But along the margins of the highway, it was still possible to find members of the indigenous Nambikwara people, often sitting sullen, drunk or bewildered. Of the four tribal groups that Mr. Lévi-Strauss spent time with — the Bororo, Caduveo and Kawahib were the others — he seemed particularly moved by the plight of the Nambikwara, whose family and social life became the subject of his doctoral thesis after he returned to Europe in 1939.

In writing of the Nambikwara, Mr. Lévi-Strauss foresaw the drama and tragedy of a people whose culture and way of life even then were clearly doomed. So he was meticulous in documenting as many aspects of their lives as he could, from relations between the sexes and construction of shelter to diet, pets and pearl gathering. Brazilian anthropologists say that even today Nambikwara oral history recalls the visit of «Professor Levi».

Mr. Lévi-Strauss may have been even more perceptive in his observations of the caboclos, the assimilated Portuguese-speaking mestiços who were the region’s dominant group. His descriptions of their behavior and manner of dress were astonishingly accurate, and in my own travels I would often hear some impossibly colorful locution that I had first encountered in «Tristes Tropiques» and attributed to what I thought must be his imperfect command of Portuguese.

Excerto de um artigo assinado por Larry Rohter no New York Times.