Roraima: Brazil's northernmost frontier by John Hemming - SAS-Space

lived mission on the upper Surumu, but it failed when disease forced his
Indians to flee to the forests. 'Father Thomas, deserted, sick and famished,
finally made his way with one companion to the station and the effort to
Christianize the Indians was abandoned.' 55 The missionary transferred his
effort to the lower Uraricoera, where the American William Curtis Farabee
met him in 1914.
Thirteen years later, General Candido Rondon was appalled to find a
British Jesuit, presumably Father Cary-Elwes, spending months in Brazil
among the Wapixana, building chapels and persuading them to migrate
across the border to his Saint Ignatius mission. Rondon also heard that a protestant
pastor was doing likewise on the slopes of Mount Roraima. These
were the Seventh-Day Adventists Alfred and Betty Cott who arrived there
in 1927 and for a few years occupied former Benedictine chapels inside Venezuela
near the frontier.
In 1910 the Brazilian government created the Indian Protection Service
(SPI) to protect its native tribal peoples. The last surviving national fazenda,
Sao Marcos, was awarded to the SPI to administer. For a time, using Makuxi
cowhands and improved ranching techniques, Sao Marcos's administrators
increased its herd. Joaquim Gondim in 1921 was impressed to find its cattle
of good quality and numbering 8,000 - well up from the miserable 3,500 left
by Sebastiao Diniz. The Makuxi were well housed and their children
received primary schooling.
The Indian Protection Service sought to do more than merely manage
its ranch, at this time. It opened more schools for Indians, a sanatorium on
the Cotingo two days' ride from Sao Marcos, and an outpost called Limao on
the upper Surumu for some Makuxi and Taurepang. When General Rondon,
the great head of the SPI, visited the area and climbed Mount Roraima
in 1927, he was able to visit these establishments. But, curiously, SPI
activity declined after Rondon's visit. It neglected its brief to protect Indians;
and by 1944 Dr. Araujo Lima wrote that even the national fazenda Sao
Marcos was 'in utter decay which is accentuated daily by its abandonment,
without the introduction of any advanced techniques of cattle or horse
breeding'. 56
When General Rondon was on the upper Tacutu in 1927, Chief Manuel
Barreto of the Makuxi complained to him that persecution by the local
sheriff was forcing his people to seek greater freedom in British Guiana.
Rondon commented: 'What a difference between the English of Guiana and
the Brazilians on the frontier. The former seek to attract all the Indians of the
region to their territory, the latter persecute their compatriots, forcing them
into exile...It is interesting to note that these Indians have a reputation of
being thieves in Brazil and cross into Guiana where they are well received by
the English who consider them good men.' 57 Another Brazilian general,
Lima Figueiredo, found the situation unchanged fifteen years later. He was
impressed by the clever propaganda of British missionaries to attract