Baré
By Bráz de Oliveira França (Negro River/
AM - 1999):
Aicué curí uiocó, paraná-assú
sui, peruaiana, quirimbaua piri pessuí [Your biggest
and most powerful enemy will come from the larger river]. It was
with this message that Purnaminari, Tupana's great messenger,
tried to warn all the peoples that controlled these lands before
1500. Maybe the pajés (shamans) and the chiefs imagined
that this powerful enemy would be an epidemic, or the fury of
the winds, a rebellion of the forest, or even Curupira's revenge
[Curupira is a bogey-man with feet pointed backwards). But they
never imagined that the enemy would be the white man, who came
from the sea, as the eyes of the Tupiniquim, Tupinambá
and maybe other native peoples of the Atlantic coast witnessed.
Many years later that same story would be repeated in the lands
of the brave Xavante, Kaiapó, Juruna and Kayabi in the
Central-West, among the Tarumã, Baré and Manao,
at the confluence of the rivers Negro and Solimões, and
among the Tukano, Baniwa, Desana and others in the extreme North,
on the Upper River Negro.
Possibly these White men were received with great surprise and
admiration, and presented themselves as friendly people, offering
gifts and trying to communicate through gestures and signs. Then
they went back to their country to tell the king of the discovery
of new lands inhabited by wild Indians. With this news, the king
of Portugal must have, naturally, sent to these lands many ships
with thousands of people, with permission to occupy and control
the largest possible part of the territory then occupied by their
true owners, at no matter what cost.
n the meantime people could never imagine the tremendous monstrosities
that the White man was capable of doing. They did not know that,
from then on, genocide, ethnocide, massacres and oppressions to
be imposed upon those that began to be called Indians had been
decreed.
On the River Negro, inhabited along its course by the Baré
people, and along its tributaries by the Tukano, the Desana, the
Arapasso, the Wanano, the Tuyuka, the Baniwa, the Warekena and
others, the same violence took place. Entire villages and peoples
were decimated by French, Dutch and Portuguese invaders. White
merchants, with credentials from provincial governors, had full
authority to perpetrate criminal acts against Indigenous peoples.
Not even the great warrior chief “Wayury-kawa” (Ajuricaba)
was able to save his people from the barbarous invaders, because
the fight was totally uneven: while the Indians fought with their
arrows and zarabatanas (blowguns), Whites shot with powerful canons
the men, women and children who tried to keep them from entering
their lands. But even dominated, arrested and wounded, Ajuricaba
preferred death and, tied up, threw himself into the river.
Today, 500 years later, we still remember the sad stories told
by our grandparents. They used to say that the first merchants
that appeared on the River Negro brought with them items such
as matches, machetes, axes and cloth, with which they tried to
convince the Indians to produce rubber, nuts, balata (bully, a
kind of gum), piassava, titica vine and other natural products.
But because the Indians were not very interested in these products
they started to use violence, attacking villages in order to capture
men and women and take them to rubber plantations, nut plantations
and fields of piassava located on the rivers Branco, Uacará,
Padauiry and Preto. Many never returned from these places, some
because they did not survive the bad treatment given by the bosses,
others because they fell victims of contagious diseases such as
yellow fever, the flu, smallpox and measles. Today there are still
descendants of the Baré, Tukano, Baniwa and Warekena who
live on those rivers a life of slavery. There are people more
than 60-years old who do not even know the River Negro, just the
bosses' law.
Until the first decades of the 20th Century it was normal for
Whites to have Indian men and women working for them, be it for
simple domestic tasks, be it for very hard work, such as oarsmen
in the big canoes that left Tawa (São Gabriel) for Belém,
taking products and bringing back merchandise, on a trip that
would take from six to ten months. Many oarsmen did not come back
because the boss killed them during the trip. Those who were taken
to gather rubber and other products were forced to produce a certain
amount, and those who did not meet the target were whipped. Those
who were forced to witness such scenes were expected to laugh
or they were subjected to a similar fate.
It was at that time that the first missionaries appeared. Their
goal was to settle the Indians in villages, with the intention
of saving them from the cruelties of their bosses and to teach
them how to believe in God through Catholic evangelization. This
initiative, however, was worse than any physical suffering, for
they forced the Indians to abandon many of their cultural practices,
such as the cures, the Dabucury celebrations (ceremonial exchange
of goods), the preparation rituals for the young and their ways
of paying homage and thank to the Universe's great creator. All
this became diabolic acts in the missionaries' law. In the large
mission buildings there were schools where the Indians were forced
to speak the Portuguese language and to pray in Latin.
In the first decades of the century there also came to the region
of the lower river Uaupés, on Bela Vista Island, the Albuquerque
family. One of them, known as Manduca, not because he was good,
but rather because he was perverse and a drunk, got the post of
Director of Indians of the old SPI [Serviço de Proteção
ao Índio - Service for the Protection of the Indian -,
the first government organ created specifically to establish an
Indian policy in Brazil]. Manduca Albuquerque made a point in
spreading his bad reputation along the rivers Uaupés, Tiquié
and Papuri. The entire population of these rivers had to produce
rubber and flour for him. At that time he bought one of the region's
first motor launches, with which he transported his production
and his men, but the Indians had to row even when the motor launch
was running and could only travel sitting or lying down. It is
told that one day, when he had travelled to Manaus with his motor,
some Indians decided to kill one of his most perverse henchmen.
When Manduca got back and learned the news, he ordered his other
henchmen to take all the men and women to a certain place in order
to have a talk with him. When they got there he was already drunk
and ordered them to be tied to an orange tree, where there was
an enormous ant nest, and be left there until the following day.
He then told the Indians to board the boat because he himself
would take them back. During that trip, in the midst of a great
drunken spree of cachaça (sugarcane liquor), he ordered
that three at a time jumped into the water. Then he shot them
with his 44-caliber rifle in the head, and so he killed everyone.
In the 1950's and 1960's the industrialized products came to
the rivers Uaupés, Tiquié, Içana and Xié
via the regatões [regatão is the travelling merchant
typical of the Amazon Region], who also took advantage of the
Indians' cheap workforce. They always had cachaça, with
which they would get the men drunk so that they could abuse sexually
the women, married or not, as payment for the debts made by their
fathers and husbands.
Despite this past of violence and massacres, we can register
a few things as conquests: the demarcation of the five Indigenous
lands in the Upper River Negro, confirming once more the prophecy
of the great Tupana's messenger, Purnaminari. In one of his visits
to his people, very irritated, he said: - “Puxí curí
peçassa amun-itá ruaxara, maramên curí
pemanduari ixê, aramém curí peiassúca,
peiaxiú paraná ribiiuá upê, pemucamém
peruá, pericú-aram maam peiara, Tupanaumeém
ua peiaram”. [You will now be dominated by other people,
until you remember me, and then you shall go to the river to bathe
and cry showing your faces so I can recognise you and Tupana will
give back what has always been yours].
Analysing this great prophecy, we see that the people of Tupana
were not only the Baré people. We come to the conclusion
that these peoples had to go through this long period of suffering.
But after they recognized themselves they would begin to get back
their original rights, they would act like Indians, Brazilians,
Amazonenses [natives of the State of Amazonas], Sangabrielenses
[natives of the municipality of São Gabriel]. The great
victory that was the recognition of more than 10 million hectares
of demarcated lands on the River Negro is the result of a struggle
that was a consequence of this past. Even so, if some of our ancestors
saw us in the state we are now and we asked them why they lived
free and tranquil 500 years ago, certainly they would answer:
“We were not Indians!”
Baré-mira iupirungá (The origin of the Baré
people)
Kuíri açú ambêu penãram,
maiê taá baré-míra iupirungá
[Now I'm going to tell you the story of the origin of the Baré
people], our past historians used to say. And they began the story
by saying:
In the old times, still in the beginnings of the world, there
came to the River Negro, coming from the larger river, a great
ship full of people inside and each one with his partner. Only
one man travelled on the outside of the ship, because he had not
been accepted inside because he didn't have a partner. When passing
the mouth of the River Negro the ship was so close to the edge
that the passengers saw that there were many people on the margin,
which included the man who travelled on the outside, who couldn't
resist the temptation, jumped into the water and swam to the river's
margin. When he reached land, he was taken by a group of warrior
women, who had the habit of accepting only women in their group.
When they needed children, they would take males from other tribes
and of that relation, if a girl was born they raised her, if a
boy they'd kill him. That was going to be the fate of the man
who swam from the ship, whom they called “Mira-Boi”
(Gente-Cobra - Snake Person), if it weren't for the fact that
his physical structure was a bit different from that of those
they had known previously, and for that reason they decided to
spare his life after submitting Mira-Boia to a rigorous test of
virility. The warrior women then prepared a great celebration
in the first full moon; a great fire was built in the center of
the patio, many fruits and wild honey were collected. The celebration
with the rituals lasted eight days. When it was over the group
decided the following: Mira-Boia could live with the group on
the condition that he generated a child in each of them. He would
have to spend three nights with every woman who was in her fertile
period. When that mission was over he was to be executed, along
with every male child that were born.
So Mira-boia lived with the group for a long time under these
conditions, until he generated a child with the last woman, and
that last woman was “Tipa” [Rouxinol - Nightingale],
a very beautiful young lady who was in her first period. Because
she was the youngest and the most beautiful, and very dear to
the group, she had the privilege of living with Mira-Boia until
her pregnancy could be seen by the rest of the group. For that
reason Tipa and Mira-Boia started to live a life of a couple,
and when she noticed that she was pregnant she also realized she
was madly in love with her partner. The same happened to Mira-Boia.
And since our hero's fate was death, she managed to convince her
now-considered-husband to run away. In the first period of the
new moon he and she ran away, while the warrior women had gone
hunting and gathering honey and fruits, which they would eat during
the celebration of the execution of the man who had given to the
group many warriors generated by him. They went to live far away
from the other groups. It is believed that such place was near
Mura, on the Lower River Negro.
After about 30 years the family was big; Tipa and Mira-Boia almost
everyday, in the afternoon, enjoyed their happiness with the sons
and daughters they had generated. So they figured they could form
a much larger family. It was then that Tupana ordered his Messenger,
which he called Purnaminari, to come to them and tell them the
following:
- “What you are thinking of now pleases Tupana, that's why
he sent me here, to teach you how to work so you will have food
for all of you everyday”.
He then lived with them for a long time, teaching them how to
build canoes, make oars, plant fields, make traps for catching
animals, fish, and training the new group for war.
When the small group had learned everything that had been taught,
Purnaminari organized a great celebration with Dabucury, Adaby
and Curiamã in order to prepare the people for their journey,
saying: “Now that you know everything I taught you in order
to live, go back to Tipa's land and take the women from Tipa's
old group as your wives, then you will be great and respected
and will be known as Baré-Mira (Baré people)”.
Purnaminari, Tupana's messenger, came back many times to visit
and teach his people. The group grew so much it completely controlled
the region of the Lower and Mid River Negro. When they came to
Tawa Falls (São Gabriel) they stayed there until Purnaminari
decided his people's new destination. However, in these falls
Kurukui and Buburi had a misunderstanding and fought a lot among
themselves, so they decided to separate, and Kurukui stayed on
one side and Buburi on the opposite side of the river. This separation
led to the disobedience of Purnaminari's rules, for he had ordered
the people not to mix with other groups, but Kurukui e Buburi
thought that in order to make the group grow they should have
many women. It was then that they made war against smaller groups
in order to take their women and multiply.
That's what Tipa and Mira-Boia did, and they managed to be the
parents of a great people which, until the arrival of the “Whites”,
lived on the River Negro from its mouth up to the falls.
About the narrative
The above narrative was collected and edited by Geraldo Andrello
(anthropologist, ISA/ Unicamp). The narrator, the Baré,
Braz de Oliveira França, was president of the Federação
das Organizações Indígenas do Rio Negro –
Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the River Negro –
(FOIRN) between 1990 and 1997. He is the current associate manager
of the Administração Regional da Fundação
Nacional do Índio (Funai) – Regional Administration
of the National Indian Foundation – in São Gabriel
da Cachoeira, State of Amazonas.
The Baré of the Upper River Negro
By Dominique Buchillet (anthropologist, Institut de Recherche
pour le Développement - IRD):
The Baré, an Indigenous group of Aruak origin, live mostly
in Brazil, along the mid and upper courses of the River Negro,
on the rivers Içana and Xié (two tributaries of
the Negro) and in Venezuela, in the region of the Cassiquiare
Canal. They number approximately 1,500 individuals in Brazil.
The name Baré derives from bári, “white”,
a term used to differentiate Whites from Blacks [Pérez
A., 1988. “Los Bále (Baré)”. In Los Aborigenes
de Venezuela, vol. III, pp. 413-479. Caracas]. The Baré
would be composed of various indigenous groups mentioned in historical
sources such as the Mandahuaca, the Manaca, the Baria, the Cunipusana
and the Pasimonare, which are not considered different peoples
but rather “exogamous clans separated from a common branch
some 150-120 years ago” (ibidem: 466).
At the time of the Conquest, the Baré occupied a territory
of more than 165,000 square kilometers, including the mid and
upper courses of the River Negro, the region of the Cassiquiare
Canal and the river Mavaca (ibid.). The Baré were one of
the first Indigenous groups of the River Negro affected by the
contact with whites. From 1669 they were, along with the Baniwa
and the Passé, living in the Fortress of São José
do Rio Negro (present-day Manaus), a military garrison from which
expeditions in search of slaves in the River Negro region departed.
Along the centuries they were, together with other Indigenous
peoples, grouped into fortresses and villages, where they were
kept as slaves. Their traditional language was gradually replaced
by the Língua Geral and Portuguese, just as their beliefs,
customs and traditions were slowly adapted to the Portuguese model.
Until recently Funai considered them White people, but currently
they are undergoing a process of reclaiming their ethnic identity
and revitalization of their ancestral culture.
