DEATH AND CRUELTY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 76, 22 January 1947, Page 3

DEATH AND CRUELTY

RELIGIOUS RITES OF TRIBES BRAZILIAN HINTERLAND (By Charles Lynch) Deep within the interior of Brazil, behind civilisation’s last great frontier, live more than 70 tribes of primitive Indians, existing as they did for centuries before the coming of Columbus to the American Continent. Exploration of these lands—the huge Brazilian States of Amazonas and Mato Grosso—offers the last challenge of the primitive world to the encroachment of civilisation. And it is a challenge which civilisation failed to meet until a few weeks ago, when a daring and doubtful party of white men made the first peaceful contact with members of the fierce savage Cervantes tribe. For four centuries lone explorers, traders, and missionaries have ventured into the wild lands, succeeding only in domesticating the less savage tribes on the fringe of the vast hinterland. The Brazilians, like the Portuguese before them, have been content to move their frontiers slowly and with caution. Even units of the Brazilian army patrol merely the outer fringes of the dark area, content with keeping the savages only in their own backyard.

Arrow Fired at Plane They have had no programme such as that which opened up the “Wild West” of North America; perhaps due in part to the fact that Brazilians tend to mix with the indigenous inhabitants of the country instead of exterminating them. The expression, “Lo, the poor Indian,” is unknown in Brazil. Most famous among the savage tribes are the Cervantes, whose tiny mud hut villages have been hitherto photographed solely from the air. The only Cervantes souvenir known to the outside world until August of last year was an arrow which a tribesman sent winging into the fuselage of a low-flying aeroplane. “Flying over the Cervantes” is one of the greatest thrills Brazil has to offer. One of the latest visitors to sample the “sport” was Joan Dosy, Canadian Ambassador to Brazil, who admitted on his return from the trip that he did not want a repeat performance.

Inspector Francisco Soares de Mereiles, leader of the first party of white men to venture into Cervantes territory and live to tell the tale, described his meeting with the savages as the tensest moment of his life. His first meeting, however, the climax of decades of patient work by the Brazilian National Service for Protection of Indians, is only the first small step towards pacification.

The time is still far distant when travellers can venture with impunity into Cervantes territory. Victime are beaten to death, usually with heavy clubs. The historic meeting followed a long “flirtation,” during which time the white men left many presents on the bank of the sinister River of Death, scene of many Cervantes massacres. At first these gifts—fish hooks, sweets, beads—were ignored. Later they were removed. The white man left more presents, in their endeavours to show that they came as friends. These also were taken by the Indians. One, day last month Senor de Mereiles and his party returned to the river bank and found gifts from the Cervantes in place of the presents they had taken. Bows, arrows, fruits, and carved wooden boxes seemed to show that the peace offerings had at last been accepted at their face value.

The party decided to make its way to a Cervantes village, to make friendly contact—or perhaps never to return. Suddenly they came face to face with a tribesman. It was a tense moment. Unseen by the white men, yet their presence guessed, hundreds of warriors crouched in the undergrowth. Senor de Mereiles raised his hand in the universal sign of peaceful greeting. The lone tribesman waved to the invisible horde—and then stretched out his hand in a gesture of friendship. Four hundred naked Indians emerged from the undergrowth, and the first “peace conference” was on. Two of them presented headless arrows to the Brazilians, symbols that the Cervantes were not on the war path. In exchange Senor. Mereiles’s party presented them with more gifts. Photographs were taken. The party was over. Smiling and chattering the Indians withdrew into their tropical fastness and the white men returned to civilisation. Now must come months, perhaps years, of patient penetration before the full beam of exploration illumines the life and ways of the world’s fiercest isolationists.

Husky Specimens Some idea of how the Cervantes live has been obtained from less savage tribes on the edge of civilisation, although these are unlike the

Cervantes in physical characteristics. Most South American Indians are poor physical specimens; the Cervantes are husky, well built, and robust. Nevertheless, the domesticated types probably resemble their fiercer counterparts of their way of life.

Leading primitive, simple lives, complacent in their complete lack of knowledge of any outside world, their ken extends to only a few miles within range of the villages in which they live. Ancestor worship and bird worship are the most common forms of religion, and the witch doctor, whose ceremonial dress is designed to resemble a brightly-coloured bird, is the most powerful man in the community. Feast days are built around the natural phases of life—birth, puberty, manhood, womanhood, marriage, old age and death. Their cen-turies-old elaborate ceremonies are as ingrained as instincts. Missionaries have fought a losing battle. Apart from those who have met a violent end, their work has been as fruitless as pushing back the sea. The Indians compare the rites of Christianity with their own ceremonies, and invariably return to the beliefs handed down to them by their ancestors. Several tribes have a ceremony in which the Christian cross fights against a sacred gourd. The gourd always triumphs. Death and cruelty play a prominent part in many of the rites. “Mercy killings” are standard practice. Cripples, badly wounded men, those incapable of their share of village work, are eliminated with accompanying ceremony. The Indians believe implicity in the after-world but regard cripples as profane and unable therefore to participate in an after-life. Consequently, they have no purpose of existence and should be cast out. Because of these Indians, and particularly because of the Cervantes and scores of others like them, Brazil has no official population figures. The census-taker has yet to be found who will tackle the job of counting heads; the danger of losing his own is too great.