The Indians were located on the river Peixoto de Azevedo, in Xingu basin river. Here is an excerpt from the story: They were there. They were athletic men painted black from head to toe. They were completely naked, their hair trimmed up to the ear. They belonged to the kranhacãrore tribe or the giant Indians. Eight of them, guys very young had between 15 and 18 years and none had less than 1.80 m of height ... (VEJA, 1973)
Other narratives confirm the existence of this mysterious tribe: Caciques (chiefs of the tribe) of Juruna tribe (or tribe of Yurun or Yudjá) say that their grandparents had contacts with the giants. They had over 2 meters and a half of height. Today, they disappeared and became "Mamaés" or nature spirits.
Brazil: giants indigenous. Where they came from? For where did they go?
In this history mixed with legend the great mysteries are: who were this people? Where they came from? For where did they go?
During the sixteenth century, many Jesuit priests participated in the colonization process of South America. They wrote about these giants in their chronical. In "Discovery of the Amazon River", three priests – Alonso de Rojas, Christoval de Acuña, Gaspar de Carvaja – they described: they are giants and have between two to three meters tall. The braves, they live naked and they wear big hoops of gold in their ears and nose (STURARI, 2006).
This mysterious nation always avoided the connect with white men. There are indications that at the time of the arrival of European peoples, portugueses, french, holaneses, the giant Indians lived more to the east. Then, they occupied a long strip of land between the states of Mato Grosso, Minas Gerais, north of Sao Paulo, Goias and Para. Today's Tribes, like Assurinis, Panarás, Parakanãs, in past times they were a single culture, a great nãção. The nation of the Kayapos.
The Panará are the last descendants of the Kayapo of south nomadic group who spoke a language of the family Ge, of Central Brazil. In the eighteenth century, these indienous had lived at the north of Sao Paulo and at Mato Grosso. They fought hard against the Portugueses. But, with the discovery of gold in Goiás, in their, territory in 1722, the natives were expelled of these regions. With no option, they moved to northern forests.
About this historic period, according the chief cacique Akè Panará, the elders say that in the past, the white men had killed many of the Panarás. They had shotguns, fire-guns. They arrived in our villages and simply killed the persons. The elders told: If the white men reached here, we have to kill them with bordunas (big maces). They are wild (Povos Indígenas do Brasil).
Who were the giants of Brazilian jungle?
Nobody knows if giants indigenous can have existed in Brazil, or at South America, one day. But a thing is sure: the legend exists. And a curious photo of Orlando Villas Boas near an indigenous very much young and tall exists too. (In this page, above).
Into a labyrinth of narratives made of fantasy and reality two hypotheses stand out: 1. The giants were masters and founders of interplanetary civilizations that had finished their mission in this orb. Then, they gone away nobody knows to where. 2. The ancient giants were survivers of the Atlante tragedy, when the last lands and kingdoms of the mythic continent were swallowed by the waters of the Oceans. Atlantic and Pacific.
Atlanteans or Extraterrestrials
Extraterrestrials or atlanteans, in a point the legends agree: not all of them left the jungle or this planet. Also there were the descendants. The interbreeding surely happened between the people more developed and individuals of the primitive tribes of South American. The giants begun to disappear after that the european explorers had arrived at the epoch of Great Navigations, in the XVI century.
Although have fought with the invaders that came of the sea, the giants had no intention to expose to themselves. They understood the power of the war of the foreign. The guns of fire. The blood of peoples shed in vain. They chose to disappear!But ... how to do this? How to make to disappear?
The legend has its answers. If they were extraterrestrials, they can have returned to their own planet or simply they went ahead with their travel trough the cosmos. But if the giants were earthlings remnants of the Atlantean Race, perhaps, as some indigenous say and also forest peoples and of the wetland at Brazil Central, only perhaps, the giants could taken to have refuge in the mythical cities and underground tunnels built by their atlanteans ancestors.
FONTES
MESQUITA, Paulo and MOREYRA, Sandra. Conheça poções mágicas da floresta e os índios gigantes do Amazonas. IN G1/Bom Dia Brasil – published in 05/20/2010
[http://g1.globo.com/bom-dia-brasil/noticia/2010/05/conheca-pocoes-magicas-da-floresta-e-os-indios-gigantes-do-amazonas.html]
PINTO, Fernando. Parakanãs, os índios gigantes. IN Memórias de um repórter, chapter 17. Brasília: Thesaurus Editora, 2004
SOUSA SANTOS, Boaventura. Capitulação e volta dos índios IN Reconhecer para libertar: os caminhos do cosmopolitismo multicultural – p 88. São Paulo: Record, 2003.
Povos indígenas no Brasil. IN [http://pib.socioambiental.org/pt/c/quadro-geral].
REVISTA VEJA, 30 ANOS. Os índios gigantes. 14 de fevereiro de 1973. [IN http://veja.abril.com.br/30anos/p_033.html]
STURARI, Marlene. De Pero Vaz de Caminha a Menotti Del Picchia: alguns motivos edênicos na literatura de viagens dos séculos XVI e XVII e no modernismo. Dissertação. Universidade de são Paulo, Filosofia e Ciências Humanas: São Paulo, 2006.