Nhambiquaras, Rondonia, Os (1913) – Edgard Roquette-Pinto*

‘Uaidnirída – Índio do Rio Juína’. Photograph taken by Edgard Roquette-Pinto, 1912. See Edgard Roquette-Pinto, Rondonia, 1917, opp. p.170.

12 mins, b&w, silent footage

Source: Cinemateca Brasileira

Background: This footage was shot by the pioneer Brazilian anthropologist, Edgard Roquette-Pinto during the course of an expedition to the Serra dos Parecis,  a plateau in the extreme west of Central Brazil, close to the Bolivian border, straddling the boundaries between what are now Mato Grosso and Rondônia states. The expedition arrived at the Serra dos Parecis in September 1912 and remained there for two or three months.

According to the catalogue , a copy of this film is held in the Cinemateca Brasileira. The catalogue describes the material as consisting of 132m (approx. 430 feet) of 16mm film. As film in this gauge was not manufactured until 1922, this suggests that the material would have been transferred from the original, highly flammable 35mm nitrate film for safety reasons.

At the time that he made this film, Roquette-Pinto was an assistant professor at the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro and his main objective was to make a collection of Nambikwara artefacts. He was accompanied by Lieutenant Antonio Pyrineus de Souza of the ‘Rondon Commission’, a federal government organisation set up in 1900 under the charismatic leadership of Colonel (later General) Cândido Rondon with a brief to build telegraph lines across the region.

Roquette-Pinto’s expedition travelled along the routes cut through the semi-forested plateau for the telegraph lines, visiting not only the Nambikwara, but also the Paresí (Halíti) communities adjacent to the Rondon Commission telegraph posts at Aldeia Queimada and Utiariti.

Roquette-Pinto later described this journey, including a brief reference to his film-making activities, in a substantial monograph published in 1917 in which he proposed that the area should be named ‘Rondônia’ in honour of  Rondon’s role in connecting the area with the rest of Brazil. Although this suggestion was later taken up by the Brazilian government, the area so named was actually somewhat to the north of the region through which Roquette-Pinto himself travelled.

Roquette-Pinto reports that he screened this material for the first time at the Museu Nacional in March 1913. It did not represent the first time that the indigenous peoples of Amazonia were filmed since it was preceded by the footage shot by the German anthropologist Theodor Koch-Grünberg among the Taulepang of Roraima in 1911, described here. But it appears to represent the first filmic representation of an indigenous people of Brazil by a Brazilian anthropologist film-maker.  It would not be until 1950, when Darcy Ribeiro worked with Heinz Förthmann on Os Índios Urubus that another Brazilian anthropologist would follow Roquette-Pinto’s example.

Film content: According to the catalogue entry, the footage shows aspects of the life of  two different groups: the ‘Tagnani’, the term used by Roquette-Pinto to refer to the northerly groups of Nambikwara who traditionally lived around the headwaters of the Roosevelt River, and the ‘Kozárini’, a Paresí subgroup who live at Aldeia Queimada, a village on the southern edge of the Serra dos Parecis, and the point where Roquette-Pinto first arrived on the plateau.

Given the time at which it was made, it is very likely that Roquette-Pinto shot this material, not to make a narrative-based film as such, but simply as a form of visual data collection, in much the same way that on this expedition, he made a series of sound recordings of indigenous music and assembled a very substantial collection of material artefacts for the Museu Nacional.

The topics covered in the material are listed in the catalogue as shooting arrows (see below), bathing in the river, a ceremonial war dance, pounding maize, digging in the ground, breast-feeding children and houses.

Shooting arrows into the air. Photograph taken by Edgard Roquette-Pinto, 1912. See Edgard Roquette-Pinto, Rondonia, 1917, opp. p.172.

It is not clear from the catalogue which of the topics listed applies to which of the two groups. However, in his monograph, Roquette-Pinto gives a more extended description of a warrior dance that he filmed among the Nambikwara who had gathered around the base that he had set up in October 1912 at the Rondon Commission telegraph post at Campos Novos, close to the modern town of Vilhena.

“Armed with bows and arrows and stamping on the ground to mark time as they chanted a two-bar song, the warriors formed a line about 15 metres from a piece of wood that represented the enemy. Two men, with arrows at the ready and half-drawn bows, broke off from the line, and as if they were hiding among the bushes of the savanna, set off in a great arc until they got close to the ‘enemy’, then they fired their arrows at it. This was the sign to attack: the chanting ceased and a volley of arrows rained down upon the ‘unfortunate’ tree trunk. They then went right up to it and finished it off with clubs, bows and other sticks” (p.172).

The particular performance described here involved the members of several different Nambikwara groups though not the Tagnani, the group specified in the archive catalogue entry. However, shortly afterwards, at Três Buritís, another Rondon Commission post close to Campos Novos, Roquette-Pinto observed the same dance among the Tagnani.

Text: Roquette-Pinto 1917.

© 2018 Paul Henley