Lost in the Shadow of Fame

by William E. Lemanski

  The expedition had travelled almost two-thousand miles since entering the Mato Grasso on the Paraguay. On January 21st the Roosevelt team began the long overland trek northwestward to the Rio da Duvida. Their route of march led at times through thick tropical forest requiring a bushwhack with machetes opening a trail for the long string of pack-mules. Noted Zahm:

  “Our second day’s journey was through a dense forest composed of trees and shrubs of all sizes and innumerable species. The branches of the larger trees interlaced overhead in such wise that at times we seemed to be passing through a dimly lighted vegetable tunnel”

  At other times they traversed many miles on open, hot, rolling plains of sand on the high Parecis plateau.*[7] Travelling in the rainy season, they would often ride into a heavy downpour of rain, soaking everyone to the skin and turning the loose soil into slippery mud, making conditions difficult for the mules. The tiny sand-flies required everyone to use head nets and gloves; one bite would leave a mark on the skin lasting weeks.

  On one occasion, Kermit, always the hunter, broke from the line of march to hunt, returning later with two buck deer. At night, the group would gather around the camp fire seated on ox skins, in some cases, eating their only meal of the day, and end telling stories of their various past adventures. Rondon would relate many incidents of hardship and struggle during his years of building the telegraph line through the very country they now traveled; one time near starvation forcing him and his men to subsist for many weeks on wild fruit. He explained how when blazing the trail for his communication line they had once lost every one of their one-hundred and sixty mules which they began with.17 Fiala recounted his frozen years in the arctic with Cherrie holding the group spellbound with his reminisces about holding-off a cavalry charge in Venezuela while he and five comrades were on foot with only rifles as defense against mounted lancers.

  Although still many miles from beginning their descent of the Duvida, the trip was starting to wear on both man and beast. Despite the enormous stock of supplies Fiala organized, much of it was useless on this type of journey and either was sent back with Harper or discarded when the pack-animals began to give out and buck off the increasingly heavy loads. Ample food and water for both man and beast became a problem. In anticipation of challenges and hardship on the Duvida, Roosevelt took a dark, philosophical view,

  “If our canoe voyage was prosperous we would gradually lighten the loads by eating the provisions. If we met with accidents, such as losing canoes and men in the rapids, or losing men in encounters with Indians, or if we encountered overmuch fever and dysentery, the loads would lighten themselves.”18

  An ominous sign greeting the column of march:

  “…was shown in the numerous skeletons of oxen and mules which littered both sides of the road. Besides these bleached skeletons, we saw a number of boxes scattered here and there bearing the inscription, ‘Roosevelt South American Expedition.’”19

  Evidence of the difficulty Captain Amilcar’s advance party experienced just days before. To conserve food, meals were becoming less frequent and less filling.

  The long hot and monotonous days of trudging across the barren wilderness of the highlands also began to undermine the men’s morale. With growing apprehension as they followed the trail of the telegraph line, pole after pole, mile after endless mile, the men were aware of the former hardships endured in this region before even reaching the unexplored river with its unknown dangers. At one of the villages, Rondon learned one of his subordinates died from beriberi ahead on the expedition’s line of march. He was also informed that three other of his men had recently drowned ascending the Gy-Parana attempting to deliver provisions to part of the expedition that would be descending that river later on.20

  Roosevelt and Kermit both knew that when the comfort and amenities of civilization are removed, the hardship and danger of the wilderness trail tends to expose both the best and worst in men; great bravery is sometimes stimulated, but frequently treachery expressed with self-serving disregard for others will be exposed. The seeds of this dangerous human frailty would surface to a murderous degree as the trip continued.

  Besides Rondon and his party of officers, Captain Amilcar, Lieutenants Lyra and Filho and Doctor Cajazeira, he enlisted a group of Brazilian porters known as camaradas for handling the pack-animals on the first leg of the journey and later as paddlers for the river passage. One of his enlistees, a surly character named Julio de Lima of Portuguese descent was a large and muscular individual whose devious and violent nature became apparent early in the trip when he attacked another camarada with a knife during an altercation. As the trip progressed, Julio would present himself as an increasing problem just as an insidious, chronic disease slowly immerges with devastating effect.

  Besides fatigue, jangled nerves and a diminishing food supply, Kermit’s chronic malaria flared-up and Father Zahm was becoming a continual nuisance to the expedition. With the apprehension and foresight of a soft office worker caught trudging through a wilderness and his recent contraction of malaria, Harper assessed the situation early on and had already departed. But the other weak link in the group was Zahm. Having led the soft life of an academic and cleric, Zahm’s stubborn constant pursuit of comfort in the face of growing adversity angered his comrades. He displayed an arrogant, elitist attitude toward the Brazilians that incensed Rondon who spent a life of suffering and deprivation in the wilderness with these very same people that Zahm denigrated. The inability to communicate clearly across the varying languages no doubt also added to the tensions. Although Rondon spoke many Indian dialects as well as French and Portuguese, Kermit became the intermediary translating in French between Rondon and Roosevelt. With the camaradas, hand signals, gestures and facial expressions were all they could use.

  Despite the growing hardships, the expedition was travelling through a beautiful wilderness of extraordinary foliage, wild rivers and magnificent waterfalls. One of the last vestiges of civilization on their journey through this picturesque land was at the villages of the Parecis Indians. The Parecis were an indigenous group Rondon had been cultivating by providing employment for patrol of his telegraphic line. The diversion of the Indian villages provided a few days respite and the opportunity for the naturalists to collect additional specimens.

  While at one of the villages, a measure of the exhaustion that was overtaking the expedition was indicated when a pack-ox wandered into the tent in which Roosevelt and Kermit were sleeping, entering one end and exiting the other without waking either of the human occupants. While stumbling through the tent, the ox ate their shirts, socks and underclothes without waking the exhausted travelers.

  On February 3rd the expedition was once again on the move, however, major changes were made in who would continue on. Thus far it was becoming quite clear that if the party was to continue and descend the Duvida successfully, a reduction would have to be made in the number of members making the attempt. Thinning the ranks was essential; both the consumption of limited resources and the human risk were too great to continue on the increasingly difficult journey into the unknown with anyone who was not absolutely essential or up to the task.

  Father Zahm was physically unsuitable and besides his age and frailty, he was too much of a social burden to continue so both he and his attendant, Jacob Sigg were forced to turn back. This rejection for the one who was the originator of entire enterprise must have been a big disappointment to Zahm. The remaining party members were relieved with the departure of this arrogant, cranky cleric. Fiala and one of the Brazilian officers were assigned to return via canoe descent of the Papagaio, Juruena and Tapajos, also wild rivers that were perhaps just as dangerous as the Duvida, a trip which Roosevelt considered a necessary part of the expedition’s work. Ultimately, Fiala would come close to losing his life in rapids*[8] on this altered route. In the rapids of the Papagaio two of Fiala’s canoes were upset, half of their provisions and all of his baggage were lost and he almost drowned.

 
Roosevelt weighed the dual and in some respects duplicate scientific skills of Cherrie and Miller against the need to thin the group and Miller reluctantly volunteered to withdraw leaving the elder Cherrie to continue with Roosevelt as the expedition’s naturalist.

  As difficult as the previous 150 miles or so had been, the trail ahead presented even a higher degree of danger and hardship for the men. The land was wilder and more remote and was the territory of the Nhambiquara Indians,21 a group of primitive forest people and only recently had Rondon won their tentative trust. The Nhambiquara were a stone-age people, fierce and wild which Roosevelt characterized as “light-hearted robbers and murderers.” They went entirely naked carrying seven-foot long bows and five-foot long arrows tipped with curare. Their short stature belied their warlike habits and were a continual scourge to the Parecis and always a potential threat to Rondon’s men working on the telegraph line. The poor condition of the pack-animals now compelled each member of the expedition to discard everything above the basic necessities. Oxen were so weak from lack of good forage they could no longer pull the carts, nine of their mules were already left behind on the road. On they rode through the heat, swarms of insects and the alternating weather of soaking down pours and humid sunshine.

  “One afternoon we pitched camp by a tiny rivulet, in the midst of the scrubby upland forest; a camp, by the way, where the piums, the small, biting flies, were a torment during the hours of daylight, while after dark their places were more than taken by the diminutive gnats which the Brazilians expressively term ‘polvora,’ or powder, and which get through the smallest meshes of a mosquito-net.”22

  They waded rivers and crossed swollen bodies of water on crude bridges or makeshift log ferries. “…many hours might be consumed in getting the mule-train, the loose bullocks and the ox-cart over.”23

  On February 15, at a place called Campos Novos (new camp), Roosevelt’s column met with Captain Amilcar’s advance party nearly a month following their separation. The ox-cart was left behind and the combined expedition continued on the trail only with pack-animals. Kermit, wandering a few miles from camp one day stumbled upon an encampment of Nhambiquaras. They were stark naked, some had long reeds thrust through holes in their lips. Although savage and dangerous, they did not molest Kermit and accompanied him back to camp where they entertained the expedition members with primitive dancing around the campfire. In the morning, one of the Nhambiquara women attempted to steal a fork but it was retrieved before they departed.

  After a day’s march, the column visited a village of these Indians then proceeded a number of miles where Amilcar along with Miller and two of the Brazilian officers once again would separate from the main group and backtrack. Their plan was to march to the Gy-Parana where they would follow that river, down the Madeira onto Manaos. Roosevelt would continue with Kermit, Cherrie, Rondon, Lyra and the doctor along with sixteen paddlers to challenge the Duvida.

  On to the River of Doubt

  On February 27, Roosevelt, Kermit and the remaining group of explorers arrived at the river’s edge. After traveling overland for over a month, the expedition finally arrived at the beginning of their goal. The trip until now had been an endurance test that had worn the men physically and frayed their recently established, delicate relationships. Natural selection had reduced the size of the expedition, hard travel and the need to lighten the load had frayed and diminished their supplies, and yet the most serious and dangerous leg of the journey was still before them.

  River of Doubt expedition members share evening meal while in the Matto Grosso. Father Zahm is on left with Colonel Candido to his left. Kermit is sitting on makeshift hide blanket on left with Theodore Roosevelt sitting on chair on right.

  Despite all of the preplanning and past debate by Zahm and Fiala, the only watercraft available to them ultimately were seven dugout canoes hand-hewn from large trees which had a tendency to ride very low in the water, had a limited capacity and were difficult to steer. The primitive craft were also very heavy and being made of raw wood eventually became waterlogged unlike the light Canadian freighter-canoes that Fiala originally wanted to use. According to Roosevelt, “One was small, one was cranky, and two were old, waterlogged and leaky. The other three were good.”24 Having already discarded all unessential baggage, the only items carried were the necessities required for survival, surveying instruments and a few books. The provisions were not full rations but were expected to last about fifty-days if combined with a plan of living partially off of the land by hunting, fishing and gathering nuts and palm-tops.

  Shortly after noon, the small flotilla dipped their paddles into the dark swift waters of the rain-swollen Duvida. At their embarkation point where the river was narrow, Amilcar, Miller and others of their party bid them farewell from a makeshift log bridge constructed by Rondon’s men on a previous trip. A feeling of unspoken foreboding overcame all as the small group disappeared around a bend in the river. All understood the questionable survival chances Roosevelt’s group faced on a river of unknown length through uncharted wilderness and now, with no chance of turning back.

  The fast running water of the unmapped river tracked a course through dense, overhanging jungle foliage that frequently would create a watery tunnel through which the men paddled:

  “The lofty and matted forest rose like a green wall on either hand. The trees were stately and beautiful. The looped and twisted vines hung from them like great ropes. Masses of epiphytes grew both on the dead trees and the living; some had huge leaves like elephants’ ears.”25

  The strange stillness of the jungle, devoid of any animal life raised both curiosity and dread in the men. Due to the wet season’s enormous rainfall, the high water covered many submerged snags that were a constant threat to the limited steerage of their unwieldy craft. The dugout canoes, laden with men and supplies had very limited freeboard with the waterline just inches below the sides; two pair were lashed together for stability, further reducing their steerage. An upset in this swift water flowing past river banks concealed beneath the dense overgrowth could be disastrous with no easy location to beach, turnaround and then return upriver for a rescue. Then again for anyone in the swift current, there was always the concern for encountering schools of the piranha or the hungry jaws of a caiman.

  Fortunately the sixteen camarada paddlers in the group were up to the task and greatly impressed Roosevelt:

  “They were expert river-men and men of the forest, skilled veterans in wilderness work. They were lithe as panthers and brawny as bears. They swam like water-dogs. They were equally at home with pole and paddle, with axe and machete.”26

  A major goal for the expedition besides locating the end of this mysterious river was to detail survey its course. To achieve this, Rondon adopted the meticulous and time consuming method of sighting a straight line along each section of the river while documenting its distance and compass direction. The process consisted of Kermit paddling ahead in his small tipsy canoe with a sighting-rod and stopping at a station point on the river with a long unobstructed view to the following canoes where he would plant the rod while holding onto the foliage along the river bank. From behind, Rondon and Lieutenant Lyra would site Kermit’s target and record the data. They would then move on to the next location and repeat the process. Over and over, the slow, tedious routine required Kermit to post a position nearly a hundred times in the first half-day while the group covered only nine and a third kilometers. Kermit, paddling in the survey’s target canoe was also the most exposed to dangers of the unforeseen both on the river negotiating its current and on its banks each time he would halt to set his sighting rod. The tropical rainforest was notorious as the home for poisonous snakes. Each time Kermit stopped while holding onto the overhanging plants and vines steadying his canoe he ran the risk of stumbling onto a snake. Or at the least, barging into a swarm of stinging wasps or receiving a shower of stinging ants from the green canopy above. Many times he would have to hack into the foliage from the c
anoe to present a clear line of sight. Roosevelt, always concerned for the safety of his son, did not appreciate either the danger to Kermit or the slow arduous process. With limited supplies to sustain the group on a passage of unknown duration, the expedition could ill afford to dally. However, Rondon’s overriding interest in documenting his watercourse and as the expedition’s military leader, Roosevelt had little choice but to defer to Rondon’s plan. Tensions between the two strong and determined personalities would continue to grow.

  On the third day after traveling barely 46 kilometers on the river, they encountered the remnants of an abandoned Indian village. The Indians of this region were totally unknown. Although the Nhambiquara were primitive and unpredictable, they were a know entity that Rondon had managed to tame, to a degree. However, the indigenous populations of this region were not only a puzzle to the expedition, but the strange new white travelers on their river would not be seen as just temporary passersby but strange invaders to the Indians. Although no visual sightings of the unknown jungle inhabitants had been made, the expedition members had the constant uneasy feeling of being watched themselves from the jungle depths and discovery of this village only heightened their apprehensions.