The strange mystery of Colonel Percy Fawcett and the lost city of Z

To this day, we still aren’t exactly sure what happened to Fawcett and his exploration team…but, we aren’t giving up. First things First… you might be asking yourself, “who in the world is Percy Fawcett?” Right? Well, Lieutenant Colonel Percival Harrison Fawcett was born on August 18th of 1867 in the seaside town of Torquay in Devon, England. He received his education at Newton Abbot Proprietary School, was a member of the Royal Geographical Society, and also attended The Royal Military Academy at Woolwich slowly climbing his way up in military rank until he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel while serving as a Reserve Officer in the Royal Artillery during World War I.

During his service, he received three mentions in dispatches and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Fawcett was married to Nina Agnes Paterson and they had two sons – Jack, born in 1903 and Brian, born in 1906. Another interesting note is that Fawcett was friends with famous authors H. Rider Haggard and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle actually used some of Fawcett’s Amazonian field reports as inspiration for his novel, The Lost World, which is pretty awesome. Percy Fawcett would cover a lot of ground in South America before his final exploration that’s so shrouded in mystery. His first expedition was given to him by the Royal Geographical Society in 1906.

He was 39 years old and was tasked with mapping the jungle area at the border of Brazil and Bolivia. During this expedition, Fawcett claimed to have seen and shot a 62 foot long giant anaconda, but scientists ridiculed him for his story. He also reported several mysterious, unknown species including the Bolivian Mitla and the giant Apazauca spider. He found the sources of the Rio Verde and the Heath River in 1908 and 1910 respectively, and Fawcett claimed to have found dogs with double noses in 1913.

Many believe these were probably Double-nosed Andean tiger hounds. According to research, Fawcett started formulating ideas about a “lost city” that he named “Z” in 1914. He believed the city was located somewhere in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil where a complex civilization once existed. The very elusive remains of El Dorado. He was further convinced of his theory after finding a document known as “Manuscript 512” that held information about ruins that were discovered in 1753. The manuscript included details of arches, a statue, and a temple with hieroglyphics…but, of course, a location of the ruins was not included. As mentioned earlier, Fawcett served his country
during World War I.

This put a temporary halt on his plans to find the lost city of Z, but he returned to Brazil as soon as he could after the war had ended. In fact, he made a solo attempt to find “Z” in 1920, but this only resulted in him developing a fever and shooting his pack animal while ill. On April 20th of 1925, Fawcett would head out on what would become known as his final expedition to Brazil. He received funding for the trip from a London-based group known as the Glove, and would take his son, Jack, and long time friend, Raleigh Rimell, with him. He was also accompanied by two Brazilian laborers, two horses, eight mules, and a pair of dogs. The last communication from Fawcett was written in a letter to his wife on May 29th of that same year. The letter reported that they were at a location known as Dead Horse Camp and mentioned that Fawcett had plans to go into unexplored territory with only Jack and Raleigh.

It is believed that he took only two companions in order to travel lighter and minimize the
chances that hostile native tribes would notice them. Fawcett’s tone in the letter was overall optimistic, but clearly something went wrong shortly after it was written. The various theories regarding his disappearance include being killed, dying of disease, and possibly even living out the remainder of life in the jungle with no intentions of coming home.

The Kalapalos were included because they were the last tribe to have seen him, and all the others make the list because they lived in the area that Fawcett journeyed into. In 1951 an indigenous peoples activist, Orlando Villas-Boas, claimed to have been given the skeletal remains of Percy Fawcett. Orlando also reported that a Kalapalo tribesman told him that they had killed the crew. The story goes that Fawcett and his companions were seriously ill. They had also lost most of their gifts for the native tribes in an accident on the river. Not providing gifts for the natives was considereda serious no-no, so the Kalapolo tribe they encountered decided to kill them. The bodies of Jack and Raleigh were thrown into the river and Percy received a proper burial due to being a distinguished, older man.

Danish Explorer, Arne Falk-Ronne, visited the tribe during the 1960s and supposedly confirmed Orlando’s story from the 1950s. This is where it gets even stranger. The bones originally thought to have been Fawcett’s were discredited by further scientific analysis. In addition to this, English explorer, Benedict Allen, visited with the Kalapolo tribe in 1998. An elder of the tribe told Allen in a recorded BBC interview that the bones found 45 year earlier were not Fawcett’s AND that his tribe had nothing to do with Fawcett’s disappearance. No conclusive evidence supports either side of the story I just told you.

There are several other stories that suggest that Fawcett lived on in the jungle. One tale says that he lost his memory and became the chief of a tribe of cannibals. The other was published in the British newspaper, The Observer, on March 21st of 2004. This article mentioned that television director, Misha Williams, believed that Fawcett founded a commune in the jungle that was based on theosophical principles and worshiped his son, Jack. Williams came to this conclusion after studying some of Fawcett’s private papers. Again, there’s no real evidence to support these claims either. Finally, we come to the most promising story of them all. Author, David Grann, released a book entitled, “The Lost City of Z” in 2009. This book details an oral history about Percy Fawcett passed down through generations in the Kalapalo tribe. This account includes information about how Fawcett stayed with the tribe for a time before heading eastward, how the tribe warned him of “fierce indians” that occupied that territory, and what their conclusions were regarding Fawcett’s fate.

Grann’s book also discusses a likely candidate for the “lost city” that Fawcett never found. if you’re interested in them. In the end, it is estimated that roughly one hundred would-be-rescuers have died on expeditions trying to discover Fawcett’s fate, which is sad because he specifically requested that no rescue missions be carried out if he disappeared. He did not want them to suffer a similar fate as his own.