A man, who was the last known survivor of an extinct Amazon Rainforest tribe in Brazil, died in his hut on Tuesday. The death was announced by Brazil’s National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) on Saturday, August 27.
Known as “The Man of the Hole,” the indigenous tribe member had resisted contact with the outside world for almost 30 years, and was living on his own, in the wild.
The man was also known as ‘Tanaru Indian’ or ‘Hole Indian,’ and although living in isolation, he was protected by the government. He was monitored and watched over by the FUNAI for the past 26 years. Little is known about his tribe because the man refused to respond to contact requests from humans.
Brazil’s constitution, which was ratified in 1988, gave indigenous people the rights to lands they had traditionally inhabited.
The man was found in a hammock in his hut and appears to have died of natural causes. He was about 60 years old. An autopsy is planned.
The Amazon Tanaru territory, in which the man lived, is described by Survival International as “a small island of forest in a sea of vast cattle ranches.”
The area is known for violent attacks on humans, and the rest of the man’s tribe had been slaughtered by cattle ranchers hoping to steal the land, since the 1970s. The last members were wiped out in 1995.
A government group filmed the man in 2018 while he was cutting a tree. He was lost to observers many times, but they were able to see his huts, and holes that he dug presumably to trap prey or perhaps to hide in. That’s why he was called “The Man of the Hole.”
Fiona Watson of Survival International said that the extermination of his people was genocide.
“We can only imagine what horrors he had witnessed in his life, and the loneliness of his existence after the rest of his tribe were killed, but he determinedly resisted all attempts at contact, and made clear he just wanted to be left alone,” she said.
It’s been said that the man survived by hunting and planting corn, as well as harvesting papaya, bananas, and the fruit from yuca shrubs.