Percy Fawcett, Manuscript 512, and a Lost City in the Amazon, Pt. 2

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. This is part two of
our two-parter on Percy Fawcett and Manuscript 512 and things
going on in the Amazon Basin. in the early 20th century.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
And if you.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Didn't listen to Monday's episode, you're going to be a
skosh confused today. So I highly recommend going back because
we left off on Monday talking about manuscript 512. I
didn't say so during that episode. I didn't include a
note for Tracy too. It's only called that because of
like a library numbering system. That naming convention means nothing

(00:50):
other than like an accession number for a library. And
it's an 18th century account, maybe, as we'll see, that
Percy Fawcett came across and became deeply intrigued by. And
we're jumping in right where we left off, and we're
going to start by talking about the narrative that this
manuscript contains. So, the Manuscript 512 account describes the writer

(01:15):
and his group finding a lost city. And it gives
a lot of details about this find, but it does
not give an actual location for it. And that's only
one problem, because this manuscript is incomplete. There are words
that are obscured or completely missing. Some sections of this
10-page document only contain fragments of sentences, and it can

(01:38):
be between hard and impossible to figure out what might
have come in between those fragments. For example, the passage
that describes the first sighting of this mystery city reads
this way, and I'm just going to pause in places
where there's stuff missing. Quote, We beheld something at a

(02:00):
league and a half's distance, a great settlement, its expansive
dimensions causing us to believe that it was some city
of the Brazilian coast. It's possible that could be read
as court. We soon descended into the valley with caution.
In a similar case, ordering. The quality and, good that

(02:21):
we noticed, chimneys, this being one of the clear signs
of settlements. Yeah, a lot of disjointed stuff going on. Mysteries.
The account goes on to describe hearing roosters in the city,
which made these explorers believe that it had to have
been inhabited. But their scouts returned saying that they saw

(02:42):
no inhabitants. So the whole group decided they would go
in at night, armed, and they strolled through what appeared
to be the only road through the city. The account continues, quote,
having walked and seen the entirety of this long street,
we came to a square plaza, in the middle of
which was a black stone pillar of extraordinary size. And

(03:03):
on top of that was a statue of an ordinary man,
with his left hand on his waist and his right
arm extended, pointing with his index finger to the North Pole.
In each corner of said plaza is a spire in
the style of those used by the Romans. but some
which were damaged and split as if struck by lightning bolts.

(03:25):
Manuscript 512 then describes bats, quote, so numerous they flew
into the faces of people. Also, figures carved in stone,
what appeared to be a temple, areas completely reduced to rubble,
and a torrential river that runs in front of the
main plaza. The group followed that river for three days

(03:45):
and came to an area of caves that sound like
they might have been burial catacombs. The manuscript includes examples
of unrecognized writing and symbols carved into slabs which cover
some of the caves. And then they found gold in
the river. And the manuscript, at least what we have
of it, ends with the writer indicating that he is

(04:06):
sending all of these details he's just written to a
person he knows in the hopes that person will join
them and partake in the fortune that they have found. Quote,
we've settled to not give share in this to any
person because we judge that the villages and camps would
empty out. But to you, I give of the minds
that we have discovered, remembering the much that I owe you.

(04:30):
Since a man has already departed from our company with
a different pretext, I beg of you, throw off your
poverty and come take advantage of these great things. Fawcett
wrote of the manuscript and its tale, quote,' I know
that Raposo's lost city is not the only one of
its kind. There exists another remnant of an old civilization,

(04:53):
its people degenerate now, but still preserving records of a
foreign past in mummies, parchments, and engraved metal plates. It
is just such a place as described in the story,
but far less ruined by earthquakes and very difficult to reach.'
He mentions that Jesuits knew about this city, as did

(05:15):
a few other explorers who have died, before he claims, quote,
I am probably the only other who knows the secret,
and I obtained it in the hard school of forest experience,
backed by careful examination of all available records in the
archives of the Republic, as well as certain other sources
of information by no means easy to tap. He never

(05:37):
explains what those certain other sources are. He described the
existence of this lost city as, quote, the only key
to the riddle of the remarkable pottery and inscriptions that
have been discovered. Yeah, I'm reading his work. I'm like, oh, dude,
because we all know if you have come to the
conclusion that there can only be one answer to all

(05:58):
of the mysteries you're dealing with, you're probably getting tunnel vision.
You're going to actually hurt your quest for information. So
here's the thing. The provenance of manuscript 512 is incredibly murky.
It is said to have been discovered in the archives
of the National Library of Brazil in 1839. There is

(06:20):
no indication of how it got into the archives. Soon
after it was discovered in the late 1830s, it was
published in Brazilian newspapers. And by the mid-1800s, various Brazilian
organizations had mounted expeditions to try to find the city
described in the manuscript. But all of those efforts were unsuccessful.

(06:41):
The authenticity of Manuscript 512 remains a matter of debate.
And even if it is an authentic document from the 1700s,
there has been a lot of speculation that it was
a work of fiction to begin with. Writing for National
Geographic in 2024, journalist Jordi Canal Solar notes a possible

(07:02):
reason for a forgery. Quote, Brazil achieved independence from Portugal
in 1822. It would have been useful for a new,
insecure republic to discover a document that described ancient civilizations
in its territory, akin to the great Maya sites in
Central America. Fawcett found this manuscript fascinating, and he 100%

(07:25):
believed that it was real. And it ignited an idea
that there might be another city closer to the area
where he had been working that was ripe for discovery
by a European. And he called this the Lost City
of Zed. And he claimed that his belief that this
other city existed came as true. Tracy mentioned earlier from

(07:45):
other texts and sources than Manuscript 512, although he never
once cited any of those texts or sources. While Manuscript
512 is frequently cited as the inspiration for Fawcett's fixation
on the lost city of Zed, there was really a
lot more to it than that. There wasn't a eureka
moment where he found some phrase or mention or evidence

(08:08):
that just made him certain that there was a lost city.
It was an idea that developed over a slow burn.
He had gone deeper into the jungle each time he
traveled to Brazil, and seeing exactly how things could be
obscured from view in this thick growth made him very
sure that a city could be hidden in there. This

(08:29):
was something that was bolstered in 1911, when Hiram Bingham
III set out to look for the lost ink in
cities of Vitkos and Vilcabamba. He did find those cities,
but thanks to information he gathered from the people who
lived in the area about ancient ruins, he is also
credited with discovering, and we got to air quotes that
because other people already knew it was there, Machu Picchu.

(08:53):
And Bingham's success and this whole story of Machu Picchu,
which was huge news globally, fed the fascination and obsession
of many Europeans, including Fawcett, that there were more lost
cities in the jungle's overgrowth. Coming up, we'll talk about
financing troubles that Percy Fawcett faced in his quest for
a lost Amazonian city. But first, we will take a

(09:16):
sponsor break. Fawcett made his case to the Royal Geographical
Society yesterday. for funding an expedition to hunt for the
lost city of Zed, but this did not go very well.

(09:37):
A lot of his European contemporaries really believed that he
had been drawn in by folklore and rumor that was
very popular among outsiders to Brazil that hinted that there
was a magical city of gold somewhere in the jungle.
And money was going to continue to be an issue
for Fawcett. It was hard to get anyone to spend
the kind of money that such an expedition would require

(09:59):
when there was a lot of kind of going on
vibes involved. Fawcett wrote about this difficulty this way, quote,
the existence of the old cities I do not for
a moment doubt. How could I? I myself have seen
a portion of one of them, and that is why
I observed that it was imperative for me to go again.
The remains seemed to be those of an outpost of

(10:21):
one of the bigger cities, which I am convinced is
to be found together with others if a properly organized
search is carried out. Unfortunately, I cannot induce scientific men
to accept even the supposition that there are traces of
an old civilization in Brazil. I have traveled much in

(10:41):
places not familiar to other explorers, and the wild Indians
have again and again told me of the buildings, the
character of the people, and the strange things beyond. Get ready,
because this is another very weird part of the story.
Because then, according to some accounts, a mystery group of
financiers that went by the name The Glove stepped in

(11:03):
with money to make the trip happen. This all sounds
really shady. The names of the individual members of this
group are unknown. It's kind of like money just showed up.
And this is a problem that you may have gathered
from listening to us talk, Monday and today, about a
lot of things in Fawcett's life. In some ways, we

(11:26):
have this embarrassment of riches when it comes to information
about him, because we certainly have very detailed accounts that
he wrote about his travels. But there are other things
that are super murky and just impossible to substantiate, and
the glove is one such example. His references to documents
that he studied without actually naming or citing any of

(11:46):
them is another. And this, as well as some of
the things that he claims to have seen, like those
massive animals much larger than anything recorded elsewhere, led a
lot of his contemporaries to label him as a fraud
or an exaggerator. But there have been some finds since
Fawcett's lifetime that suggest he may have been at least

(12:06):
intuitive enough to get a lot of ideas right. We'll
talk about some of those at the end of the episode.
In the case of the trip's financing, though, there's contradictory
information in the press. On June 12th, 1925, the Los
Angeles Times offered a much more mundane version of how
the trip was to be paid for. Quote, the expedition

(12:28):
is sanctioned and aided by the Royal Geographical Society of England,
the American Geographical Society of New York, and by the
Museum of the American Indian High Foundation. Colonel Fawcett goes
also as a correspondent of the Los Angeles Times and
the North American Newspapers Alliance. Yeah, so it's unclear what

(12:48):
the deal might have been here. It may have been
a case where the Royal Geographical Society was like, we're
not paying for all of this. But they may have
kicked in a little bit, and then these other groups
similarly were like, yeah, I'll give you some for it,
and it made up enough that he was able to go.
But going back to the search for Zed, Fawcett understood
that this was a very dangerous undertaking, even as much

(13:10):
as he believed the whole thing was real. He wrote, quote,
one thing is certain. Between the outer world and the
secrets of ancient South America, a veil has descended, and
the explorer who seeks to penetrate this veil must be
prepared to face hardships and dangers that will tax his
endurance to the utmost. the chances are that he will

(13:31):
not get through. But if he should, if he is
lucky enough to run the gauntlet of savages and come
out alive, he will be in a position to further
our historical knowledge immeasurably. And that is the most icky
thing I'm willing to include about any of his writings
about the people of South America. Fawcett's expedition to find

(13:52):
the city's Zed included his son Jack and Jack's close
friend Raleigh Rimmel. Fawcett wrote of the two young men, quote,
Jack and Raleigh will have to learn to swim, as
it were, by being flung into deep water. With no
former experience, they will be taken into a supreme endurance test.
I myself worked up to it more gradually and in

(14:13):
any case had behind me many years of army life
in the tropics. Being by nature a lone wolf and
rather abstemious, I was not softened by gin and whiskey
when the first South American adventure came along. And as
each succeeding expedition was harder than the last, the toughening
process was continuous. He wanted to travel with only two

(14:35):
other people because he thought a small band would have
an easier time avoiding hostile indigenous groups and also thought
they could just make better time and keep things more
nimble in general. In addition to Jack and Raleigh, there
were also two hired Brazilian assistants. These were more like
laborers than guides. They helped care for the animals that

(14:58):
were also part of the party, which included two horses,
two dogs, and several mules. And the press loved this story.
That LA Times account explained that Fawcett believed that the
lost city he sought was part of a culture that
predated the oldest ones human had known up to that point,
making it essentially the true cradle of civilization, and that

(15:20):
he was willing to stake his entire reputation on it.
Heads up that this write-up from the LA Times comes
with a side of gross racism. Quote, he has already
gone far toward validation of his contention that there existed
in this region a majestic civilization of an unknown, white race,
perhaps 10,000 years old, antedating Egypt. That it held the

(15:43):
secret of a mysterious light, possibly derived from some knowledge
of basic atomic forces. That these ancient people knew astronomy
and mathematics, and that they had perhaps the oldest highly
developed indigenous culture in the history of the world. He
has so far analyzed and articulated his findings that, as
he now says, he is ready to announce his conclusions

(16:06):
and risk his scientific reputation upon them. The group set
out from Europe in the early spring. On April 20th, 1925,
they started their expedition from Cuiaba, Brazil. On each of
Fawcett's trips since his first one in 1906, he'd gone
farther into the forest than any other European had. And

(16:27):
the same was true of the 1925 effort. On May
29th of 1925, he wrote Nina a letter while the
men were at Dead Horse Camp. It was named that
because he had had to kill his horse on a
previous mission there. This letter details some of the problems
that they were having. Quote, The attempt to write is
fraught with much difficulty, owing to the legions of flies

(16:50):
that pester one from dawn till dark, and sometimes all
through the night. The worst are the tiny ones, smaller
than a pinhead, almost invisible, but stinging like a mosquito.
Clouds of them are always present. Millions of bees add
to the plague and other bugs galore. We hope to
get through this region in a few days and are

(17:12):
camped here for a couple of days. Jack is well
and fit, getting stronger every day even though he suffers
a bit from the insects. I myself am bitten or
stung by ticks and these bzums, as they call the
tiny ones, all over the body. Raleigh I am anxious about.
He still has one leg in a bandage but won't

(17:32):
go back. So far we have plenty of food and
no need to walk, but I am not sure how
long this will last. There may be so little for
the animals to eat. I cannot hope to stand up
to this journey better than Jack or Raleigh, but I
had to do it. Years tell in spite of the
spirit of enthusiasm. He continued with their location. Quote, here

(17:55):
we are at Dead Horse Camp, latitude 11 degrees, 43
minutes south and 54 degrees, 35 minutes west. the spot
where my horse died in 1920. Only his white bones remain. Nevertheless,
the season is good. It is very cold at night
and fresh in the morning, but insects and heat come
by midday, and from then till six o'clock in the evening,

(18:18):
it is sheer misery in camp. You need have no
fear of any failure. But Nina got no more letters
after this May 29th missive. No one heard from Percy, Jack,
and Raleigh ever again. And we're going to get into
the theories about what happened to these men and some
of the many attempts that have been made to find

(18:39):
out what happened to Fawcett after we take a break
and hear from the sponsors that keep the show going.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Fawcett As weeks of.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
No communication from Fawcett's group stretched into months and then years,
the presumption was that he had been killed by one
of the indigenous tribes of the Amazon. Fawcett's colleague, Henry Koston,
who had been with him on numerous expeditions, dismissed that
idea in statements to the press. He was adamant that
Fawcett was too experienced with dealing with the various peoples

(19:16):
of the area and had gotten to know so many
of them that that just couldn't have happened. In 1928,
George Miller Dyatt mounted a mission to try to find Fawcett.
Dyatt was the son of a British father and an
American mother, and although he had been born in New York,
he was educated in England and eventually joined the Royal
Navy Air Force. He became renowned as an aviator and

(19:39):
travel filmmaker, and he was commissioned by the Royal Geographical
Society to try to find out the truth regarding Fawcett's fate.
This was, incidentally, in direct violation of Fawcett's own wishes.
He stated very plainly before the expedition that if he failed,
he did not want anyone to look for him because
he felt it was too dangerous. Diet's party, unlike Fawcett's,

(20:04):
was huge, complete with photographers and radio operators. And at
one point during the journey, after making contact with the
Kalapalos and the Nahukuas tribes, Diet became convinced that he
was in danger, and he radioed his story to the
papers back home, kind of ostensibly like, I need to
get this story out before they kill me. But he survived,

(20:26):
and after he returned home, he wrote a book about
his experience titled Manhunting in the Jungle. Dyack claimed that
he had met and spoken with a man named Aloike,
who was the leader of the Anahukua tribe, and that
this man was possibly Fawcett's murderer. He had also found
a uniform case in the jungle that had belonged to Fawcett,

(20:49):
and he felt this was evidence that he had been killed.
But Brian Fawcett, who was Percy and Nina's younger son,
discounted this, writing, quote, The Dyat expedition returned with no
proof of anything, not even that the Fawcett party had
been there. For while the uniform case identified by the
maker had belonged to my father, it was one discarded

(21:10):
by him in 1920. It was Commander Dyat's belief that
my father had been killed, but I have given the
evidence and leave it to the reader to judge. We
of the family could not accept it as in any
way conclusive. Dyett's book even includes the information that a
clairvoyant he consulted said she saw the end of Fawcett's

(21:31):
life and that he had been killed by one of
the tribes. It comes off as sort of a boastful,
swaggery type of tale. Yeah, that book is definitely like,
I'm a big manly man who went in the jungle
looking for my friend and I talked to the natives
and they were clearly the murderers. Like, it's really, it's
old school and it's not great. In 1931, An expedition

(21:55):
in the area which was not looking for Fawcett, but
was there to film a documentary about the Amazon, believed
that they had stumbled onto the truth. This effort was
funded by the Penn Museum of Philadelphia, and the group's
ethnologist was a man named Vincenzo Petrulo. Petrulo noted in
his expedition diary that he made a stop on the

(22:16):
east bank of the Kuluani River on August 13th, mentioning
that this was the spot where Fawcett had entered the bush.
Petrulo told reporter Joseph McLaughlin, quote, I realized I had
been following his trail when I reached the village of
the Kalapalus on the Kuluani River, a tributary of the Xingu.
Two of the natives came to tell me of the

(22:38):
visit and departure of three white men a number of
years ago. That having been the second time outsiders had
come into their country, the incident was clearly remembered. They
told how the white men arrived at the Kalapalu village
in the company of some Anahukua Indians who had guided
them from their village on the Kuluseu a march of

(22:59):
four days. The white men carried packs and arms, but
no presents for the Indians such as I had. The
Kalapalu gave them food, and in the morning, having failed
to dissuade the leader, the older man, from his project,
they ferried the three men across the Kuluane River. It
was explained to the Indians that by going east, a

(23:20):
large river would be reached where large canoes could be found,
which would take the party home. The younger men were
ill and were suffering from the Boratudo sores from black
flies and apparently were reluctant to go any further. Subsequently,
for five days, the Kalapalu saw the smoke of the
travelers as they lit a campfire each night. It is

(23:42):
presumed that on the sixth day, they reached the forest
to the east, for the smoke was not seen anymore. Later,
a party of the Kalapalu found traces of the camps made,
but not the white men. When asked why Diet had
not gotten this version of events when he visited, Petrulo
replied that he did not have interpreters. and also that

(24:04):
the indigenous people of the area did not like him. Ultimately,
Petrulo came to the conclusion that Fawcett's end had been unfortunate,
but not violent. His interactions with indigenous people he spoke
with led him to believe that Fawcett had gotten deep
into the dense forest on the east side of the
river and had, quote, died of thirst or hunger or disease.

(24:27):
Peter Fleming mounted an expedition to find Fawcett or at
least try to find out what might have happened to him.
Peter was the brother of writer Ian Fleming, who created
James Bond. Fleming's expedition did not turn up any evidence
about Fawcett, but it did result in a book. Peter
Fleming published Brazilian Adventure in 1933. For years, the Fawcett

(24:51):
family held out hope. In 1932, Percy's sister, Beatrice Fortescue,
gave an interview to the Swindon Advertiser, indicating that she
believed her brother was still alive. She was quoted as saying, quote, Somehow,
I feel certain he lives, if only as the guarded
prisoner of savage Indians, and his wife knows it through

(25:13):
the telepathic messages she receives from him. Beatrice continued, quote,
yet I don't really know whether he will want to
come back. After seven years of life amongst the Indian tribes,
he may hate the thought of civilization. But he must
come back if they find him, for he will alter
the whole map of Brazil. He will be a famous man,

(25:34):
and England will be proud because he is English. That
same year, a trapper named Stephen Ratton walked into the
British consulate in Sao Paulo and told the consul general,
Arthur Abbott, that he had met Fawcett in the jungle,
where the lost explorer was living with the Merchilagos tribe.
According to Ratton, Fawcett, whose hair and beard had gone

(25:57):
completely white, was clothed in animal skins and said he
had been held captive there for five years and that
his son and Raleigh Rummel had died the previous year.
Vincenzo Petrulo was asked his opinion on this account, and
he was dismissive. He told the press the location of
the sighting was very far away from where Fawcett had been,

(26:18):
and that the mention of animal skins was an immediate
giveaway that this was a false account. He said the
indigenous populations of the area never wore skins because, quote,
you would die from the stench if not from the heat.
The Indians go absolutely naked. It seemed as though there
might be a break in the case of the missing
explorer in 1951. In April of that year, the Associated

(26:41):
Press released a story that Orlando Villas-Boas, an anthropologist working
for the Brazilian government and leading an expedition through the jungle,
had found skeletal remains that he believed were faucets. the
article stated that Villas-Boas, quote, said that the Kalapagos Indians
killed the three explorers near the Rio das Mortas, River

(27:01):
of Death. They threw two of the bodies into a
lagoon and buried the oldest, whom he believed to be
Colonel Fawcett. That mention of the Kalapagos is actually the
Kalapalo and indigenous people of the Mato Grosso area. Villas-Boas
claimed that the Kalapalo led him to the place that
Fawcett was buried after he had been trying to get
that information from them for five years. Villas-Boas came away

(27:26):
with an intact skull, and the remains were eventually tested
and found to be not Percy Fawcett. The skeletal remains
reintroduced a lot of theories about the fate of Fawcett
and his two companions. With no evidence to go on,
wild theories and rumors spread in the years following Fawcett's disappearance.

(27:49):
There were a lot of stories that the Englishmen had
been killed by indigenous people. Others were a bit more outlandish.
One rumor began that the younger men were killed, but
that Percy's blue eyes had entranced his would-be killers and
they spared him. It was also claimed that Fawcett was
worshipped as a god and that he had integrated into

(28:10):
the local tribes of his own volition and that he
had no desire to return to Europe. A Brazilian military
official named Candido Rondon, who was an advocate for Brazil's
indigenous tribes, told reporters that he thought Fawcett had been
killed by one indigenous group. But then over time, he
refined that assessment. He came to believe that the indigenous

(28:34):
people had initially been hired or persuaded to act as
guides for the English army.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
But that the.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
Guides and explorers had then come into conflict when Fawcett
had tried to force those indigenous guides into territory that
belonged to an enemy tribe. It is unclear from the
way that U.S. newspapers reported this which group Rondon was
ultimately blaming for having murdered Fawcett. In 1953, Fawcett's son

(29:04):
Brian published Exploration Fawcett. That's a book compiled of his
father's letters and diaries. And once it was made public,
people quickly noticed a discrepancy in the information about Fawcett's
last location that had been printed in the papers versus
what information the family had. The coordinates that he gave

(29:24):
for Dead Horse Camp when he gave information to the
papers was 13 degrees, 14 minutes south, 54 degrees, 35
minutes west. that 13 was an 11 in the information
he gave Nina. And that was roughly 200 miles north
of the coordinates that he sent to nina to this

(29:44):
day it is unknown if that discrepancy was a typo
or if he purposely made the change to throw people
off Though the location of Fawcett's City of Zed remains
a bit murky, there have been archaeological finds that give
his ideas about lost cities in the area of Mato
Grosso some vindication. In 2008, archaeologist Michael Heckenberger published work

(30:09):
that he had been doing for decades alongside indigenous people
of the area, that being the Curicuro area. This work
had uncovered what's believed to have been a civilization made
up of the Kurukuru people's ancestors, a massive multi-municipality site
that showed a complex urban development. That large settlement is

(30:31):
known today as Kuikugo and is a protected site within
the boundaries of Brazil's Xingu Indigenous Park. Research and excavation
have continued in this area, and the Kurukuru have remained
heavily involved in this work. Recent writing about the expedition
has sought to exonerate the Kalapalo. In 2010, David Grand

(30:53):
published the book The Lost City of Z, or Zed,
whichever way you like, A Tale of Deadly Obsession on
the Amazon. And it includes statements from members of the
tribe that are descendants of those that would have been
alive when Fawcett was there, that they absolutely did not
kill Fawcett. Incidentally, if you ever saw that movie, The
Lost City of Zed, it is based on that book.

(31:14):
A coda regarding Brazil after Fawcett's time there. Human Rights
Group Survival International continues to track the numbers and issues
facing the indigenous populations of Brazil. And Survival International traces
the reclusive nature of a lot of the surviving indigenous
cultures back to the rubber trade. The small number of

(31:36):
ancestors from previous generations who survived the era of the
rubber barons chose to remain hidden from newcomers. And that
remained the cultural practice, and that's continued ever since. Other
groups experienced genocidal attacks more recently, including an especially horrific
incident in the 1960s known as the Massacre of the

(31:58):
Eleventh Parallel, and it followed suit. Today, there are an
estimated 305 different indigenous peoples in Brazil, with a total
population of 1.7 million people It is estimated that 100
of those 305 groups remain uncontacted. While there are some
protections in place, their lands continue to be vulnerable to encroachment.

(32:22):
There is still a lot of work to do. I
know there is a lot of land in Brazil that
is supposed to be indigenous land that is continually subjected
to threats from like clearance, wildfires related to other activity
in the area, all of that. Yeah, that's like a
huge anthropological topic and social topic that could be its

(32:47):
own series, frankly. In 2019, there was a really incredible
protest that was like the first protest that included Indigenous
people actually having their voice at least put out there
in a way that got covered by global newspapers. So
there's a lot to unpack with that. But I wanted

(33:08):
to at least mention that this is Not something that
people are like, oh, yes, we solved all that. It's good. No,
it stayed horrible for a long time and still there
are problems. But I have a very upbeat listener mail. Oh, good.
It's from our listener, Kristen. Listen, if you send me
an email that says no such thing as too many shoes,
I'm going to be a fan of it. That's all

(33:30):
I'm saying. Kristen writes, at the beginning of the sneaker episode,
Holly had me giggling when she confessed she has a
room for her shoes and that she visits them. I
collect purses and all their many accessories. My Billfold collection
is amazing. They are all made by the same company
in Southern California, and I've been collecting them for a
very long time. My main display for some of them

(33:53):
are floor-to-ceiling shelves in the hallway outside my bedroom door.
This way, I can gaze at them while sitting in bed.
I change out the display occasionally so that no one
feels left out. Man, this is like, you're singing my songs.
My husband mostly supports this obsession, and sometimes when I
have had a particularly bad day, he will suggest that

(34:13):
I go play purse. I visit, reorganize, dust, and feel
so much better afterwards. I am envious of an entire room. Tracy,
I have wide feet with a high arch and instep.
I completely understand the finding of ones that work and
get multiples. I get backup pairs of the ones I
really like. This is why I own far too many
Birkenstocks and Hokas. Comfort over cuteness. As always, you two

(34:36):
bring a smile to my face and make my drive bearable.
Thank you for bringing a little more light to the world.
As tax, I give you a picture of my purse shelf.
My pickles decided to play too. The others, clockwise, Gracie, Angus, Phyllis,
and Georgia. Last but never least, Walter the Yellow Lab
I share with my boss. Thank you for being you, Kristen.

(34:57):
I am obsessed with all of this. I am obsessed
with the purses. Listen. I see that Harvey's purse that's
based on the shag Star Wars cantina art that I
passed on and have kicked myself about ever since. I
see it in your collection. There's also a fabulous Haunted
Mansion one in there that is gorgeous. This is a
good collection. Oh, it's beautiful. Oh, it's beautiful. I love it.

(35:19):
I think playing purse is a great form of therapy,
and I recommend that anyone find whatever it is that
makes them feel good to dust, play with, and rearrange.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
It's great.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
These cats are weapons grade cute. There is one that
is like a dilute buff orange and white situation in
front of a fire that looks like it came out
of a calendar and it's the sweetest thing ever. There
is a very sweet black and white baby that looks
like a tuxedo, although I can't see their whole body
in its entirety, so I don't know. There is a

(35:51):
tortie and a solid black baby. I want to, all
these cats are spectacular and don't even get me started
on this sweet puppy. Oh my goodness. That puppy could
be like a door-to-door salesman and I would buy everything
that he had in his case without hesitation. Would I
need those wrenches? No, but I'd buy them because that's
a face that you trust. Thank you so much for

(36:14):
sending us this email. It's so charming and your babies
are so lovely and your purse collection is spectacular. And
I feel like you are a deeply kindred spirit. And
I thank you for that. If you would like to
write to us, you could do that at historypodcast at iheartradio.com.
You can also find the show notes for today's episode
and any episode on our website, which is missedinhistory.com. All

(36:38):
of our sources are listed for any of the shows
we've done. And if you would like to subscribe to
the show and you haven't done that yet, I promise
you it's the easiest thing you can do in a day.
You can do that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere
you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff You Missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts

(37:01):
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Stuff You Missed in History Class News

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Bobby Bones Show

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Percy Fawcett, Manuscript 512, and a Lost City in the Amazon, Pt. 2