Death on the River of Doubt

by Samantha Seiple

  Fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, and French, he had a knack for making friends wherever he went—as well as narrowly avoiding danger and death.

  His trembling hand and the big scar on the underside of his arm were the result of a narrow escape from an attack—but not from a wild beast. During his entire career as a naturalist, only one animal had ever unexpectedly attacked Cherrie: a tamandua, or lesser anteater.

  “Dangers and narrow escapes in the lives of explorers are not always associated with the forces of nature or wild creatures of the forest. Often man becomes the greatest and most deadly menace of them all,” Cherrie stated.

  For Cherrie, that truth came to light one morning while he was hunting for birds in Peru. Following a trail, he came upon a thicket. After checking the branches to see if there were any birds hiding, he turned and saw a man aiming a double-barreled shotgun at him.

  Cherrie recognized him. He had caught the man stealing from him several months before, and the man had vowed revenge. Without thinking, Cherrie walked toward him, swung his gun from his shoulder, and pulled the trigger. The man dropped dead.

  The tamandua, also known as the lesser anteater, can be found in trees and on the ground.

  Then Cherrie noticed a sharp pain in his right arm and saw blood spurting out. Before the man died, he had managed to shoot off the entire underside of Cherrie’s arm, splintering the bone and severing the tendons.

  Dropping his gun, Cherrie grabbed a handkerchief from his pocket. Using his hand and teeth, he tied a tourniquet around his arm. But it continued to bleed.

  Though he was certain he was going to bleed to death, Cherrie walked back to camp for help. There wasn’t much his companions could do other than tighten the tourniquet. The nearest doctor was 150 miles away, which would take three days and three nights to reach. Even though everyone, including Cherrie, thought the wound was fatal, he decided to go.

  Roosevelt sits in a canoe ready to begin the journey down the river while Cherrie steps aboard.

  Since it was too painful bouncing around in a horse saddle, Cherrie walked much of the way. No one would give him anything to eat—with the exception of chicken broth—since it would be a waste of food. Everyone who saw him expected him to be dead by morning. Only he wasn’t.

  Dazed and in agonizing pain from the infected wound, Cherrie kept pushing himself, walking in his blood-soaked clothes until he caught a boat to the nearest village that had a doctor. Once there, the police wanted to arrest him for murder. But the doctor told them not to bother. Cherrie would be dead by morning. And yet, surprising everyone, he managed to survive.

  The police never arrested Cherrie. The man he shot in self-defense was a murderer and thief. Although the big scar and trembling hand were a constant reminder of his narrow escape from death, Cherrie didn’t let it bother him. He could still pull the trigger on his gun and was the fastest taxidermist around.

  When Roosevelt first met Cherrie, he liked him right away.

  “He is one of the best explorers, one of the most nervy men in all dangers, whether they come from the elements, from wild beasts or from wilder men,” Roosevelt said.

  Along with Roosevelt and Kermit, Cherrie was the only other American on the expedition. Combined with Rondon’s team, there were a total of twenty-two people.

  As the group trekked to the start of the River of Doubt, they passed by grave sites and the sun-bleached skeletons of oxen and mules from Rondon’s previous trips along the road. It was both a reminder and warning that many did not make it out of the jungle alive. When Roosevelt and the others passed the graves marked with wooden crosses, they raised their hats, acknowledging Rondon’s workers who had died.

  Even more disturbing and unsettling were the graves of Rondon’s soldiers who had been attacked by the Nhambiquara Indians. After killing the men with their six-foot-long arrows—the tips of which were poisoned with a plant extract called curare—the Nhambiquara buried them in an upright position, with their heads and shoulders sticking out of the ground.

  Like the United States, Brazil had a population of different Indian tribes native to the land. From the time the first Portuguese explorer, Pedro Álvares Cabral, discovered Brazil in the year 1500, the Indian population was negatively impacted—from disease to enslavement to encroachment on their land and way of life.

  Cut off from civilization, the Nhambiquara Indians were adept at hiding from plain view in the rain forest. So much so that some people believed that the Nhambiquara were essentially a myth. At least they had until 1907, when Rondon and his men were shot at. The first arrow whizzed by Rondon’s face, and he mistook it for a bird. But the second arrow grazed his hat. And the third hit him in the chest. By chance, Rondon escaped injury. The thick leather rifle strap he was wearing stopped the poisoned arrow from tearing into him.

  With the arrow still sticking out of his strap, Rondon fired his rifle into the air, scaring the Indians off. At first, Rondon was outraged. He and his men wanted to kill them, to gain the upper hand.

  A Nhambiquara Indian with his bow and arrow.

  “Why I never dreamed that such a treasonous attack could happen … I escaped a shameful death at the hands of traitors!” Rondon wrote in his diary.

  By the following day, however, he’d had time to collect both the Nhambiquara arrows and his thoughts. Rondon, who was part Terena and Bororo Indian as well as Portuguese, decided against a counterattack.

  Rondon realized that from the Indians’ perspective, he was invading their homeland. He understood that they were protecting their territory, just like he was trained to do in the military.

  “Attacking us, they were doing no more than defending their own lives and those of their women and children … The most overwhelmingly important thing to avoid is adding fuel to the flame … We must do everything possible to show them … that we have no other intention than of protecting them,” Rondon wrote.

  Drawing from his experience in establishing peace with the nearby Pareci Indians, Rondon knew the best approach was to gain the Nhambiquara Indians’ trust. To do this, he and his men needed to remain passive and peaceful—no matter what. He ordered his men to never fight back even if they were under attack—even if it killed them, literally. His motto was “to die if necessary; to kill never.”

  Rondon was so passionate about protecting the native people of Brazil that in 1910 he helped set up the Indian Protection Service. His ambition was to protect the South American Indians and preserve their culture, striving for a peaceful coexistence. He was the liaison between the South American Indians and the Brazilian government.

  But the Nhambiquara, cut off from society in the rain forest, weren’t aware of Rondon’s decision. Although the explorers retreated, the Nhambiquara stealthily followed them. They terrorized Rondon and his men, attacking them at night when the men were sleeping in their hammocks, and stealing their food and killing their pack animals.

  In order to break through the communication barrier and begin peace negotiations with the Nhambiquara, Rondon set up a phonograph and played records. Like the Pied Piper, the music lured the Indians out of their hiding places and into Rondon’s campsite. Once there, Rondon gave them a generous peace offering—gifts of food, beads, handkerchiefs, and metal tools such as knives and axes.

  The Nhambiquara were nomadic hunters and gatherers with Stone Age tools. Rondon’s gifts of metal tools were a persuasive means of communication, allowing him to forge a fragile friendship.

  Still, things weren’t always friendly. Whenever the Indians visited Rondon’s camp, something was usually missing after they left. And if the Nhambiquara ever felt threatened or betrayed, they settled the matter by killing the person.

  Although Roosevelt respected Rondon and his mission, he wasn’t going to die for the cause. Roosevelt viewed the Nhambiquara as “light-hearted robbers and murderers.”

  “He is on remarkably good terms with them, and they are very fond of him—although this does not prevent them from now and the
n yielding to temptation, even at his expense, and stealing a dog or something else that strikes them as offering an irresistible attraction,” Roosevelt wrote.

  It was anybody’s guess if the Indians might attack them on the expedition. And since the River of Doubt was previously unexplored, it was possible that other tribes lived there that no one knew about.

  “Anything might happen,” Roosevelt wrote. “We were about to go into the unknown, and no one could say what it held.”

  Pushing off from the shore, the camaradas paddled the dugouts, sliding through the smooth, dark water and moving briskly toward the shadowy forest in the horizon. The river ran deep and wide from all the rain, covering up rocks and fallen trees. As the journey into the unknown began, no one could have suspected that there would soon be a criminal among them.

  From the wooden bridge, Roosevelt heard someone shout, “Good luck!”

  He would need it.

  The last of the seven canoes begins the journey down the River of Doubt.

  CHAPTER 6

  Into the Unknown

  March 1, 1914

  Day 3 on the River of Doubt

  Before the sun had a chance to rise, and the forest was still eerily quiet, Roosevelt emerged from his tent. It was pitched on flat ground near the river’s edge.

  Wearing only his birthday suit, Roosevelt waded into the cold black water. He knew it was a risk swimming with hungry piranhas.

  Adding to the risk was the fact that no one knew how to prevent an attack or what to do if the piranhas did strike. Some people advised against splashing in the water, while others, like Cherrie, swore that splashing was the only way to keep them away. But one thing was certain: Even the smallest drop of blood attracted the piranhas like a nail to a magnet.

  “They are the most ferocious fish in the world,” Roosevelt wrote. “Even the most formidable fish, the sharks or the barracudas, usually attack things smaller than themselves. But the piranhas habitually attack things much larger than themselves. They will snap a finger off a hand incautiously trailed in the water … they will rend or devour alive any wounded man or beast; for blood in the water excites them to madness.”

  Even so, that didn’t stop anyone from getting into the water. Not even Rondon, who was missing a little toe after a piranha bit it off. Or Cherrie, who had scars on his shoulder and body from a piranha attack.

  Cherrie remembered the day he was attacked after slipping from a tree limb and slicing his arm open in the fall:

  “I realized that I was bleeding and that my blood would instantly incite an attack by the murderous fish … the lightning-like rapidity of the piranha left me little chance to escape unhurt … But I retained enough of my reason to know that my one chance of escape lay in keeping the fish at bay before they became crazed with the taste of blood. So not only did I strike out for the shore but I set up a violent motion of twisting and rolling and splashing with my arms and legs. Even then I felt a blow and a sharp pain in my shoulder that told me one of the fish had struck. All I could do was to continue my furious splashing. Luckily I succeeded in reaching the shore, though badly bitten … I know that had I been even slightly stunned by my fall I should never have lived to tell the tale.”

  A bloodthirsty piranha.

  After bathing in the river and eating breakfast, the men of the Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition lined up and stood at attention. Rondon, dressed in his military uniform and with his faithful dog, Lobo, by his side, read aloud his Order of the Day, which included their work assignments and goals. He would also always nail a sign to a wooden post that was carved with the letters R-R (for Roosevelt-Rondon), the camp number, the date, and how far they’d traveled down the River of Doubt.

  Unfortunately, they hadn’t made much progress. Traveling at a slothlike pace, it had taken three days to map eight miles.

  “The course is extremely tortuous … twisting and turning in every direction. The boatmen have some strenuous times in getting the boat around some of the curves,” Cherrie wrote in his diary.

  The surveying group, which was responsible for plotting the course and measuring the length of the river, had their work cut out for them. Even though they were the first to leave each morning, they were the last to arrive at the new camp.

  Kermit, who was in the lead canoe with his hunting dog, Trigueiro, was in charge of “sighting.” He looked for an area along the shoreline that gave an unobstructed view up and down the river, which was usually at one of the many twists and turns.

  The camaradas in his canoe, Simplicio and Henrique, paddled and steered the small canoe to the shoreline. Kermit then hopped out of the canoe—never certain if he was going to be greeted with a poison arrow shot by a hidden Indian.

  After using his machete to hack his way through the dense foliage—all while getting stung and bitten by wasps and ants—Kermit would set up the sighting rod. The rod had two disks attached to it, one white and one red, which were 1 meter apart.

  When the sighting rod was set up, Rondon’s loyal right-hand man, Lieutenant João Salustiano Lyra, used a telemeter, an instrument that measured the distance from his canoe to the sighting rod. At the same time, Rondon used a compass to note the direction of the river. Later, Lyra, who was a cartographer, would plot the course and calculate the distance.

  This “fixed-station” survey method was an accurate way to map the river, but it was time-consuming. On the first afternoon, Kermit planted the sighting rod 114 times, taking five hours to map six miles.

  “Lots of ants; rather hard work,” he wrote in his diary.

  The slow speed worried Roosevelt. Unlike Rondon, he believed a detailed map wasn’t necessary. Given their low food supplies, traveling down the river in a timely and efficient manner was crucial to their survival.

  “We did not know whether we had one hundred or eight hundred kilometers to go, whether the stream would be fairly smooth or whether we would encounter waterfalls or rapids … [or] meet hostile Indians … We had no idea how much time the trip would take. We had entered a land of unknown possibilities,” Roosevelt wrote.

  It was also becoming apparent that the possibility of supplementing their food rations with game, such as the tapir, looked bleak. With the exception of a school of otters swimming in the river, the surrounding area so far had not been full of wildlife. The high waters along the shoreline had caused some of the animals to migrate inland, deep into the Amazonian rain forest.

  Roosevelt was keeping a close eye on everything, but he wanted to be “more than courteous and polite and friendly with my Brazilian companions.” So, for now, he decided it was best not to say anything. Besides, for all he or anyone else knew, the river might get easier to navigate as they went along.

  Not long after Rondon read his Order of the Day, the surveying team took off down the river to begin their long day’s work.

  It was about eleven o’clock in the morning when Roosevelt, Cherrie, and José Antonio Cajazeira—the expedition’s “cool and plucky” medical doctor—climbed into the canoe they shared. It was the largest and most difficult one to maneuver.

  “We had seven canoes, all of them dugouts. One was small, one was cranky, and two were old, waterlogged, and leaky,” Roosevelt noted.

  There were also three camaradas in Roosevelt’s canoe. Luiz Correia was the steersman, Julio de Lima was the bowsman, and Antonio Pareci was the paddler.

  “They were expert rivermen and men of the forest, skilled veterans in wilderness work. They were lithe as panthers and brawny as bears. They swam like waterdogs. They were equally at home with pole and paddle, with axe and machete … They looked like pirates,” Roosevelt wrote.

  One of the biggest and strongest camaradas was Julio de Lima. When Rondon first hired him to go on the expedition, Julio was enthusiastic. This was unusual, since many men viewed working for Rondon as a form of punishment. It wasn’t just the harsh and isolated wilderness that deterred them. Rondon was a strict disciplinarian, ruling his men with an iron fist.

>   His tough and authoritarian leadership style was necessary in the wild where disease, Indian attacks, and the inhospitable environment relentlessly threatened everyone’s lives. Rondon couldn’t risk a mutiny.

  Expedition members João Salustiano Lyra (left) and Dr. José Antonio Cajazeira (right).

  If any of his men showed insubordination, Rondon was quick to put them in their place. In the past, this had included brute force, such as beating them with a switch (which he later regretted). In any case, with his reputation as a no-nonsense leader as well as the grueling work, Rondon had to pay his men six to seven times more than the going rate for hired workers.

  In comparison, Roosevelt’s leadership style was much more approachable. Even though he couldn’t speak Portuguese, the former president’s gregarious nature broke through the language barrier. One way he showed his appreciation to the camaradas for their backbreaking work was to share a chocolate bar from his provisions. He did this every day at noon.

  “It was a strange form of food for the Brazilian interior, and was especially enjoyed by the laborers,” said Rondon. “Those little daily acts of thoughtfulness were much appreciated and the men soon loved him.”

  Cherrie described Roosevelt as “the ideal camp mate.”

  “We all felt the honesty of the man and his unselfish attitude,” he said. “[Roosevelt] was a good fellow to have in any camp party. He always wanted to do his share of the work and was the soul of good spirits and comradeship.”

  Cherrie and the others especially enjoyed Roosevelt’s ability to tell a good story, keeping everyone entertained with tales of his adventures in the Wild West, in Africa, and as president.

  “He was a charming companion … He was what we Brazilians call a ‘pandego’ … ‘the life of the party,’ ” said Rondon. “And talk! I never saw a man who talked so much. He would talk all the time he was in swimming [sic], all of the time during meals, traveling in the canoe and at night around the camp fire. He talked endlessly and on all conceivable subjects.”