Percy Fawcett
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| Percy Harrison Fawcett | |
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| Born | 1867 Torquay, United Kingdom |
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| Died | 1925 (presumed) Brazil |
Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett (1867 – presumably 1925) was a British archaeologist and explorer.
Along with his son, Fawcett disappeared under unknown circumstances in 1925 during an expedition to find what he believed to be an ancient lost city in the uncharted jungles of Brazil. He is said to have been an inspiration for Indiana Jones, the fictional archaeologist/adventurer, and a fictionalised version of him aids the character in a novel.[1] Also, according to an article in Comics Scene#45, he was also the inspiration of Kent Allard, the alter ego of the Shadow.[2]
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[edit] Early life and career
[edit] An adventuresome father
Fawcett was born 1867 in Torquay, Devon, England to Edward B. and Myra Fawcett. His Indian born father was a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, and it is no doubt that from him Percy Fawcett got his adventuresome streak. In 1886 he received a commission in the Royal Artillery and served in Trincomalee, Ceylon where he also met his wife. Later he worked for the British secret service in North Africa and learned the surveyor's craft. He was also a friend of authors H. Rider Haggard and Arthur Conan Doyle; the latter used his stories as an inspiration for his The Lost World.
[edit] Fawcett's early expeditions
Fawcett's first expedition to South America was in 1906 when he travelled to Brazil to map a jungle area at the border of Brazil and Bolivia at the behest of the Royal Geographic Society; the society had been commissioned to map the area as a third party, unbiased by local national interests. He arrived in La Paz, Bolivia, in June. Whilst on the expedition, Fawcett claimed to have seen a giant anaconda, for which he was widely ridiculed by the scientific community.
Fawcett made seven expeditions between 1906 and 1924. He mostly got along with the locals through gifts, patience and courteous behaviour. In 1910 Fawcett made a trip to Heath River to find its source. Following his 1913 expedition, he supposedly claimed to have seen dogs with double noses - these may have been Double-nosed Andean tiger hounds[3]. He returned to Britain for active service in the army during World War I, but after the war he returned to Brazil to study local wildlife and archaeology.
[edit] Fawcett's last expedition
In 1925, with funding from a London-based group of financiers called The Glove, Fawcett took his older son Jack with him, allegedly to look for a lost city he had named "Z". Fawcett had studied ancient legends and historical records and become convinced that there was a lost city somewhere in the Mato Grosso region. He also left a note that if they did not return, no one should send a rescue expedition to try to find them, or they might suffer their fate.
For a first-hand account of the encounter of Fawcett and his companions with the Kalapalo, told by a Kalapalo leader in Kalapalo to anthropologist Ellen Basso, please see Ellen Basso's The Last Cannibals (University of Texas Press)
[edit] Disappearance and early hypothesis
The last sign of Fawcett was on May 29, 1925 when Fawcett telegraphed his wife that he was ready to go into unexplored territory only with Jack and Jack's friend Raleigh Rimmell. They were reported to be crossing the Upper Xingu, a south-eastern tributary of the Amazon River. Then nothing more was heard of them.
Many presumed that local Indians had killed them, several tribes being posited at the time – the Kalapalos who last saw them, or the Arumás, Suyás, or Xavantes tribes whose territory they were entering. {See Colonel Fawcett link below for reference only.} Both of the younger men were lame and ill when last seen, and there is no proof they were murdered. It is plausible that they died of natural causes in the Brazilian jungle.
In 1927, a nameplate of Fawcett was found with an Indian tribe.
In 1933, a compass belonging to Fawcett was found near the Baciary Indians.[4]
[edit] Subsequent expeditions, explanations and theories
[edit] Rumours and unverified reports
During the following decades, various groups mounted several rescue expeditions without results. They heard only various rumours that could not be verified. In addition to reports that Fawcett had been killed by Indians or wild animals, there was a tale that Fawcett had lost his memory and lived out his life as the chief of a tribe of cannibals.
100 would-be-rescuers have died in more than 13 expeditions sent to uncover Fawcett's fate. A 1951 expedition unearthed human bones that were later found to be unconnected to Fawcett or his companions. Kalapalo tribesmen captured a 1996 expedition, but released them days later when they gave up all their equipment.
[edit] The Villas Boas story
Danish explorer Arne Falk-Rønne journeyed to the Mato Grosso in the 1960s. In a 1991 book, he wrote that he learned Fawcett's fate from Orlando Villas Boas, who had heard it from one of Fawcett's murderers. Apparently, Fawcett and his companions had a mishap on the river and lost most of the gifts they'd brought along for the Indian tribes. Continuing without gifts was a serious breach of protocol; since the expedition members were all more or less seriously ill at the time, the Kalapalo tribe they encountered decided to kill them. The bodies of Jack Fawcett and Raleigh Rimell were thrown into the river; Colonel Fawcett, considered an old man and therefore distinguished, received a proper burial. Falk-Rønne visited the Kalapalo tribe, and reported that one of the tribesmen confirmed Villas Boas' story about how and why Fawcett had been killed.
[edit] Fawcett's bones?
In 1951, Orlando Villas Boas supposedly received the actual remaining skeletal bones of Fawcett and had them scientifically analysed. The analysis allegedly confirmed the bones to be Fawcett's. But his son Brian Fawcett (1906-1984) refused to accept them. Villas Boas claimed that Brian was too interested in making money from books about his father's disappearance. As of 1965, the bones reportedly rested in a box in the apartment of one of the Villas Boas brothers in São Paulo.
In 1998, English explorer Benedict Allen claimed he had found the genuine remains of Fawcett. At the same time, the chief of the Kalapalo-tribe, Vajuvi, supposedly confirmed that the bones found by Villas Boas some 45 years before were not really Fawcett's.[2]. Vajuvi also denied that his tribe had any part in the Fawcetts' disappearance. No conclusive evidence supports either statement.
[edit] Commune in the jungle
On March 21, 2004, The British newspaper The Observer reported that television director Misha Williams, who had studied Fawcett's private papers, found that Fawcett had not intended to return to Britain, but rather meant to found a commune in the jungle based on theosophical principles and the worship of his son Jack[5]. A follow-up to this story was published in The New Yorker magazine a few months later[6]. The New Yorker article also reports that the Lost City of Z may have been found by the archaeologist Michael Heckenberger.
[edit] Russian documentary
In 2003, a Russian documentary film "Проклятье золота инков / Экспедиция Перси Фоссета в Амазонку" (The Curse of the Incas' Gold / Expedition of Percy Fawcett to the Amazon) was released as a part of TV series "Тайны века" (Mysteries of the Century). Among other things the film narrates about the recent expedition of Oleg Aliyev to the presumed approximate place of Fawcett's last roundabouts and Aliyevs findings, impressions and presumptions about Fawcett's fate.
[edit] Additional information
[edit] See also
- Amazon River
- Archaeology
- Explorers
- List of people who have disappeared
- Paititi
- Royal Geographic Society
[edit] Notes
- ^ Rob MacGregor (November 1991). Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils. Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-29035-6.
- ^ a b Larry Orcutt. 2000. Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett. [1]
- ^ BBC News Double-nosed dog not to be sniffed at 10 August 2007
- ^ David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace. 1981. History of the Search for Percy H. Fawcett Part 2. Trivia-Library.com. [2]
- ^ Vanessa Thorpe. Veil lifts on jungle mystery of the colonel who vanished. Guardian UK. March 21 2004. [3]
- ^ David Grann. A Reporter at Large, "The Lost City of Z,". The New Yorker. September 19 2005. [4]
[edit] References
- Falk-Rønne, Arne. (1991). Klodens Forunderlige Mysterier. Roth Forlag.
- Fawcett, Percy and Brian Fawcett. (2001) Exploration Fawcett. Phoenix Press, ISBN 1-84212-468-4
- Fawcett, Percy and Brian Fawcett. (1953) Lost Trails, Lost Cities Funk & Wagnalls ASIN B0007DNCV4
- Fleming, Peter. (1933) A Brazilian Adventure, Charles Scribner's Sons ISBN 0-87477-246-X
