![\"Last](\"https:\/\/c.ndtvimg.com\/2022-09\/dnj1ima_amazon-tribe-afp_625x300_03_September_22.jpg\"\/ "\\"Last")
<\/div>\nGrab of a file video taken in March 2011 by Brazil’s National Indian Foundation<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Brasilia: <\/b><\/p>\n
For more than 20 years he lived alone in the Brazilian Amazon eating nuts, fruit and game — a symbol of the struggle of indigenous people who exist in isolation in the rainforest.<\/p>\n
Now this man whose very name was unknown is dead, and his passing has made headlines around the world.<\/p>\n
His life was marked by massacres that left him as the lone survivor of a small tribe attacked by gunmen apparently hired by ranchers seeking to exploit the pristine Amazon.<\/p>\n
He was found dead lying in a hammock on August 23 in Tanaru Indigenous Territory. Authorities found no signs of violence and believe he died of natural causes.<\/p>\n
The man was covered in the bright feathers of a bird called the guacamaya, a kind of macaw, local news reports said.<\/p>\n
The Tanaru Indigenous Territory covers 8,000 hectares (30 square miles) of protected rainforest in Brazil’s southwestern Rondonia state, bordering Bolivia. The reserve is surrounded by sprawling cattle ranches.<\/p>\n
Rife with rogue miners and wood cutters whose work is illegal, it is one of the most dangerous regions of Brazil, according to the Survival International NGP.<\/p>\n
The Tanaru land “is like an oasis of green in the sea of destruction,” said NGO director Fiona Watson.<\/p>\n
An arrow shot<\/strong><\/p>\n The “man of the hole” was first spotted in 1996 by a documentary team traveling with officials of the National Indian Foundation, a government agency that was probing a massacre committed against his tribe.<\/p>\n Proving the presence of indigenous people in the Tanaru forest area was necessary in order to grant the area legal protection.<\/p>\n The footage was featured in a documentary called “Corumbiara” in 2009.<\/p>\n In it, the man’s eyes are seen peering out from inside a straw hut. A spear pokes out at one point, as if to scare visitors away. But no one utters a word.<\/p>\n Over the years Funai teams came back with representatives of neighboring tribes to try to determine what language the man spoke and learn more about his people.<\/p>\n But he made clear he did not want to engage anyone. Feeling threatened, one time he shot an arrow that left a visiting team member seriously wounded.<\/p>\n “One can only imagine what this man was thinking, going through, living on his own, not able to speak to anybody and I think very frightened because any outsider for him represented a threat, given his terrible experience,” Watson said.<\/p>\n After that, authorities just tried to patrol his territory and look for signs that he was still alive.<\/p>\n In the last known footage of him alive — shot in 2011 but not released until seven years later — he is seen semi-naked cutting down a tree with an axe.<\/p>\n Besides bows and arrows that showed he hunted, there were gardens where he grew fruit and vegetables, such as papaya and manioc.<\/p>\n “We saw one of his gardens and it was full of produce — very beautifully kept,” said Watson who visited the site in 2005.<\/p>\n But what most fascinated researchers were the many holes he dug — some two meters (seven feet) deep and with sharp spears at the bottom.<\/p>\n Funai said officials found 53 places that had been his home in the Tanaru territory, always with the same structure: a small straw hut with one door and a hole.<\/p>\n The holes were used to trap animals but experts think they may also been a place for him to hide from intruders or had some kind of spiritual purpose.<\/p>\n The holes, Watson said, are “a mystery that has died with him,” as is the history of the Tanaru people.<\/p>\n Funai has identified 114 indigenous groups that live in isolation in Brazil’s part of the Amazon.<\/p>\n (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n