The Brazilian Indians

It is not known how many indigenous groups existed in Brazil when the European conquest began. It is known, however, that the indigenous population has declined rapidly since then and has continued to decline until today. Suffice it to say that in the year 1900 the number of tribal groups in Brazil was 250; however, in 1957 it was only 143. In just 57 years, therefore, 87 tribal groups disappeared. Between 1900 and 1957, more than 80 indigenous tribes met Brazilian society and were deculturated or destroyed by disease or contamination. During this period, Brazil’s indigenous population dropped from about 1 million to less than 200,000. What does it mean to say that 87 tribal groups disappeared from the history of a country’s life in less than 60 years? 87 socio-cultural groups, a few hundred villages, a few thousand indigenous people disappeared. Along with people, families, villages, clans, extinct tribes where hundreds, perhaps thousands of years would have lived, unique ways of living, relating to nature, producing the material goods of life and the symbolic means of thinking about the world, many of them of incomparable richness and complexity. Unique indigenous cultures disappeared forever.