Word: koi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...from Curitiba came Anthropology Professor Jose Loureiro of the University of Parana, bringing Koi with him. He had studied every reference to the mysterious Xetás and spent long, frustrating hours with the boy, who refused to answer most questions about his people...
...some instinct rather than memory, Koi led Loureiro to camps of his people, which proved to be pathetic palm-leaf shelters set in tiny jungle clearings. The camps were always empty, but piles of fresh coconut shells and animal bones proved that Xetás were near. Logs showed charred holes where fires had been kindled by friction. At last, in the sixth camp, Professor Loureiro" found a stone ax. "It was fantastic," he said. "A Stone Age implement in actual use by living hands...
Timid Warriors. That year he saw no living Xetás. But when he went back the next year, Koi led him to a clearing, and there 18 Xetás were huddled in five shelters. The Xetás looked ferocious, with contorted mouths and tusks sticking out of their chins. Actually they were scared to death. Two of the fierce-looking men bolted into the jungle. The rest accepted gifts of sugar with trembling hands. But overnight, they vanished...
Gradually Professor Loureiro won the Xetás' confidence, returning season after season to talk with them through Koi. He made taped records of their speech, whose strange sounds seem to blend with the calls and cries of the jungle. Said Czech Philologist Cestmir Loukotka, who studied the tapes: "It is an entirely new language. The Xetás are a people apart, with a culture and ethnic consciousness of their own, a Stone Age remnant now unique in the world...
...themselves are the professor's worst opponents. Now that they have their peace with civilization after four centuries, they are coming out of the jungle, cutting their matted hair, switching from stone to metal implements. Koi is their leader in this respect. "Stone is no good," he declared last week. "Xetá life is no good; outside is better." Koi wants to be a taxi driver...