Word: cabral
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Dates: during 1961-1961
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...years. Like the North American Indian before him, the Brazilian Indian's enemy is the white man-and the white man's ways. Throughout the country's vast and still largely untamed jungle, the Indian stands dangerously close to extinction. When Portuguese Sea Captain Pedro Cabral discovered Brazil in 1,500, the lush tropical land teemed with 3,000,000 Indians of some 2,500 tribes. Today its tribal Indian population is down to an estimated 78,000 and falling steadily every year...
Brazil's history is studded with examples of unspeakable cruelty to the dark-skinned natives who lived there uncounted centuries before Cabral. Early Portuguese colonizers enslaved natives by the thousands to work the sugar plantations, butchered whole tribes as a warning to others. Jesuit missionaries, serving as the Indians' first "protectors," instead became their oppressors by herding them into new settlements so that their lands could be more easily confiscated. Dreaded mame-luko* raiders-crossbreeds of Portuguese and native blood-disguised as priests, swept down on the missions to carry off their congregations, sometimes killing the Jesuit fathers...