The Unconquered In Search of the Amazon

504 Pages·2011·5.42 MB·English

by  Wallace Scott

Copyright © 2011 by Scott Wallace All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wallace Scott.
The unconquered : in search of the Amazon’s last uncontacted tribes / Scott Wallace.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Indians of South America—Amazon River Region—Social life and customs. 2. Wallace, Scott—
Travel—Amazon River Region. 3. Amazon River Region—Description and
travel. I. Title.
F2519.1.A6W35 2011
981′.1—dc22
2011006717
eISBN: 978-0-307-46298-5
Photograph insert © 2011 by Scott Wallace unless otherwise noted.
Photograph on this page © 2011 by Scott Wallace
Jacket design by Jennifer O’Connor
Jacket photograph by Arctic-Images/Workbook Stock/Getty Images
v3.1
For Mackenzie, Aaron, and Ian,
and my parents,
Robert and Flora Wallace,
who would have been proud
to hold this in their hands
Poor Aruá, he had no way of knowing that the whites were not a tribe like
ours or like others that occupy a single riverbank, or two at most. He didn’t
know that they were the first of a whole world of people, an inexhaustible
anthill, occupying the entire earth, insatiably swarming over the globe. In the
following years, more and more started arriving. They continue to surround
us to this day. They have already taken possession of the side of sunrise;
someday they will take the forests of the sunset. Then we will be reduced to
an islet in a sea of whiteness.
—From Maíra by Darcy Ribeiro,
translated by E. H. Goodland and Thomas Colchie
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue: Deep In, Far Back
Map
PART I: INTO THE AMAZON
1. A Rumor of Savages
2. Scramble to the Amazon
3. Through the Chokepoint
4. At a Bend in the River
5. A Topography of Strife
6. White River, Black Night
7. A Government of One
8. Between Two Worlds
9. The Point of No Return
PART II: IN THE LAND OF THE ARROW PEOPLE
10. A Forest Dark
11. The Headwaters
12. Lessons in Biology
13. A Guerrilla Army
14. In the Footsteps of Rondon
15. The Meaning of Contact
16. Our Guns, Our Germs, and Our Steel
17. The Day of the Maloca
Photo Insert
PART III: THE IMPERATIVE TO SURVIVE
18. Reprovisioned
19. Jungle Shipyards
20. The Tipping Point
21. East with the River
22. Borderlands
23. Rendezvous
24. The Old Man and the River
25. The Gold Dredge
26. Civilization and Our Discontents
27. Meet the Head-Bashers
28. The Overflight
Epilogue
Postscript
Acknowledgments
Notes
Select Glossary and Pronunciation Guide
Bibliography