It was a desperate race against time, and the elements. An expedition of Brazilian anthropologists and family members of an uncontacted tribe deep in the Amazon jungle have spent the past month in a frantic search for an isolated people — to avert a war.

The Javari Valley reservation is Brazil’s second largest after the Yanomami reservation. It stretches over 85,444 square kilometres.

It is an area larger than Austria.

It is home to the last concentration of uncontacted tribes on the planet.

And one of them was very angry.

Brazil’s agency for indigenous peoples (FUNAI) said this morning that the mission sought to reunite a group of relatives with their tribe who were convinced they had been murdered by a neighbouring tribe.

Wielding cudgels and bows, the two tribes have been on the brink of open war for months.

But a peacekeeping mission was sent deep into the Javari Valley reservation in far western Brazil, on the border with Peru.

INVASION
The Javari Valley is home to some 16 known uncontacted tribes, along with eight who have had limited interaction with the outside.

One of the uncontacted groups, the Korubo tribe, has recently been particularly hard pressed battling poachers, illegal fishermen and loggers.

As a result, its people have become separated and scattered across a rugged section of the region. Some family members have lost contact with one another.

The larger groups became convinced the missing had been murdered.

And they had a prime suspect.

The nearby Matis tribe.

The Matis people first made contact with Brazilian authorities in the 1970s. They’ve largely been living in voluntary isolation ever since.

But they’ve recently ventured out of their forest repeatedly to request FUNAI’s intervention: they believed the isolated Korubos wanted revenge, mistakenly believing they had killed their relatives.

It’s not the first time the rival tribes have clashed.

Reportedly, they engaged in a seriese of serious battles in 2014.

But this time it was all a misunderstanding.

The missing family members had actually fled into areas occupied by more open tribes.

And the only way to convince them was to reintroduce them to their relatives.

DIPLOMACY
The main concern of FUNAI analysts was that the isolated group would not believe that the Korubos in the expedition were in fact their relatives, which made them label the mission as “high risk.”

“The best scenario would be an encounter where they are able to talk with their tribal relatives and decide to stay in the Coari region,” FUNAI expedition leader Bruno Pereira said before embarking on the quest. “The worst case would be a fight breaking out with the Matis resulting in deaths,” he said.

Brazilian law states that contact with isolated tribes can be used only as a last resort to preserve the lives of indigenous peoples and the expedition was FUNAI’s biggest since 1996. It is also the agency’s first major operation during the administration of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro who regards protecting the tribes as an impediment to Brazil’s economy.

It was a success.

The FUNAI agency said a team of nearly two dozen managed to find a group of 34 members of the Korubo tribe. And the expedition included some of the missing relatives of the Korubos.

REUNION
“It was actually quite moving. We soon found one of the two Korubos we saw first was a brother of one of the members of the expedition,” said Pereira. “There was a lot of emotion and tears.”

And the tribal war has been averted.

The trip lasted 32 days in the Javari Valley, an area of more than 8 million hectares, or bigger than Hungary.

But the reunion was just the start of the process.

Now FUNAI is attempting to get the scattered remnants of the tribe back together.

Its stated aim is to protect the family groups by encouraging them to reunite and stay with other less isolated Korubo living to the north on the Coari River.

FUNAI’s chairman Franklinberg de Freitas, appointed by Bolsonaro, called the expedition “a landmark” success.

INTO THE FIRE
The Kurobos’ battle to preserve their way of life — and that of the other tribes in the valley reservation — is only just beginning, however.

Brazil’s new leader has often criticised national and international bodies that handle indigenous issues. He has also promised to stop demarcation of indigenous reservation lands and allow miners and farmers to operate there.

It’s a message that has served only to encourage fresh waves of poachers, illegal farmers and miners to push deeper into the Amazon forest.

FUNAI estimates there is between 107 and 112 uncontacted tribes within Brazil.

And tales of rape, murder and abduction have been spilling out from the frontiers. Some tales tell of the massacre of entire tribal groups by poachers and treasure hunters, and the devastation of introduced disease.

Survival International, an indigenous tribe advocacy group, says the situation is dire.

Survey flights and discussions with neighbouring peoples suggests “the uncontacted or recently contacted groups are very reduced in number.”