First-ever photograph showing a Macuxi/Macushi indigenous person; Brazil, 1894.
This photograph-postcard published by the Brazilian government in 1904 shows a unique picture taken a decade earlier, somewhere near the Branco River in Northern Brazil, in 1894.
It depicts a Macuxi/Macushi young adult man in ceremonial regalia, including feathered headgear and feathered necklace/frock, while holding a stone axe in this right hand, and bow and arrows on the left hand. He stands over the skin of a jaguar, with its skull lying on the bottom-left corner of the image, as mementos of a successful hunt.
This is believed to be the first image depicting a person who was born inside the territory that now corresponds to the Brazilian state of Roraima.
The photograph-postcard was made by German photographer George Huebner, who visited the region looking for orchids in that year and took the first-ever photographs of the Braco River basin. The only known extant copy belongs to the vast personal collection of Maurício Zouein, a professor at the Universidade Federal de Roraima who holds a doctorate in social history (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro). He shared this valuable piece of history in 2022 through his book *"A ideia de civilização nas imagens da Amazônia"* ("The Idea of Civilization In Amazon's Images").