The disappearance of Colonel Fawcett — the Upper Xingu

OVERVIEW

Percy Harrison Fawcett (1867–?) was a surveyor, artillery officer and explorer who made seven expeditions in South America between 1906 and 1924. By 1914, from documentary research including Manuscript 512 in the National Library in Rio — a 1753 account of a ruined city in the interior of Bahia — he had formed the idea of a lost city in the Mato Grosso he called "Z".

HISTORY

On 20 April 1925 he left Cuiabá with his son Jack and Jack's friend Raleigh Rimmel. The last letter came on 29 May, carried by a runner from Dead Horse Camp: they were about to go into unexplored territory, crossing the Upper Xingu. He had left instructions that no rescue should be sent if they did not return. The Royal Geographical Society declared them lost in January 1927. Many expeditions went after them anyway and failed; at least one searcher died.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

No one knows what happened. The Kalapalo, the last people to see the party, say the three went east and that after five days no more campfires were seen; a Kalapalo chief, Comatzi, later spoke of strangers being killed, but bones he produced were not Fawcett's, and his predecessor Izarari told different versions to different visitors. Both younger men were lame and ill when last seen. It is on the map as a documented disappearance — with the lost city it was chasing — that has never been resolved.

VISITING

The Upper Xingu is Indigenous territory, protected within the Xingu Indigenous Park; entry requires authorisation.