Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [190]
The great cascade of the Rio Papagaio heralded itself the following day with a distant roar and slowly intensifying vibration underfoot. Then mist columns appeared, swaying and breaking. Riverside trees opened out and disclosed a stupendous sheet of white-green water, thundering into an almost invisible gorge. Roosevelt was thrilled, and told Rondon so. “With the exception of Niagara, there is nothing in North America to compare with this fall at Utiariti.”
He forgot, or modestly chose not to say, that he had once been compared to Niagara himself.
MUCH AS HE WOULD have liked to spend hours staring at the cataract, he had to deal with a disagreeable problem in town. Father Zahm had made himself unctuously objectionable to Utiariti’s Parecís population. He was claiming “a goodly number of baptized Indians” as a result of his visit.
Kermit sneered and Roosevelt was infuriated, but Rondon felt unable to stop the priest from catechizing. The Serviço de Proteção’s official policy, framed by himself, was to respect the “spiritual freedom” of Indians. That included allowing them to pledge to any creed, as long as they were not forced to do so.
When the two colonels met up with Zahm, they found him in full missionary mode. He said he wanted to spread the word of God into “Nhambiquara Land,” the stretch of broken country extending from Utiariti to José Bonifácio. Rather than ride any more on a mule, he thought he would travel in a padiola, or sedan chair, borne by some Parecís.
“The Indian is used to carrying priests,” Zahm explained. “Often in the past I’ve used this way of getting around.”
Before Rondon could protest, Roosevelt said, “You realize, of course, that you will be abusing the principles of my good friend Colonel Rondon.”
A heated three-way discussion ensued. Zahm said that Peruvian Indians considered it an honor to bear the weight of Roman Catholic clergy. Rondon replied that such servility was contrary to “the habits and character” of Brazilian tribes. His agency was working to make them full citizens of the republic. If it meant to suppress them, he added sarcastically, it would model its policies on those of the Jesuits.
Roosevelt ended the argument by summoning Zahm to his tent. He heard the priest out, then issued a formal order. “Since you can’t stand to ride any more, you will return to Tapírapoan immediately, and Sigg will go with you.”
Moving at once, as he had as President, to prevent any appointee from suing for wrongful dismissal, he scribbled a memo for his fellow principals to sign:
Every American member of the expedition has told me that in his opinion it is essential to the success and well being of the expedition that Father Zahm should at once leave it and return to the coast civilization the settled country
Theodore Roosevelt
Nine signatures were appended, including even Sigg’s.
FEBRUARY CAME with a heavy rain that delayed Zahm’s departure and cast Kermit into deep gloom. “Cat very sad,” he noted in his diary, using his pet name for himself, and on the next day, “Cat most unusually sad.” He was accustomed to a sense of social isolation that set him apart, even when surrounded by jocular company. But his current malaise was primarily sexual. Just before he had set off up the Paraguay with his father, Belle Willard had surprised him by accepting his written proposal of marriage. Her letter had awakened in him a vast impatience to have done with this expedition, so much less enjoyable than the great Roosevelt safari of five years before. The longer he languished in Mato Grosso, the more he feared Belle might change her mind. Her father was now President Wilson’s ambassador to Spain. She was a party-loving young lady, and relocation to Madrid was sure to enlarge her already glittering field of acquaintance.
Hunting might have worked off some of Kermit’s frustration, but the grasslands were lacking in game. He took what consolation he could find in reading Camões’s Os Lusíadas,