On the Warpath

To the cabodos (rubber-tree tappers and Brazil-nut gatherers) who live along tributaries of the Amazon, the Caiapo Indians are bad medicine. Savage and naked, they lurk in the jungle until the men in caboclo settlements leave for the day's work. Then they swoop down, killing everyone but the girls, whom they kidnap. If they meet resistance, they fire thatched huts with flaming arrows, like Sioux attacking a covered-wagon train. Says an old trader: "The best thing to do when you see a Caiapo is to shoot first."

To the Caiapos, on the other hand, the cabodos are sinister members of a light-skinned tribe which threatens their tropical hunting grounds and may rightfully be attacked. In this view they have a virtual ally in the powerful Indian Protective Service, a federal bureau. So considerate is the Indian Service of its wards that it has even tried to have the government forbid shooting of Indians in self-defense.

Last week, after many months of increasing Caiapo depredations, the State of Para Chamber of Commerce sent an angry telegram to Brazil's Congress, "transmitting the intense clamor of the state's population against the murdering of rubber tappers and nut gatherers by the Caiapo Indians." It noted that "at a time when Brazil needs its rubber for its economy, security and defense," production in the area had dropped from 2,000 to 400 tons a year as frightened cabodos refused to venture into Caiapo territory. Worse, the Indians, in addition to bows & arrows, clubs and lances, were using Winchester rifles supplied to them by renegade rubber traders, just as firewater and firearms were sold to U.S. redskins by unscrupulous fur traders. The telegram hinted that the Winchester ammunition came from the Indian Service; recently at a Service post police seized 16,000 rifle bullets.

Unperturbed, the Indian Service answered: "When nuts and rubber pay good prices, white men invade Indian territory. From the position we take against exploiters and invaders comes the animosity against our service."

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