Secrets of the lost Amazon tribe
IT BEGAN with a short video clip on YouTube in 2014, which recorded the initial encounter between a lost Amazonian tribe and “civilisation”. It was the fi rst time that a meeting with a so- called “uncontacted” tribe had been caught on camera, and it went viral.
Now a new Channel 4 fi lm takes us further into the lives of the Sapanahua tribe who live deep in the Amazon jungle on the BrazilPeru border. What was intriguing about that original encounter is that it was the tribes people who sought it. Tribal chief Xina ( pronounced Sheena) and three others appeared one day on the riverbank opposite Simpatia, a remote settle ment, eight days away by boat from the nearest town.
Their language was unintelligible but anthropologists detected similarities with another tribal dialect and so translators were able to discern that Xina and his fellows were seeking help and protection from “very bad men” who had attacked their group of 35 ( 14 men, nine women and 12 children) with guns and machetes.
Experience has made the indigenous tribes of Amazonia wary of white people, as they face danger from illegal loggers, drug traffi ckers and even the military. More than 100 agents of Funai, the Brazilian ministry for indigenous peoples have been killed by hostile tribesmen in the last 20 years.
The tribes also fi ght back against civilisation by raiding villages and carrying off whatever they can carry. The law forbids villagers from defending their property. Instead they must evacuate, returning only when the raiding parties have fi nished, so there is little love lost between them.
Xina blithely admitted he had killed white men with arrows in the past but anthropolo- ‘ FIRE BREATHER’: Carlos Meirelles gist Carlos Meirelles, who was present at that 2014 encounter and was shot in the neck by an arrow 10 years ago, gained his trust. He and British fi lm- maker Angus McQueen became the fi rst outsiders to be accepted into the tribal community, making fi ve trips over 18 months.
The tribesmen were most alarmed by Meirelles’ smoking (“He’s breathing fi re! Go away!”) and singularly unimpressed when the visitors responded to their singing with a musical offering of their own. “What s*** singing!” they said, trading l o o k s of disb e l i e f . They can only count to 10 ( they have no need of higher numbers) and if n e c e s s a r y ( which it isn’t) they can cal- culate their approximate age using seasons. “They are what we once were,” says Meirelles.
The Sapanahua are short ( around 5ft 5in on average), have no body hair and wear the hair on their head in a bowl shape with the crown closely cropped.
As far as anyone can tell, life expectancy is short. “We saw nobody who looked older than 40 to 46,” said McQueen. When asked what happens when they die, they explain how the spirit travels down river and then up to a giant hut in the sky to live there forever. White men also go down river they added but their spirits are transported to “another sky” by the “fl ying things” ( aircraft).
When Xina and his three friends fi rst appeared on the riverbank in 2014, they were naked. When we next see them it is nine months later and they are all wearing clothes. It turns out they have long coveted them, as well as plates and pans. Xina’s wife Powo is especially fond of her fl ip- fl ops.
“We are ashamed now when we are naked,” says Xina, echoing Adam and Eve post- Forbidden Fruit. However the dangers they face are very real. They are used to the perils of their environment – Xina relates how his own grandmother was killed and eaten by a jaguar – but they have few defences against modernity. Bows and arrows are their only weapons and when Meirelles shouts at them for ransacking a village it is not simply because he objects to their stealing but because the clothes and textiles are likely to be riddled with germs to which the Sapanahua have no immunity.
The Sapanahua live in huts shaped like half cones, which can be built speedily, but the encroachment of modern man drives them to abandon even these temporary dwellings. Food is scarce says Xina and at night he and the other men do not sleep as they have to guard their women.
Today’s fears also seem to awaken old memories. The women sing tribal songs telling of lost families. A century ago many indigenous people were used as slave labour on Brazil’s rubber plantations. Uncontacted tribes such as the Sapanahua may in fact be the descendants of escaped slaves who sought refuge in the impenetrability of the jungle – not a lost tribe, but a hidden tribe.
And one that still needs to hide. One man remembers white men storming their settlement more recently “screaming with guns and machetes and talking into radios”.
McQueen also encountered the nomadic Mashco- Piro tribe, who live on the Peruvian side of the border. Bigger, hairier and more aggressive than the Sapanahua, they have been known to attack and even kill.
The remote village of Montesilvano was attacked by 100 nomads who appeared from the forest, ransacked the place and simply melted away back into the trees. Another attack further down river last spring brought bloodshed.
EVEN the authorities are mistrustful of the MashcoPiro. However McQueen says his overwhelming impression of the tribes is of a people riddled with fear. “They are aware of the outside world but afraid of it,” he said. The Sapanahua now have carefully controlled relations with the outside world but Meirelles sees no merit in trying to preserve their “uncontacted” status. He asks why should they not want their lives to be easier or more comfortable once they know what is possible. And who are we in the “civilised world” to deny them?
The Sapanahua may be the living embodiment of our past selves but some of their problems are up to date. At one point Xina’s friend appears with a new girlfriend, who has a son. He has taken up with her on Xina’s advice, he explains, “because she doesn’t have a man and I don’t have a woman”. However, not long after he returns from hunting to fi nd her with another man.
“Why did they have to humiliate me,” he wails. “If he wasn’t a relative, I would have killed him.”
Some human experience is, and always has been, universal.
First Contact: Lost Tribe Of The Amazon is on Channel 4 at 9pm on Tuesday, February 23.