It was a simple gesture of humanity — the gift of a bunch of bananas — that ended centuries of isolation.
Footage has emerged of the moment an Amazonian tribe, undisturbed by outsiders for hundreds of years, overcame their natural wariness and accepted the token of friendship.
The members of the Chitonawa tribe, from the headwaters of the Envira river in the Peruvian rainforest, are thought to have fled their homeland after a massacre at the hands of Peruvian drug traffickers. Their homes were apparently torched by criminals who wanted access to their coca plants to make cocaine and mahogany trees for illegal logging.
So it was that three tribesmen, dressed only in loincloths, stumbled across another group of outsiders as they fled into Brazil. The video showed their understandable trepidation as they first approached the villagers of Simpatia, about 100 kilometres from the border.
A local man who spoke their language, Jaminawa, coaxed the men closer until they eventually accepted his gift. The recipients then raised their hands in an apparent gesture of appreciation.
After this initial contact, the Chitonawa retreated into the jungle, but, emboldened by their earlier visit, the group of five men and two women, aged between 12 and 22, would visit the village on two subsequent occasions.
Researchers from Brazil’s National Indian Foundation were fascinated by the rare contact, which took place at the end of June. But their fascination soon turned to concern when the Chitonawa people shared details of their plight through an interpreter.
“The majority of old people [in the tribe] were massacred by white Peruvians, who shot at them with firearms and set fire to their houses,” said Ze Correia, the interpreter. “They say that many old people died and that they buried three people in one grave.
“They say that so many people died that they couldn’t bury them all and their corpses were eaten by vultures.”
The video, which was posted online Thursday, showed two tribesmen trudging through the river. Beside the opposite bank, a villager matched their progress, holding up more than two dozen bananas by way of welcome.
The Chitonawa men were reluctant to approach, and another of their number stood on the far bank, holding what appeared to be a gun, which researchers believe he may have captured from a logging camp. They also “whistled and made animal sounds,” according to Carlos Travassos, one of the researchers.
After more than a minute, the men in the water, who carried swords tucked in their loincloths, approached and received their gift.
The film also shows a subsequent visit, when the Chitonawa return to the village with an axe, apparently to defend themselves. Despite their friendly reception, even these encounters proved to present a risk: it transpired that all seven tribesmen had contracted influenza when they appeared for a third time. The Brazilian government sent a team of doctors, who kept the tribesmen in quarantine near the village until they recovered.
There are thought to be around 77 so-called “uncontacted” tribes of indigenous Indians in the Amazon. Another such tribe was photographed brandishing spears at a plane in March.
Fiona Watson, the research director at Survival International, a British charity that works closely with the Brazilian authorities to safeguard tribesmen, said she was lobbying the Peruvian government to investigate the claims of a massacre. “The story they had to tell was disturbing,” she said. “I feel they have been forced into this contact.”
The Daily Telegraph