If you plan on being a professional spear hunter of jaguar, there are more convenient places to be born than Riga, Latvia, in 1890. Sasha solved this problem by following his brother Ernst to Argentina and, in 1914, to the backwaters of Brazil. His personal story is a dark reflection of the wild land and the ferocious individuality of a frontier people; a world of feudal honor, murder, intrigue and jealousy blended with the savagery of the tropical jungles and marshes, with their swarming, blood-feeding insects, ravenous piranha fish, fer-de-lance and bushmaster snakes and giant jaguars—tigres—the largest and most dangerous of the American cats.
Sasha Siemel was not an especially big man, in his prime a bit under six feet tall and weighing 180 pounds, with a red-blond beard and blue eyes. But for his size, he was immensely strong and quick, a gifted wrestler and fighter. In his earlier days in Brazil, he fought many times against professional strongmen and “Terrible Turk” types, usually winning the bouts and prize money handily. His physical prowess had a dark aspect, though, that earned him the blood enmity of such lesser men as one Ricardo Favelle, a fellow employee of Siemel’s at a silversmith’s shop in the little town of Passo Fundo. For months a deadly feud had been building up between the men, which culminated with Favelle trying to shoot Siemel, forcing the Latvian to take away the revolver and rearrange the general contour of Favelle’s skull with the butt. Although the French-Brazilian survived, Sasha thought he had killed him and lived much of his life under the impression that he was a wanted murderer. Actually, Favelle was to come to a far more exotic death, as we’ll see a bit farther on.
It was while this feud was warming up that Siemel first heard stories of a legendary old Guató Indian some thousand miles away who possessed an ancient skill. He was a tigrero, a master of the art of spearfighting the jaguar.
The revered title of tigrero, in its true Brazilian sense meaning one who hunts jaguars professionally with a spear (as opposed to the more common Spanish usage indicating merely a hunter of tigres), had only been used with reference to a very few Indians. Normally hunting in groups, some tribes like the Guató did produce a real tigrero every few generations, a solitary paladin who fought single-handed in the jungles and marshes with his dogs, usually for hire to ranch owners whose cattle were being killed by jaguars. Mostly, aspiring tigreros never reached fame because of the very nature of their calling. They died from their early mistakes under the claws and fangs of their intended prey, just more moldering bones in the jungla. With only a lance blade between an infuriated 300-pound jaguar and sure death, a single error in judgment or timing was fatal. Even a bullfighter, a torero, could make mistakes and live. Who has achieved fame in that profession without many cornadas and hundreds of stitches after goofing? There are always others to draw off the bull and an infirmary with expert medical help immediately available. Not so with the tigrero. Alone with his feline adversary, he had to kill or die. If a jaguar could get between the spear point and the man’s body, there would be no help. No mistakes were allowed.
So why would anybody, white or Indian, with anything between his ears but solid bone want to hunt jaguars on foot, armed only with the zagaya, the Indian spear?
There are as many answers to that one as there are reasons men hunt, fight, skydive, gamble or take up with redheaded ladies. In the peculiar high, thick swamp grasses of the western Brazilian pantanal, or marshes, Siemel claimed that, incredibly, spear hunting was safer than using a rifle. It was his logic (certainly not without foundation, as he killed well over 300 jaguars in his career) that when visibility is down to a matter of a few feet and the gun misses or wounds, the jaguar will either charge instantly, before another shot is possible, or escape into the anonymous grass. If he charges, he will nearly always kill the hunter. With the zagaya, a man can continue to fight, keeping the cat off him so long as he has the strength to resist.
That, to be sure, is the technical side of the answer. Much more, as typified by Siemel’s outlook, lies in the eternal mystique that has always existed between man and the deadly game animals. As we have examined in other works, the difference between shooting an elephant at one hundred yards through the chest and stalking a big tusker to within ten or so yards is the difference between simple animal assassination and real sport hunting. When you are within ten yards of a bull elephant, you, my friend, are in harm’s way. With the long shot, one kills an elephant in a sterile, riskless and, in my opinion, cowardly manner. At halitosis range, you enter into the most ancient nonbiological passion of humanity: self-testing. And on purpose, which is the most important aspect of the implied morality of the act. Nobody stuck a .45 in your ear and forced you to get so close that you can smell the peanuts; quite the contrary, you probably paid the equivalent of a deposit on Westminster Abbey for the questionable privilege. Isn’t it just peachy? What fun to stand there listening to the blood roar in your ears, your stomach flapping around like a startled bird, your hands so shaky and sweaty that the rifle feels like a freshly peeled sapling. A bystander would think it was you against the elephant. How wrong he would be … .
The point of big-game hunting is not just a matter of killing something that can bite back, but of how it is done and how much risk to which the hunter purposely exposes himself. It all comes down to that timeless moment between slamming heartbeats when you know for an absolute certainty that if you lose your nerve or blow the shot you are going to die. Dead. As in forever. No more pungent amber scotch, no more sea breezes over the malachite flats, no more charcoal-crusty, slab-sided steaks, no more mysterious girl aroma in the twilight. Not even any more taxes once the I.R.S. finishes mauling your bedraggled carcass for the last gold inlay. Like most things in life, you only get out of an experience what you put into it. There is no emotional free lunch, either.
This is acutely the case when hunting jaguar with a spear. A tigre that’s been taking his vitamins will weigh twice as much as an average man and is probably five times stronger. As a cat, he’s considerably quicker, forcing the hunter to fight a counterpunch game, reacting to the cat’s tactics while controlling the overall strategy as much as possible. In all the world of hunting there could be little more satisfying than beating a big, mankilling cat on his own terms, alone and on foot, muscle against muscle, steel spear blade against ivory fang. I have hunted and killed African Cape buffalo with a thrown spear for much the same reasons Sasha Siemel fought his jaguars. But I promise you faithfully that I have no intention of trying my luck on any tigres. I guess I’m just not that emotionally starved.
The sixty-year-old Guató Indian known as Joaquim was a misty legend throughout the thousands of square miles of the upper Paraguay River’s Xarayes and São Laurenço Pantanal when Sasha first heard of him from an old bounty hunter in Passo Fundo, Dom Carlos Roderigues. A very colorful sort—if he wasn’t on your trail—the one-eyed Roderigues kept a tally of his own human kills by stringing their dried ears on a length of cord that hung over the front door of his home, a most effective bit of advertising that served the same purpose as a cobbler displaying a large wooden boot over his shop.
At this time, just before his disagreement with Favelle erupted into violence, Sasha felt he was in a most awkward spot. To let Favelle kill him was pretty obviously not the answer, nor did he want to kill Favelle, because the little man’s friends would hire either Dom Carlos or some other pistolero for revenge. Both Sasha and his brother Ernst had been considering a trip to look into business possibilities in the remote Mato Grosso, along the Bolivian and Paraguayan borders, and had decided to leave Passo Fundo. Dom Carlos Roderigues, who had years before seen Joaquim Guató (Indians took their tribal name as their surname, in many cases) spear-fight a jaguar, told the tale to Sasha, who became intrigued and determined to seek out the old man in the Mato Grosso Marshes, if possible. After his fight with Favelle accelerated his plans slightly, he left with his brother for this primitive land, along the way picking up a cowboy named Apparicio Pinheiro, whose badly infected garapata tick bites Sasha doct
ored. Taking odd jobs, particularly repairing simple machinery and guns, the three pushed sporadically north from ranch to ranch until finally reaching the pantanal. At last, Ernst having decided to stay in a town, Sasha found Joaquim Guato on the fazenda of Senhor Chico Pinto on the São Laurenço River.
It was an especially filthy and dilapidated mud and thatch hut along the river, containing one very drunken Indian, stoned out on canha, raw cane spirit that could strip paint or power a diesel engine. Although Joaquim could hardly speak, he did confirm that he was, indeed, the great tigrero of southern legend. With the unlikely spearman was his best dog, a slat-ribbed reddish mongrel called Dragão, whom Joaquim extolled as being the finest jaguar dog in all of Brazil. It was, he explained candidly, because of the insult of a rancher offering mere money for the dog that he had decided to assuage his injured sensibilities with canha. In any case, although Sasha thought he would need a week to sober up, the Indian offered to take Siemel hunting the following morning. To Sasha’s surprise, Joaquim arrived, bright-eyed if not exactly bushy-tailed, with Dragão an hour before dawn.
After several miles of hard walking—Sasha carrying his Winchester and camera case (he had been anxious to photograph a jaguar), following the barechested Indian armed only with his zagaya spear—Dragão hit the trail of a puma, or mountain lion, the spoor still fresh. It wasn’t a tigre, but it would do. Although Sasha was as tough and durable as dried boot leather, it was all he could do to keep up with the barefoot Indian, chasing after the howling dog. After a half hour, the puma came to bay in a lapacho tree, and the men came up with Dragão on guard below.
Pumas are odd animals, as large as big leopards but most inoffensive with regard to man. Although the species ranges from Alaska to Argentina and eastward as far as the Florida Everglades, there have been only one or possibly two documented cases of man-killing or eating in its long history. It’s apparently a matter of species “personality” with this otherwise powerful, muscular and well-armed cat, which kills deer-sized animals with ease, that it is almost invariably shy and unaggressive toward man. In America’s western states, pumas are regularly treed by dogs and captured with ropes, a performance which, if attempted with a leopard, would create a waiting list at any fair-sized hospital. Still, if cornered and pressed hard enough, even a field mouse will take the offensive sometimes.
After Siemel took a picture of the cat, the puma showed nervousness and leaped to a lower branch. Joaquim had indicated that Sasha should take the shot, which he did, hitting the chest. Mortally wounded, the puma leaped from the tree and fell over, but then recovered and jumped at Siemel. In the blink of an eye, fate threw a roundhouse low blow. At the same second that the cat was in midair, Joaquim and Dragão attacked simultaneously, the Indian with the spear and the dog with bared teeth. As he hurtled for the puma’s throat, Dragão passed between the slashing zagaya blade and the cat, the point penetrating completely through the dog’s neck and on into the puma’s shoulder. The mountain lion was dead before he hit the ground; Dragao lived only a few seconds.
The old Indian deep in stunned grief, Sasha returned home to the hut where he was staying, leaving Joaquim Guató alone in his misery. The next morning, Joaquim came to Siemel’s hut with two scraggy-looking dogs, the smaller of which was named Valente. As a gesture of friendship, the Indian presented Sasha with his choice, recommending Valente as a potential pack leader. Sasha was touched. He knew that Senhor Pinto, his host, had offered a great deal for the dog and had been refused. In return, Siemel gave Joaquim his Winchester (although Julian Duguid, Sasha’s early biographer, says it was a double-barreled .32 pistol), not as payment for the dog but as a return gift between hunters. Joaquim had told the white man that he had decided not to hunt for the next two months, and Sasha headed north to the newly discovered diamond fields on the Rio Garça with Apparicio Pinheiro.
Ten weeks later, Siemel returned to find the Guató as drunk as usual, yet again ready to hunt the following day. The next morning, with Valente in the lead, a big male jaguar was cornered in a stand of acuri palms, and Siemel witnessed his first spear fight.
It was an incredible tableau that the novice came upon, a furious male tigre encircled by baiting dogs that dodged and lunged, staying clear of the flickering paw strokes as the cat, ears laid back and snarling, made short rushes at one dog, only to be nipped in the rear by another. Then the half-naked Indian stepped into the scene, his heavy spear pinned between his right elbow and his side. It was a completely different Joaquim Guató, on sure, bare feet, eyes clear, stare locked on the jaguar with terrible concentration. As he saw the man the tigre froze, ignoring the dogs, a rosetted statue with glowing yellow eyes wide with calculated hate, as the Indian moved slowly nearer. The distance between them shrank in ominous silence, each jungle killer measuring the other. At three yards the man stopped, the zagaya low and leveled. A puff of flying dirt erupted from Joaquim’s feet as he kicked a clump of earth and leaves straight into the jaguar’s twisted face, goading him into a charge. Confused and furious, the big male was just beginning his rush as the Indian feinted the spearhead at the cat’s throat, drawing a lashing claw stroke. In a blink, he stabbed home as the charge began, the blade driving into meat up to the crossbar where it joins the shaft, slicing deeply into the neck.
It seemed impossible that the frail hunter could hold off the raging fury of the 300-pound jaguar as it fought the spear, sometimes lifting the little man clear off the ground as he clung to the shaft. Somehow he kept his balance, for to fall was to die. Suddenly the tigre backed up a few feet, trying to wriggle off the spear. Joaquim was with him, jerking the bloody blade free and, as fast as a closing steel trap, driving it full into the dappled chest. As the man turned on the shaft, the jaguar was now on its back, the chest matted with wet crimson. With all his strength, the Indian worked the spear in the wound, and the struggles of the stricken cat grew more feeble, at last stopping with a shudder that ran the length of the body. The dogs moved in to worry the carcass as Sasha expelled a breath he had been holding in petrified fascination throughout the fight.
He was hooked. What for the Latvian had been a smoldering desire burst into a wildfire of passion to match himself against a jaguar with the zagaya. He would become a tigrero or spend his life in the attempt.
Spear hunting, after throwing rocks or beating a prey animal’s head into mush with a club, is probably the oldest form of hunting with a weapon. Before the atl-atl-type javelin or dart launcher was developed, and later the bow, the only way primitive man had to place a cutting edge into the body of his victim was to attach it to the shaft of a stick, which created the spear. In the very early days, passive hunting was likely the most productive way to kill bigger game, either with pitfalls or by driving herds over cliffs. Yet, as weaponry improved, active hunting, which involved stalking and killing, became the measure of our beetlebrowed forebears’ prowess. In many parts of the world, it still is today. The vestigial heritage of this way of life may be seen very clearly, especially around modern Madison Avenue or Wall Street.
From the most elemental point of view, hunting with the spear falls into two main categories: throwing and thrusting. Obviously, the object in either case is to place the spearhead with its sharp cutting edges where it will do the greatest physiological harm. Like the arrowhead or swordpoint, the principle is to disrupt the circulatory system by hemorrhage, thereby cutting off the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain. When you think about it, a spear, an arrow or even a bullet through the heart actually causes death by asphyxiation, as the heart ceases to pump and the brain dies of oxygen starvation.
The greatest danger in hunting big game with the spear is that it forces the hunter into very close proximity to his quarry. The spear may be perfectly placed, but considerable time can elapse before the prey loses consciousness and dies, every moment of which it may spend tearing sirloins and rump roasts out of the hunter. In the case of the throwing spear or javelin, the advantages and disadvantages tend to offset
one another. The problem lies in the fact that few people can throw a spear very far with any reliable accuracy, and precision placement in a vital area is all-important. Also, in the case of fast-reacting game or men in battle, the giveaway movement of the throw, as well as the slow flight time of the spear, can permit dodging, which negates the probability of a hit. The positive side of the matter is that of distance. Once thrown at something big and ugly, the hunter is free to run like hell with a head start. As one tribe in New Guinea (whose national sport is placing their neighboring warriors en brochette) tells their young men, the only thing more important than being a good spear thrower is being a very good spear dodger.
Where the spear is most in evidence today—Africa—the throwing type ranks about equally with the assegai, which is a short stabbing spear popular with the southern Bantu races, such as the Zulu. Far more game in Africa is killed with the arrow than the spear, but certain animals are hunted with the spear under local conditions that may vary widely. Among the Nilo-Hamites, such as the Masai, Nandi, Karamojong, Samburu and others, the spear is always used on lions and, in some blooding rituals, for elephants. The Bambuti Pygmies of the Ituri Forest in the Congo region regularly hunt elephants with a wide-bladed stabbing spear lent to them by their Bantu neighbors. In this unbelievably dangerous form of hunting, they stalk right up to the selected elephant and thrust from beneath for the kidney region and then dash away. Needless to say, elephants don’t like this very much, and a great many Pygmies don’t get a chance to try this more than once—their first and last time.
Death in the Silent Places Page 14