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If Indians living in the path of the Transamazon Highway weren’t contacted (“pacified” was the term of choice) and relocated, the consequences for them would have been disastrous. Conflicts with surveying and construction crews were inevitable. So were Western diseases—measles, influenza, dysentery, malaria. Isolated people have no resistance to such diseases and first contact with Europeans frequently results in demographic losses in excess of 80 percent. After demographic collapse, many tribes simply ceased to exist as organized entities.

To ward off these horrific prospects, the Villas Boas brothers organized a crash program, carried out by highly trained sertanistas—team leaders—to establish contact and then pacify and relocate entire villages and tribes. Pacification was accomplished through the proffering of Western goods, including machetes, axes, metal pots, fishhooks, matches, mosquito netting, and clothing. The seductive appeal of such things was nearly irresistible, for each of these items can make a quantum improvement in a sylvan lifestyle. Acquisition of several or all of these goods is a transformative experience that makes contact essentially irreversible. Once a person knows such things exist, then that person and his entire community are irrevocably changed. Missionaries trying to make contact to save souls know this and exploit it to lure people into a trap of dependency. Dependency instantly demotes proud, confident, and independent people to a mendicant status that is pitiable to behold.