Love Finds a Way

Deep in the Mato Grosso jungles, beyond the Rio das Mortes (River of Deaths), live 15,000 Chavante Indians, members of the fiercest Indian tribe in all Brazil. For decades Brazil's Indian Protective Service agents have sought to tame and civilize the warlike Chavantes under their uniquely Brazilian motto of "pacification through love." Though the agents never used arms, even in self-defense, the ferocious Chavantes rebuffed them. One agent who dared to cross the River of Deaths was left dead under a pile of 1,000 war clubs.

Wild Welcome. Three years ago wiry I.P.S. man Francisco Mereiles narrowly missed the same fate on a peacemaking expedition near the Chavantes' Serra do Roncador (Snoring Mountain). Ambushed, he whipped his gift-laden burro off into the jungle and escaped while the Indians chased and killed the burro. Manfully turning the other deep-tanned cheek, Mereiles kept right on wooing the Chavantes with gifts of cloth and aluminum pots dropped strategically along their forest trails. Eventually, tribesmen began slipping across to the white man's side of the River of Deaths, asking for gifts and gulping down all the food in sight. One day Chief Apoena himself put in an appearance and, before leaving, promised to send his sons with an invitation to visit him.

Early last month the momentous bid arrived from Chief Apoena. Escorted by the chief's sons, Mereiles and a few other I.P.S. men set forth on the first white men's visit to a Chavante chief in his own village. After three days' steady march, they passed between a five-mile gantlet of Apoena's sentries. Finally they came to a halt before the hut where the chief lived with his three wives. Chavante braves, their bare bodies daubed with bright-hued clays, broke into a wild welcome dance. Apoena himself, in a breech clout and wooden earrings, stood before Mereiles, addressed him as "Imuman Uazasse" (Patient Father). Gravely, his men handed out gifts of bows & arrows, received in return knives, axes, aluminum pots. A rousing sport carnival followed. Then Apoena gave a banquet during which everybody ate roast deer and grasshoppers from great earthen jars.

Powwow & Palaver. Next day the solemn powwow was held. "The land where the Chavantes live now is far from the land where the Chavante ancestors are buried," Chief Apoena said. "We ask the powerful strangers for pledges that we shall not be molested here." Apoena was also troubled about "the great bird which flies without moving its wings." Would such birds come often? Mereiles, through his interpreter, said they probably would, but never as enemies. Then Apoena suggested that one day he would like to send what he had "most inside of himself," i.e., one of his sons, to see the chief of the white men.

On that note the visit ended. Last fortnight Pacifier Mereiles proudly returned to Rio to report on his successful mission across the River of Deaths. "Look us well in the face," Apoena had told him in parting, "so that you may not take us for others who are not your friends."

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