Rescuing another Loner | The last Man of his tribe

Have you read the recent story of the death of the last man of a tribe in Rondonia, Brazil, a people who were never successfully contacted, so they and their language remain unidentified?

Following clashes with illegal miners and ranchers, his tribe was gradually reduced to 7 members, then in 1995, six of those were killed, leaving only him. He survived alone for another 26 years.

One of the accounts I’ve read calls him the ‘loneliest man on Earth’.

Well, I don’t think he was lonely in the way most people think. The mere fact that he survived successfully for so long tells me that he felt very much at home in the wild ‘Tanaru indigenous reserve’ of 8,070 hectares where he lived. Indigenous people count other species, and special places, as friends and relatives. I suspect he had daily conversations with non-human visitors.

Of course, the last man or woman could have been an extrovert. The bullets that destroyed his people wouldn’t have been choosy about who they cut down. But I don’t think an extrovert would have survived this way. He would have been driven to find other people. This man must have been a loner by nature.

A loner myself, all my life I’ve felt happy whenever I re-entered any wild area. Sometimes I talk with animals, insects and trees, but mostly I just feel content having them around me. Even when fishing and hunting, killing some of them, I apologize to them as most hunter-gatherers do. This man was obviously a consummate hunter.

Just think, estimated to be about 60 years old, apparently knowing that he was dying, he got into a hammock, covered his body with macaw feathers (I like to think it was the blue and yellow ones), and let himself go. That’s how he was found. He conducted his own funeral.

But the feathers are what intrigues me most here.

For about twenty years now I’ve been researching the possibility of an ‘after-life’, what psychologist J. B. Rhine called the “Mt Everest of paranormal phenomena”. Like Rhine, I’ve been reluctant to discuss my findings which are still grossly incomplete. It’s not just a Mt Everest I’m investigating – it’s a psychic Amazon wilderness of unidentified extent.

But just think – If a wider existence exists, then he may now be back together with his people. Or he may be still alone,  travelling on, exploring a new larger wilderness.

I think I really need to begin my posts on that subject. In the meantime, here is the BBC account if you haven’t read it:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-62712318