A lost tribe of Amazonian Indians thought to have died out nearly 100 years ago has been discovered in a remote region of Brazil. The Naua Indians, once the strongest tribe in the north-western state of Acre, were formally identified by government anthropologists yesterday.
Around 250 of the indigenous people have now been certified as authentic Naua Indians. Of these, around a third are under 10 years old.
The tribe's strange story took a further twist when the government's National Indian Foundation said that the remaining Naua had lost most of their cultural heritage.
Mr Antonio Pereira Neto, a spokesman for the foundation, said: "We thought that the Naua had died out in the 1920s. It's amazing that these people have survived this long and that we have been successfully able to identify them. "However, they look like you and I and they have forgotten many of their traditional ways."
The last definite sighting of the tribe was in 1906, when a newspaper in the Amazonian state of Acre published an article headlined: "Last Naua woman marries". Anthropologists believed that the woman went on to have children but that her family line died out some 15 years later. But it has now emerged that the Naua survived. In the years since their disappearance, the tribe is believed to have had extensive contact with white men. They worked primarily as rubber tappers in a remote jungle region of Brazil on the border with Peru. Through this the Naua lost most of their cultural traditions, including their language.
"The main reason why no one realised that the Naua had survived was because the Naua had lost all their traditions," said Mr Pereira. "However, their anthropological data has been compared with our records and it is confirmed beyond doubt that these are Naua people."
The remaining Naua came to the authorities' notice after they were discovered by government engineers planning to establish a new national park. They found the Indians after carrying out a geographical survey of the jungle mountain range where they live.
After they were discovered, representatives from the National Indian Foundation were called in to identify them. They were able to converse because the vast majority of the Naua spoke Portuguese, the language of Brazil.
"Over the years they have had a lot of contact with white men but they are still Indians and their rights must be respected," said Mr Pereira. "They told us that they didn't want to leave their land because they had always been there."
The National Indian Foundation is planning to launch a claim for a Naua reservation. Under Brazilian law, all indigenous people are entitled to demarcated land in their traditional areas.
If their land is designated a National Park, then the tribe will be forcibly moved to another region because no humans are allowed in these environmentally sensitive areas.