Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  After a five-week voyage from the Rio Madeira, the Mundurucu had brought them to this settlement just beyond the mouth of the Rio Tapajós, where Amador and Segge sighted a small sailing vessel at anchor. The Mundurucu refused to go ashore here, and leaving them with one canoe and their possessions, they had immediately turned back to journey down the Tapajós to other Mundurucu.

  Amador and Segge landed at a muddy beach where ninety canoes were drawn up. They carried a force of 120 Portuguese and half-breeds and six hundred native auxiliaries, mostly Tupinambá.

  The commander introduced himself: “I am Bento Maciel Parente. Who are you?”

  “Bento Maciel?” Amador asked, recalling the old soldier who’d gained such a fierce reputation in these lands.

  “The son,” the commander explained.

  “Amador Flôres da Silva . . . of São Paulo.”

  Now Bento Maciel showed surprise: “São Paulo de Piratininga?”

  “It’s a long story,” Amador began.

  “I’ve no time for it,” Bento Maciel said brusquely. His eyes swung to Segge. “You?”

  “Secundus Proot,” Segge said tonelessly, recalling what he’d heard of this vicious family back at Recife.

  “Hollander?”

  “Yes, senhor.”

  Bento Maciel turned back to Amador: “Why are you with this enemy?”

  “He’s not an enemy, Capitão. He’s a comrade from the sertão.” Hastily, Amador blurted out some facts of their journey.

  Bento Maciel was astonished by Amador’s account, but suddenly interjected: “Later we can talk; now my army is engaged.” He started to walk away from them up the sloping riverbank to the sixteen malocas of these Tapajós natives. Amador and Segge followed him.

  Two malocas burned, the flames and smoke a backdrop to the spectacle in the clearing.

  Tapajós were being run down by their attackers, hurled to the earth, and dragged off by an arm or a leg and herded into a square formed by their Tupinambá captors. To one side of this human square, ten Tapajós — seized after offering resistance were being mutilated by two swordsmen in bronze breastplates, who lopped off a nose, ears, lower arm, continuing until the Tapajós who provided their sport keeled over and died.

  Babies who tottered into the path of the conquerors were impaled on the points of spears. With a Portuguese marching up front, six Tupinambá braves carried aloft a Tapajós pagé. They hurled the screaming elder into the flames.

  Even as these atrocities were being carried out, a squad of Tupinambá supervised by half-breed slavers were hauling rough-cut timbers to an area near the beach. They were raising an enclosure where the chief of this clan and his savage dignitaries would be segregated until the flotilla left for Belém.

  “Why go to the trouble?” Amador asked. “Keep them with the rest.”

  “That will not do,” said Bento Maciel. “Already they’ve given us no end of difficulty.”

  “In what way?”

  “We came for a peaceful trade. We brought lengths of cloth to exchange for heathen held prisoner by these Tapajós. But the chief sent his prisoners to another village. The pagan will not accept this lawful commerce —”

  “Lawful? Dear Jesus in heaven, what’s lawful about this carnage?” Segge cried out.

  “Hold your tongue, Hollander!” Bento Maciel’s eyes radiated hate. “Our dear father, Bento Maciel Parente, patriot of our king, was murdered by your people.”

  “I know nothing of this.”

  “You know nothing, Hollander. Three years ago our king, Dom João, so thankful to God to be rid of the Spaniards, made a pact for ten years’ peace with the Dutch. Friends, our king wanted; traitors he got! In Europe, the Hollanders spoke of peace; here, they sent a force to take Maranhão and carry away its governor, my father. They let him die, the hero. Seventy-five years old and left to rot in a dungeon of Pernambuco!”

  This was partly true. In 1641, before formal ratification of the ten-year truce between the Dutch and the Portuguese, Count Maurits sent a force from Recife to seize São Luis, the capital of Maranhão captaincy. But, when the defenders begged Bento Maciel to resist the invasion, he had handed over the keys of his fort without firing a shot. Taken prisoner and delivered to Count Maurits, the old butcher of Belém so disgusted the Dutch prince that he had him banished to a remote fortress, where he ended his life.

  Amador now attempted to intervene between young Bento Maciel and Segge. “There is justification for this war,” he said.

  “War?” Segge shook his head. “This is war?”

  “Come, Hollander!” Bento Maciel snapped, Segge hesitated.

  “You ask for justification?” Bento Maciel began to walk along the side of the clearing. Amador followed.

  Segge walked behind them. They came to a landing place where the Tapajós kept their canoes.

  “There is our justification.”

  An enormous Cross lay flat in the mud.

  “They were offered the Lord’s protection,” said Bento Maciel. “They rejected Him.”

  An advance party of Bento Maciel’s force had brought this Cross to the Tapajós. “Always keep it pointing to heaven,” the slavers advised, “that our Lord Jesus may see His children.” Then they’d left, to take the same message to other natives. By accident or design — it was never determined which — the Crosses fell. And the raiders were legally able to act against pagans who neglected the symbol of their salvation.

  “Merciful God . . . is there no forgiveness?” Segge murmured.

  The slaver gave a long, disapproving look. “Come, Paulista,” he said to Amador. “I have men to command.”

  By nightfall, the Tapajós had been pacified. The women and children were confined in the remaining malocas. Bento Maciel had earlier addressed the Tapajós and informed them that those who remained docile would be favorably treated: He held up a length of coarse cotton cloth and promised that for a month of steady work at Belém they could possess such a strip of material. He also held up shackles and he promised, too, that if the Tapajós gave the slightest cause, he would throw them in chains. The chief of these Tapajós, Tabaliba, and nineteen elders got no such assurances and were already incarcerated at the enclosure.

  Amador had spent the afternoon in the commander’s company. From him, he had learned startling news: The Dutch had recalled Johan Maurits, and the count had left Recife the previous May. It was now August 1644, and Bento Maciel believed it possible that the Portuguese of Pernambuco could already be in revolt. With Count Maurits’s departure, most of the Dutch garrison had also been withdrawn, Holland seeing no need to maintain a major force in the colony when a treaty of peace existed between Portugal and herself. “What they don’t realize is that the treaty means nothing to planters who owe the Dutch Company a fortune,” said Bento Maciel. “They’ll support any uprising that throws the Hollanders — and their huge debts — into the Atlantic.”

  Bento Maciel listened to Amador’s story of the journey across the sertão and accepted his explanation of how he’d come to undertake this exploration with a Hollander. “We’ll take him to Belém, as you wish. We’ll put him on a vessel to Europe or wherever he wants to go,” he said. “But I warn you, da Silva — keep the Hollander from me! You’ve been too long in the sertão. You forget the nature of this enemy.”

  “Capitão Bento Maciel, I’ll never forget my comrades beheaded by the Dutch.”

  “Good! Then remember, too, that your painter friend is one of them.”

  “Proot and I have seen and suffered much together.”

  “That I can understand, but now you’re almost back in civilization — Portuguese civilization, da Silva, where many more have suffered by the actions of this heretic’s countrymen.”

  Not long after this conversation, Amador found Segge at their canoe. All along the bank, the fires of slavers and Tupinambá burned brightly in the pitch-black moonless night. Segge was leaning against the prow of the canoe, which had been dragged a short distance up the mudd
y beach.

  Neither spoke immediately. Since leaving Engenho Santo Tomás in October 1640, three years and ten months ago, there had been occasions when dissensions threatened their camaraderie, and always the conflict had passed when they continued their march. But now both men sensed a rift opening between them as wide as the river just beyond.

  Segge’s first words were directed at the cause of this breach. “What crimes have they committed to warrant this brutal treatment?”

  “They defiled the Cross. They denied their prisoners the freedom Bento Maciel came prepared to bargain for. They’re chastised for their wars against the Portuguese, their cannibalism. They won’t change. They were savages before the Portuguese came, and savages they’ll remain.”

  “And their souls?”

  “Their souls?” Amador glared at his friend.

  “What I’ve witnessed today — is this how the Portuguese maintain their souls for Christ?”

  Amador gave the canoe a violent kick. “Jesus Christ knows Portuguese, Paulistas — He knows how we’ve suffered in this pagan land!” He lurched forward and seized Segge by the shoulder, almost knocking him into the canoe. “What do you know, Hollander? What do you know about Brazil — even your splendid count, who’s been sent away from Recife, what —”

  “Johan Maurits . . . gone?” Segge jerked loose from Amador’s grasp.

  “Yes, Segge Proot — sent back to Amsterdam where he belongs. He came to discover Brazil, to show the Portuguese how to tame this heathen hell with love and kindness . . . and painters. They’ve called him back. A failure.”

  “This can’t be true,” Segge exclaimed. “Maurits of Nassau loved this land as if it were his own. He wanted friendship between Hollander and Portuguese — to build a prosperous colony.”

  “Which his armies stole from us.”

  “I promise you this, Amador” — Segge’s tone became deeply melancholic —“there will be Portuguese colonists who’ll pray for the return of Count Maurits.”

  “Certainly — every collaborator and traitor.”

  What happened the next afternoon made the split between them irrevocable.

  Segge was walking slowly along the beach when he saw a commotion at the enclosure in which the Tapajós chief and elders were penned. Fifty yards from it, he caught sight of something inside the pen that made him break into a run.

  “No! No! Not them!” His shouts tore the air. “Mundurucu! Men who guided us on the river!”

  A Tupinambá squad probing upriver for villages of potential slaves had captured the eight Mundurucu.

  Segge argued with a slaver at the pen. “We brought them here. They served us faithfully for months. Their people saved us when we were dying of fever.”

  “I see savages, Hollander — as fit for Belém as any Tapajós!”

  Segge stormed up to the village clearing, where Bento Maciel and his notary sat at a makeshift table making an inventory of the captives. Amador stood near them.

  “Our Mundurucu” — Segge looked across at Amador — “they’ve thrown our Mundurucu in with the Tapajós!”

  Amador glanced at Bento Maciel.

  “Amador, for God’s sake!” Segge cried. “The Mundurucu who guided us — these men have imprisoned them!”

  “All eight, Hollander,” said Bento Maciel. “Swept up by my Tupinambá!”

  “They can’t be taken as slaves.”

  “By whose authority?”

  “For the love of God, Amador — tell him!”

  “They’re savages, Segge. What does it matter?”

  “Amador?”

  Amador looked at him quizzically.

  Segge turned again to Bento Maciel: “Those Mundurucu saved my life, and his.”

  Bento Maciel looked at Amador. “I hear no objection from you, Paulista.”

  “Oh, no, Capitão,” Amador said, without hesitation.

  “Damn you!” Segge shouted. “Damn you all!”

  Bento Maciel’s hand flew to the hilt of his sword.

  “Leave him be, Capitão!” Amador yelled. Then, to Segge: “Go! Go before he kills you!”

  Segge hesitated for just a moment. Then, cursing under his breath, he turned away and trudged toward the trees.

  Segge wandered back toward the enclosure. The temporary stockade of tree limbs and brush was poorly constructed, nowhere more than six feet high and intended more for segregating these men from the village than for preventing their escape. A man with distinctly Moorish features was in charge of twenty Tupinambá who guarded the prisoners. Segge ignored “The Turk,” as he thought of him, and peered over the top of the enclosure.

  The Mundurucu sat together. He hailed them, but when he tried to engage them in talk, they ignored him.

  Beloved Jesus! he said to himself. The Mundurucu think I’m one of these men. They think I’m responsible for their capture!

  At midnight, Segge eased a canoe down the beach and into the water. He pushed it thirty feet offshore and lowered a stone anchor to hold it until he returned. Then he set out for the enclosure carrying a machete and a twelve-inch tapered dagger, the property of the late Don Hernando Ramirez de Ribera.

  The Turk and his Tupinambá were at a fire up on the bank — all fast asleep. Segge slipped into the small stockade. The Mundurucu he roused first; then he woke the Tapajós chief, Tabaliba, and the elders nearest him. These men wore shackles, but ropes, not chain, were passed through the rings of the restraints. Segge hacked through the bonds with the dagger and indicated that the prisoners were to leave the enclosure at the side facing the water; to make a passage through the loosely packed brush and branches was no problem.

  Segge told the captives to head for the Tapajós canoes, four hundred yards below the enclosure. Then he slipped out and hastened to his canoe.

  He padded off silently, not daring to look back, for he now expected to be apprehended. He passed between other canoes and Bento Maciel’s vessel. When he reached a point opposite the mud beach with the Cross, the Tapajós and Mundurucu were waiting for him in their canoes.

  The chief, Tabaliba, and two Tapajós transferred to Segge’s craft.

  “Where are we going?” Segge asked.

  ‘To a friend of my people,” said Tabaliba. “There is a cave. Three days’ walk through the forest.”

  This mention of a cave led Segge to believe that the desperate man was taking them to a sorcerer. He shook his head. “No, Tabaliba . . . no,” he said. “No pagé has power to combat the evil of the Portuguese.”

  “You have helped us, have you not? We have another friend at the cave.”

  “A Hollander?”

  Tabaliba said simply. “He will help us.”

  He sat on a natural raised platform a foot up, deep in the cavern. The smoke from several lit tapers rose to the high ceiling, and the light cast long shadows across the floor of the broad gallery. A fire to one side of the platform provided warmth in the chilly, damp atmosphere. Opposite the man, Segge Proot sat with his legs crossed on a pile of animal skins and listened intently to this ally of the Tapajós.

  High on the side of a mountain, three days’ journey beyond the north bank of the Rio das Amazonas, this had been the cave of Tocoyricoc, but its present occupant was very different from that venerable exile from the realm of the Inca.

  The man on the platform was only forty-four. He had strong shoulders, a full chest, and heavily muscled limbs. His hair was flaxen and thick, his beard the same. Many years in the tropics had burnt his face a deep brown. Beneath his wiry eyebrows danced the liveliest green eyes Segge had ever seen.

  His name was Abel O’Brien. He was a son, not of provinces of the Inca, where the mountains stood high in the clouds, but of County Clare in Ireland, and of low meadows beyond the Shannon.

  Yet, different as he was from old Tocoyricoc, when Abel O’Brien told Segge his story, he, too, spoke of lakes of gold and Virgins of the Sun.

  “We saw gold and silver and jewels enough to ransom the Great Mogul! And oh, the wenc
hes — nubile nymphs with skin as soft as the touch of silk. We saw it all, Secundus Proot, my cousin Bernard and I, beneath the stars on our voyage to this southern land in our Lord’s year 1620. Bernard was just seventeen and I a man of twenty, but didn’t we dream the dreams of kings? And if we asked our captain, Roger North, of these wonders, he’d say, ‘Aye, aye, aye, my lads, the Amazones are there! The Amazones and grand El Dorado, to whom the Spaniard seeks exclusive recourse!’ Who were we to challenge the promise of this man who’d marched with Raleigh into the Guianas just three years before in quest of that fabulous kingdom?”

  Abel O’Brien had already explained to Segge that between 1610 and 1634,English and Irish parties had made persistent attempts to gain a foothold on the northern banks of the lower Rio das Amazonas, the 1620 expedition having been led by Captain Roger North, an officer who’d served with Sir Walter Raleigh. Four years later, Abel O’Brien’s cousin Bernard O’Brien settled a group of colonists 250 miles upriver at a place called Pataui, “Coconut Grove.” For a decade, the O’Brien’s and their compatriots, rarely more than two hundred in number, with thousands of native allies and sometimes in alliance with the Dutch, confronted the Portuguese. Nominally, Spain, by right of the Tordesilhas Treaty, had claim to the entire Amazon basin. But the union of the two crowns between 1580 and 1640 gave the Portuguese free rein to occupy the lands around the river sea.

  When approaching this settlement beyond the Rio das Amazonas, Segge had been instantly impressed: At the foot of the steep hill was a stockade built in a semicircle to cordon off an area below the cave; upon entering the palisade, Segge saw that behind it, earthworks provided additional fortification. Within the stockade were more than a dozen habitations, most of native construction, though three nearest the cavern were of wattle and daub. The entrance of the Tapajós chief caused excitement among the natives who dwelt here; many of the eighty residents were from Tabaliba’s village, including a daughter of the chief — one of Abel O’Brien’s seven concubines.

  When the lord of this forest hideaway approached him, Segge had glanced apprehensively at Tabaliba, but the chief was busily relating the disaster at his village. Segge’s misgiving was caused by the appearance of the man. He wore the uniform of a knight of Spain: green breeches with crimson slashes, skirted doublet of the same color, burnished breastplate and tasset, with silk sash and fine-worked leather belt crossed over his chest from shoulder to waist, where a ceremonial sword hung at his left side. On his head he wore a feather-bedecked hat with the brim turned up on one side. His boots were of the same soft leather as the sword belt and reached to above his knees.