Amazon Frontier covers the 150 years when the first European scientists expolred the natural riches of Amazonia and became fascinated by its tribal peoples. Exciting and murderous encounters with new tribes continued throughout the nineteenth century, particularly when the Amazon's rubber monopoly made Manaus a frontier boom town. However, the Indian population, once so feared by the Europeans, began to decline and they became little more than objects of anthropological study or romantic literature. John Hemming ends his account in 1910 with the creation of Brazil's famous Indian Protection Service, a subject he resumes in Die If You Must

Author Biography

John Hemming was Director of the Royal Geographical Society in London from 1975 to 1996. He has been on several surveying and environmental-research expeditions to unexplored parts of Amazonia, and has probably visited more Indian tribes than any other non-Brazilian. He is the author of fourteen books including the prize-winning The Conquest of the Incas.