New Indigenous Tribe Found in the Amazon
6/8/98
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Title: New Indigenous Tribe Found in the Amazon
Source: The Associated Press
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 6/8/98
Federal Indian agents said Sunday they have discovered a tribe of hunters
living in near-inaccessible reaches of Brazil's Amazon rain forest.
"We didn't know they existed," says Sydney Possuelo, who heads the Federal
Indian Bureau's Department of Isolated Indians. "We ran into them by accident."
Possuelo says in a telephone interview that he first encountered the tribe's
12-15 huts two months ago while flying over Acre state, near Brazil's western
border with Peru.
However, the discovery wasn't made public until Sunday, when reported by the
nation's leading newsmagazine, Veja.
Very little is known about the tribe's 200 members, its customs, its language,
even its name. Unlike most Amazon Indian groups, it doesn't live in jungle
clearings but deep beneath the forest canopy.
"Trying to find them is like looking for a needle in a haystack," says
Possuelo. "That explains why it took so long to discover them."
The tribe lives in one of the Amazon's most isolated regions, about 2,000 miles
northwest of Rio de Janiero. The closest road is 80 miles away and dense jungle
makes vehicle travel impossible. Area rivers are seldom navigated.
Federal Indian agents began looking for a tribe after three settlers in the
area were killed. Authorities suspect the tribesmen killed them to protect
their food supply, Possuelo says.
To prevent further clashes, Possuelo says he has asked officials to settle the
farmers elsewhere and prevent outsiders from entering the Indians' territory.
"Now that we have discovered them, we can't turn our backs," Possuelo says. "If
we do, they will certainly disappear."
Estimates of the number of Indians in Brazil when Europeans first arrived vary
from 1 million to 11 million. Some 300,000 remain today in 270 tribes as war,
slavery, starvation and disease have taken their toll. Authorities say about 55
tribes live in unexplored pockets of the Amazon and have yet to be contacted.
Meanwhile, authorities say gold miners, loggers, settlers, and poachers are
pressing into uncharted areas of the rain forest, endangering the remaining
indigenous groups, including the 23,000-member Yanomami, the world's largest
Stone Age tribe.
Associated Press, Copyright 1998