At the fields, Segge stopped. The old man was at his side. Segge pointed excitedly, his expression one of pure delight: From the river to the crops, the natives had cut a broad, straight canal that ran for hundreds of yards.
Segge estimated that there were at least thirty malocas in the community; from those near them, it appeared that about forty people dwelled at each. The women were more attractive than the Tupinambá, with more delicate features, and all wore colorful feather aprons similar to the one Segge had seen on the child.
When they reached the center of the village, the old man issued orders. Low stools, each carved from a single piece of wood, were brought. The elder indicated that Segge should be seated in front of a small, circular hut, and then sat next to him. Two warriors came toward them with a man whom Segge immediately saw was different from these people — shorter, more round-faced, similar to a Tupinambá.
“I am Pitua, a prisoner of these Paresí,” he said, in Tupi.
Segge’s heart fell. Dear God, he thought, they’re the same.
But there followed a long exchange in which Segge learned that the old man was Kaimari, the great chief of this Paresí clan. The clan occupied eighteen villages similar to this one, lying between these lands and a range of mountains a week’s walk to the north. There were four Paresí chiefdoms, two of whom were Kaimari’s allies and one with whom he quarreled.
To Segge’s undisguised relief, he learned that the Paresí were not flesh eaters. Pitua, the interpreter, came from Tupi-speaking cannibals in the forests north of the border mountains, a tribe who had raided into Kaimari’s lands. Pitua, a prisoner for five years, had a Paresí woman and children and worked in their fields.
Kaimari now wanted to know about the big blond, and delivered a string of questions through the interpreter. Segge was impressed by the chief ’s grasp of his answers. Kaimari was vague when it came to concepts of time and distance, his world being essentially confined to the limits of the Paresí chiefdoms; but he accepted that there were different men “a long way away,” and showed no special surprise when Segge spoke of the ocean that separated Holland from this continent. There were great waters here, too, Kaimari said, and with a stick he scratched several lines on the ground; they all led up to one especially broad line — Mother of Rivers, great waters such as Segge had mentioned.
“We call it Rio das Amazonas,” Segge said, thrilled that the Paresí should know of its existence.
“Why do you travel this way?” Kaimari asked.
Segge tried to explain the search for the warrior women and El Dorado. When neither made sense to Kaimari, Segge told him that the Tupinambá had taken him and a friend who journeyed with him captive.
“It was their hope to slay and eat us,” Segge said.
Pitua did not translate these words, and seemed apprehensive.
“Why don’t you tell him what I said?” Segge asked.
“The Paresí hate men who eat flesh. If I tell him what you said, it will remind him that I was one of those men.” Nevertheless, at Kaimari’s insistence, Pitua nervously relayed Segge’s words.
The elders and pagés attending Kaimari became agitated at this report of cannibals so close to their lands. For a time, Kaimari did not speak to Segge but consulted with the Paresí.
“They are asking if they will have to make war on the Tupinambá,” Pitua said.
Segge, the man who once said he did not rejoice in the death of men, experienced an uncommon pleasure at the notion of the Tupinambá column being torn to shreds.
He was surprised then when the interpreter told him that Kaimari had no argument with the Tupinambá. “He says that if they pass peacefully through his lands, he will not fight them.”
“Kaimari is wise,” Segge said. “But if they go, they’ll take my friend, and they’ll eat him as surely as they would eat Paresí if they had them.”
After discussing Segge’s concern with the elders, Kaimari spoke to the interpreter.
“Tonight they will decide if anything can be done to help your friend,” Pitua said. “Now, Kaimari says, you must eat with him. He has had enough talk.”
After a meal of deer meat, maize cakes, sweet potatoes, and a winelike liquor, Segge was taken to a small hut where he was to spend the night. A place for honored guests, the interpreter told him. Yara would sleep with his family, the man said. Segge did not question these arrangements, and very soon after climbing into a hammock, he fell into a deep sleep.
He awoke to see Kaimari on his small stool a few feet from the hammock. Elders stood silently in the shadows behind him, all looking expectantly in Segge’s direction. The interpreter was with them. Segge swung out of the hammock and gave a cheerful greeting
“You are to fetch your friend,” Pitua said. “Thank Kaimari!” Segge said.
“Kaimari wants no war,” Pitua said. “Go to the Tupinambá. Demand the prisoner. If they refuse to release him, kill them. Otherwise, Kaimari says the Tupinambá may pass through his chiefdom in peace. Then they are in the lands of Ixipi, who is also Paresí. Ixipi will give them war, as he gives to all his neighbors.”
“Tell Kaimari I am pleased that it was he and not Ixipi who stood on the riverbank with his grandchild.”
Pitua conveyed this to the old chief, who burst into laughter.
“What’s wrong?” Segge asked.
Pitua was also amused. “She is not his grandchild.”
“No?”
“She is his new wife. She will be a child only until he can have her as a woman.”
Segge pictured the small, wide-eyed girl in the blue and gray feather apron. “Then tell him, interpreter, that I hope for many seasons in which he will enjoy this little flower.”
When this was translated, the old man said, “I will wait for your return. Go now and fetch your friend.”
Before he left, Segge went in search of Yara. He found her huddled in a corner of the interpreter’s hut. She lay in a fetal position, her face in her hands. “Yara,” he said, “it’s me.”
“Oh, please . . . I want to go away.” She took her hands from her face but did not raise herself.
Segge thought of the previous morning at the river, the water trickling down her skin. I am thinking that the sun is shining.
“My Yara,” he said quietly, and with a sense of anguish. “It’s better that you return to your people.”
Amador was convinced Segge had been captured and slain by savages. When search parties had failed to find him and the girl the previous afternoon, Amador felt total despair and passed hours reciting prayers Padre Anselmo had taught him in childhood. Early this morning, Amador had personally led another search along the river. They had found no trace of the couple.
He was now alone in a world of heathens. He could foresee nothing except a bloody death at their hands in this his twenty-eighth year.
Ipojuca was even more distressed than Amador. “Jupi wails about a daughter he has lost,” he told the Portuguese. “It is much worse for me.”
“Why?”
“I am pagé. I promised that Yware-pemme would rejoice with Yellow Beard. Now Yellow Beard is gone.”
“Savage!” Amador screamed. “May you burn in eternal hell!”
Ipojuca’s black eyes sparkled. “You will not be lost like Yellow Beard,” he said. “I will see that you are protected because I, Ipojuca, have never eaten a Portuguese.”
Amador stormed away, the Tupinambá’s words burning in his ears. The encampment was on open ground that sloped toward a gallery forest bordering a stream. A mile away, this water flowed into the river where Segge and Yara had bathed. Amador was heading for the trees when he came to an abrupt halt.
Emerging alone from the trees was Segge Proot.
“Meu Deus!” Amador cried.
Amador flung his arms around Segge and held him in a wild embrace. “Segge! Oh, Segge Proot, my comrade!” Amador’s dark eyes were filled with tears.
“Friendly savages . . . ,” Segge said breathlessly, when Am
ador released him.
“You returned?” Amador looked dumbfounded. “Fool! Oh, Lord, why?”
“To fetch you, of course.”
“You came back for me?”
“I’m not alone,” Segge said, directing Amador’s eyes to the forest behind him. “More than one hundred warriors wait back there,” Segge said. “And behind you, Amador, the Tupinambá approach.”
Amador turned, to see Ipojuca and half his warriors hurrying toward them, several armed with clubs.
“The cow!” they cried. “Yellow Beard, the cow, is back!”
“We run?” Amador queried. It seemed as if he would leap away. “No,” Segge said. “There’s no need.”
“So! The prisoner is back!” Ipojuca said. “Where did you wander, Yellow Beard?”
Segge did not respond. He was watching Jupi pushing toward him.
“My daughter — what have you done with Yara?” the elder cried.
Ipojuca ignored Jupi’s frenzy. “Yellow Beard was lost and now he stands again with the Portuguese. The ancestors wanted this. The ancestors guided Yellow Beard back.”
Segge addressed Jupi: “Yara is safe. She’ll return to you.”
Ipojuca looked at Segge with open admiration. “You have honor, Yellow Beard. There are no-warriors who flee Yware-pemme; you who do not know these things came back. This is the way of a Tupinambá who seeks Land of the Grandfather.”
“That is not the truth, Ipojuca,” Segge said.
“What do you mean, Yellow Beard?”
Segge raised his right arm high in the air and waved it. “Here’s the truth!”
At his signal, the Paresí stepped out of the trees.
Ipojuca looked rapidly along the Paresí phalanx; then he swung around to search the area of the encampment, and was dismayed to see a group of Paresí warriors there, too.
Two Tupinambá bravos sprinted toward the Paresí ranks, yelling curses and brandishing their clubs as they ran. A crescendo of jeers and insults rose from the Paresí phalanx, until the two Tupinambá slammed against the wall of warriors.
The men closest to the assailants fell upon them, jabbing and slashing with their long spears. In less than a minute, the Paresí stepped back from the bodies and gave a triumphant whoop; then they began to taunt other Tupinambá to come forward.
“They’re friendly?” Amador queried, when this brief clash was over.
“Toward us, yes,” Segge said. “They abhor flesh eaters.”
Ipojuca had watched the slaughter of his men impassively. Now he asked, “They will kill my people?”
“Return our possessions, our muskets, and our powder, let us leave unmolested,” Segge said, “and no harm will come to you. But you must immediately march away from the lands of these Paresí.”
Ipojuca looked puzzled. “Why don’t they kill us?”
“Their chief doesn’t want to fight. But be quick with your decision, Tupinambá.”
Hurriedly, Ipojuca consulted with his warriors. “We will accept what Yellow Beard says. Were we Tupinambá ready for battle, not one of these ‘women-who-will-not-fight’ would live,” he concluded imperiously. He issued orders for the muskets and other possessions to be fetched.
Segge signaled to two Paresí who were holding Jupi’s daughter. When they released Yara, Segge watched resignedly as she broke into a run and fled directly to the shelters.
Ipojuca began to chuckle.
“Why do you laugh, Tupinambá?” Amador demanded angrily.
“I was remembering the storyteller,” Ipojuca said. He looked at the Paresí. “‘Keep the cows,’ Ibira advised us, ‘a gift for the enemy.’” He glanced at Jupi. “Was he not the wisest of storytellers?”
Amador and Segge spent ten months, from September 1642 until July 1643, with the Paresí. Here, as Segge said, they were gods come down from Olympus. The simplest things they showed the Paresí left them in awe. It was understandable that they’d be grateful when Segge built sluices to control the flow of water to the Paresí fields; when Amador demonstrated how an anthill could be hollowed out to make an oven. But even an ordinary slipknot could send the Paresí into raptures.
Kaimari and his pagés put endless questions to the men, including requests that they tell about their God. Amador and Segge spoke of an all-powerful God, His Son, and the Holy Mother. Kaimari and the pagés were moved by stories of Jesus Christ, but they found the concept of an unseen, omnipotent God unacceptable. They told the two men that the most powerful spirit the Paresí knew revealed itself to man.
Amador and Segge saw this god of the Paresí on a hunt in a forest north of the border range — in lands of the Tupi-speaking cannibals.
On the second day of the hunt, thunder rolled above the forest canopy and lightning sent jagged fingers of fire probing among the trees. A storm exploded, rain hissing down through the forest levels, a sheet of water that splattered noisily onto the soft humus. The torrent lasted twenty minutes, and just when it ended, the four Paresí hunters were brought face to face with their deity:
A thirty-two-foot anaconda, olive green with large black spots, was coiled around the low branches of a tree next to a stream, its body twisted in a series of huge S’s.
Amador reached for his musket, but the Paresí issued stern warnings against disturbing the Great Spirit. Even to hunt in its area was forbidden. They must leave immediately, the Paresí said.
They sped away through the trees until they considered they were at a safe distance from the anaconda. They rested for a day, and here Segge borrowed a stone axe, and on a boulder in the middle of the river, carved:
SECUNDUS PROOT — 1643
The report of the anaconda caused excitement back at Kaimari’s village: A year could pass in which no one saw the Great Spirit. The Paresí feasted to mark the event. A bamboo trumpet of such length it required two men to carry it represented the anaconda. This serpent symbol was taken from the sacred house of Paresí warriors, and each man vied for the opportunity to pay homage to the anaconda by dancing at the trumpet’s summons and bringing it an offering of meat. During these events the village women hid themselves, fearing punishment for gazing upon the trumpet.
Amador and Segge attended the rites, and witnessed an attack on a girl who strayed into the men’s hut when they were eating the meat brought to propitiate their serpent god. The girl was raped by every man there and then strangled.
Kaimari was unmoved by their horror at her death. “It is forbidden for women to visit the men’s sacred place,” he said, through the interpreter Pitua. “She knew the penalty. To allow a woman to witness these ceremonies is dangerous.”
“So dangerous they must be killed?” Segge asked.
“Yes, they must die.” Pitua delivered the responses in a quavering voice. “But why?” Segge asked. “Why, Kaimari?”
Kaimari’s response startled them. “Men were nothing when women were warriors. Men were worms of the earth.”
“Who were the warrior women, Kaimari?” Amador asked eagerly.
“In the beginning, a race of women ruled earth. A man’s only use was to lie with them. The girls born to these women were trained as ferocious warriors. The boys? No one knows what happened to the boys.”
“These warrior women — where are they now?” Segge asked.
Kaimari laughed. “There are no warrior women,” he said. “There are only women who must hide at the huts when the men celebrate.”
“What happened to the warrior women?” Segge asked.
“They were defeated. With the help of the great anaconda, men stole the secrets of women and became warriors. This is why it is important that women never witness our ceremonies. If they did, men could lose the power our forefathers stole for us.”
This was Kaimari’s last word on the subject, but Amador and Segge had more to say to each other, for it reawakened their interest in the Amazons.
Segge was popular with the village children. Parents were amused at the sight of the heavy-limbed Dutchman, his yel
low locks flying as he bounded past with children in pursuit. Segge would often halt abruptly and hurl and object whizzing over their heads to the far side of the clearing. — This object, a crudely fashioned black ball, had fascinated Segge since he first saw it. When he asked where it came from, a group of children led him to the forest and showed him a large tree, the sap of which was bled to make the ball. Collected in gourds, the milky liquid formed a doughy mass; this was rolled out, and layers were spread over a round clay core.
Life among these people was so pleasant that Amador and Segge gave little thought to departing. But in July 1643 they finally decided to move on. Kaimari himself provided the incentive.
They had often inquired about the jasper object that Kaimari wore around his neck.
“Who gave them to the Paresí?” Segge asked Kaimari.
“Paresí elders, men of position and honor, have always worn them,” Kaimari said.
“From whom did they get them?” Segge repeated.
“From our fathers and grandfathers,” Kaimari said, offering no further explanation.
Then, in July 1643, Kaimari announced that he was sending men to fetch jasper. They would walk to a place below “Love-Me-River,” one of the arms of Mother of Rivers, Kaimari said. There they would trade with the Mojo tribe for green stones.
“We would have a strong escort,” Amador said. “When they’ve done their trading, they can take us to this Love-Me-River.” He smiled saying the name. “From there we can go by canoe to the Rio das Amazonas. We’ll find missions, traders —”
“Slavers?” Segge added.
“We’ll be back with civilized Christians,” Amador said.
They left the village in mid-July. Kaimari accompanied them for part of the way, leading them south to avoid the lands of Ixipi, who was again threatening war. They skirted Ixipi’s territory; when they turned southwest, Kaimari bade them farewell.
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