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The Araweté history has been, at least since
the beginning of the century, one of successive conflicts
with enemy tribes and constant moves. They left the Upper
Bacajá because of Kayapó and Parakanã
attacks. The Araweté, in turn, upon arriving at
the Ipixuna and other rivers of the region (Bom Jardim,
Pinhaquara) drove the Asurini, who had settled there,
away to the Ipiaçava river, up North aways. In
1970, following the construction of the Trans-Amazon highway,
which ran through Altamira (the nearest city), the Brazilian
government began an effort to attract and pacify the indigenous
groups in the mid Xingu region. The Araweté began
to be officially noted in 1969. By 1971 Funai established
the Ipixuna Attraction Front, which maintained off and
on contacts with the Araweté until 1974, without
ever visiting their villages. By that time the group was
divided into two blocks of villages, one farther to the
South, in the Bom Jardim watershed and another to the
North, at the Upper Ipixuna.
By January 1976, Parakanã attacks prompted
the Araweté from both regions to seek the Xingu
banks, intent on "taming" the whites -- since
they never thought they were "pacified" by
the whites, but rather the other way round. Funai found
them in May of the same year, precariously camped near
fields, starving and sick due to contact with the whites
in the beiradão - as the lands on the Xingu banks
are called by regional populations.
By July, Funai’s frontiersmen decide to
move this sick, wretched population on a trek to a station
built in the Upper Ipixuna, near the old villages of
the group. It was a 100 km walk, which took 17 days
and at least 66 persons died en route. With their eyes
shut by infectious conjunctivitis caught in the beiradão,
people could not see their way, were lost in the woods
and starved to death; little children, suddenly orphaned,
were sacrificed by adults in despair; many people, too
weak to walk, asked to be left behind to die in peace.
How many people started the trek is not known,
but only 27 arrived together with the woodsmen who led
the way; the remainder trickled in later. Some Indians
detoured to older villages along the way; a new Parakanã
attack drove the entire Araweté who survived
trek and foe to gather at the Funai Station. In March
1977, Funai’s first census tagged 120 individuals.
The Araweté listed the names of 77 individuals
who disappeared in the period between their arrival
in the Xingu, in January 1976 and their arrival at the
old station in July of the same year; three succumbed
to the Parakanã and 73, therefore, perished from
contact and the disastrous trek: 36% of the entire population
at the time.
In 1978, the group moved, together with the
Funai Station, to a site closer to the mouth of the
Ipixuna river, where they reside to this date.
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