How It All Goes Down
The Colonel's Bones
- The chief of the Kalapalos agrees to meet David Grann. Do they want more bones for their collection?
- Vajuvi, the chief, demands five thousand dollars from Grann before he'll talk.
- Grann doesn't have that kind of dough, so they bargain down to a few hundred dollars' worth of supplies. (About 400 sticks of beef jerky, perhaps.)
- The men take a truck deep into the jungle to the Kalapalo village.
- One of the villagers tells Grann that "white people are building something in Afasukugu" (23.31).
- That is a sacred area of the jaguar, and the Kalapalos are upset that the white men are building a hydroelectric dam there.
- Grann worries that while he's looking for an explorer who disappeared decades ago, a whole tribe might disappear.
- The next day, Vajuvi takes Grann fishing for piranhas. Not what Grann had in mind when he wanted a bite to eat, we imagine.
- While waiting for the fish to nibble, Vajuvi tells Grann the truth: they never had Fawcett's bones.
- A Brazilian explorer was looking for Fawcett's whereabouts, and he promised rifles to the tribe who could produce evidence.
- The Kalapalos gave the explorer the bones of Vajuvi's grandfather, who was a very tall man.
- Now Vajuvi wants the bones back.
- However, Vajuvi says Fawcett was there many years ago.
- The tribe warned him not to continue farther into the jungle, where tribes are hostile, but Fawcett persisted.
- After five days, the tribe could no longer see his campfire smoke.
- Vajuvi insists that the Kalapalos tried to save Fawcett. Grann believes him, even though this guy is about as trustworthy as Pinocchio with a foot-long nose.