The commander in chief had given the rebels a truce of a few hours. The result had been to evacuate the useless prisoners from the war zone. The afternoon was peaceful for the
jagunços,
who were biding their time until the truce ended. The end was announced with two blank rounds fired by the artillery. This was followed by a cannonball. The defenders in the settlement again sent heavy fire to the attackers. The night of October 2 noisily ushered in a lively gun battle.
VI
The End
We do not have to narrate what happened on October 3 and 4. The battle was losing its military aspect on a daily basis and it finally fell apart completely. They abandoned the last shreds of useless formality. Meetings of the commanding officers, maneuvers, placement of troops, even the bugle calls—in fact all hierarchy of rank was virtually eliminated in an army without uniforms.
They surmised that the
jagunços
could not hold out much longer. Some of the soldiers had gone down to take a look at the enemy position and the situation was incredible. In a square trench a little more than a yard deep, next to the new church, a dozen fighting men who were weak with hunger and horrible to look at, were preparing to commit a terrible form of suicide. They called it their field hospital but it was a grave. There were already more dead than living in the hole. Some had been there for a few days. Their bodies formed a gruesome square in which a dozen dying men were attempting to fight an army.
They did fight, keeping the advantage on their side. At least they had stopped their adversaries. Anyone who came too near would be added to the trench of bloody bodies. Scattered over the pile of
jagunço
corpses were the red stripes of army uniforms. Lying there was the sergeant adjutant of the Thirty-ninth, who had fallen into the pit. A similar fate was in store for his comrades. They thought this engagement would be easy. All they had to do was take the remaining huts and crush whoever was still in them.
The terrible things that followed are buried for all time. Those who committed the acts never returned. Standing at the ditch, they were overwhelmed by the horror of it all. Before their eyes was a trench of dead men, covered in blood and draining pus. It was beyond their wildest imaginings. They were struck dumb by it.
We will finish this book.
Canudos did not surrender. The only case of its kind in recorded history, it resisted until the last man was down. It had been conquered inch by inch in the literal sense of the words. It fell on October 5, at dusk, when its last fighters fell dead, every last one of them. There were only four left: an old man, two full-grown men, and a child, facing a raging army of five thousand soldiers.
We will forgo describing the last moments. They are impossible to describe. The story we are telling was a deeply moving and tragic one to the very end. We must finish it hesitantly and with humility. We feel like someone who has climbed a very high mountain. On the summit, new vistas unfold before us, and with that greater perspective comes vertigo.
Should we test the incredulity of future generations by going into detail about the women who flung themselves on their burning homes, with their children in their arms?
What words are there to express that from the morning of the third nothing more was seen of the able-bodied prisoners who had been taken the day before? Among them was Pious Anthony who had surrendered to us in trust and who had given us so much valuable information on this obscure event in our history.
The settlement fell on the fifth. On the sixth they finished the task of destroying and razing the houses—a total of fifty-two hundred by the last count.
The Counselor’s Skull
At dawn that day a commission assigned to find the remains of Antônio Conselheiro located his corpse.
1
It was lying in a hut near the arbor. The body was under a shallow layer of earth and was wrapped in a filthy sheet. A few withered flowers had been scattered over the humble shroud. Resting on a reed mat were the last remains of the “notorious and barbaric agitator.” They were in a condition of advanced decomposition. Clothed in his old blue tunic, the Counselor would not have been recognized by those who had been closest to him in life.
They carefully exhumed the body, a valuable relic and the only prize this war had to offer. They took care that it did not fall apart. If it had, they would have had nothing but a disgusting mess of rotting flesh on their hands. They photographed it and drew up a document certifying its identity. The entire nation must be convinced that the terrible foe had been beaten.
Later they reburied it. The thought occurred to them afterward that they should have preserved the head. This was the head on which so many curses had been heaped. Since they did not want to exhume the body again, a twist of a knife did the trick. The corpse was decapitated and the horrible face, running with scars and pus, again faced the victors.
Afterward they took it to the coast, where it was greeted by crowds dancing in the streets in impromptu carnival celebrations. Let science have the last words. There, in plain sight, was the evidence of crime and madness.
VII
Two Lines
It is truly regrettable that in these times we do not have a Maudsley, who knew the difference between good sense and insanity, to prevent nations from committing acts of madness and crimes against humanity.
Notes
A PRELIMINARY NOTE
1
jagunço—
gunman or outlaw, usually a cowboy who can be hired as a mercenary; in this text the term is often synonymous with
sertanejo
, the native inhabitant of the backlands;
tabaréu—
greenhorn, comes from the word
tabareo
, a new army recruit, and connotes a backwoods rustic, someone who is awkward and lacks education;
caipira
—country bumpkin, a term used in southern Brazil.
2
The author wrote eight notes to the third edition of
Os Sertões
(1905). These are reproduced at the end of the Samuel Putnam translation (1944, 479-87) and also by Alfredo Bosi in his didactic edition (1973, 395-99). The translation of the notes is by Elizabeth Lowe.
unconscious mercenaries
—author’s note 1:
“This term has been questioned by some, but I let it stand. My intention was not to attack the
sertanejos.
I regret to say, this book is an open if unwilling attack, not a defense. In my seeming assault on these extraordinary inhabitants of the backlands, men with their own form of civilized existence who inflicted barbaric acts on our semibarbaric troops, I was only reporting the facts. If I were not concerned with appearing presumptuous, I would have added an epigraph by Thucydides that comes from his history of the Peloponnesian War. Even though I lack his eagle-eyed foresight, I too could claim: ‘I have not relied on eyewitness reports and my own subjective reactions; I have simply narrated the events that I witnessed firsthand or those for which I had reliable sources.’” (Putnam, 479; Bosi, 399)
CHAPTER I
1
Sebastião da Rocha Pita, a seventeenth-century Portuguese writer who imitated the Spanish Gongorist style and was the author of
History of Portuguese America
; Henry Thomas Buckle, author of
History of Civilization in England
(London, 1872).
2
Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege, German explorer who published a book on his 1811-17 journeys through Brazil.
3
campos gerais
—a generic term for open country that is not forested; Campos Gerais is also a place name for the open areas of the Paraná plateau (cf. Putnam, “List of Terms in Regional Use,” 495).
4
massapé
—fertile topsoil (cf. Putnam, “Regional Terms,” 496).
5
bandeirantes
—members of a
bandeira,
or expedition of armed adventurers, usually from the São Paulo region, who went to the backlands in search of gold and precious stones (cf. Putnam, “Regional Terms,” 495).
6
caatinga
—scrub forest typical of the backlands (cf. Putnam, “Regional Terms,” 495).
7
uricuri
palms—
Attalea phalerata
Mart. (cf. Putnam, “List of Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 493);
ipueira—
pond or lake that fills during the rainy season, a wetland (cf. Putnam, “Regional Terms,” 496).
8
mandacarú—
the cactus
Cereus jamacaru
and similar species (cf. Putnam, “Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 493)
.
9
Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, a nineteenth-century German geographer, coauthor with J. B. von Spix of
Travels in Brazil
,
in the years 1817-1820
(London, 1824).
10
mangabeira—
a variety of rubber tree, which yields a milky sap from which Pernambuco rubber is produced.
Hancornia speciosa
Gomez (cf. Putnam, “Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 493, and note 16, p. 245).
11
completely unprotected from the corrosive acidity of the cyclonic downpours
—author’s note 2 (1905 edition):
“This phrase has been criticized as inaccurate and an example of my scientific dilettantism (
Revista do Centro de Sciencias, Letras e Artes de Campinas
, No. 2, January 31, 1903). Since there is no time for extensive references, I will point to page 168 of Contejean’s
Geology
, which discusses rock erosion: ‘des actions physiques et chimiques produites par les eaux pliviales plus ou moins charges d’acide carbonique—principalement sur les roches les plus attaquables aux acides, comme les calcaires . . .’ Em Liais’s work on Brazilian geology describes this phenomenon: ‘se montre en très grande échelle, sans doute à cause de la fréquence et de l’acidité des pluies d’orage’ (151). The aforementioned critic gives me this lesson: ‘Rains do not cause erosion because they may contain niter or ammonium; erosion is due to the pressure of the upper atmospheric layers on the softness of the lower ones.’ This is a strange sort of geology indeed.” (Putnam, 479; Bosi, 395)
12
Charles Frederick Hartt led the Morgan expedition (1870-71), which conducted geological exploration of the Amazon region.
13
quixabeira
—a tree of the Sapotaceae family,
Bumelia sartorum
Mart. (cf. Putnam, “Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 494).
14
cajuí
—Putnam identifies this as the cashew tree,
Anacardium occidentale
, but da Cunha’s
Anacardium humilis
may be
Anacardium humile
, a relative of the cashew sometimes called the monkey nut (cf. Putnam, “Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 493).
15
macambira—
a bromeliad,
Bromelia laciniosa
Mart. ex. Schult
.
, common in northeastern Brazil (cf. Putnam, “Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 493).
16
caroa
—a sharp cactus,
Neoglaziovia variegata
Metz (cf. Putnam, “Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 493).
17
They possess in their leaves cells elongated into fuzz, which are a notable tool for condensation, absorption, and defense
—author’s note 3 (1905 edition):
“I hasten to correct this obvious mistake. The correct wording is ‘
. . .
the
favelas . . .
possess cells in their leaves that, expanded in the form of villosities
...
’ ” [The literal wording of the source phrase is: “the
favelas
. . . possess, in their leaves, stomata that, expanded in the form of villosities...”] (Putnam, 480; Bosi, 395)
18
In addition to the botanical terms noted here, there are abundant references in the text to various families, genera, and species, including amaryllis, bignonia, bromeliads, cacti, euphorbia, Gramineae, Lecidea, Mimosaceae, tillandsia, and the like.
19
canudos
—tubes made out of the pipe reed,
canudo-de-pito
(cf. Putnam, “Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 493).
20
Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt, a German naturalist who traveled extensively throughout the Americas from 1797 to 1804.
21
juazeiro—
a tree,
Ziziphus joazeiro
Mart., of the Rhamnaceae family, which produces the
juaz
fruit (cf. Putnam, “Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 493).
22
xique-xique
—sometimes spelled
chique-chique
, this cactus is identified by the author as
Cereus peruvianus
and may be
Opuntia brasiliensis
and other cacti in that genus or
Pilosocereus gounellei
(cf. Putnam, “Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 493).
23
quipás
—creeping cacti,
Opuntia inamoena
Schum.;
Rhipsalides
—Cactaceae family, genus
Rhipsalis
(cf. Putnam, “Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 494).
24
caatanduva
—desolate scrubland, literally “sick forest” (cf. Putnam, “Regional Terms,” 495).
25
Augustin François César Prouvençal de Saint-Hilaire published
Voyages dans l’intérieur du Brésil
in 1830, recounting his travels through the country from 1816 to 1822.
26
simaruba
—
Simarouba versicolor
var.
angustifolia
Engl., also called
caraíba
;
baraúna
—a hardwood tree,
Melanoxylon brauna
Schott., of the Leguminosae family used for mine shafts, railway ties, and construction work (cf. Putnam, “Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 494).
27
mariseiros
—cassia trees (cf. Putnam, “Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 494).
28
umburana
—tree,
Amburana cearensis
A.C. Sm., of the Leguminosae family (cf. Putnam, “Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 494).
29
juremas
—acacia trees,
Acacia jurema
Mart. (cf. Putnam, “Botanical and Zoological Terms,” 493).