Read The River of Doubt Online
Authors: Candice Millard
The River of Doubt (48 page)
Steps toward pacification were slow and fearful on both sides, and when the moment of face-to-face contact finally arrived, it was fraught with emotion and heavy with the weight of two worlds colliding. This extraordinary meeting—the passing of gifts over what had seemed an unbridgeable divide—was chronicled in the pages of
National Geographic
magazine the following year, as an unarmed
sertanista
risked his life to reach out to a tribe that could easily have killed him. Standing in the rough clearing that the
sertanistas
had carved out of the forest as a place to leave gifts for the Indians, two terrified young men—one a nearly naked warrior, the other representing the Brazilian government—leaned forward, extended their right arms as far as they would reach, and exchanged gifts: a machete for a palm-frond headdress.
After the exchange was completed in silence, a series of clicks echoed in the jungle as fifty Indian warriors who had stood ready to attack withdrew their arrows from their bows. “In this manner,” the magazine reported, “one of earth’s last Stone Age peoples took their first fearful steps into a bewildering new world of men who know how to fly to the moon.”
* * *
I
N THE
years since the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition made its journey, countless battles have been waged in the rain forest that flanks the River of Doubt. Untold millions of creatures have been born and died. They have multiplied, and they have protected, fed, and fought for their offspring. Some species have begun to evolve to become better predators and more elusive prey. Others have succumbed to extinction. To an outsider, this stretch of the Amazon, at least, appears untouched and unchanging, but in the delicately balanced, constantly evolving reality of the tropical rain forest, nothing ever remains the same.
The moment the men of the expedition pounded their camp markers into the riverbank, the Amazon began to dismantle them. The rains expanded and warped their rough surfaces. Termites gnawed on the soft wood. Animals and Indians carried them off for their own uses. Even the elaborate network of fungus on the forest floor devoured the markers after they fell, reclaiming them for the jungle’s intricate and tightly woven web of life. The simple tribute to Simplicio that the men had left near the falls where the camarada had drowned soon disappeared, as did the crude cross over Paishon’s grave. Even the brave soldier’s bones were likely scavenged from their shallow resting place.
Among the most ephemeral marks the men left on the rain forest were the ruts in the thin layer of leaf litter made by Roosevelt’s cot as he lay sweating and shaking, his voice fading in the early-morning darkness as he instructed his friend and his son to leave him there to die by his own hand. Had they done so, rather than resolve to find a way to bring Roosevelt and all of the expedition out of the rain forest alive, the former president’s remains would have been scattered along the River of Doubt—and used, like everything else in the jungle, to protect and sustain the living.
But while the Amazon erased all evidence of the expedition, the rain forest, the wild river that runs through it, and the former president who had led them left an indelible impression on the men who survived. On March 1, 1919, not quite two months after Roosevelt’s
death, the Explorers Club, a New York society devoted to scientific exploration, assembled at its clubhouse on Amsterdam Avenue for a memorial to the former president and fellow explorer. The club members, who included such legendary figures as Robert Peary and Roald Amundsen, invited George Cherrie to speak to them that night.
Cherrie, who felt more at home in a remote South American rain forest than he did in the rich, formal surroundings of the Explorers Club, accepted the invitation with the same wry reluctance he had felt when he had been offered a spot on Theodore Roosevelt’s expedition six years earlier. Cherrie felt out of place at the black-tie affair, speaking before a gathering of some of New York’s wealthiest and most powerful men, and was not convinced that he could do justice to his topic.
Stepping to the podium, his leathery skin and rugged appearance in stark contrast to the club’s fine white linens, gleaming silver, and polished wood, Cherrie regaled his audience with the tales of hard adventure that were his trademark and life story. But when he came to the subject of Theodore Roosevelt, his demeanor noticeably changed, and the man who had once objected to “camping with royalty” struggled for ways to express the depth of his feelings about the former president, and their shared struggle for survival on the River of Doubt.
In the club’s ornate hall, filled with mounted polar bears, Indian spears, and other trophies from across the globe, the aging naturalist became lost in the memory of a distant jungle, and a friendship forged at the limits of human endurance.
“I have always thought it strange,” Cherrie said quietly, “since I had the opportunity to know him and know him intimately—because I feel that I did know him very intimately—how any man could be brought in close personal contact with Colonel Roosevelt without loving the man.”
As he continued, his audience of dignitaries and socialites realized that the man before them—a man whose callused hands had fought
off cavalry charges, smuggled guns, and catalogued nature’s most dangerous mysteries—had begun to weep.
“I was in the consulate at La Guayra, Venezuela,” the naturalist recalled, “when the Consul received the cable announcing Colonel Roosevelt’s death. He handed it to me without a word.
“When I read that message,” Cherrie said at last, “the tears came to my eyes. As they do now.”
OTES
M
ANUSCRIPT
S
OURCES
Archives of the American Museum of Natural History, AMNH Indiana Province Archives Center, IPAC
John A. Zahm Papers, CJZA, and Albert F. Zahm Papers, CAZA Archives of the University of Notre Dame
Kermit and Belle Roosevelt Papers, KBRP Library of Congress, Manuscript Division
National Geographic Society, NGS
Rauner Special Collections Library, RSCL Dartmouth College Library
Theodore Roosevelt Collection, TRC
Harvard College Library, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University
Theodore Roosevelt Papers, TRP, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Presidential Papers Series
ROLOGUE
“I don’t believe”
George Cherrie,
Dark Trails
(New York, 1930).
“No civilized man”
Theodore Roosevelt,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
(New York, 1914).
“The scene is vivid”
Kermit Roosevelt,
The Long Trail
(New York, 1921).
As the fever-wracked
Ibid.
HAPTER 1
: Defeat
The doors were not scheduled to open
New York Times
, Oct. 31, 1912.
“Such unbounded energy”
John Burroughs, “Theodore Roosevelt,”
Journal of the American Museum of Natural History
, Jan. 1919.
Before the doors even opened
New York Herald
, Oct. 31, 1912.
Men and boys
New York Times
, Oct. 31, 1912.
More than two thousand
Ibid.
“For some unexplained”
Corinne Roosevelt Robinson,
My Brother Theodore Roosevelt
(New York, 1921).
“yelling their immortal souls”
New York Sun
, Oct. 31, 1912.
As Roosevelt passed
by Ibid.
Inside the auditorium
New York Times
, Oct. 31, 1912.
Roosevelt, still famously
New York Herald
, Oct. 31, 1912.
The last time Roosevelt
Arthur MacDonald,
The Would-Be Assassin of Theodore Roosevelt
(Washington, D.C., 1914).
Incredibly, Roosevelt’s heavy
Stan Gores, “The Attempted Assassination of Teddy Roosevelt,” in
Wisconsin Magazine of History
(Milwaukee, 1970).
His coat unbuttoned
Oscar King Davis,
Released for Publication
(Boston, 1925); Kathleen Dalton,
Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life
(New York, 2002).
At 10:03 p.m.
New York Times
, Oct. 31, 1912.
“Friends, perhaps once”
Ibid.
“I know the American people”
Henry Fairfield Osborn,
Impressions of Great Naturalists
(New York, 1924), TRC.
On election day
New York Times
, Dec. 29, 1912.
“a flubdub”
TR to Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Aug. 22, 1911,
The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt
, Elting E. Morison, ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1951–1954), vol. 7.
“I suppose you will”
Quoted in Nathan Miller,
Theodore Roosevelt: A Life
(New York, 1992).
“Roosevelt goes down”
New York Herald
, Nov. 7, 1912. (The article cites several different newspapers’ editorials about the election.)
“I accept the result”
Quoted in Hermann Hagedorn,
The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill
(New York, 1954).
“There is no use”
TR to Arthur Hamilton Lee, Nov. 5, 1912, in
Letters
, vol. 7.
Before the Republican convention
William Roscoe Thayer,
Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography
(Boston, 1919).
“Many of his critics”
Ibid.
“The telephone”
Hagedorn,
Roosevelt Family
.
Holed up at
Dalton,
TR: A Strenuous Life
.
“Of course I am”
TR to KR, Dec. 7, 1912, TRC.
Roosevelt’s family
Hagedorn,
Roosevelt Family
.
His sister Corinne
Robinson,
My Brother TR
.
“regular, monotonous motion”
Ibid.
“One of my memories”
Theodore Roosevelt,
An Autobiography
(New York, 1913).
Desperate for their child
David McCullough,
Mornings on Horseback
(New York, 1981).
Finally, Theodore Sr.
Robinson,
My Brother TR
.
Early in 1879
Thayer,
TR: Intimate Biography
.
“the best man”
TR,
Autobiography
.
“If I had very much”
Quoted in McCullough,
Mornings on Horseback
.
“Look out for Theodore”
Quoted in ibid.
He graduated
Ibid.
In 1884, however
Edmund Morris,
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
(New York, 1979).
“Black care”
Theodore Roosevelt,
Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail
(New York, 1981).
It was a transition
George Washington, the United States’ first president, had made a point of serving only two terms, and every president after him had followed that precedent. It was not until 1951, however, that the two-term limit was made official, by the Twenty-second Amendment, which Congress ratified after Franklin Delano Roosevelt—Theodore Roosevelt’s distant cousin and nephew by marriage—was elected president four times in a row.
“Of course a man”
Quoted in John Milton Cooper,
The Warrior and the Priest
(Cambridge, Mass., 1983).
“My dear fellow”
TR to Paul Martin, March 2, 1909, in
Letters
, vol. 6.
HAPTER 2
: Opportunity
“bringing together men”
Emilio Frers to TR, Jan. 28, 1913, TRP.
Frers’s words must
Ibid.
Although Frers could not have
“I have always felt a little uneasy on account of all you children because I have not made money,” Roosevelt wrote to Kermit just days after the election. “It may be that my reluctance to do the well-paid things I am asked to do represents mere Quixotic fastidiousness on my part, for there is no moral wrong in them. But I shrink to a degree greater than I can express from commercializing what I did as President or the reputation I have gained in public service.” (TR to KR, Nov. 11, 1912, TRC.)
“You blessed fellow”
TR to KR, April 23, 1908, TRC.
Although he suffered
TR to Anna Cowles, Nov. 11, 1913, TRC.
“I am greatly pleased”
TR to Emily Tyler Carow, Jan. 4, 1913, in
Letters
, vol. 7.
In fact, at that time
Even a decade later, the Pan American Society was still trying to entice Americans to visit their neighbor to the south. Toward that end, the society published a twenty-four-page pamphlet titled
The Call of South America.
(John Barrett,
The Call of South America
[New York, 1922]).
“They were bearded”
H. M. Tomlinson,
The Sea and the Jungle
(Evanston, Ill., 1999).
Nicknamed “Mad Maria”
Alain Gheerbrant,
The Amazon
(New York, 1988).
Looking back
TR,
Autobiography
.
Captivated by the thrill
Ibid.
When Roosevelt was only
Geoffrey Hellman,
Bankers, Bones and Beetles
(New York, 1968).
He entered college
TR,
Autobiography
.
During his last term
John Burroughs, “Theodore Roosevelt,”
Journal of the American Museum of Natural History
, Jan. 1919.
“by far the most successful”
Henry Fairfield Osborn, “Theodore Roosevelt, Naturalist,”
Journal of the American Museum of Natural History
, Jan. 1919.
Roosevelt had known
As a child, Roosevelt had been close friends with Henry Fairfield Osborn’s older brother Frederick, a bright little boy who had a passion for birds that rivaled Roosevelt’s own. The two boys had been known to spend entire days together tramping through forests in search of interesting animals. On one such day, young Roosevelt, to his delight, had spotted what he believed was a new species of frog. His pockets already bulging with other specimens, he placed the frog on his head and clapped his hat down over it. The temporary measure seemed satisfactory until Secretary of State Hamilton Fish and his wife appeared on their afternoon drive along the river. As soon as they saw the carriage coming toward them, both boys obediently doffed their hats, and the frog, taking advantage of the situation, leapt off Roosevelt’s head and made good his escape. Frederick Osborn, as Roosevelt would sadly recall many years later, drowned “in his gallant youth.” But Roosevelt never forgot his boyhood friend, and he went on to form a lifelong friendship with his younger brother. (Henry Fairfield Osborn,
Impressions of Great Naturalists
[New York, 1924], TRC; Theodore Roosevelt, “My Life as a Naturalist,”
Natural History
, April 1980.)
“I can hardly”
Osborn to TR, June 25, 1913, TRP.
A priest since
Ralph E. Weber, “Father Zahm,”
Catholic World
, Feb. 1922.
But, paradoxically
“Priest and Scientist,”
Indianapolis Journal
, Jan. 16, 1898, IPAC.
In 1896, while still
John Zahm,
Evolution and Dogma
(Chicago, 1896).
“keep yourself before”
Ralph E. Weber,
Notre Dame’s John Zahm
(Notre Dame, Ind., 1961).
“the chummiest of chums”
John Zahm to Albert Zahm, Oct. 17, 1913, CAZA 4/09.
“Where was I to find”
John Zahm,
Through South America’s Southland
(New York, 1916).
Finally, in the summer
Ibid.
In an extraordinary
Ibid.
“You may save”
Quoted in ibid.
“By George!”
Ibid.
“With a wide knowledge”
Frank Chapman,
Autobiography of a Bird Lover
(New York, 1933).
“[I] would like”
TR to John Zahm, June 10, 1913, TRP.
HAPTER 3
: Preparation
“delightful holiday”
TR to John Zahm, July 7, 1913, TRP.
“a funny little Catholic priest”
TR to Arthur Hamilton Lee, July 7, 1913, in
Letters
, vol. 7.
In July
Frank Chapman, introduction to Theodore Roosevelt,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
(New York, 1924).
Fiala’s first trip
Herman R. Friis, ed.,
The Arctic Diary of Russell Williams Porter
(Charlottesville, Va., 1976). Both expeditions were sponsored by William Ziegler, the wealthy president of the Royal Baking Powder Company, and, in part, the National Geographic Society. The Fiala-Ziegler Expedition was the first to take the society’s flag—with its famous blue, brown, and green bands representing the sky, earth, and sea—on assignment.
The renamed
Anthony Fiala, “Two Years in the Arctic,”
McClure’s Magazine
, Feb. 1906.
On Fiala’s orders
George Shorkley, “Medical Records—Ziegler Polar Expedition,” Jan. 23, 1904, Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library.
“an ill conceived”
Quoted in Fergus Fleming,
Ninety Degrees North
(New York, 2001).
“I would give anything”
John Zahm,
Through South America’s Southland
(New York, 1916).
“A better man”
Ibid.
The expedition’s tentative plan
Frank Chapman to Henry Fairfield Osborn, June 24, 1913, AMNH; Frank Chapman,
Autobiography of a Bird Lover
(New York, 1933).
Fiala was looking forward
Fiala would later explain his theory in an interview with
The Saturday Evening Post:
“The South American Indian goes practically naked, has few possessions, and the water of the rivers is always warm. So, when he comes to a cataract, he usually doesn’t try to portage; and if the canoe upsets, it doesn’t matter much. He has never had any stimulus to build a better boat. But the North American Indian wore furs and navigated rivers that were always cold. So he developed a light, buoyant canoe, hard to upset, easy to portage.” (Webb Waldron, “Making Exploring Safe for Explorers,”
Saturday Evening Post
, Jan. 30, 1932.)
The canoes he ordered
Anthony Fiala, Appendix B, in TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
.
Father Zahm, meanwhile
John Zahm to George Curtiss, Aug. 16, 1913, IPAC.
Characteristically
Ibid.
He also ordered
Rogers Peet Company invoices, IPAC.
Fiala ordered
Austin, Nichols & Co., Inc., invoices, IPAC.
“I am sending you”
Anthony Fiala to TR, Sept. 5, 1913, TRP.
“I’ll reply to you”
Quoted in Chapman, introduction to TR,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
, 1924.