There was a tribe of indigenous people living in the rain forests of Brazil. They were a small tribe and they lived a very simple life, away from the modern, civilized world.
But in 1970s, a group of rich farmers and ranchers wanted to get more land. They decided to clear some of the jungle so that they had more land for their crops and cattle. But they had a problem.
In the rain forest, which they wanted to clear, there lived a tribe of indigenous people. So they needed to get rid of them first. For the greedy ranchers, these indigenous people were worth less than their cattle. It was just a little problem and they had a solution.
They hired a group of mercenaries with guns and rifles to get rid of the tribe. They offered them a lot of money and the mercenaries came. They went to the jungle and massacred the whole tribe of these indigenous people. Only one boy ran away to the jungle and survived.
When the Brazilian government found out what had happened, they stopped the ranchers immediately, but it was already too late. The people of the tribe were dead. But at least, the government said that nobody could clear that part of the forest. Nobody could go there and cut the trees down.
The boy who ran away from the mercenaries and hid in the jungle was now alone. He grew up and became a man. He was now living in the jungle, moving from one place to another. He didn’t want to talk to anybody from the modern world. When they tried to make a contact with him, he ran away.
He lived in isolation. He grew some corn and potatoes and he ate the wild animals which he had caught in his traps. When he moved to a new place, he always dug a hole in the ground and built a hut around it. After one year he always moved to another place and built a new hut.
He lived like this for a long time. But he was getting old. He felt weak and he couldn’t work as hard as he had when he was younger and stronger. And as the time went by, he grew weaker and weaker.
When he felt that he wouldn’t live much longer, he walked around the jungle for many days and collected hundreds of beautiful and colourful feathers from various birds. When he had enough feathers, he took them all to his hut.
Then he made a bed on the ground outside the hut, and he put all those hundreds of beautiful and colourful feathers around it. Then he lay down on the bed, looked up at the sky and waited for the night to come.
When the stars came out, he watched them for a while. Then he closed his tired eyes and died peacefully, in the land of his people.
And with his death, the whole tribe of his people disappeared from the face of the earth forever.
indigenous /ɪnˈdɪdʒənəs/ – pôvodní (obyvatelia, kultúra)
crop /krɒp/ – poľnohospodárska plodina
cattle /ˈkætl/ – dobytok
get rid of – zbaviť sa (niečoho, niekoho)
greedy /ˈɡriːdi/ – chamtivý
solution /səˈluːʃn/ – riešenie
mercenary /ˈmɜːsənəri/ – žoldnier
trap /træp/ – pasca
hut /hʌt/ – chatrč
as the time goes by – ako plynie čas
feather /ˈfeðə(r)/ -pierko
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