During their two centuries of contact with non-Indians, the Krahô have experienced numerous reversals and inversions in their situation. After some early conflicts, they were long allied with ranch owners, but in 1940, many were massacred when some ranchers attacked their villages. In the 1950s, they followed a prophet who promised to transform them into “civilized Brazilians,” but in 1986, they set their sights on a goal that implied just the opposite, an assertion of their ethnic identity, by going to the São Paulo Museum to demand the return of an axehead, shaped like a half-moon, that was vital to their traditions. They often travel to large cities, where they know the streets and authorities better than do the rural Brazilians near their reservation. They often telephone negligent friends to ask for glass beads, cloth, and cattle to provide meat required for ritual feasts.