For more than 20 years, he lived in the Brazilian Amazon eating nuts, culmination and play, a symbol of the struggle of indigenous peoples living isolated in the rainforest.
Now, this guy whose unknown call has died and his death has made headlines all over the world.
His life was marked by massacres that left him as the only survivor of a small tribe attacked by armed men hired through shepherds seeking to exploit the pristine Amazon.
He was found dead from begging in a hammock on August 23 in the indigenous territory of Tanaru. Authorities have found no signs of violence and he died of herbal causes.
The guy was covered with the bright feathers of a bird called a macaw, a type of macaw, local media reported.
Tanaru’s indigenous territory covers 8,000 hectares (30 square miles) of rainforest in the southwestern Brazilian state of Rondônia on the border with Bolivia. The reserve is surrounded by extensive ranches of farm animals.
Plagued by rogue miners and loggers whose work is illegal, it is one of Brazil’s most dangerous regions, according to Survival International NGP.
The land of Tanaru “is like an oasis in the sea of destruction,” said NGO director Fiona Watson.
An arrow shot
“The Man in the Hole” was first seen in 1996 through a documentary crew traveling with officials from the National Indigenous Foundation, a government firm investigating a bloodbath committed against his tribe.
Accrediting the presence of natives in the forest domain of Tanaru is mandatory to grant legal coverage to the domain.
The photographs appeared in a documentary titled “Corumbiara” in 2009.
We see the eyes of the guy scrutinizing the roof of a thatched hut. At some point a spear comes out, as if to scare visitors. But no one utters a word.
Over the years, Funai groups returned with representatives of neighboring tribes to check which language the guy spoke in and learn more about their people.
But he made it clear that he did need to rent someone. Feeling threatened, he once fired an arrow that seriously injured a member of the visiting team.
“You can only believe what this guy was thinking, going through, living alone, not being able to communicate with anyone and I think very scared because any stranger to him posed a threat, given his horrible experience,” Watson said.
After that, the government simply tried to patrol his territory and look for symptoms that he was still alive.
In the last known photographs of him alive, taken in 2011 but transmitted seven years later, he is seen half-naked cutting a tree with an axe.
In addition to the bows and arrows that showed the hunt, there were orchards where he grew buds and vegetables, such as papaya and cassava.
“We saw one of their gardens and it was full of produce, very well maintained,” said Watson, who visited the site in 2005.
But what fascinated the researchers the most were the many holes he dug, about two meters (seven feet) deep and with sharp spears on the bottom.
Funai said it discovered 53 stalls that had been its home in Tanaru territory, still with the same structure: a small thatched hut with a door and a hole.
Holes were used to trap animals, but mavens can also be a position where you can hide from intruders or have some sort of non-secular purpose.
The holes, Watson said, are “a mystery that died with him,” like the history of the Tanaru people.
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Funai knows 114 indigenous teams in isolation in the Brazilian component of the Amazon.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed. )
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