National Geographic had an article in the August issue about primitive tribes in the Amazon. The author believed they should be left undisturbed. Others disagree. It generated a lot of responses, both on a forum on the web page, and letters to the magazine, which were printed in the current issue.

I have no easy answer to the question. There are legitimate issues beyond cultural ones, including the real possibility of decimating the natives with diseases they are not prepared for (this has happened many times.) But the letters, some of which I reproduce below, may say more about the writers and their beliefs than about the hard facts of the issue.

The story on Sydney Possuelo's quest to protect isolated Amazonian Indians from contact with the outside world generated the most mail. Is Possuelo a hero or a misguided romantic? The spirited argument spilled over onto our website's Forum. An online poll asked, "Should isolated, uncontacted peoples be left alone?" Almost two-thirds said yes.

I am surprised there are still tribes like the Flecheiros able to avoid the onslaught of our so-called civilization. We have wiped out so much knowledge of the first people to populate North and South America. The Flecheiros live in harmony with nature and don't need interference or salvation. Their Garden of Eden should be spared.

JAMES 0. YOUNG
Represa, California

.

Having lived with isolated tribal populations throughout Amaionia since 1966, 1 take exception to the quote attributed to Sydney Possuelo: "Uncontacted Indians live in a lost paradise.' Not exactly. It is often a brutal world of lives cut short by disease and homicide from intertribal warfare. Ask the Indians of Ecuador and Peru if they wish to go back to the days before the introduction of modern medicine and the end of revenge killings. Cultural change is inevitable. To think otherwise is misguided romanticism.

JOHN WALDEN, M.D.
Huntington, West Virginia

.

Is the life of the Indians tough? By our standards, yes. But I bet they could survive forever if just left alone. What about us, the "educated" and "civilized" people? We are the ones who need to be saved, not them.

OCTAVIO CAMPOS SALLES
Sao Paulo, Brazil

.

Supposedly, isolated Amazon tribes are protected from outside contact for their own good. But who are we to choose what is good for another group of people? Through the vigorous "protection" espoused in the article, they are being denied choice, and by being denied choice, they are being denied their humanity. They are being treated like endangered animals, all for the sake of someone else's sense of wild beauty.

JENNY TENNANT
Morgantown, West Virginia

.

I appreciated Sydney Possuelos decision to let the uncontacted tribes live as they have lived for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. It's the choice of the Flecheiros and theirs alone to take the first step toward us if they want to know us. Thank you for opening a window to an Earth still wild, still untamed.

JENNY FRIEDL
Pfarrkirchen, Germany

.

Perhaps some of the Flecheiros would prefer something different from squatting around a fire and eating, as the article's author, Scott Wallace, describes in On Assignment, "tough" monkey meat in a "stinky" broth. Modern civilization has its benefits.

VIVIAN LEE ELLINGSON
Apache Junction, Arizona

.

I am quite sure that the Flecheiros can come out and look for us if they want to, We should learn a lesson from what happened to Australia's Aborigines and New Zealand's Maori! After contact, the Flecheiros will be abandoned. Leave them alone.

MARIUCCIA ALCOCK
Ipswich, England

.

What disturbed me the most about the short sidebar story, "After First Contact," was the Korubo's practice of infanticide. Then I realized that my Christian values were clouding my ability to objectively draw conclusions about these people. Because their culture is so radically different from mine, their traditions seem savage and brutish when viewed through the moral lens of modern Christianity. It might be humbling to consider that only a few hundred years ago Christians were burning people alive because they thought they were witches.

JUAN CASERO
Hialeah, Florida

.

That last one was particularly interesting. Maybe I'm just not looking at infanticide with an open enough mind. It is also worth noting that none of the writers of these letters probably spends their lives sitting around a fire chewing monkey meat.