5 - On The Trail Of The Indians

From the southernmost tip of Sicily to Hammerfest, the most northerly town in Europe, you fly over eight countries in the course of your 2,500-mile journey. Flying from Moscow to the South Yemen, which is about the same distance, you see seven nations below you.

But if you fly from Cacipore to the Rio Grande, some 2,500 to 2,700 miles in a north-south direction, there is only one country below you all the time: Brazil. It is just the same in a west-east direction-from the Peruvian border to Recife on the Atlantic Ocean it is all Brazil. With a surface area of 3,289,440 square miles, the gigantic South American country is only exceeded in its endless extent by Russia, China, Canada and the USA. Besides being vast, Brazil is full of mysteries.

If a pilot of the VASP airline on a routine flight of 1,250 miles sees towers or villages or ruins that are not marked on the map, he notes down their geographical position and makes a report. But if someone sets out to verify the data only three days later, the towers, villages or ruins may have already disappeared. What was only briefly visible in favorable weather conditions, when the wind was right or after a forest fire, has already been overgrown, swallowed up again by that green Moloch, the forest.

Brazil is a country of extremes. It is as difficult to get to know its present as it is to get to know its past. Since Dodge, VW, Ford and Chevrolet have been making all kinds of cars here, army pioneers are constantly turning up archaeological finds when building the new roads intended to open up the vast territories which are still inaccessible. No one can estimate how much unique material is lost forever in the mountains of debris excavated.

Archaeology is a universal hobby in Brazil, but professional archaeologists are rare. If finds as rich as these were made in other countries, universities would initiate research projects or governments provide financial aid for excavation teams under expert leadership. It is quite different here. The size of the country and the multiplicity of archaeological riches, most of them virtually inaccessible, mean that planned digging, classification and excavation scarcely ever take place. Even if a forgotten prehistoric town is accurately located and accessible with the right kind of vehicle, it takes years before the money to equip a modern expedition is available. Only too often the result is that it comes too late.

Archaeological finds in Brazil are mostly due to the luck, industry and keenness of enthusiastic laymen. The Austrian Ludwig Schwennhagen was one of them. He was a teacher of philosophy and history and lived for a long time in Teresina, the capital of the north Brazilian state of Piaui. Schwennhagen was the first man to give a detailed description of the mysterious Sete Cidades (Seven Cities) in his book Antiga Historia do Brasil, published in 1928. When the second edition of his book came out in 1970, Schwennhagen had long since died a poor schoolmaster.

I first heard the name of Schwennhagen from the lips of Dr. Renato Castelo Branco, who brought me an invitation to visit Sete Cidades as the guest of the Government of Piaui.

“Whereabouts are these Sete Cidades?” I asked.

“Only 1,875 miles away as the crow flies,” answered Dr. Branco.

 

“North of Teresina, between the town of Piripiri and the Rio Longe. We can be there the day after tomorrow.”

There were two reasons why we landed at Teresina at government expense. Firstly, Chariots of the Gods? and Gods from Outer Space have gone into several editions in South America (especially in Brazil) and open all doors to the author. Secondly, the Governor of Piaui wants to turn the site of Sete Cidades into a national park and is grateful for any publicity which will further his plans. A well-built road covers the hundred miles from Teresina to Piripiri.

The landscape is flat and dark green; the verges of the road are covered with undergrowth that is bordered by dense jungle. Wild pigs, wild cows and wild horses make the journey somewhat dangerous. Although the district is almost on the equator, the climate is bearable. A gentle breeze blows constantly from the coast some 200 miles away. From Piripiri you travel to Sete Cidades by a rough ten-mile road that can be used by cross-country vehicles.

Suddenly and without warning you are confronted by the first ruins. (Fig. 54.)

Fig 54.

Plan of Sete Cidades (Seven Cities),

which clearly shows order among the chaos of rocks destroyed by apocalyptic forces.

Well, ruins is not quite the right word here. There are no disordered remains of stones that were once built up in layers. There are no monoliths with sharp edges and artificially carved furrows as on the Bolivian plateau at Tiahuanaco. Even after making an intensive search and using your imagination to the full, you can find neither steps, nor stairs, nor streets which could have been lined with houses.

Sete Cidades is one monstrous chaos, like the biblical Gomorrah that was destroyed by heaven with fire and brimstone. Stone has been dried out, destroyed, melted by apocalyptic forces. And it must have been a very, very long time since the titanic conflagration raged. No one has ever excavated here.

Science has never attempted to uncover the different strata of this primordial stone past.

Here bizarre stone shapes, articulated monsters, shoot from the ground like question-marks. An educated guide, attached to me by the Governor of Piaui, told me that the Seven Cities’ strange contorted shapes had been formed by glacial deposits. As I know perfectly well from my home-country Switzerland, when glaciers all over the world withdraw, they leave behind an unmistakable broad band of eroded stone. There are no such traces here. Sete Cidades describes a fairly accurate circle with a diameter of 12 miles. My guide put forward another speculation. In the past there had been a sea-basin here and the Seven Cities were simply the remains of washed out stone; wind and temperature changes had sculpted the strange picturesque “ruins.” (Fig. 55.)

It might be true. Why not?

I have seen with my own eyes some of the fantastic structures which have come into being through the inventiveness and inexhaustible potentialities of nature. Death Valley in the USA, the Salt Cathedral in Colombia, the granite cauldron in Bolivia and the bizarre, almost architecturally articulated rock fissures on the Dead Sea-they were all wonderful and bizarre enough. There are many strange follies made by the great master-builder, nature.

But in some inexplicable way everything seemed to be quite different at Sete Cidades.

The arrangement of the “ruins” into seven districts can be clearly seen on the “official map” of Sete Cidades. Coincidence? A caprice of nature? I cannot accept that so much deliberate arrangement was caused by natural forces and I felt it much more likely that a definite plan lay behind it all. But what disconcerted me most were the crumb-like bits of metal squashed between the layers of rock and protruding from them that left traces of rust like long tears on the walls. This feature occurred too often and too regularly in the midst of all the chaos.

It is possible that there may be a geological explanation for the “tortoise” (Fig. 56), the special attraction of Sete Cidades, but in the absence of research we know nothing.

Fig. 55.

Detail of the ruined site of Sete Cidades, where the arrangement in seven districts can still be distinguished in spite of the chaos.

So far no scientific investigation of the foundations has been undertaken.
 

Fig. 56.

The “tortoise” is the special attraction in the wilderness of Sete Cidades.

In the absence of research, nothing positive can be said about it.

Although the origin of the Seven Cities is still unexplained, the rock paintings are an established fact. You can see them and photograph them. And there can be no doubt that the paintings are considerably more recent than the rough weather-worn stone monuments. Sete Cidades has two “pasts”: one a dark primordial past that can probably never be reconstructed, and a “modern” one, although even that dates to prehistoric times.

Once again not even the cleverest man on earth knows who painted the paintings on the walls. Yet it very soon becomes clear that the prehistoric artists, with few exceptions, liked to use the same motifs and symbols as are found in cave and rock paintings all over the world. Circles, wheels (with spokes), the sun, concentric circles, squares inside circles and variations on crosses and stars. Just as if all prehistoric artists, even those in the most remote parts, had visited the same art school! In his book Kult Symbol Schrift, Oswald O. Tobisch has shown in tabulated form that rock drawings in Africa, Europe, Asia and America are related to each other.

At the end of his comparative studies Tobisch asks in amazement:

“Is it possible that once there was a unified concept of God on an international scale simply inconceivable to our present way of thinking and that mankind in those days was still in the ‘field of force’ of the ‘primordial revelation’ of the one and almighty creator, to whom mind and matter, the whole universe with the heavenly bodies and living creatures, were and are subordinate?”

Here I am only going to introduce a few examples of the rock paintings at Sete Cidades, but I shall be glad to place my extensive collection of color photographs at the disposal of research workers. The red and yellow circles, which are obviously some kind of signal, are noteworthy, especially because rock paintings in two colors are rare.

Undoubtedly they were intended to transmit some special message. (Fig. 57.)

Fig. 57.

The red and yellow circles, obviously a kind of signal, are striking.

The technical sketch shaped something like a test-tube in the lower half of which two ropes with signal flags are recognizable, is remarkable (and so far has no counterpart elsewhere).

On a sturdy blood-red staff, 12 ½ inches high, there are five ovals like the balls on Christmas trees. Nothing from the real world of prehistoric men-animals, plants, stars-can have served as a model for them. (Fig. 58.) Then there is a line, below which jour balls dangle like notes of music. As prehistoric men did not know any musical notation-who can deny that?-they must also be meant to convey a message.

There is an ancient Indian relief with nine “notes of music” below and two above the central line that is almost a counterpart to it. Indian research workers easily identified the relief from descriptions in Sanskrit texts as the representation of a Vimana, i.e. a flying machine. (Gods from Outer Space.)

Fig. 58.

This technical looking plan is remarkable and to the best of my knowledge

without parallel in the international catalog of rock and cave paintings.

A test-tube?

Fig. 59.

Rock and cave painters always stylized objects in their perceptual world.

What was the model for this simple flying machine?

Another very remarkable example, in my opinion, was a flying machine (Fig. 59) that might have been drawn by a child. Prehistoric painters stylized everything they saw in an extremely simple way. What served them as a “model” here?

But to me the most extraordinary and impressive painting was a wall with astronauts on it. It shows two figures with round helmets, and floating above them a thing that visionaries would call a UFO. A spiral winds between the figures. Next to it a form is reproduced that an imaginative mind could interpret in a limitless number of ways.

Fig. 60.

The drawing high up on a rock face at Sete Cidades

is identical in style and layout with an old Indian bas-relief

which was identified by Sanskrit scholars as a Vimaana, a flying machine.

Fig. 61.

A tricky puzzle to solve.

A space station in orbit? Concentric circles with little windows?

One of the most puzzling finds at Sete Cidades!

A difficult kind of rebus. What can it be? A space station in orbit? (Fig. 61.) A circular band with little windows on the side facing us ... a band with a protuberance ... with a bifurcation above it. I have gone over the outlines of the drawing with charcoal to make it clearer. Last but not least, a primitive drawing which shows an astronaut in a complete spacesuit. In the company of Ernst von Khuon, I ask the question: were the gods astronauts?

The place where these rock paintings were found is also very strange and (so far) inexplicable. All the examples of rock drawings reproduced here float at a height of 26 feet on a very inaccessible wall. I think that the painters (provided there were no giants!) stood on a platform of stone blocks while they were working. But with the passage of time this platform must have been worn away by weathering because there is absolutely no trace of it to be found below the high wall.

The weathering away of the platform could be a clue to the great age of the rock paintings at Sete Cidades. The reserves of the Hopi Indians, members of the large Pueblo group, are located in Arizona and New Mexico. Today there are still about 8,000 Hopis in existence.

They weave extremely beautiful baskets, following an ancient handicraft tradition, and make magnificent pottery. In spite of the pressure of the blessings of civilization, the Hopi Indians on their reserves have preserved their age-old rites and customs, as well as their orally transmitted legends in an astonishingly pure form.

Fig. 62.

Large numbers of Petroglyphs can be seen on the rocks of the reserve,

although they are often hard to get at.

Of the four sketches chosen, the “Star Blower” is the most striking.

Antenna-like attributes can easily be recognized.

White Bear is chieftain of the Coyote clan by right of birth. He can still read most of the ancient “drawings” carved in the rock. Thus White Bear knows that a hand with outspread fingers next to the paintings means that the tribe who once executed the drawings is still in possession of the whole traditional wisdom. White Bear is capable of interpreting widely separated rock and cave drawings that he has never seen before. Unfortunately the chieftain is very reticent and extremely skeptical of white men (with good reason). The Petroglyphs in the reserves are of remarkable design and sometimes whole rock faces are covered with them. (Fig. 62.)

What have the legends of the Hopi Indians to tell us?

They say that the first world was Toktela. (Toktela literally means infinite space.) Only Taiowa, the creator, originally dwelt in the first world before he created men. The ancestors had been in contact with various worlds before they found their home on this planet. Taiowa told them that the supreme law was “Thou shalt not kill.” If there were any differences of opinion or disputes between the Hopis, the opposing parties separated, went off in different directions and sought new hunting grounds. But both sides stuck to the traditional laws and kept on covering rocks and caves with the same paintings during their long marches. (They still observe this practice today.)

In the Book of the Hopi (the first revelation of the Hopi’s historical and religious world-view of life) the following legend is told:

“In ancient times there was a battle for the Red City in the South. Wherever they came from, all the tribes were accompanied by Kachinas, beings who were reputed not to be of the ‘fourth world,’ indeed, they were not men at all. Nevertheless, they always proved themselves to be protectors and advisors of the tribe and frequently helped them out of tricky situations with superhuman powers and arts.

 

This was what happened in the Red City in the South when some Hopi tribes were suddenly attacked from all sides. With the speed of the wind, the Kachinas built a tunnel through which the Hopis were able to flee into the open behind the enemy lines without shedding blood. When they said goodbye, the Kachinas said to the chieftains: ‘We are staying to defend the city. The time for the journey to our distant planet has not yet come!’”

If we follow the Hopi traditions, all the red rock drawings are simply very early messages with precise instructions to tribe members who might happen to pass through that particular bit of territory at any given time.

It would be an interesting experiment to show Big Chief White Bear my color photographs of rock and cave drawings at Sete Cidades. Who knows, perhaps he would “read” in the remarkably similar symbols and motifs that the mysterious Red City of the South had been rediscovered at last. Back in Teresina, I looked forward keenly to a meeting with Felicitas Barreto (Fig. 63), a Brazilian who is an Indian scholar of high standing.

Her book Danzas Indigenas del Brasil (Native Dances of Brazil), with descriptions of the ritual dances of various wild Indian tribes, had made a deep impression on me. We had been in correspondence for some years and now I was going to meet her in person. Mrs. Barreto, “lost” to civilization for 20 years, came from the godforsaken region of the Upper Rio Paru, on the borders of Brazil and French Guiana. The Brazilian Air Force was bringing her to Belem. I had guaranteed a return flight from there to Teresina.

Fig 63.

I met Felicitas Barreto the celebrated Indian scholar, at Teresina.

She has lived in the jungle with Indians on the banks of the Rio Paru for 20, years.

“Good heavens, how noisy it is in this town! Can’t we creep into some quiet corner?” said Mrs. Barreto, a middle-aged lady with a wiry figure.

I found the quietest room in the Hotel Nacional.

Below I reproduce some of the conversation I took down on my tape recorder:

“How long is it since you have been in a town?”

“About twenty months, but one day will last me for a very long time. Already I’m homesick away from my Indians in the virgin forest.”

“Homesick?”

“Yes, for nature. I’ve learnt to converse silently with the sticks and stones, with animals and dewdrops. The Indians don’t talk much, but we understand each other perfectly.”

“You live among wild Indians. Why don’t they kill you, since you’re a white woman?”

 

“The Indians don’t live up to their reputation, and anyway I am a woman, and a woman is like a snake without venom, like a weapon without a point. They call me ‘pale half-moon’ because of my blonde hair. All the tribes know about me, they all know me by that name and if I move on to another tribe, I am always given a friendly reception.”

“What do you wear? Jeans?”

“Good lord, no! Mostly I go about naked or in a grass skirt. The chief of the tribe I’m studying now has invited me to be his third wife.”

“For heaven’s sake! Surely you haven’t said yes?”

“Not yet, but it would be nice to be a chief’s third wife. As third wife I should have the least work to do. Besides, three of us could give the chief a sound thrashing.”

 

“Really?”

“Yes, why not? If an Indian does not treat his wives properly or plays tricks on them, his wives beat him. After he has had his beating, he has to leave the house, go to the river and stay there in a kneeling position. If none of his wives fetch him before evening, he has to spend that night and all the following nights in the men’s house and look for new wives. Perhaps these strict customs are the reason why Indians are perfect gentlemen. And I must add that the tribe never deserts anyone, even if he is being ostracized or is seriously ill. Twice I was bitten by poisonous snakes, I lost consciousness for several days and the Indians looked after me and cured me with plants which they chewed and applied to the wound.”
 

“You know my books. What do the Indians have to say about the idea that man comes from the universe?”

“Let me answer your question with a legend that is told by the Kaiato tribe. They live on the Upper Xingu in the State of Mato Grosso. Incidentally all the tribes know this legend or similar ones.

“Far away from here on an alien star sat an Indian council that decided to change the tribe’s dwelling place. The Indians began to dig a hole in the ground, deeper and deeper, until it came out on the other side of their planet. The chief was the first to rush into the hole and after a long cold night he came to the earth, but the air resistance there was so strong that it blew the chief back again to his old home. Then the chief told the tribal council about his experience, that he had seen a beautiful blue world with a lot of water and many green woods and that he advised that all Indians should go to this world. The council decided to follow the chiefs advice and ordered the Indians to plait a long cotton cord. On this cord they slowly lowered themselves into the hole so that they too would not be blown back from the earth. Because they entered the earth’s atmosphere slowly, their mass migration was successful and since then they have lived on earth. In the beginning, relate the Kaiato, contact was still maintained with the old home through the cord, but one day a wicked magician cut it in two and since then they have been waiting for their brothers and sisters from their old home to seek and find them again on the earth.”

“Do the Indians also speak about the stars?”

 

“Not about the stars, but to the stars! They often sit motionless in a circle for hours, holding each other by the shoulder as in an endless chain and not saying a word. If you ask one of the men who was present (after the session is over) what they all did, you would certainly not get an answer, but I know from the women that the men are conversing with heaven.”

“Are they praying then?”

“No, they are carrying on silent dialogs with someone up there.” Mrs. Barreto hunched her shoulders and pointed to the ceiling.

“Tell me, do the wild Indians still have any rites or ritual objects that point to any land of connection with the universe?”

“Oh yes! There are the feathered men, Indians who cover themselves with feathers from head to foot, to make themselves look like birds who can rise into the cosmos so easily. And then there are the countless types of masks, which, if one likes, can all be interpreted along the lines of your theories. Many of the masks have branches with several forks springing from them like the antennae in your cave drawings.

 

Often the Indians completely disguise themselves in straw to make themselves resemble their fabulous ancestors. Joao Americo Peret, one of our outstanding Indian scholars, recently published some photographs of Kayapo Indians in ritual clothing that he took as long ago as 1952, long before Gagarin’s first space flight! If you look at those photographs, the first thing you think of is astronauts. The Kayapos, not to be confused with the Kaiato, live in the south of the State of Para on the Rio Fresco.”

Fig. 64.

Dr. Joao Americo Peret took these photos of Kayapo Indians in 1952,

when no one had any idea how astronauts dressed.

The Indians wear these ritual robes in memory of the appearance of the heavenly being Bep Kororoti.

Joao Americo Peret very kindly allowed me to use copies of his photographs of Kayapos in their “ritual garments” as illustrations to this book. (Fig. 64.) He took them in an Indian village on the Rio Fresco, south of Para.

In view of this really astonishing masquerade I feel that it is important to reemphasize that Peret took these photographs in 1952 at a time when the clothing and equipment of astronauts were still not familiar to all us Europeans, let alone these wild Indians! Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth in his spaceship Vostok I for the first time on April 12, 1961, and only since that event have astronauts in their suits become as familiar a sight as mannequins in shop windows. The Kayapos in their straw imitation spacesuits need no commentary apart from the remark that these “ritual garments” have been worn by the Indian men of this tribe on festive occasions since time immemorial, according to Peret.

The Kayapo legend that Joao Americo Peret told me needs no commentary either. Peret heard it in the village of Gorotire on the banks of the Fresco from the Indian Kuben Kran Kein, the old counselor of the tribe, who bears the title of Gway Baba, the wise.

This is the legend which the sage related:

“Our people lived in a big savanna, far away from this region, from which one could see the mountain range Pukato Ti, the summits of which were enveloped in a cloud of uncertainty and this uncertainty has not been cleared to this day. The sun, tired from its long daily walk, lay down on the green grass behind the brushwood and Mem Baba, the inventor of all things, covered the heaven with his cloak full of hanging stars. When a star falls down, Memi Keniti traverses heaven and takes it back to the right place. That is the task of Memi Keniti, the eternal guardian.

“One day, Bep Kororoti, who came from the Pukato Ti mountains, arrived in the village for the first time. He was clad in a bo (i.e. the straw suit in the pictures), which covered him from head to foot. He carried a kop, a thunder weapon, in his hand. Everyone in the village was terrified and fled into the bush. The men tried to protect the women and children, and some of them attempted to fight the intruder, but their weapons were too weak for they crumbled to dust every time they touched Bep Kororoti. The warrior who had come from the cosmos must have laughed at the weakness of those who fought against him. To demonstrate his strength he raised his kop, pointed it first at a tree and then at a stone, and destroyed them both. Everyone believed that in so doing Bep Kororoti wanted to show them that he had not come to wage war with them.

“Confusion reigned for a long time. The bravest warriors of the tribe tried to organize resistance, but in the end they could only succumb to the presence of Bep Kororoti, for he did no harm to them. His beauty, the radiant whiteness of his skin, his obvious affection and love gradually enchanted everyone. They felt safe with him and became friends.

“Bep Kororoti took pleasure in learning how to use our weapons and how to become a good hunter. He progressed so well that he could handle our weapons better than the best men of the tribe and was braver than the bravest men in the village. It did not take long before Bep Kororoti was received into the tribe as a warrior and then a young maiden sought him as a husband and married him. They begot sons and a daughter, whom they called Nio Pouti.

“Bep Kororoti was more clever than anyone else so he began to instruct the others in unknown matters. He led the men in the construction of a Ng Obi, the men’s house that all our villages have today. In it the men told the youngsters about their adventures and so they learnt how to behave when in danger and how to think. In truth the house was a school and Bep Kororoti was the teacher.

 

“In the Ng Obi handicrafts were developed and our weapons were improved and there was nothing that we do not owe to the great warrior from the universe. It was he who founded the ‘big chamber’ in which we discussed the trials and needs of our tribe, and thus a better organization came into being that made life and work easier for everybody.

“Often the young men resisted and did not go to the Ng Obi. Then Bep Kororoti put on his bo and sought the young men; once he had done this they could no longer resist and came quickly back to the Ng Obi because only there were they safe.

“If hunting was difficult, Bep Kororoti fetched up his kop and killed the animals without damaging them. The hunter was always allowed to take the best piece of prey for himself, but Bep Kororoti, who did not eat the village food, only took what was essential to feed his family. His friends did not approve of this, but he did not change his attitude.

“His behavior did change with the years. He no longer went out with the others. He wanted to stay in his hut. But when he did leave his hut he always went up into the mountains of Pukato Ti from which he had come. One day he followed the will of his spirit, for he could no longer master it. He left the village. He assembled his family and only Nio Pouti was not present, for she was away, and his departure followed rapidly. The days passed and Bep Kororoti was not to be found. But suddenly he reappeared in the village square, and uttered a terrifying war cry. Everyone thought he had gone mad and they all tried to calm him down. But when the men tried to approach him, a terrible battle took place. Bep Kororoti did not use his weapons, but his body trembled and anyone who touched him fell to the ground dead. The warriors died in swarms.

“The battle lasted for days, then the fallen groups of warriors could stand up again and continued to try to subdue Bep Kororoti. They pursued him almost to the crest of the mountains. Then something happened that left everyone speechless. Bep Kororoti walked backwards to the far edge of the Pukato Ti. With his hop he destroyed everything that was near him. By the time he had reached the very top of the mountain range, trees and bushes had turned to dust. Suddenly there was a tremendous crash that shook the whole region and Bep Kororoti vanished into the air, surrounded by fiery clouds, smoke and thunder. By this earthshaking event the roots of the bushes were torn from the ground and the wild fruits destroyed. Game disappeared so that the tribe began to suffer from hunger.

 

“Nio Pouti, who had married a warrior and bore a son, and was as we know a daughter of the heavenly Bep Kororoti, told her husband that she knew where food for the whole tribe could be found, but first they would have to follow her into the mountains to Pukato Ti. Urged on by Nio Pouti her husband plucked up courage and followed her into the region of Pukato Ti. There she looked for a special tree in the district of Mem Baba Kent Kre and sat on its branches with her son in her lap. Then she told her husband to bend the branches of the tree down till their tips touched the ground. At the moment that this contact took place, there was a big explosion and Nio Pouti disappeared amid clouds, smoke, dust, thunder and lightning.

“Her husband waited for a few days. He had lost his courage and was almost dying of hunger when he heard a crash and saw the tree standing in its old place again. His surprise was great, his wife was there again and with her Bep Kororoti and they brought with them big baskets full of food such as he did not know and had never seen. After a time the heavenly man sat in the fantastic tree again and ordered him to bend the boughs down to the earth. There was an explosion and the tree disappeared into the air again.

“Nio Pouti returned to the village with her husband and made known an order of Bep Kororoti’s. Everyone must leave immediately and erect their villages in front of Baba Kent Kre where they would get their food. Nio Pouti also said that they had to keep the seeds of fruit and vegetables and bushes until the rainy season so that they could put them in the earth again and reap new harvests. “That is how agriculture started ... Our people moved to Pukato Ti and lived there in peace; the huts of our villages grew more numerous and they could be seen stretching from the mountains right up to the horizon ...”

I had this Kayapo legend, which was told me by the Indian scholar Joao Americo Peret, translated literally from the Portuguese. Equally old as the legend is the straw spacesuit which the Indians wear in memory of the appearance of Bep Kororoti.
 

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