Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [189]
“MAIS CANJA, ‘MORE SOUP.’ ”
Expedition members at dinner. Clockwise around the rawhide: Zahm, Rondon, Cajazeira, Kermit (cross-legged), Miller, Cherrie, three unidentified Brazilians, Roosevelt, Fiala. (photo credit i15.3)
On 24 January, Kermit noted in his diary, “We’re over the divide and into the Amazon side now.” The only visible evidence of this was the northerly trend of the rivers they crossed. Otherwise, the equidistance of the horizon ahead with that behind gave no sense of progress. As Father Zahm put it, in his literary way, the Plan Alto was so flat, “one felt justified in denying the earth’s sphericity.”
By now Kermit was openly contemptuous of Zahm, describing him in letters home as “a very commonplace little fool” and “an incessant annoyance” who seemed to think that a man of God was entitled to special privileges. Among these was freedom to beg off chores, order Jake Sigg around, and boast about how many humble souls he had saved. His laziness was so extreme that Kermit took to referring to him as “Lizzie’s brother,” after a languid, melon-loving morrocoy tortoise that Miller had trapped.
Although the priest was flattered to have been presented with a saddle almost as fine as Roosevelt’s, he did not enjoy having to sit on it fourteen hours a day. A muleteer was deputized to walk beside him in case he fell off. Zahm was alarmed when boxes labeled “Roosevelt South American Expedition” began to show up in the grass, evidently bucked by some of Amílcar’s resentful critters.
Relief for him was at hand at Rio Juruena station, in the form of a caterpillar-tread caminhão truck that belonged to the Brazilian Telegraphic Commission. It was a speedy vehicle, able to crawl at thirty miles per hour even across swamps. When Cherrie and Miller, who were unable to do much collecting on the hoof, got permission to travel ahead to Utiariti in it, Zahm jumped at the chance to ride along.
Kermit was not the only person pleased to see him go. Colonel Rondon, as a nearly full-blooded Indian and convert to the Positivist humanism of Auguste Comte, mistrusted Catholic clergymen and especially resented their “fatherly” posturing toward aboriginal people. All the way up the Paraguay, Zahm had been laying hands on the heads of uncomprehending children, blessing and baptizing. Rondon foresaw trouble ahead at Utiariti, in the heart of Nhambiquara country. The local Indians, among the most primitive in South America, were not likely to take kindly to a cassock-wearing stranger who descended on them deus ex machina.
Rondon’s misgivings were compounded by the fact that he had himself founded Brazil’s national Indian-affairs agency, the Serviço de Proteção aos Indios e de Localização de Trabalhadores Nacionais. It was no less paternalistic than the Catholic Church in seeking to pacify and assimilate interior tribes—especially the Parecís and Nhambiquaras, who lived along telegraph routes and whose labor was needed to build and maintain the lines. Yet Rondon had a deep, consanguineous concern for the dignity of all Indians. He was passionate in his Positivist belief that the descendants of the white men who had killed them in war, occupied their lands, and visited strange diseases upon them, owed them a debt that should now be repaid.
When Roosevelt first saw some Parecís Indians on the twenty-ninth, he thought they looked much the same as ordinary Brazilian caboclos, or backwoodsmen. They wore clothes and sandals. But that was more than could be said for their womenfolk. Some of the younger ones were content with a loincloth or less.