THE NAMBICUARA 



THE PEOPLE AND THEIR HABITAT 



The telegraph line which runs from Cuiaba, the 

 capital of Mato Grosso, to Porto Velho on the 

 Madeira River has created a narrow corridor of 

 the known through the vast unknown stretches of 

 northwestern Mato Grosso. Along this line the 

 Government has established telegraph stations 

 manned by telegraph operators, many of whom 

 are Paressi Indians. A makeshift road, over which 

 trucks can travel, follows the line a few miles past 

 Utiarity to Burity; beyond this the road is no 

 more than a trail along which men ride on horse- 

 back and goods are transported by pack oxen. 

 At Vilhena there is an army airfield. 



Since 1912, when the line was completed, this 

 corridor has been the highway of men who have 

 sought rubber, diamonds, gold, and Indian souls. 

 No permanent settlements of farmers or stockmen, 

 as yet, occupy this vast hinterland. The rubber 

 concessioner, usually a man from Rio de Janeiro, 

 Sao Paulo, or Cuiaba with sufficient funds to buy 

 a truck or two, lays claim to a stretch of "galeria" 

 forest, builds a camp along the road, hires a num- 

 ber of tappers, and goes into business. Each 

 underpaid tapper works an area of trees, bringing 

 his rubber to camp on his back or more rarely on 

 oxback. Food must be brought in from Cuiaba, 

 and as supplies, at best, are precarious, any delay 

 in truck transportation brings scurvy and starva- 

 tion. Eventually the workers drift away, some 

 it is said dying on the way, and the operation 

 ceases. During the last war the United States 

 Government, through the Rubber Reserve, enabled 

 rubber operations to expand. Good camps were 

 established and the road improved. Today, how- 

 ever, the camps and the road are deteriorating, 

 leaving the field to the shoe-string operator with 

 his second-hand truck. The operations of the 

 gold and diamond miners are still more uncertain. 

 In small groups they enter the area, their scanty 

 supplies carried on oxen and mules. Men un- 

 familiar with the semiarid wastes easily miss the 

 areas where fodder and water can be obtained, the 

 pack animals die and the stranded men are left 

 to find their way out the best they can. At 

 Utiarity I met a miner who was waiting for food 

 supplies from Cuiaba. He had four oxen and two 

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mules. During the height of the dry season in 

 July his mules died of starvation, for during this 

 period horses and mules must be given at least a 

 pint of maize a day to keep them alive. Just 

 before I left, the miner was willing to sell his 

 emaciated oxen and equipment and leave. The 

 best able to withstand the hardships are the 

 missionaries who come as permanent settlers with 

 adequate stores, put up their buildings, and plant 

 small fields of manioc on the bottom lands. 



A brief description of the approximately 400-mile 

 truck journey from Cuiaba to Utiarity will provide 

 the reader with an impression of this part of Mato 

 Grosso. As no regular freight or passenger 

 service exists north of Cuiaba it is necessary either 

 to hire a truck or to wait until someone else plans a 

 trip and to join the party. With gasoline costing 

 one dollar (US$1) a gallon, trips of this length 

 are beyond the means of merely inquisitive trav- 

 elers, and even to anthropologists with expense 

 accounts, charges of this nature may lead to 

 embarrassing questions. Hearing that two Amer- 

 ican missionaries were negotiating a trip to 

 Utiarity we joined them by paying a part of the 

 expense. 



Thus one afternoon Kaoro Onaga and I climbed 

 on top of one of the two overloaded trucks and 

 headed northwest. The trucks were owned by a 

 Cuiabano nicknamed Joao Tapuya owing to his 

 Indian ancestry. Being an owner of two trucks, 

 he belonged to that class of people who believe it 

 undignified to work with their hands. Each 

 truck, therefore, had a driver and each driver had 

 an assistant and two loaders; thus, besides the 

 owner, there were 8 men to operate two trucks. 

 Among the passengers, besides myself and my 

 student, there were the two American missionaries, 

 Rev. Lawrence W. Buckman and Rev. Robert 

 Meader, Buckman's wife and 3-year-old son, two 

 other women with children-in-arms, and some half 

 dozen men headed for various points on the way. 

 It was up to each person to find his place on the 

 load and to make himself as comfortable as 

 possible among the boxes, sacks, and sheets of 

 corrugated iron, which, with each jolt on the rutted 

 dirt road, shifted position. 



That evening we arrived in Rosario some 90 

 miles north of Cuiaba. On entering the town we 



