Do Novo ao Velho Mundo: Indígenas da Amazônia na Alemanha dos naturalistas Spix e Martius

Abstract

During their expedition in the early XIX century (1817-1820), Bavarian naturalist travellers Johannes Baptist Spix and Carl Friedrich Philipp Martius, kept contact with various indigenous peoples in Brazil. They ended up taking two indigenous children from the Amazon region to Munich, Germany, where they died a few months later, victims of bowel and lung diseases. They were baptized as Isabella Miranha and Johannes Juri, names of the groups they belonged. This article aims understand how the contact with different indigenous peoples and, specially, their relationship with these two children, redimensioned these travellers’ conceivings about the nature of indigenous from Brazil.