide the Indians with some habitat. In other words, as if they too were endangered wildlife to be protected in the wilderness, and any habitat would do. At the most, the owner felt obliged to leave such wasteful nature standing while the Indians also only waste the land by simply occupying it and not for productive usage. The document is devoid of any notion of Indigenous Territory or impediments to ownership (the owners would help choose the areas). In sum, a useful purpose for a useless part of their land. The materialistic advantages are all too blatant.

Although FUNAI lawyers[lxxvii] managed to torpedo the initiative, the fact that this flagrantly discriminatory and totally illegal proposal was even considered reveals the strength of the political clout involved. When no rapid answer came forward, this ethnocentric and thoroughly ideological proposal was repeated. In such larger ambience the unaware Sararé continued to struggle with their more immediate problems.    When Price visited the Sararé on his tour in 1980 to inspect the official plans to protect the Nambikwara he witnessed a difficult situation. After 1968 when the population was still 57, this mere fraction of the original population further decreased to 35. Furthermore, the vicinity of the ranch, only 7 km away, also left its mark. The leader of the main village lived near the resident missionary where the Indians wore ragged clothes, in stark contrast to the former handsome bronze people, unashamedly naked who impressed Price in 1968 (Price 1989b: 103). The leader had worked at a sawmill and earned the wood to construct his house. No doubt a tribute to adaptive genius, now the headmen’s house consisted of adobe and rough lumber and no traditional Sararé oblong, domed, thatched houses were in sight. The forest had been cleared right next to the adjacent landing strip, and where Price once hunted there were many cattle grazing. Resultantly, there was little to hunt. Around 18 people lived near the runway, and from 8 to 10 lived a little further away, one family lived to the southeast[lxxviii]. During the few years time under the leadership of the man who came to the fore after contact and despite the Indians resistance, many lands were taken and converted to pasture. The logging mentioned probably financed part of the ranch’s initial costs. The leader himself worked on the land usurped from his own people and was rewarded with the very wood stolen from them in the first place (recall that this was the same time that the regional administrator admitted to Price that the whole Guaporé Valley is legally Indigenous Territory). Price also noticed that the encroachment of Brazilians reached the top of the mountain range, that some other areas had begun to be occupied but others still were empty of settlers. In fact, a little further up north in the Guaporé Valley, the wave of deforestation abided after 1972 and in large areas (near the Wasusu) the jungle had been allowed to grow back. The excessive clearing was probably inspired by a wish to establish legal claim to as much land as possible before any official impediment relating to indigenous rights arose (Price 1989b: 102-110).

The adverse effects of the 1970s on the Sararé population and territory relates to the opening up of the road to Vilhena. The major incursions used the feeder roads descending from the Parecis Plateau from the old BR highway or headed north from the upper Guaporé (where Pontes e Lacerda gained significance). Price’s 1980 Mission resulted from an attempt to co-opt and to silence him, as he was a firm critic of the new Polonoroeste project that threatened to deal a final blow to the Indian peoples along the route. First and foremost to the Nambikwara of the Valley, as the loan solicited from the World Bank purported to asphalt the existing BR 364 actually was meant to finance the so-called variant, an alternate route. Not unexpectedly, the new highway deviated from the previously constructed road on the Parecis Plateau by passing through the Guaporé Valley, and thus through Sararé territory. Initially the World Bank pretended nothing had been decided, neither the loan itself nor the actual route among three alternatives. Once into the bureaucratic mill of loan approval, however, no such loan was disapproved and the evaluation of the projects that the loan was to finance involved little more than formal procedure. Furthermore, the real reason to approve the loan originated in the unrelated issue of the country’s debts, underpinning this real argument with the knowledge that the granting of the loan enabled the bank to influence its expenditure and the projects’ execution. The completely understaffed and unappreciated environmental department issued several warnings that the Polonoroeste was dealing with ecological uncertainties, based on insufficient data, and that likely outcomes would be at odds with the proclaimed development aims (see Rich 1992 for this shameful sham between projected public image and real information and workings). There were many related irregular occurrences. For the general public, a World Bank employee wrote a watered-down version of Price’s report on the insufficiency of the proposed measures to protect Indians. His own report was classified and few had access to it. In disregard to Price’s moral imperative to the Indians and the public, many Bank officials considered his later publications supporting the Nambikwara to be a betrayal of his initial promise not to divulge any part of his work to the Bank (Price 1989b). Obviously all inappropriate material was hid from the public. Soon thereafter, the World Bank — an institute clearly not at all innocent in accepting the aims and environmental measures of the project – approved the loan for plans that became known as one of the most appalling failures of this time.

Despite its documented deception, the World Bank applied some pressure on the Brazilian government to avoid the genocide Price warned of five years earlier. Price’s efforts had begun to engage non-governmental organizations in the United States and a declaration by the American Anthropological Association, for example, attracted public attention. Later Price testified before the US Congress and again the issue was in the limelight. Within Brazil, concerned citizens founded several organizations, usually with the participation of prominent anthropologists, to support the Indian cause and criticize the current situation. They waged a campaign against the actions and repeatedly warned of the negative repercussions if the variant route was to be constructed. Some time previously, Price reported that this road was already surreptitiously in progress and on its way to penetrate the Nambikwara territories well before authorization was given. The plight of the Nambikwara was meant to draw public attention to this drama and redressing this wrong was one of the major Indian issues of the times. Forced to act because of the national public opinion and the international pressure on the World Bank to save its increasingly damaged image, the Brazilian government finally approved some effective protection for the Indians against the onslaught of civilization. The battle against the variant, as Price correctly predicted, was lost to economic interests. Price witnessed the manager and White people in the Guaporé Valley comment that the head of the road department and responsible engineer for the roads asserted that “this business of Indian reservations won’t amount to anything” (Price 1989b: 110). The governor of Mato Grosso “doesn’t even want to hear about Indians around here” (ibid). Powerful political and economic interests expressed a fierce perfidious opposition to Indian rights. The dossier on the Sararé Indigenous Territory does not contain the intricacies or expert reports of the demarcation process but does hold some documents about the legal and political struggle of the Sapé ranch against the interdiction. As the documents from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s are few, it is difficult to get a clear picture of the immediate effects the dissolution of the interdicted area caused. In one document the ranch cited the indecent proposal of the Mato Grosso Agricultural Association (and therefore may have stimulated its inception), later repeating the solution. All efforts fought to prevent ceding one inch of its 80,000+ ha (considerably expanding on the original fazenda for which the Negative Certificate was issued). These papers mention that the struggle against the interdicted area did succeed in lifting the interdiction of the major part, now only 42,320 ha remain to constitute a reservation (reducing the total by 286,680 ha). They did not relent in their efforts against even this greatly reduced quantity. According to them, the presence of at maximum thirty Indians, who were nomads and who allegedly were not there in the first place when the ranch was built did not deserve such a large amount of land. The nomadic character of the Indians makes it seems as if they enter the ranches’ area and by virtue of the same mode of life they certainly would decide to move on later. Naturally, this consortium of owners, likely numbering less than the Indians they wanted to expel, manifestly did deserve so much land[lxxix].

In this political climate, the four small reservations of 1980 might have been the only solution (albeit a wholly unsatisfactory one) to create reservations for a vanishing population. Here it is possible to discern how the accidental coordinates of the Corumbiara development project involuntary aided the Aikaná and Latundê claims. Quite literally, the groundwork had been laid for an intervention to establish reasonable Indigenous Territories, while in the Guaporé Valley the uncontrolled advance simply occupied the land within the more arbitrary limits of properties sold on paper in a more confusing and legally questionable way. In the Guaporé Valley the owners already had to deal with confusion, latent conflicts, and potential violence that made some of them take radical measures. Only on the national level did the internal and external pressures appealing to the human rights of civilization produce some effects. The supposed moral and ethical conduct to evaluate the treatment of indigenous peoples and the corollary set of values is the only way to mitigate the effects of stereotypes, greed, ethnocentrism, and socioeconomic interests[lxxx]. The World Bank imposed a program of assistance to the Indian peoples on the unwilling and reluctant Brazilian authorities. That much of this cooperation and initial resistance to any outside interference follows from the public image problem is shown in the reaction of a Brazilian ambassador to whom Price, in Brasília, presented a carefully worded diluted report about the incompetent program elaborated by FUNAI. The ambassador insisted on suppressing a paragraph he considered offensive for Brazil, not on the grounds of its inaccuracy but only because it reflected poorly on the country (Price 1989b: 68). These were the years when the military related to the security community commanded FUNAI and shaped policy. These people involved with the Intelligence Service viewed the Indians as obstacles to development and as Brazilians to be fully integrated into the national community. They were not against ethnocide, and they never favored generous Indigenous Territories. In this sense, the eventual demarcation a few years later of the Sararé Indigenous Territory and the Guaporé Indigenous Territory extending from the Wasusu in the south to the Mamaindê in the north can only be attributed to pressures from the public and the World Bank as well as a deteriorating public image. Forced by public opinion and the World Bank (itself being pressured internationally) the Indian Territories ended up larger than the tiny parcels proposed in 1980-1. Therefore, a new study, of a kind already underway at the time of Price who proposed a territory of similar elongated, stretched out, elephant-like shape, imposed by the World Bank finally rescued the central and southern Nambikwara of the Valley from extinction and grossly insufficient territories. The improvement still entailed a tremendous reduction and fragmentation of traditional lands. Fierce opposition from people like the state governor, made it necessary for the army to carry out demarcation (Costa 2000: 53-4). The tensions in the Guaporé Valley ran high, non-Indians were exacerbated by the necessity to yield to such irrelevant, powerless, and minor social categories as socioeconomically and politically superfluous nomadic Indians. As the total area of the Guaporé Valley is less than 250,000 ha, a tremendous amount of land was lost. Eventually FUNAI demarcated three small areas as corrections of the large Indigenous Territory, two are of great religious significance, and one has prime economic importance. The fact that these corrections were necessary highlights either the inadequacy of the original study or the pressures entailed in even this demarcation.

The program that FUNAI created to care for the Indians involved mainly a material infrastructure and personnel for the agency. There were also traces of some of the standard prejudice directed against the Nambikwara. The result was money partially spent on useless initiatives, no true Indian consultation about their necessities, and a high ratio of Whites to Indians. On top of this the inefficient bureaucracy which was patently top-heavy in towns and generally staffed with employees more interested in their salary than public service. It goes without saying that there were a handful of honorable exceptions of emotionally and physically committed people (Price 1989b: 183-5). The massive investment paid off comparatively small dividends but there was a slow and gradual population recovery[lxxxi]. The Sararé profited from the general improvements in health care and the same pattern as was seen among the Valley Nambikwara prevailed in the net demographic result, a small number of elder men, and even fewer elder women survived the onslaught of disease. In the June 2000 census reproduced by Ariovaldo dos Santos, the Sararé had grown to 93 people in a much skewed age distribution. The people thought to be older than thirty years (a baseline for the last epidemic) total eight men and ten women over than fifty, of them five of the men were over 60 and only one of the women was over 65. Of this part of the female population four were between 31 and 35 years old, and seven of an age that indicate the possibility they bore children after epidemics. Jointly with the people who died in the interval after the epidemics, these are those who survived and reached adulthood. When we examine the group under the age of thirty, only four women and men were born who survived through the 1970s. Additionally, there are 32 males and 35 females under 20. This permits the deduction that significant population recuperation happened in the 1980s, as there were few survivors of the 1970s. The lack of individuals aged 26 to 30 show that Price was correct when he claimed that infant and child mortality rates were high. The subsequent exponential population growth came about because of increased health care. There were also modifications made to the peoples’ traditional child bearing rules regarding spacing between children effectually favoring small families. It is in light of the meager population that the Indians decided to repopulate so quickly that in 2001 there were nearly 100 individuals. Again one finds a surprising resilience and determination related to these people being resolute and proud Indians who value their people and culture and continue to strive for more personal and local autonomy.

The older generation of today views the younger ones below 16 as the promise for the future and producers of a revitalized tomorrow. They also hope that their efforts will help diminish the dependence on the national society (Santos 2000: 20-1). Multiple strengths and multiple dependencies are at stake. The traditional Nambikwara concept of marriage as a simultaneous family and village affair did not disappear in the integrated post-contact village, the contraction of previous independent local groups. As a result, there were some new tensions as evident in a story about a conflict over cultivatable land and horticultural gardens at the major post-contact village that resulted in killings within the Sararé. The alliances, including marriage exchanges, do not necessarily convey a wish or disposition to tolerate blending together into a homogeneous group. Only the constraints of historical contingencies forced the fragments of the prior autonomous peoples to coalesce. In this situation the survivors needed to cooperate and founded a temporary common village by the pure necessity of the survival of any Sararé. The leading adults of that time married each others’ women and exchanged marriageable individuals to accommodate as many people as possible. Sometimes, when men died, they left their widows and children to surviving brothers who raised the latter as their own. The component members of the village lived together under the threat of the outside and the danger of extinction. Again according to the same pattern as discussed above, the members of the differentiated groups did not forget their origins and persisted in aggregating around their leading men. These are today the elders in a situation similar to Vitorino’s, the steadfast pillars of traditional knowledge and wisdom, the sole survivors that contain the foundations of the ways and mode of life of the past. It is because of their narratives and teachings that the transmission of traditional lore, culture and knowledge still is guaranteed. For example, one night the reputedly oldest man held a training session in traditional music with the presence of most of the children under 12 participating in the singing. Although grief for the deceased and tradition of not speaking the names of the dead warriors makes some topics taboo, these people cultivate the transmission of other parts of traditional knowledge. Expectedly, when the population increased and the pressures from the outside declined, these same men maintained the memory of their own groups’ territorial patrimony. They always wanted to resettle in their own lands, congregating their close family on their home territory. The concentration in one village often, in peace-time, created frictions amongst descendents of different peoples (Santos 2000: 22).

Peace-time did not bring just an easy demographic recovery after the installation of the massive bureaucratic apparatus to assist the Nambikwara (the medical records show an increment in in locus activity in the 1980s). Several events, the persistent failure of effective protection and the sociocultural divergent perspectives complicated an already difficult adjustment to the new circumstances. In that sense, the Indian efforts and the remarkably fast recovery become even more notable. At first, the Sararé believed that they not only made the peace and suffered no defeat by the Bean People (as evident in an initiative visit to Vila Bela). Then they also thought of the alliance in traditional terms, establishing an alliance would transform the enemy into an ally that respected their autonomy and traded according to the Nambikwara pattern to furnish the community with desired goods and services (cf. Santos 2000: 4). This too conforms to the image and template of inter-group relations of the Campo peoples when they entered into a relationship with Rondon and his people. The deceptive aspects of normalized external relations appear to have been very slow to realize. The Nambikwara mould of exchange between visitors and hosts consists of a similar silent trade as observed by Lévi-Strauss but in this case the usual procedure reposes on delayed exchange. The visitor takes as a present that he likes and in return, during the counter visit, the former host chooses for himself what he desires as the counter-present. The aim is solidifying a social relationship between the exchanging partners, the social content of the gift predominates over the material dimension (even if the equity of the gifts is evaluated by both partners). Bargaining is inconceivable and the effects on the interethnic relationship cannot be underestimated. When the missionaries started direct exchange without any suitable delay, they thoroughly displeased the Nambikwara do Campo who considered this to be very bad manners. Even an Indian who learned to read, write, and count (he learned to do so with the Nambikwara Project), and who knew the monetary value of what he wanted to sell still assented immediately to the very low offer he received from a shopkeeper. He said that he acceded because he needed to sell goods to the same man in the future (Price 1989b). It was clearly difficult for him to imagine a social relation with a friendly stranger where the economic dimension outweighs the totalizing summation of the sociocultural dimensions of the allied group template. The separation of the economic sphere from the total social relationship, the disengagement of the economic or any other specific dimension of the total social person (to paraphrase Mauss) may have been be the most difficult phenomenon to imagine, accept and apply in practice.

The efforts of anthropologists, the Nambikwara project, and later FUNAI employees turned to the production of Indian artifacts as a feasible income source. The selling of these artifacts was fraught with practical difficulties and, despite the founding of a special department and the creation of a number of outlets in cities, still never ran smoothly. The advantage of the system is that the delayed return fits the particular pattern and the fabrication is open to anyone with the ability and will to produce. The total deployment of time spent in productive activities may be changed but the change does not seem to significantly interfere with the normal course of kin relations and religious practice. The disadvantage is the irregularity of the return and the thorough lack of understanding of the economic system (Price (1977) discussed these convergences and divergences of understanding more fully in order to improve the Nambiquara Project; Aspelin (1975) also wrote extensively on this). The concept of monetary value and the market as an instrument to establish relative prices is a mystery not easily mastered. Even today the Sararé do not really understood these exotic sociocultural principles and the configuration of ideology and practices in the national sociocultural construction of the economy. Nowadays people occasionally produce artifacts like bows and arrows, and palm nut necklaces. I once saw a prominent Indian wanting to trade a feathered headband. The various White people working in the area serve in various ways as intermediaries. From their accounts and the events witnessed, it is apparent many still calculate the return in the traditional manner, although now they customarily specify what gift they wish in return for the original object. The persistence of a transformed traditional notion of give-and-take is obvious. Depending on the White people whom they choose to trade with, the Whites normally try to explain the market value and the expected returns, and ask whether these suffice to pay for the desired object[lxxxii].

The younger post-contact generation understands money somewhat better and covets its privilege as the universal means of access to new goods (from guitars to ice-cream and soft drinks; to cite some concrete examples). Yet, the temptation of the world of money and concomitant consumption of an overflow of goods still seems to be bounded. The people of the older generation are not so interested in outside goods. For them, the Nambikwara notions of ways of life and the socially determined level of wants and consumption predominate. Their needs and wants apparently are still restricted. In the 1980s, FUNAI began to register the Sararé elderly for pensions. Again, Price warned early on of the negative effects such an income might have on the traditional political leadership model. The money available certainly did not mean any outrageous wealth to the recipients. However, the steady trickle of income, in a situation of scarcity of alternate means of monetary income creates a sort of power base for the elderly. Their income is a steady and reliable monthly source, difficult to match by the producer of any currently existing alternative. Traditionally, the leader was a vigorous, intelligent and energetic caretaker of his group. An alternative source of goods undermines his authority and role as the foremost person of wealth redistribution. Elders wielded influence irrespective of wisdom and some felt that sharing with the group was unnecessary (Price 1989b: 185). This may explain part of the changed pattern of authority of the council of elders in Aroeira, when normally the younger people esteem the elders for knowledge but also devalue old age by virtue of the diminished individual capacities (a point on which Fiorini (2000) and Serafim (2000) agree as true for the Wasusu).

The Sararé intelligently countered this inducement to change and insisted that the money benefit the entire population. The FUNAI employee responsible for the area collects the money, buys the food and other supplies, and distributes the purchases more or less according to the size of each family (only families qualify). In this way the distribution does not subvert social tendencies and permits the continuation of the in-group sharing model. This creative and feasible solution runs against the individualism prevalent in national society (the FUNAI agents not excluded; in 2001 the employee obeyed the injunction but also occasionally went out of the way to provide something more for the legal recipients). Even without this influence, the elders still wield considerable political power. Either the leadership models of Price and Lévi-Strauss did not capture this authority in the past, or else the historical contingencies engendered a new situation. Perhaps they underestimated the subtle influence behind the scene of the men of knowledge (but evident in Vitorino’s account where the elders’ interpretation weighs heavily on conduct). The leader exercises his leadership by approval and the major decisions apparently always concerned all older men and the construction of some consensus. In my sense this contributed to the effect of strengthening the elders’ authority after contact in Aroeira. Simultaneously, everywhere the demographic disaster transformed all older people into key figures in raising children and transmitting knowledge to a host of young people. As for the Sararé, after contact the old leaders stepped back and the younger one mentioned by Price took over. The Sararé still recognize his leadership until today, although he leaves certain interactions to his son. The younger generation that could be taking over is only beginning to marry and start families, and as any leader must have a family, there are few candidates.

The post-contact generation that came into being after the peace does begin to play a political role. The young men clearly refer to an opposition between the generations, basically between pre-contact men and themselves, although there does not seem to be a large rift yet. It is understandable that as they did not experience the state of belligerence, they have a somewhat different view of the world, especially with respect to the relations with Whites, the use of the Portuguese language, and the acquisition of knowledge of national society. As far as I noticed, the elder Sararé speak their mother language without any foreign vocabulary. The far more numerous younger generations, by comparison, use a great deal and even employ short interposed expressions or isolated words from Portuguese (for which presumably there are no alternatives). The first language of this people remains the native indigenous language, but a new dialect seems to be appearing among the children. The elder speakers evince the prior dialectical differences and they are practically monolingual. The younger generation (here referring to adolescents and young adults) and primarily the males, speak Portuguese reasonably or near-fluently, although they lack a full competence. Knowing well that there exists a correlation between language and politics and society, the elders push a number of young men to learn the national language. They know the language is necessary to defend their interests in national society. In this sense, the pride in their language, the maintenance of Sararé as the first language learned and as the language of everyday interaction, all indicate its future continuity. It also favors the transmission of distinctive sociocultural forms and practices. The language with its potential of inherent, explicit and implicit worldview and particular way of conceiving and describing the distinct sociocultural construction of the universe abides by virtue of the perseverance of the elder generations. Shamanism, myths and cosmology, music and flutes (forbidden for women) persist and all such customs were transmitted to the next generation. One Indian hinted that some unnamed ritual disappeared, but this does not seem to be due to outside pressures or any wish to assimilate.

Before such resolve for autonomy, persistence of mode of living, and adherence to tradition had conditions to prosper, two types of assaults occurred that could have fostered more disastrous results. The traditional models of alliance, the inept, structurally weak FUNAI and its share of corruptible employees (some simply acting passively for fear of being murdered), the exhaustion of not easily renewable resources in the Valley and in other regions combined to constitute a configuration of elements that helps explain such assaults. The first wave of aggressions concerns the lumber in the area. Not only did the fazendas sometimes process the trees on their land but in general entire towns prospered owing to logging[lxxxiii]. The operators either illegally entered Indigenous Territory on their initiative, possibly because of weak vigilance and large circumferences, or dealt directly with the Indians. When doing business with the Indians, they likely thought of the friendship of the logging patrons and employees in terms of the alliance template and the gifts they received. When compared to the financial difficulties of FUNAI after pacification, the apparent lavishness of these entrepreneurs, who earn by annihilating the wilderness or at the minimum ravage the forests’ ecological structure, could pretend to be a conspicuously generous alternative source of external goods. Many villages succumbed to the lure of seemingly easy access to abundant consumer goods, and the Sararé are no exception; houses were built, cars and bikes were given. Some FUNAI employees are accused of intermediation. The acceptance possibly also issued from the own cultural conceptual difference between vegetal life and animal life. For the latter the Sararé recognize the owners, more like caretakers in the myths, as Price expounded in “Earth People”. His conclusion of the message of moderation emanates from these injunctions as evident in the jaguar guarding over the herds of wild pigs, and the large otter owning the fish in the stream in the Waterfall Peoples’ area. Additionally there are the ancestral spirits’ advice on the correct use of medicinal plants in their own territory (if the plant is not on their territory, it is dangerous; Santos 2000: 26-30). No such mythical message or caretaker is known for the forest or for the species of trees. In fact, the forest is seen as a continually dangerous place where evil spirits live and should be avoided. This explains one reason these people preferred to live on the savanna. In horticultural experience the forest always regenerates. The forest may seem inexhaustible too[lxxxiv]. In consideration of all of the above, maybe we can begin to understand why the Indians decided to allow the logging operations. In time they quarreled and this partnership dissolved. The Indians always basically mistrust the Whites and highly value autonomy and self-esteem. This attitude of self worth, and hence the idea of directing the loggers or the logging operations, probably vied with the arrogance and ethnocentric prejudice of the loggers who felt themselves far superior to the Indians. In the end they fought, a party of Whites ambushed several older Indians, tied them up, held them for hours and beat up several people. Then they rounded up the moveable presents and took them away. Perhaps the worst blow referred to the humiliation and physical maltreatment of the warriors. After this incident the large majority thoroughly disliked the loggers and never allowed any entry again.

Another historical curse renewed its attack on Indian Land. The alluvial gold in the streams that run down the mountain range replenish the stock of gold on a regular basis. As early as 1975 Price discovered a company prospecting for gold, called Ouro Fino, staking out a claim on the Sararé River. He believed that few problems would occur if this company explored the border river. Unfortunately, no one could have predicted that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, gold fever in the Amazon reached its peak and hundreds of thousands of gold miners migrated through the entire basin to the places where rumors and findings located soils and streams with gold dust or stones. Economic crisis and structural expulsion of peasants from the soil in the rest of Brazil contributed to the influx. Once the region was rediscovered as promising and actually producing gold, the rush was inevitable. The state of Mato Grosso authorized the mining activities adjacent to the Indians’ area. In no time the gold prospectors spilled over into the almost empty and economically wasted Indigenous Territory. As usual, FUNAI was unable to expel such a volatile mass of intruders and the countryside along the mountain range became dotted with camps and excavations. The miners founded a cooperative and the Santa Elina Company also participated. The Sararé region had the doubtful privilege of notoriously being the only Indigenous Territory to which the official federal agency regulating mining activities issued a formal permit for exploitation: the Cooperative gained a license in 1993 in flagrant contradiction to the law because the Territory received its final legal recognition in 1991 (Ricardo (ed.): 41). A figure of 3000 miners is mentioned at this time, around 1990-2, as exploring a number of streams in the Indian area. Another loan from the World Bank (after 1992), for the so-called Prodeagro program, benefited the Indians because it furnished the funds available only after the government met some conditions about the removal of prospectors and implementing territorial guarantees for Indigenous Territory (but only in 1992; Santos 2000: 50; notwithstanding the support of another international campaign to protect the Sararé). It also aided in financing regularization, control and vigilance of the lands (Costa 2000: 55). After a renewed invasion of around 8000 men, a town arose complete with pharmacies, bars and shops. The nearby city of Pontes e Lacerda lived mainly from the proceeds and profits from gold and timber from indigenous territories (Serafim 2000: 26; he also noted that the combined population was over 10,000). Only in the beginning of 1997 were the prospectors finally expelled by another large FUNAI and federal police operation[lxxxv]. The environmental damages may last for forty years. The people involved in the lumber trade associated themselves with this invasion and the Indians practically lost control over the entire region along the mountain range. It was then in 1993 the lumber company’s attraction front presented itself as an alternative source for all external goods and succeeded in motivating the Indians to expel FUNAI and all other agencies.

A small recovery is registered particularly since the decompression of the extraneous pressures and population growth allowed the Indians to disperse into four smaller villages in search of living space for the component local groups (Santos 2000: 26). The three new villages are localized along the mountain range, one being of the elder who was the last leader of the Waterfall People, and relatively close to the original home range in the proposed new territory (Fiorini und.). The second village has another esteemed elder and his relatives. The last settlement is the only one founded by a younger leader without a resident elder. Everywhere in the new villages dating from after 1997 the houses are built in the traditional way. In this sense the reorganization of the population in space serves not only a better way of occupancy of the larger territory, it also conforms to the re-assertion of the old pre-contact local group loyalties and encourages local autonomy. Even the inter-marriages and the mixture of the groups did not reduce the loyalty to their own local groups and their separation from one another when the necessary conditions permitted. The different segments mobilized themselves to regain former autonomies: the recurrence of their own ancestor spirits, lands, and mode of life (a tendency also seen for the Negarotê). Whenever feasible the old patterns resurge and a resistance to imposition, deculturation and acculturation occur consistent with the image of the proud people described by Price. Belief in oneself and ones’ mode of life survived the onslaughts of the self-styled civilization. The contemporary situation received a significant support from the latest modality of civil action increasingly popular in the 1990s among the neoliberal Cardoso government. Cardoso’s administration contracted non-governmental organizations for specific missions and allotted many tasks to projects managed by NGOs. For the last few years one carried out a project of planting large portions of land with a fruit-bearing palm tree, called açaí[lxxxvi]. The idea is an ecologically sound alternative for the future as the source of outside revenue to replace any temptation of substituting FUNAI and reintroducing logging. The organization also built a house in the village closest to the to-be demarcated area, effectively contributing to fixate the new villages. After the turbulent years of all these brutal interventions and experiences of conquest, dominance and the attempts to impose an extraneous template of dependency and inferiority, such action improved the morale and self-esteem of the peoples.

The younger generations partake in the traditional culture and apparently have a strong feeling of continuity and identity with ancestral traditions while still managing to be dynamic in solving new problems. Being well-versed in tradition does not mean that there is any less attraction to the outside. The missionary invites young men to meetings, or to boarding school, but latter experiment seems now to have failed, and attracts very few. The commencement of courses for local health agents and the like also create opportunities to visit the regional society at no costs and to get acquainted with the apparent overwhelming supply of goods. The miners sometimes tried to maintain reasonable neighborly relations by gifting some items to the people they stole from. The nearby fazenda invented another goodwill gesture, a few young men play in the soccer team; some visit employees who are friends; and the manager allows fishing in the pond. Relatively good relations seem to be reciprocal. When it was discovered that some young people stole some objects from the ranch, the community’s pooled funds from the pensions covered the losses. The fazenda, however, thought the event a sufficient reason to construct a fence between the fazenda and Indian Territory. For the two main entrances to the Indigenous Territory, by the way, locks and fences of the adjacent properties located on their own former territory must be opened (but at least FUNAI received the keys). The logging operators provided consumable goods and a view on expanded wants and desires on a level not previously socially defined as imperative or acceptable. The small quantity of mahogany left in the Guaporé Valley probably is mostly still standing in parts of the Sararé Indigenous Territory and the loggers are extremely interested in exhausting this last reservoir. Repeatedly they stealthily invade the area, try to corrupt young Indians, FUNAI, and the other Whites, threaten their lives and play with accusations against incorruptible people (either the accusations may achieve the removal of the accused, or it may intimidate or constrain the accused up to the point that he cannot stop the invaders).

The current relative tranquility is only partial and has an unknown duration. The pressures to engage in the depletion of forest resources are strong and relentless. On the positive side, the population growth and the founding of new villages assure the continuity of the Sararé as a whole and, in a mode not easily detectable at the moment, of the surviving component parts of the group cluster. The astonishing resilience and adherence to their unique sociocultural models of world view and practice guaranteed the physical, sociocultural and linguistic persistence in a transformed modality. Just as the Nambikwara do Campo, the Valley peoples demonstrated resilience, tenacity, resistance, and a capacity to rebuild social life after terrifying, fragmenting, and very disrupting experiences. To regroup, transcend depopulation, actualize some form of a viable social life with the remnants of the extinct peoples by (temporary) fusing and pooling the means of social reproduction until conditions warranted division and repossession of territory, demonstrates a strong sense of identity, of autonomy as a core value, and of a deep attachment to the land (among which the supernatural ties are notable). The survivors of waves of diseases transformed their grief, knowledge and will to perpetuate a mode of life into a life project of safeguarding their heritage. The Nambikwara ensemble’s emphasis on individual autonomy and their own specific knowledge instead of material goods or elaborate collective rituals, empowered these individuals and facilitated the resurgence of local groups composed of segments of villages or village-sets. The regional pre-existing alliances of what probably constituted the sub-set Sararé of the Valley Nambikwara cluster also bestowed the remainders of the villages with the means to enjoin in this project despite the high tensions in the forced conviviality of the sharing local group. Significantly, despite territorial contraction, some relation of autochthony of the continual reciprocity with the land and its ancestral guardians persisted by relocating within the bounds of this territory or by being near to one’s home territory; the souls of the ancestors feed the sentiment of belonging to the land and its traditions.

Linguistically speaking, the dialectical differences in the post-contact generation disappear in the intense social life during the time when all of the Sararé were forced to live in one single village. The renewed transformed language, which is in itself a product of these historical contingencies, is not threatened (in the new generations fusing into one language; Borella 2001, personal communication). It is the first language to all and therefore its reproduction is guaranteed. It is the common daily language used in interactions and collectively held highly. It is a relevant predicate in defining oneself and others and is gradually becoming a written language, developing its own spelling different from the writing system developed for the Nambikwara do Campo. If the long historical trend in the conquering dominating society towards the incremented acceptance of Indian peoples’ distinctiveness and relative autonomy persists, the context will be favorable to language maintenance and a sociocultural adjustment to the surrounding society with its pretensions to superiority. Price’s predictions and expectations did not always bear out. For example, to the best of my knowledge the military fazenda on the Nambikwara Indigenous Territory did not prevent repossession of the Indian Land. Some fazenda owners lost parcels of their land, one owner whose bridge across the Sararé River had to be burned twice to this day laments the loss of his best land.

The future may be another country. Scenarios for the future composed of the factors aligned above are hazardous. Fortunately, identity and language do not seem to be in any immediate danger. The major danger for the tranquility of the Sararé may lie with the economic situation. Presently the economic exchange with the capitalist economy seems to be in relative equilibrium. On the one hand, the autochthonous access to the productive means of sustenance appears to guarantee fulfillment of the basic daily needs. On the other, the still relatively limited wants of the large majority of the population with respect to outside commodities also guarantees the limited need for the goods or raw materials to be produced by the Indians to pay for industrialized imports. Thus, the major danger in the future concerns the creation of many new wants that can only be satisfied by the incoming flow of extraneous commodities acquired by the exchange of local produce. The major problem of a sharp increase in wants is finding a steady and sustainable flow of goods or raw materials marketable on the outside. That is, marketable, sustainable in the ecological sense and non-disruptive of normal social life while the produce has to be absorbed by markets completely uncontrollable by the Indians. For the Sararé this would imply the transformation from mode of living with a great or total measure of self control, to a partial economic dependency on an uncontrollable, ethnocentric and largely incomprehensible conquering society. If the ethnic identity and the sense of the sociocultural necessity of perpetuity of language and tradition appears to be guaranteed, both by internal motives and external demands and tendencies, the future will be an exercise to transform the experience of conquest into a creative adjustment to a new mode of life. At least the Sararé will be able to discuss, think and propose in their language, and enjoy all the concomitant advantages such totalizing competent fluency provides to the community of speakers.

Notes
[i] Indigenous modes of warfare differ considerably from western conceptions and the Indian reaction certainly represents some new modality even if it would difficult to define the logic of the former mode of regime of hostility (see for example Descola 1993). Ferguson argued that almost all modes of war after contact are affected by conquest (1990).
[ii]It is no coincidence this policy draws various ethnocentric and other criticism but it is only viable when the remaining groups are relatively few and the conquest of Brazil’s rightful territory is completed.
[iii] The province president did not mince words about the Bororo’s relationship: ten years of subjugation by the use of too brand means (ib.: 33). Note that this was in the same year as the Canudos War, when the supposedly backward racially inferior inhabitants of the sertão defeated various expeditions of the army before being massacred in the name of civilization.
[iv] This is an assumption not demonstrated here. However, as the state (like the province) had relatively large numbers of Indians occupying important tracts of land, this is almost certainly true. It is, it may be noted, certainly true today (2000-7).
[v] It is interesting to note that the expression national society has such a time depth because it is currently the usual expression to designate the country in opposition to the native peoples (and normal in anthropologists’ usage). Originally the idea appears to connote the idea that the aboriginals never could constitute a real polity. Tribes in this sense are conceived of as unequal and a political phase prior to the Nation-State whose national society is the ideal and true mode of political organization.
[vi] Price translated a large part of the article in English (1984) but the complete reproduction is in Spanish in Price (1983a). These two articles are basically the same in the main materials cited, except for some cuts and changes in the sequence, but the earlier publication is more complete and somewhat more comprehensive (I translate the Spanish in all references to fill in the gaps when necessary). The expression center means the interior of a region, usually away from the more inhabited areas. In the Amazon the expression is used by the rubber gatherers to refer to the area away from the river.
[vii] Melville thought he had found a bunch of happy natives in the Marquesas Islands. He viewed the Europeans arrived with misgivings, “Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosoms the vipers whose bite is destined to poison all their joys … Ill fated people! I shudder when I think of the change a few years will make in their paradiasic abode” (quoted in Bell 1995 :44). True enough, they dwindled from fifty thousand to some six thousand in one generation.
[viii] At this time deserts sometimes referred to regions believed nearly devoid of inhabitants. The notion of empty spaces in the interior also has a long history and is not a recent invention of any of the state-sponsored movements to occupy Amazonia.
[ix] At this time no objective written media existed. All newspapers belonged to political and partisan groups, and most articles reflected political leanings.
[x] It is difficult to reconstruct such meanings without more documentary and ethnographic evidence. When possible, the results are fascinating. Gow offers such penetrating analysis (2001: ch.7).
[xi] So far the linguistic research among the Katitauhlu has not uncovered the same attitude and the term seems to be used neutrally.
[xii] As long as the salt made the food unbearable, the Whites would be the ‘strangest stranger’ because their normal food was inedible, contrary to foods consumed by Indian allies or foes.
[xiii] The salient place of the Giant Hawk Spirit among the Nambikwara do Campo and its dangerous role for the unburied dead will be discussed below. Perhaps large predatory birds are dangerous to people and by association the Whites who resemble them reinforce the image of potential danger.
[xiv] Of course, Price specifically asked about him too. Still, the systematic account of these movements discloses the importance of the semi-legendary figure. The registration of many details is common in this kind of testimony.
[xv] Price (1983a: 625) remarks that the hunter probably carried the game by means of a headband; thus he was looking down and not seeing the road before him. This explains the inattentiveness of the hunter who certainly would not be surprised when still hunting.
[xvi] This might explain the personal names, because another researcher does not mention any deceased by name in respect to the Nambikwara do Campo custom of not saying aloud the names of the dead (Costa 2000: 24). The Wasusu, on the other hand, sometimes do and under certain circumstances such names can be mentioned (Fiorini 2000). Possibly the practice in the savanna is also not as absolute as thought to be by Costa.
[xvii] The Indians complained incessantly about their presence and invasions to Rondon’s people. They took and destroyed their rubber collecting tools and harassed them at night with the sound of diurnal animals. According to the medic of the Rondon Commission, they did this without being seen (cited in Costa 2000: 43). They were wise enough to avoid being shot at. This scaring strategy may be the same as before in the south and relied, unwittingly, on the stereotypes of the cannibal savage.
[xviii] This is a printing error; he means the Kithaulú and not Kithaulá, the people amongst whom he did his major fieldwork.
[xix] Price noted that this is Alfonso França, the administrator from 1943 to 1969 of the Pireneus de Souza Indian Post (Price 1983a: 625). As the Kithaulú live in an adjacent area, they knew him personally from visits.
[xx] These locations refer to the telegraph stations (Price 1983a: 625).
[xxi] During a 1912 visit on the Juína, someone noted a shotgun in an apparently uncontacted village that had been traded with people from Campos Novos (Price 1983a: 626).
[xxii] One of them being a shaman, the expertise and wisdom of shamanism are more relative in this case than the high level of intelligence and knowledge demonstrated in the Sabanê myth of the transformation into animals. It is true that the shaman doubted the wisdom of his action but acceded to the wish of his companion. Apparently, the shaman did not know better but relented to the pressure of a confidant as negating a request is unsociable. The same thing occurred in the myth of the neighbouring Wasusu, and thus very likely the Sararé resemble them. The latter shows parallels the Nambikwara do Campo myth in which the Harpy Eagle was the first Owner (Fiorini 2000).
[xxiii] He did lobby for land but only rarely, however there were few legal provisions. He did so in 1918, when Colonel Rondon presented the State Assembly of Mato Grosso with data to implement a reserve at the sources of the Arinos and Paranatinga Rivers. The war going on in this area induced the state president to accept the plan to end hostilities by reserving land enough for sufficient means of subsistence to the wild Indians, who, as usual, live in a nomadic state (Corrêa 1918: 40). Most state legislators were wary to grant land rights.
[xxiv] It may seem strange that Price in his discussion of Western given names does not mention this particular situation. In effect, it appears very little known even among students of Nambikwara. Price (1983b: 147), however, does not mention the original source, a book from 1917, only a previous article about his trip from 1912. This article probably did not discuss the situation as clearly as the book, Price would have certainly discussed it. Also, Price, as far as I know, did not speak German. Note that this would not be a clear case of confusion created by ‘Western classification’ because the confusion derived from the imposition of a stigma by the other two Paresi segments.
[xxv] He started to live in the region in 1959 and stayed at least until 2000 or 2001. Borella and I met the couple in 2000 when they kindly received us in their house in Vilhena from which they continued to visit the Nambikwara and were involved in educational projects of bilingualism. A few small booklets have been produced to support and stimulate literacy in the native language. This laudable part of their work in favor of language maintenance is said to form part of a literacy program aiming at the preservation of myths and legends (ib.: 2). Nevertheless, the main effort in print has been the publication of a Nambikwara Bible. They asserted that a resulting bilingual dictionary inspired Indian pride in their native language.
[xxvi] The authors do not explain how they ascertained the year; perhaps they used an outside source. The general context sits well with the expansion of rubber and that must be significant even if the exact year might have been a problem. França of Espirro reported the measles in this year and also, without ever visiting the villages, attributed the same epidemic as reaching the Mamaindê (and again in 1961; Aspelin 1975: 24-5).
[xxvii] Price described the pattern of villages on the savanna poetically: “(…) [they tend to cluster like] a series of headwater forests arranged like leaves along the stem of a major stream” (Price 1982b: 185).
[xxviii] Note how the descriptor comfortable contrasts with Lévi-Strauss’ observation of miserable primitives at the edge of starvation in the dry season when they are forced to eat anything to escape hunger. This letter must be the one that is mentioned in his major work on the regrettable World Bank experience (Price 1989b: 49; the paragraph cited confers as does the size). Here he candidly adds that the letter produced no more than two other letters (one by his father). However, the Bank never made clear if these were the only ones to arrive or the only ones they were able to trace to his action. This led to his classification by the Bank as a radical firebrand (ib.: 52-3).
[xxix] This comes from an updated FUNAI memo cited previously and present in “O Projeto Nambiquara”. This includes the simplicity of female seclusion rites, absent from the Southern Nambikwara of the Valley (Serafim 2000: 40).
[xxx] If we take the conservative figure of 0.02 person/km² for the whole of the estimated original Nambikwara territory of 50,000 km², the result is only 1,000 people. After suffering the losses resulting from conquest, Price estimated only 0.01 person/km² in 1976 (cited in Setz 1983: 11).The size of the ecologically more interesting territory may also be underestimated with respect to the Northern Nambikwara and the Valley: Price thought an estimate of 20.000 people by Rondon’s people too high for a territory largely made of “inhospitable savanna” (Price 1994: 66). Hence in his latest estimate he arrived only at the figure of 6.000 Indians (ib.: id.). At one time Price proposed the larger area of 55,000 km² (Price 1975: 5), if true the population would be greater. However, with only a slightly larger number of the mean average of people/km², the total numbers would increase considerably. For instance, in one study the number proposed is 0.06 people/km², elevating the population to 3,000. If, as in an quoted example, 80 people exploit 9000 ha., then the density of this particular occupancy amounts to 1.1 people/ km²: a much larger figure for 1900 than customarily given follows (55.000; based on the work of Aspelin; report on the situation of Amazonian indigenous peoples available at http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Sonja/RF/Ukpr/Report49.htm, accessed 2001).
[xxxi] Price and Cook (1969: 690) still thought the name is ánunsú, but this in the Sararé region may mean village and not people (information by the linguist Borella). Hence, it is likely that Price changed his mind after his post-1968 experiences.
[xxxii] Price used village cluster in both articles but the difference in size makes the second use of cluster into the notion of village of the first instance. The second usage appears a review of the former consigning the attribute of a set to the former village; the same local group may have more than one village and forms part of a larger regional set. This is the view I actually favor (this seems to have applied to the Lakondê and concurs with the Sabanê transmitted idea of a possibly all–inclusive category of Kulimansi. In fact, around 1981 (Price und: 1), he is quite clear that “Each local group consisted of a single village or two or more villages that were closer to each other than to other villages”. The other possibilities are that Price simply forgot his previous usage and mixed the terms or perhaps he adhered to the confusion created by history where because of depopulation, the distinction between the two collapsed, as in the narrative where neighbors joined in a new melange to re-establish social viability.
[xxxiii] This might have to do with the notion of viciousness attributed to violent and more distant peoples, as wild in Portuguese (brabo) connotes fierce.
[xxxiv] Lévi-Strauss asserted in an article for the Handbook of South American Indians (very likely penned in the early 1940s) “(…) polygamy is the privilege of the chief and other important men” (1948: 366). He also credited the shaman as being distinguished with the same privilege and notwithstanding the common combination of being a shaman and chief, adds that he is sometimes a distinct man (ib.: 369). This is an article which is mainly consulted by specialists so the contradiction is widely unnoticed.
[xxxv] For example, the leader of the village in the savanna at Campos Novos died in the “great measles epidemic of 1945” and only left two very small sons (Price 1987: 9). Expectably, in normal life the composition of the village is much less subject to changes and dividing or joining factions maintain strong kin relations (Price 1987: 10).
[xxxvi] This information comes from Price’s latest article on the geopolitical organization of the Nambikwara. Here he emphasized the flux from concentration to fragmentation and vice-versa as a more general model of fusion and fission and the importance of leadership in the process. This, however, is contradictory to his earlier article on leadership where the flux and influence of the leader himself was played down (albeit in opposition to Lévi-Strauss). I think it is revelatory that the examples cited (1987: 17-8) are all post-epidemic events. It seems likely that in pre-contact times there was less fluidity involved in village formation, unless occupying new lands (see Price’s argument about the occupation of the Paresis Plateau 1987: 18-22).
[xxxvii] Information contained in a report from the FUNAI Work Group entitled: Relatório Área Indígena: Pireneus de Souza (20/10/1981, illegible signature; copy in the archives of ISA). The legislative measure references the land proposed by Rondon mentioned by the president of the state in 1918. However, the land proposed does not coincide with the Pireneus de Souza Area. Rondon may have lobbied for more than one area.
[xxxviii] The metaphor of the cake is from a powerful Minister of Economics at the service of the military in the 1970s who always maintained that the cake must grow before it can be divided. In other words, development and economic growth should precede the redistribution of national wealth. This thwarted any kind of redistribution policy and today the inequality of wealth in Brazil is one of the highest in the world. Some economists affirm, on the contrary, that only an active government intervention can have an effect (M. Dias David, “L’économie des pauvretés, des inégalitiés et de l’accumulation des richesses dans le Brésil contemporain”. Talk at 10/10/2001, CRBC, Paris).
[xxxix] Proceedings of the First Meeting of the Indigenist Council of Funai, held on October 27, 1975. This Council was called together by the FUNAI president to discuss indigenous affairs and to receive advice on policy matters to be undertaken by the agency. Originally, after the foundation of FUNAI this was to be a directive organ but soon it was demoted to an advisory status. Many presidents did not ever convene with the Council.
[xl] Padronal is Brazilian place name located at the south of Vilhena somewhat to the south of the source of the Doze de Outubro River. From here the encroachment also severely affected the Mamaindê.
[xli] These different titles of different epochs and institutes continue to produce proprietors claiming compensation in federal courts (Costa 2000: 46).
[xlii] Although “intent” may be hard to prove, it may very well be argued that part of the UN definition of genocide applies to the aim of forced dislocation: (…) genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: […] 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (Hinton 2002: 2-3). As will be seen below, in all instances forced removal caused suffering, destruction and impairment of conditions of demographic and sociocultural reproduction. As with the Latundê, the imposition of fatal circumstances on the conquered, even without deliberate killing, should count as genocidal practice (Maybury –Lewis 2002).
[xliii] Take the Indigenous Territory of Utiariti as example. Among the various people who live there are the descendents of the Nambikwara do Campo encountered in near isolation by Lévi-Strauss. Today the large landholding dedicated to soya and its open space ends at the low forest of the savanna where the Indigenous Territory begins.
[xliv] These peoples are the ones regionally known as Nambikwara by all of the named units of the Nambikwara ensemble and now live in the Nambikwara Indigenous Territory.
[xlv] Recall that in some places, and especially among Catholics, the belief is that a person not baptized is not a fully human being (in a contemporary populous neighborhood in Recife, M. Lins Reesink personal communication). Historically, these non-human pagans are thought of as animals.
[xlvi] Although his prestige did not stop the almost completely black population of Vila Bela to secretly go on killing Indians. As said by one elder who met Rondon: “He wanted no killing of Indians. But we killed them secretly, only we were to die? Out of sight, when close by, we killed too, because nobody wanted to die.” (Bandeira 1988: 75). Either us or them, that is presented as the choice of the time. In other words, a long history of black and Indian relations of hostilities: from the maroon communities who stole women, but did not flourish afterwards, to the attacks on Vila Bela that, according to black tradition, caused suffering and hardship. Today sentiments express superiority and benevolence (ib.: 75-6).
[xlvii] In this epoch the official expression for Indian land was Indian Reserve; later this changed to Indigenous Land, the current designation. The word Reserve sometimes provoked the anti-indigenous interests to claim that the Indians should not be granted large reserves, no land at all, or no permanent possession as if some zoological specimen to be protected, isolated and not allowed to follow general human evolution. The ethnocentric evolutionary reasoning thus appealed to the same attitude of we know what is best for the primitives. In the early seventies one minister at the service of the military dictatorship actually expressed himself in practically such terms. It is a sign of the times and a sign of FUNAI’s role expressed with the ministers’ maxim, The Indian should never impede development.
[xlviii] Although according to Father Dornstauder (1975), it was he that led a large number of expeditions to pacify the various segments of the Rikbaksta (as documented in this book-size article; he mentions (ib.: 174) taking Tolksdorf along on his thirtieth expedition, beginning in September 1959). So perhaps the merit of this pacification may have due to the Father and very little to Tolksdorf.
[xlix] Along with a specific kind of occupancy that strung along the river, possibly one regional group spun out along a set of villages. In the Guaporé Valley where in places the forest extends in all directions, Agostinho hypothesized that the pattern differed towards a concentric model of occupancy that may have favored the contraction of the local group to one village. However, this contraction may have been already shaped by the population losses.
[l] The expression cleaning or cleansing of an area has taken on a specifically negative connotation, but the displacements projected and carried out did, as will be evident presently, caused much psychological stress and many deaths. Hence, even though not as genocidal as the current connotation suggests, the policy might be considered a modality of ethnic cleansing.
[li] The information on the Wasusu in the article by Puttkamer is scanty and the government actions to remove the Indians from their land is depicted as if it was a neutral decision made by prior office holders and corrected when the archeological team also uncovered the long term presence of the Nambicuara in their own territory. Furnished with this proof by FUNAI, the government followed suit by ending the policy of small reserves and replacing them with one large reserve, the overall explanation of government action and inaction is mainly lacking. The author was a friend of Tolksdorf (and both of German origin).
[lii] This is still contained in the previously mentioned proceedings. Another FUNAI document quoted alleged that the agency erred in not arranging an immediate meeting between the old and new project coordinator and that this created a climate of mistrust and growing dislike between the two men. Though this may have contributed, it is evident from these remarks and further evidence that the conflict really concerned the direction of the agency’s work. Not the least of factors was the continued interference of the formerly responsible agent. Tolksdorf lobbied with his supporters within the agency to remove Price and they used the customary weapons of false rumors and accusations against him. Some such accusations Tolksdorf himself was thought to be guilty of, like taking bribes from ranchers (Price 1989b: 21).
[liii] I do not quite understand this affirmation of 1989 because the area, as far as is evident from the map I saw, should have included Sararé villages or traditional village sites. In his Project dated January 1975, Price remarked that two villages are situated within the limits. Maybe this is a slip because of his insufficient knowledge of the Guaporé Valley at the time of the Project.
[liv] Again, the underlying idea being that their land is similar to a parcel of private property within the boundaries of the country, and not the territory of a people. The Indians’ land should be equated with the notion of a territory and is analogous to a country, not a farm.
[lv] A copy of this map is in the archives of the OPAN (Operação Amazônia Indígena), in Cuiabá. This map details the names of groups and features that demonstrate the occupancy of the entire region.
[lvi] This is from Price’s August 15, 1977 report. Instead of fixed Indian Posts, the Project employed circulating Indian agents and thus countered the common model of symbolic domination of the Post. Generally the Nambikwara do not appreciate the idea of a Post chief because the person given this position often demands strict obedience from the Indians, something that they obviously dislike (undated report on the Project by Price). Pedro Agostinho’s (1996) evaluation of the Project strongly approved of its directives and execution and recommended its continuity.
[lvii] Contrary to common belief, such causes are not natural at all. Price reminded readers of this fact. In his 1980 letter denouncing World Bank support of Polonoroeste, he estimates a 90% decline of the pre-contact population over a period of ten years if modern western health care is withheld from these populations. As noted in Parts I and II, when such choices are made with knowledge of the expected outcome, this may be considered genocide.
[lviii] The reference for all this information comes from a small booklet celebrating their 45 years of missionary work edited by the Christian Mission Foundation in Brazil (Bruijns 2001; chapter 3).
[lix] Protestant missionaries usually interpret this kind of chance event as divine indication of a place or a people as the object of a mission.
[lx] He also had hospital in Vila Bela. Price admired his supportive and practical stance and considered him a friend (Price 1989b: 98-9).
[lxi] These names coincide with the few names I collected myself. The names given by Price were always recognized as group names by a few younger men I questioned in an effort to verify. The neighboring Wasusu added another name still, but, then again, this name can refer to one of the component villages also being given as another name of the list (Fiorini does not explain if he thinks the name refers to a seventh distinct group).
[lxii] Price first arrived in the Sararé region when they were all congregated near the missionary’s house and the three major groups which already maintained relations of reciprocity also suffered the impact of epidemics in the early 1960s (Fiorini und.: 6). It was when they were thoroughly deplenished in numbers that the mission, and later FUNAI, attracted them all to a new site.
[lxiii] Concept by Charny, cited in Maybury-Lewis, who adds: “Indigenous peoples have often been the victims of genocidal massacres, where the slaughter is on a smaller scale and results from a general attitude toward indigenous peoples rather than necessarily being part of a campaign for total elimination of the victim population. On the other hand, campaigns of extermination are characteristic of those phases of colonization in which the invaders have decided on a course of ethnic cleansing to rid a territory of its indigenous inhabitants and appropriate it for themselves. In the heyday of colonialism such exterminations were often justified in the name of progress” (Maybury-Lewis 2002: 45). Here, as in Rondônia, we were still in the heyday of internal colonialism: without overt campaigns but with occasional genocidal massacres and other genocidal practices. Bringskens communicated the fact to the local military detachment which investigated and confirmed the massacre (although the date is given as January 1968). Armed thieves were trying to steal horses from the Indians. The village was on the “property” of the Colonizadora do Sul do Brasil. The National Security Council investigated this company later (FUNAI document from 1979 on the general situation of the Nambikwara signed by two anthropologists, one other functionary and one of Price’s collaborator and making an argument against the proposed expropriation of lands and in favor of the necessity to demarcate ample lands on traditional territory). It must be noted that, more than ten years, no mention is made of any criminal investigation or judicial action to punish the perpetrators. Carelli and Severiano (ib.: id.) also affirm the authorities ignored the massacre.
[lxiv] The Indians gave them “chicha”, a drink made form maize fermented in a hollow tree trunk. They also ate sugar cane. In other words, the Indians planted sufficient maize to make this beverage.
[lxv] Cited in an article written for Cultural Survival at the time of the World Bank loan for the construction of the BR364 in the Polonoroeste scheme (Price 1982a). After Fuerst spent some time in the main contacted village (he was unable to visit the other villages), he estimated a population of somewhere between fifty and a hundred.
[lxvi] The Latundê suffered a post-contact epidemic that in a sense was even worse. Less than a quarter of the Sararé population tallied by Price a few years prior eventually survived but not all knowledgeable adults perished.
[lxvii] As a FUNAI employee Santos did not discuss merits but asserted the need to intervene to avoid decimating the group (2000: 20). Although Carelli and Severiano generally denounce FUNAI accessory behavior, they agree that the action saved lives (1980: 12).
[lxviii] Moreover, Santos affirmed that the mythical origin of the Nambikwara for the Sararé lies within the Sararé region. He did not cite the myth or the place but this contributes to the same phenomenon (2000: 5).
[lxix] As mentioned above. As a last and concrete example, the dry season pest killed many people and domestic and wild animals in 1789-1790 in the region of the Serra do São Vicente (A. Rodrigues Ferreira, 1791, manuscript in Biblioteca Nacional, courtesy Dr. Caselli Anzai). That is, in the disputed mining area. The probability of contagion must have been quite high.
[lxx] Different peoples may have built up some differentiated knowledge. The problem of interpreting epidemics was solved after contact by attributing poisoning to the Whites and thus separating this epidemic from the Hatasu; the compartmentalizing between two domains of illness also preserves the Indigenous theory and practice.
[lxxi] One of these groups, the Central Valley Manairisu, passed through the Sararé village and that caused some tense relations. According to the story, they even boasted that they eat people (and the Sararé apparently believed the claim). Despite the numerical inferiority, the Sararé, who are very skilled in war, killed one man of the other group on the way back. In other conflicts with other groups they also consider themselves as invincible victors.
[lxxii] Price estimated the effects after contact, but as noted repeatedly, there was unofficial contact for years and the Indians suffered greatly from this.
[lxxiii] The narrative quoted is from a man of the post-contact generations. Note that he too observed that the elders did not tell much about these stories owing to the sadness inherent in such memories. The narrator is one of the better speakers of Portuguese in the Territory. For example, speaking about the different villages he remarked on the nature of the distinction as being one of etnias, ethnic groups (a scholarly term rare among Indians). This classification concurs with the discussion above about the conception of peoples and villages.
[lxxiv] They present themselves as teachers and restrict, but do not eliminate, evangelization. The booklet celebrating the missionary’s activity is a bit incorrect in asserting that the current couple are linguists and trumpeting their attempt to learn the Nambikwara language (and translate the Bible). Despite their efforts to learn the language, they only have a basic vocabulary. They did not present themselves to me as linguists or scholars (and they downplayed the missionary status and stressed their role as teachers to Borella).
[lxxv] Price also thought the Northern Nambikwara of Marco Rondon and Seringal do Faustino were eager to move, although some testimonies I heard suggest otherwise.
[lxxvi] This is the same minister who asserted in arrogant ethnocentric tranquility that a few Indians must not impede progress and must accept the benefits of assimilation.
[lxxvii] One lawyer did observe that the Interior Minister ordered a faster Indian integration into the national community (usually a legal phrase misunderstood as a brief for forced assimilation). This, in his opinion, was incompatible with the conservationist intent of the untouched nature for the reserved land of the ranches. And locating the Indians in these areas would produce an unwanted effect: it would keep them in a position of eternal dependency on nature. It seems, therefore, someone in Brasilia considered himself not to be dependent anymore on nature. The concomitant stereotype of fragility of Indian mode of subsistence and the negative connotation continue today.
[lxxviii] Price visited the place for less than a day and since his Nambikwara was rusty and of a slightly different Campo dialect, he could not verify his information. If we add up the numbers it is quite possible that the total population did not add up to the latest census. Still, not having plummeted to a lower level indicates a platform from which the group may recover. On the positive side, the persistence of the Indian agent in the Guaporé Valley produced a 2.1% growth between 1975-9. Unfortunately, the infant mortality rate and that of youth were both very high. As he does not specify the figures for each local group it is unclear if and how the Sararé are included in these figures (Price und.: 7).
[lxxix] They do point out the inconsistency of leaving out the airstrip and adjacent village from this reduced version. This suggests that no profound study preceded the selection of this area. After Price, FUNAI apparently abandoned the relocation projects and acted to reduce the prior total to slightly over 10% of the original terrain.
[lxxx] Reducing the northern neighbors (Hahaintesu), for example, to 22,000 ha wedged in between one fazenda of 100,000 ha and three fazendas of 400,000 ha (Carelli and Severiano 1980: 20).
[lxxxi] In 1982 the population distributed over three villages was 43 and in 1985 it was 55. One group was at the Post, and the other two were nearby, the tendency to live with one’s own group reasserted itself. One of the outside villages was led by the elder of the Waterfall People later residing in the mountains (Torres 1986).
[lxxxii] Other factors may interfere, for instance a wish not to contradict the Indians. In the case of the young missionary couple, for example, who felt worried about the political dependency created by their authorization to stay in the village by the Indians and only later attempted to introduce a balanced exchange (in national terms), i.e. the fair worth of an item on the national market.
[lxxxiii] A town like Comodoro, a recently emancipated municipality, is notorious for the fact it does not lie on forested land and still continues to be economically viable because of timber.
[lxxxiv] When speaking of the old Kwaza woman who wandered in the forest on long treks around Chupinguaia, the Aikaná commented about these Indians that they thought the forest would never end.
[lxxxv] Vincent Carelli made a video “Boca Livre Sararé” (CTI, São Paulo), translated as “”Sararé Free Lunch” in which he documented the situation and its tensions.
[lxxxvi] The association was conceived by one of the agents who initiated their labor with Price. This employee occupied a post high in the bureaucratic hierarchy and this let him dedicate special attention to the Sararé. This is temporary and it highlights how much of the historical situation of a people depends on the political vicissitudes and not on any consistent agency policy.

The awful unfolding scene of the future
It is difficult to predict the future. After completing work on the three Nambikwara peoples above I decided to try to establish a few parameters and attempt to limit the scope of what future scenarios may come into play. This brings to mind the volumes of memoirs written by Sir Winston Churchill on his participation in the tremendous and costly events of WWII. Here, only a few years after the appalling events that left so many dead and engendered the reality of the very word genocide, Churchill pondered what way, exactly, his experience could aid in avoiding human tragedy. He believed that he did not write history, that was the work of a future generation, instead his goal was to make “(…) a contribution to history which will be of service for the future” (Churchill 1964a: preface; orig. 1948).His account offers a fascinating inside view of a war that brought entire nations into servitude and threatened the existence of a sovereign Great Britain. Many European countries suffered from the Nazi occupation and domination of their lands and, in reality, their attendant transformation into German colonies. Churchill, and according to his account, the entire British people, were determined even at the most difficult time of the War in the mid-1940s to continue the fight and never to surrender and accept the loss of freedom. This utter resolve, he clearly affirmed, is a matter of sentiment and values, not merely the expression of any kind of material interests. The feelings of the subjugated peoples and the indomitable spirit for their liberty as a free British people of these times show the force of ideas and values related to ethnic self-determination. I suggest that simply by transposing this historical experience, the author and these European peoples should appreciate the longing for autonomy and admire the resistance and resilience of the Nambikwara peoples whose histories are discussed in this book. The fact is, many people do appreciate this and these are the people who pressured governments to act in accordance with their professed values and insure that laws are obeyed. Of course, the ethnocentric values of civilization and progress in the pre-eminent evolutionary framework conflict with other values and by attributing primitiveness and backwardness to indigenous peoples that, for many people and all governments, justify the suspension of their own pre-eminent notion of self-determination. The Nambikwara congeries and other subjugated peoples think otherwise. These peoples have their own goals and plans for the future.

History is shaped by the unfolding of intersecting multiple causalities and the permanent, simultaneous occurrence of a multifold contingencies and accidents. Human history is both determined and indeterminate by structural causes and open to human agency. The present shapes the future but the scene of the future remains fundamentally open-ended and obscured, especially for the embedded participant. “The veils of the future are lifted one by one, and mortals must live from day to day” (Churchill 1964b: 209). In prospective, science, the main crux that needs to be ascertained is the weight to be attached to the diverse factors contributing to permanence (structural continuity), or transformation (structural change). The larger issue at stake here can hardly be addressed and the particular prospects for the different Nambikwara peoples have already been outlined above. Still a few additional remarks are required. Continuing along the lines of Churchill’s experience, he recounted that before the War, in 1932, he had an opportunity to meet Hitler in Germany, an encounter suggested by a man who was likely the German leader’s emissary. During Churchill’s conversations with this man, he expressed his astonishment about Hitler’s policy towards the Jews. He said he understood such posture if any Jew had done wrong, committed treason, or wanted “(…) to monopolize power in any walk of life; but what is the sense of being against a man simply because of his birth? How can any man help how he is born?’”(Churchill 1964a: 71). True enough, this issue addresses the fundamental question of deprecating and hating all people of a certain social category owing purely to their classification and identification as a certain people. The intermediary must have relayed this doubt, and Hitler apparently considered this sufficient reason to cancel the appointment. In this way the two future enemies never met face-to-face.

The fixed obsession with the Jews as the scapegoat of all evils, and hence a people to be removed from all humanity, reached the point of the notorious, modern and systematic attempt to annihilate this inferior race. To describe the attempt and the incredible number of deaths, the term genocide was invented. The concept of genocide that evolved from the Nazi attempt to exterminate an entire people within their country and conquests remains somewhat ill-defined but it seems apt to assert that the perpetrator defines the target people and then attempts to annihilate the whole or a substantial part of them (definition by Palmer 1998)[i]. This still happened very recently, around 1985, in the Corumbiara region of Rondônia near the Latundê when the village of one people was ambushed and only a few escaped (now known as Akunsun; for some time it was believed they were Nambikwara). There were also cases where “(…) unintended genocidal consequences are noted by the perpetrator, and are continued or increased when genocide is attempted but fails” (Palmer 1998: 90). In this sense the accumulated knowledge of the deleterious after-effects of making contact with uncontacted peoples, or fragments of peoples, were and are all too well known that, in this sense, it can safely be asserted that all of the segments of the Nambikwara ensemble suffered from genocide. In the case of the telegraph line affecting the Sabanê, maybe the practical difficulties of that time may be seen to attenuate the lack of assistance, but the gradual abandonment represents the lack of political will. Building a road through the Sararé territory with no land set apart, and no constant sufficient medical aid provided, was a clear act of genocide. Not furnishing the Latundê with real medical assistance for various years after contact almost destroyed their chances of continuance as a separate people. As Price said, epidemics as natural causes conveniently hides the real cause, and it is quite debatable whether at the time this attitude was mere neglect or worse. If the Akunsun massacre is a case of, let’s say, societal genocide, definitely facilitated by the weak state presence, the Nambikwara ensemble suffered from colonial genocide perpetuated by the purposeful state negligence. In general, official policy considered the obstacles to progress posed by inferior savage Indians as unworthy of any major investment. Formally including the subordinate group within the state as Brazilian citizens, and maintaining a façade of acting in the best interests of the victims, actions which are thwarted by circumstances beyond control, is a larger typical pattern of colonial genocide (Palmer 1998: 92-3). Unworthy of being allotted enough funds, these Indian peoples contributed with an enormous amount of wealth to Brazilian society. Imagine the value of appropriating some 90% of the best lands of an area approximately 500 km² along with the wealth generated by timber, gold, cattle, and crops. Compare this figure to the costs of efficient protection. Unquestionably, the Indians’ contribution to riches of Brazil immensely exceeds the costs incurred.

At the height of this pattern the actions of Price and the Nambiquara Project prevented extinction of most segments of the Nambikwara ensemble. The intertwined combinations of conceptions, values, and material interests almost caused this congeries of peoples to disappear. The history of Brazil abounds with such cases: “Not seldom in the annals of the past – how much more often in tragedies never recorded or long-forgotten – had brave, proud, easy-going states, and even entire races[ii], been wiped out, so that only their name or even no mention of them remains” (Churchill 1964c: 229-230). This observation is correct, yet not only states undergo this fate, although the modern ideology of the nation-state considers this recent creation to be the main actor of history. The fact of being citizens of the state was a foreign notion to the Indians, it confers the obligation to apply other values of Christian civilization, today most significantly joined with the notion of human rights (also a Western creation stemming from WWII). These rights and values are brought to bear on the modern state. In the arena of international politics the issues of human and minority rights provide a framework of protection to the sensitive question of treatment of minorities within the nation-state. These rights counteract the strong internal sociopolitical forces that favor the unleashing the material interests within Brazil that are predisposed to continue the pillage of Indian natural resources. The territories and lives of those peoples officially included as Brazilians by the state, but actually sentimentally excluded as fellow citizens by the very large majority of this people. This would be in consonance with the expansive logic of a supposedly naturally superior capitalism. That is, to the benefit of these national, capitalist and regional interests the Indians are politically included in the nation-state, but in terms of ethnic sentiments, they are very much ethnocentrically excluded, hence sentimentally outsiders and not worth of exaggerated rights.

The contradiction between being simultaneously excluded and included generates the thorough ambivalence of granting certain rights and a degree of Indian autonomy while ultimately still preserving the right to shape the course of events. The state and the nation take for granted their natural right to appropriate the Indians, the Indigenous Territory and all natural resources that are within the national borders. This exemplifies the essence of a colonial regime initiated by the taking of possession by Cabral, this act implies abolishing the Indian peoples’ political autonomy. The self-determination of peoples used to be evident to Churchill, who characterized the Nazi regime as an obviously aggressive colonialist and oppressive domination. When the Germans were about to conquer France, he understood the crucial question to be “(…) if France was still expected to fight on and thus deliver up her people to the certainty of corruption and evil transformation at the hands of ruthless specialists in the art of bringing conquered peoples to heel” (Churchill 1964c: 160-161). The evil transformation mentioned here noticeably relates well with a system of interethnic domination that at the very least results in ethnocide. Structurally speaking not much difference prevails between this view of conquered Europe and the system of internal colonial domination of Indian peoples within the state’s self-defined bounds and rights. The difference lies principally in the ambivalence and contradictory rights in existence that correlates closely with France’s role, but the same rights and status are not extended to peoples enduring internal colonialism. The ambivalent and ambiguous rights contest the accepted notion of conquest and nationalism to challenge the excesses of subordination manifested in genocide, ethnocide and linguicide[iii]. The future will be forged from the clash of interpretations, interests, and legal rights that might enable the Indian peoples in Brazil to regain some control of their territory and their sociocultural and linguistic autonomy, thus strengthening the possibility of their growth as ethnically and culturally distinct peoples within the framework of the Brazilian state. The legal framework poses serious limitations to the expression of self-determination, although the law gives certain essential rights it also limits the autonomy of the Indian peoples. The current law does leave some room for the legal and political contention of important infringements of Indian rights and permits Indian political strife as a valid method to insure a larger measure of autonomy.

As seen above, over the last decades the ambiguous attitude of the state has slowly and reluctantly tilted in favor of a more respectful policy towards the Indian communities. Although the process has had its successes and failures, it is overall best thought of as an uphill battle where the correct implementation of legal rights always and continually provokes strong ethnocentric feelings and political actions (or worse) on the part of the social categories hardest affected by these so-called privileges of the unworthy. In general, and to the distress of many ethnocentric conservative proponents and intellectuals of progress, even without direct interests in Indian resources, the Indians will survive into the present century. Genocide as an option is ruled out and will be increasingly condoned less by the state. Ethnocide and linguicide, however, are still accepted by important parts of Brazilian society but legally it has become difficult to propose such discriminatory action as official policy. In a way, respect for alterity even within the structural constraints of domination could suffice to permit the Indian peoples to vie for the recognition of a package of rights that grant a fairly large measure of autonomy with the respectful assistance of state’s interpretation of a less impositive Indian policy. On the other hand, the dynamic equilibrium between the material interests complemented by ethnocentric common sense and the alternative collective human right of Indians to exist, does not spell an easy route towards this goal. Within a spectre of prospective possibilities the current dominance and the strong disposition to impose sociocultural models of living and economic development will still be going strong and it remains to be seen if providing a larger political space for the dominated to decide their own future will continue long enough.

Words in collision
Language and thought in connection with the sociocultural creation of social life create a subject matter that constitutes the heart of the anthropological enterprise. More importantly, the intricate recursive relation between language as lived words and reality in the sociocultural realization of a multiplicity of lived worlds constitutes the essence of human agents. Languages do not map reality, even if they do not exist in a material vacuum. And yet, in a real sense, within these constraints, language constitutes the reality of each speaker and people. In this manner it seems safe to say that any language fabricates its own unique construal and a unique way of structuring reality. This uniqueness of each language is a powerful argument in favour of continued efforts to preserve endangered languages and promote language maintenance. Simultaneously, every language is fundamentally equal to all others, and all the advanced criteria of establishing any kind of hierarchy of superiority and inferiority between languages are based upon arbitrary standards. The most common opinion about translatability that linguists adhere to states that all languages can express everything originally enunciated in any other language (Lyons 1981: 305; 308-11; Hill and Mannheim 1992: 384). Nonetheless, ethnographers know too well that all efforts to portray the full complexity of a language’s classification systems and its articulated concepts of another language are cumbersome and extensive exercises of denotation and a mesh of connotations. At any rate, the loss of any language means the loss of the many complex socio-cultural encodings of accumulated knowledge, loss of a unique, irreplaceable perspective, and the privation of the proper and fluent means of expression of one particular culture, knowledge of the kind the Nambikwara prided themselves with. Furthermore, even if the relation between reality, language, thought and mind is a debated issue, there is a growing body of research that supports “(…) the proposal the particular language we speak influences the way we think about reality” (Lucy 1997), implying that the language spoken influences memory, perception, day-to-day thinking, and behavior. It seems a weak form of the sometimes misunderstood Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has gained some acceptance (discussed by Hill and Mannheim; 1992) and hence the loss of any language signifies not only the privation of a specific way of thinking and lived worlds for the people concerned, but also an impoverishment for humans as a whole. As Sapir wrote, “The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached” (apud Hill and Mannheim 1992: 385)[iv]. “The world of image and concept, the endless and ever-shifting picture of objective reality, is the unavoidable subject-matter of human communication, for it is only, or mainly, in terms of this world that effective action is possible” (Sapir n.d.: 39).

Unfortunately, it seems that the unfolding scene of the future does not look so bright for language maintenance. Social worlds in collision are also words in collision. Presently, it is predicted that thousands of languages will soon die and some researchers suggest that 90% may vanish within the current generation[v]. A recent and simple mathematical model of language competition attributes the main cause of language shift to status. In this model Abrams et al. started with the assumption that when languages in the same social space compete, there is only one winner. They also suggested that for successful co-existence of multiple languages, there must be clear boundaries between dominant language areas. They added that language planning can reverse the process of language loss essentially by elevating its status. In light of this, the model demonstrates the possibility of a dynamic equilibrium of persisting bilingualism (Abrams and Strogatz 2003). Indigenous Territories may provide the possibly necessary language refuge. The recent trend towards a larger respect for alterity, countering the former (and partially still present) shame attached to speaking an inferior dialect, may provide the stimulus to endorse the normal tendency of the older generations to transmit their own mother tongue[vi]. Perhaps the previous disposition towards multilingualism can be grafted on a renewed positive evaluation of language maintenance of the native language, joined with the advent of bilingualism of Portuguese for the newer generations. This desired situation differs for the three cases in that the Sararé mother tongue would be complemented with the necessity of the national language, the Sabanê urgently need revitalization for the reversal of language death, and the Latundê require weight attached to bilingualism and a sizeable improvement of the current educational situation.

Within this basic model, status only relates to economic and social opportunities and accordingly the results are provisional when dealing with the forces that shape an interethnic system of domination and subordination that is as complex as that of the Brazilian indigenous population. Indeed, when reviewing again the three Nambikwara cases, only the Sararé seem to be in a clear position to maintain their new Sararé language, recently forged from previously different dialects. Furthermore, as the Sararé case demonstrates, history transformed the previously segmented village/village-set model of the Nambikwara ensemble and therefore the currently existing named units should be treated as different peoples, each with different trajectories and particular needs, and not as a monolithic unit called Nambikwara (Reesink i.p.). Consequently, as defining the limits between languages is fundamentally a political and sociocultural act, each contemporary people which is an heir to one or more ancestral groups should be considered as possessing its own proper language (as Latundê and Lakondê in Telles 2002). This is in agreement with what is known of their previous language ideology, which stressed the language differences between the former groups. From the discussion for each people and language a few issues worthy of serious consideration arose. The Latundê need to emerge from the constant official neglect they endured and very likely some active assistance may be required to assure their ethnic survival and, by extension, the language. The Sabanê will maintain their ethnic identity, language loss does not fatally impair being Sabanê and indianidade although the dominant society does not hold these people in high regards. It appears that only a program of a concerted effort of specialists and Indians of the remaining core of elder speakers directed at the reversal of language shift and loss can effectively guard the language from disappearance (and, naturally, in some unknown measure, the culture). Such programs exist and apparently in a similar situation one of them increased the number of younger speakers, although it remains to be seen if the core of surviving speakers suffices (Farfán 2001: 186; if not, then only a curator model of the actually extinct language may be feasible, Furbee and Stanley 2002). Solutions then do exist[vii]. The problem here once more concerns the basic neglect and lack of political will within the interethnic system of domination. Policy makers and politicians still predominantly presume that the Indians will naturally be attracted to civilization and their language and culture will disappear as a matter of course. The recent increasing international attention to language rights (with important declarations that may help stimulate further official action), and the promotion of the notion that a truly democratic society is obliged to optimally develop its diverse linguistic and cultural riches, help the cause of preservation (Paulston 1997).

Nambikwara history moves within the larger framework of Brazilian history and that must be viewed within the continental and global historical processes. As such, predictions are more complicated than those that only take into account local and national observations. International laws and rights tend to promote language and cultural maintenance. A significant internal Brazilian support sustains the long-term effort of a social movement with the increasing active participation of the victims. Marx suggested “Men make their own history, but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted” (Marx 1973: 146). The truth of this statement for the recent histories of the Nambikwara peoples needs no elaboration. Marx added that “The traditions of the dead generations weigh like a nightmare on the minds of the living” (ib.: 146). He may have ovedrstated the point. Nambikwara tradition was unprepared for the onslaught of Brazilian society but proved to be surprisingly resilient to overcome the immense losses sustained. The weight of history bears mostly on the interethnic system of dominance and the enormous pressures from the regional society to cede their most valuable resources (land, gold, mahogany) at ridiculous terms of trade. Having been assured a fraction of their territory, and as there was some demographic recuperation, the most pressing problem now seems to be the economic articulation of a system of local village sustenance with the capitalist mode of production. There is no easy solution to this problem of accommodation between lived worlds so distant in economic principles. Given the Nambikwara resilience to pass through difficult periods a tenuous hope for creative adaptation may be held out when this process is shaped within the framework of tendencies that may be more favorable. In this case, when the Nambikwara “(…) conjure up the spirits of the dead to help them” (ib: 146), the tradition and the guidance of the ancestral spirits already manifested their value. If, with such guidance and the benefit of reasonable conditions found at the more inclusive sociopolitical contexts, the Nambikwara peoples succeed in making their own history rather than being shaped by the history of others, then they stand a chance to maintain their ethnic, sociocultural and linguistic identities. If this were to happen, it would be a positive mark on a record otherwise blemished by violence and injustice. Lévi-Strauss[viii] once made a statement that both Price and Churchill (had he been able to remove himself from the evolutionary perspective that allowed violence against the uncivilized) would have ascribed to:
“(…) I am an Americanist and Americanists are constantly confronted with the observation that we have destroyed our own object of study or at least reduced its size. Thus we constantly approach the South American Indian with both the attitude of the scientific observer, trying to be objective, and the consciousness of being part of a civilization that has committed a kind of unpardonable sin – in my opinion the greatest sin ever committed in the history of humanity, which is to have destroyed or attempted to destroy half of the richness of humankind” (interview in Massenzio 2001: 419).

As seen above, apart from the evident material interests that haunt and assault the Indigenous Territories within the logic of expansive capitalism, the contradictory values and conceptions of Western civilization shape the future (Brazil considers itself firmly anchored in the West). It is little known that Lévi-Strauss noticed the ravages of the “destructions at a distance”, aside from the destruction caused of the epidemics there were the possible negative effects related to the introduction of metal tools long before actual contact (Lévi-Strauss 1973: 370; originally a 1961 lecture). Moreover, contrary to an ahistorical notion like underdevelopment, he adopted Marx’s proposition that the development of the developed countries was facilitated by the plunder or primitive accumulation of other continents, like the Americas. To describe this centuries-old process, Lévi-Strauss wrote that this was done “by means of violence, oppression and extermination”, or “a situation created by brutality, pillage and violence” (ib: 369). This vision of the vanquished Indian peoples differs from the usual one trumpeting triumphant national history, and is capable of expressing an encompassing framework for Indian histories. These words denote a debt towards Indians peoples generally unrecognized, but still formulated in the analytical terms prevalent in the West. Still, Western languages have their limits. To paraphrase Wittgenstein, “the limits of our language” are the limits of our world. This leaves open the question of which bounds of which language are the limits of which world? Or, conversely, the limits of which world are the bounds of which language? Words are configured to signify worlds of value judgments and the exercise of power. In some combinations of power in interethnic systems, several differently constructed sociocultural worlds have a future. The recognition of a peoples’ right to existence, like that of the Nambikwara ensemble, precedes the highly theoretical question of the bounds of any peoples’ world and the richness of human linguistic and sociocultural creativity. The value of these languages and worlds stems from the very uniqueness of human inventiveness as expressed by Nambikwara peoples. Lévi-Strauss emphasized that this lesson of respect for others derives from historical experience and should orient all prospective action. The creation of conditions for the effective exercise of the ultimate value of self-determination is primary[ix]. This belief is not as modern as may be believed. Sapir already wrote in the thirties of the twentieth century: “the deliberate attempt to impose a culture directly and speedily no matter how backed by good will, is an affront to the human spirit. When such an attempt is backed, not by good will, but by military ruthlessness, it is the greatest conceivable crime against the human spirit, it is the very denial of culture.” (apud Wolff; 1974: 101). If this idea was to be followed constantly, the world would be a different place. The Latundê, Sabanê and Sararé finally could freely plan and realize their own unfolding scenes to lift the veils of the future, and freely pursue the bounds of their languages within their own transformed, lived worlds.

Notes
[i] The concept was developed for the Nazi intent to eliminate the Jewish people but the Convention of 1948 but the definition expands to include targeted groups as defined on a national, ethnic, racial, religious basis. Hence there is some controversy about the applicability of this term in various cases. This discussion leads too far from the modest objective of this chapter, but it may be noted that there are two subsidiary goals besides murder: (i) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to group members; (ii) Deliberately inflicting living conditions calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction in whole or in part (Stein 1996). Both can be seen as demonstrated in above in the previous Parts.
[ii] Note that here races is used to refer to peoples.
[iii] By analogy, such a term predictably was to be invented after the former two. Apparently it was coined in 1988 (Skutnabb-Kangas apud Farfán 2001: 185).
[iv] For one of the most interesting and convincing examples of the influence of language on the life and culture of a people see Witherspoon (1977). See also Brody (2001) for an anthropological perspective on the language of hunter-gatherers, world view and translatability.
[v] Other sources are less radical but estimates still indicate a decrease of 50% to 80% in fifty years (Farfán 2001: 185).
[vi] As the case analyzed by Kulick (1998) shows, unconscious factors may cause the language shift even when the older generation favors language maintenance in their own village. As said, the model is simple and reality is more complex. For a general overview of Amazonian languages, see Queixalós and Renault-Lescure (2000). One notes the almost complete absence of anthropologists in this stocktaking and effort to analyze language shift. As this is a strongly sociopolitical phenomenon, anthropologists should get involved on much larger scale.
[vii] Not surprisingly the Farfán (2001: 191) noted that conventional schools in Mexico customarily depreciate native languages and contribute to their extinction. The current bilingual monitors certainly will not be sufficient for the Latundê and Sabanê. For a general introduction to the problem and solutions, see Crystal (2002).
[viii] In the same interview Lévi-Strauss considered the substantial world population growth as the most striking change of the 20^th century. He spoke of the enormous crowds he saw in Pakistan that attest that humankind is, after all, only one species and that just as the world began without humans, so shall it end without them. Near the end of his life, Price also became interested in overpopulation and concluded that the population surge is bound to result in a crash that may leave no survivors (Price 1995; 1998; 1999).
[ix] It is superfluous to suggest that academics must in some way follow Price’s outstanding example.

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