Teddy Roosevelt suffered a political defeat for a second non-consecutive
term for the presidency in 1912. He dusted himself off from the defeat by
joining an expedition into the jungles of Brazil that would wind up lasting two-years.
[BTW-“Jungle” was the formerly Tarzan-cool word for what we know today as tropical
rainforest.]Roosevelt recorded his perspective of the expedition in the self-penned volume Through the Brazilian Wilderness. This was a time when Presidents wrote more than tweets, and if they did write books, they were not ghost-written, they wrote them themselves just like big boys.
It has been decades since we’ve had any “leader” not foist off that dissimulation.
This is not a political statement. It is a statement of character and devolving ethics. Trump no more wrote The Art of the Deal than JFK wrote Profiles in Courage. Mr. Roosevelt wrote the books with his name attached, while no fan of his politics, I am a fan of the man, and, in the end, wouldn’t we rather agree with someone’s character than their theatrical persona? Some feel differently, I presume.
What follows is not so much a review of Roosevelt’s volume as a spotlight here and there of lessons or episodes that struck me of utilitarian note or at least insight into the endeavor. I heartily encourage you to have a read for yourself. It is well-written and non-self-aggrandizing—remember those days, when someone did interesting things with a sense of humility?
Lesson #1
“Any highly specialized creature, the higher its specialization, is apt to be proportionately helpless when once its peculiar specialized traits are effectively nullified by an opponent. This is eminently the case with the most dangerous poisonous snakes. In them a highly peculiar specialization has been carried to the highest point. They rely for attack and defence purely on their poison-fangs. All other means and methods of attack and defence have atrophied. They neither crush nor tear with their teeth nor constrict with their bodies.”
A common topic on this blog, in my books, and on our RAW Volumes, specialization is predictability. Predictability is the ultimate no-no in warfare.
Lesson #2
“There must be absolute religious liberty, for tyranny and intolerance are as abhorrent in matters intellectual and spiritual as in matters political and material; and more and more we must all realize that conduct is of infinitely greater importance than dogma.”
[Emphasis my own.]
Lesson #3
“The native hunters who accompanied us were swarthy men of mixed blood. They were barefooted and scantily clad, and each carried a long, clumsy spear and a keen machete, in the use of which he was an expert. Now and then, in thick jungle, we had to cut out a path, and it was interesting to see one of them, although cumbered by his unwieldy spear, handling his half-broken little horse with complete ease while he hacked at limbs and branches.”
I was struck by the observation of nimble dexterity. Watch your average human phone in hand trying to pick produce in the supermarket and imagine them being nimble in the jungle.
Lesson #4
“We were now in the land of the bloodsucking bats, the vampire bats that suck the blood of living creatures, clinging to or hovering against the shoulder of a horse or cow, or the hand or foot of a sleeping man, and making a wound from which the blood continues to flow long after the bat's thirst has been satiated.”
Today we complain of mean tweets. Softened much, have we?
Lesson #5
“Many regions in the United States where life is now absolutely comfortable and easygoing offered most formidable problems to the first explorers a century or two ago. We must not fall into the foolish error of thinking that the first explorers need not suffer terrible hardships, merely because the ordinary travellers, and even the settlers who come after them, do not have to endure such danger, privation, and wearing fatigue— although the first among the genuine settlers also have to undergo exceedingly trying experiences. The early explorers and adventurers make fairly well-beaten trails; but it is incumbent on them neither to boast of their own experiences nor to misjudge the efforts of the pioneers because, thanks to these very efforts, their own lines fall in pleasant places. The ordinary traveller, who never goes off the beaten route and who on this beaten route is carried by others, without himself doing anything or risking anything, does not need to show much more initiative and intelligence than an express package. He does nothing; others do all the work, show all the forethought, take all the risk—and are entitled to all the credit. He and his valise are carried in practically the same fashion; and for each the achievement stands about on the same plane.”
Yelp, GPS, tour packages, “All-Inclusive” resorts, scheduled excursions with a tip jar.
Lesson #6 [Compare with Lesson #7]
“Next morning the cacique of these Indians, in his major's uniform,
came to breakfast, and bore himself with entire propriety. It was raining
heavily—it rained most of the time—and a few minutes previously I had noticed
the cacique's two wives, with three or four other young women, going out to the
mandioc fields. It was a picturesque group. The women were all mothers, and
each carried a nursing child. They wore loin-cloths or short skirts. Each carried
on her back a wickerwork basket supported by a head-strap which went around her
forehead. Each carried a belt slung diagonally across her body, over her right
shoulder; in this the child was carried, against and perhaps astride of her
left hip. They were comely women, who did not look jaded or cowed; and they
laughed cheerfully and nodded to us as they passed through the rain, on their
way to the fields. But the contrast between them and the chief in his soldier's
uniform seated at breakfast was rather too striking; and incidentally it etched
in bold lines the folly of those who idealize the life of even exceptionally
good and pleasant-natured savages.”Here Roosevelt shows his bias for Western apparel. And yet a scant few pages later…
Lesson #7
“By the evening the rain was coming down more heavily than ever. It was not possible to keep the moisture out of our belongings; everything became mouldy except what became rusty.”
So, who is wise now, the scantily clad indigenous folks or the badge and uniform respecting explorers?
Lesson #8
“The men held a dance in the late afternoon. For this occasion most, but not all, of them cast aside their civilized clothing, and appeared as doubtless they would all have appeared had none but themselves been present. They were absolutely naked except for a beaded string round the waist. Most of them were spotted and dashed with red paint, and on one leg wore anklets which rattled. A number carried pipes through which they blew a kind of deep stifled whistle in time to the dancing. One of them had his pipe leading into a huge gourd, which gave out a hollow, moaning boom. Many wore two red or green or yellow macaw feathers in their hair, and one had a macaw feather stuck transversely through the septum of his nose. They circled slowly round and round, chanting and stamping their feet, while the anklet rattles clattered and the pipes droned. They advanced to the wall of one of the houses, again and again chanting and bowing before it; I was told this was a demand for drink. They entered one house and danced in a ring around the cooking- fire in the middle of the earth floor; I was told that they were then reciting the deeds of mighty hunters and describing how they brought in the game. They drank freely from gourds and pannikins of a fermented drink made from mandioc which were brought out to them.”
A remarkable insight into people as they are.
But notice…
Lesson #9
“During the first part of the dance the women remained in the houses, and all the doors and windows were shut and blankets hung to prevent the possibility of seeing out. But during the second part all the women and girls came out and looked on. They were themselves to have danced when the men had finished, but were overcome with shyness at the thought of dancing with so many strangers looking on.”
Intriguing that the nudity did not make the act of dancing in the nude “wrong” it was the “thoughts/looks/assumptions” of the “civilized” onlookers that made it so.
Calls to mind another traveler’s tale…
“’Speaking once with a Japanese gentleman, I observed that we considered it an act of indecency for men and women to wash together. He shrugged his shoulders as he answered: ‘But these Westerners have such prurient minds!’ [Mitford, Tales of Old Japan, 1871.)”
Lesson #10
“There was so much humidity in the air that everything grew damp and
stayed damp, and mould gathered quickly. At this season it is a country in
which writing, taking photographs, and preparing specimens are all works of
difficulty, at least so far as concerns preserving and sending home the results
of the labor; and a man's clothing is never really dry.”Intriguing that a man as perspicacious as Mr. Roosevelt never stumbles upon the lesson before his eyes.
Lesson #11
“Before leaving we prepared for shipment back to the museum some of the bigger skins, and also some of the weapons and utensils of the Indians, which Kermit had collected. These included woven fillets, and fillets made of macaw feathers, for use in the dances; woven belts; a gourd in which the sacred drink is offered to the god Enoerey; wickerwork baskets; flutes or pipes; anklet rattles; hammocks; a belt of the kind used by the women in carrying the babies, with the weaving-frame. All these were Parecis articles. He also secured from the Nhambiquaras wickerwork baskets of a different type and bows and arrows. The bows were seven feet long and the arrows five feet. There were blunt-headed arrows for birds, arrows with long, sharp wooden blades for tapir, deer, and other mammals; and the poisoned war- arrows, with sharp barbs, poison-coated and bound on by fine thongs, and with a long, hollow wooden guard to slip over the entire point and protect it until the time came to use it. When people talk glibly of "idle" savages they ignore the immense labor entailed by many of their industries, and the really extraordinary amount of work they accomplish by the skilful use of their primitive and ineffective tools.”
Question for the Self: How many of the things that you use everyday do you make personally, or, more telling could you make?
Lesson #12
“Travelling through a wild country where there is little food for man or beast is beset with difficulties almost inconceivable to the man who does not himself know this kind of wilderness, and especially to the man who only knows the ease of civilization.”
I wager many of our everyday First-World “complaints” would vanish if we permitted contact with stark conditions now and again. Test the fortitude a bit. Shore up the soul. Wait…my phone is pinging me!
Lesson #13
“They were practically absolutely naked. In many savage tribes the men go absolutely naked, but the women wear a breech-clout or loincloth. In certain tribes we saw near Lake Victoria Nyanza, and on the upper White Nile, both men and women were practically naked. Among these Nhambiquaras the women were more completely naked than the men, although the difference was not essential. The men wore a string around the waist. Most of them wore nothing else, but a few had loosely hanging from this string in front a scanty tuft of dried grass, or a small piece of cloth, which, however, was of purely symbolic use so far as either protection or modesty was concerned. The women did not wear a stitch of any kind anywhere on their bodies. They did not have on so much as a string, or a bead, or even an ornament in their hair. They were all, men and women, boys and well-grown young girls, as entirely at ease and unconscious as so many friendly animals. All of them—men, women, and children, laughing and talking— crowded around us, whether we were on horseback or on foot. They flocked into the house, and when I sat down to write surrounded me so closely that I had to push them gently away. The women and girls often stood holding one another's hands, or with their arms over one another's shoulders or around one another's waists, offering an attractive picture. The men had holes pierced through the septum of the nose and through the upper lip, and wore a straw through each hole. The women were not marked or mutilated. It seems like a contradiction in terms, but it is nevertheless a fact that the behavior of these completely naked women and men was entirely modest. There was never an indecent look or a consciously indecent gesture. They had no blankets or hammocks, and when night came simply lay down in the sand. Colonel Rondon stated that they never wore a covering by night or by day, and if it was cool slept one on each side of a small fire. Their huts were merely slight shelters against the rain.”
Lesson #14
“The moon was nearly full, and after nightfall a few of the Indians
suddenly held an improvised dance for us in front of our house. There were four
men, a small boy, and two young women or grown girls. Two of the men had been
doing some work for the commission, and were dressed, one completely and one
partially, in ordinary clothes. Two of the men and the boy were practically
naked, and the two young women were absolutely so. All of them danced in a
circle, without a touch of embarrassment or impropriety. The two girls kept
hold of each other's hands throughout, dancing among the men as modestly as
possible, and with the occasional interchange of a laugh or jest, in as good
taste and temper as in any dance in civilization. The dance consisted in slowly
going round in a circle, first one way then the other, rhythmically beating
time with the feet to the music of the song they were chanting. The
chants—there were three of them, all told—were measured and rather slowly
uttered melodies, varied with an occasional half-subdued shrill cry. The women
continually uttered a kind of long- drawn wailing or droning; I am not enough
of a musician to say whether it was an overtone or the sustaining of the burden
of the ballad. The young boy sang better than any of the others. It was a
strange and interesting sight to see these utterly wild, friendly savages
circling in their slow dance, and chanting their immemorial melodies, in the
brilliant tropical moonlight, with the river rushing by in the background, through
the lonely heart of the wilderness.”Question: When was the last time you had an utterly lovely visceral experience with your friends that did not center around talking about movies, TV, or sporting events? Simply an evening of participation under the stars?
Are we missing something?
Lesson #15
“Here Kermit, while a couple of miles from our tents, came across an encampment of Nhambiquaras. There were twenty or thirty of them—men, women, and a few children. Kermit, after the manner of honest folk in the wilderness, advanced ostentatiously in the open, calling out to give warning of his coming. Like surroundings may cause like manners. The early Saxons in England deemed it legal to kill any man who came through the woods without shouting or blowing a horn; and in Nhambiquara land at the present time it is against etiquette, and may be very unhealthy, to come through the woods toward strangers without loudly announcing one's presence. The Nhambiquaras received Kermit with the utmost cordiality, and gave him pineapple-wine to drink. They were stark naked as usual; they had no hammocks or blankets, and their huts were flimsy shelters of palmbranches. Yet they were in fine condition. Half a dozen of the men and a couple of boys accompanied Kermit back to our camp, paying not slightest heed to the rain which was falling. They were bold and friendly, goodnatured—at least superficially—and very inquisitive. In feasting, the long reeds thrust through holes in their lips did not seem to bother them, and they laughed at the suggestion of removing them; evidently to have done so would have been rather bad manners—like using a knife as an aid in eating ice-cream. They held two or three dances, and we were again struck by the rhythm and weird, haunting melody of their chanting. After supper they danced beside the camp-fire; and finally, to their delight, most of the members of our own party, Americans and Brazilians, enthusiastically joined the dance, while the colonel and I furnished an appreciative and applauding audience. Next morning, when we were awakened by the chattering and screaming of the numerous macaws, parrots, and parakeets, we found that nearly all the Indians, men and women, were gathered outside the tent. As far as clothing was concerned, they were in the condition of Adam and Eve before the fall.”
Lesson #16
“The paddlers were a strapping set. They were expert rivermen and men
of the forest, skilled veterans in wilderness work. They were lithe as panthers
and brawny as bears. They swam like waterdogs. They were equally at home with
pole and paddle, with axe and machete; and one was a good cook and others were
good men around camp. They looked like pirates in the pictures of Howard Pyle
or Maxfield Parrish; one or two of them were pirates, and one worse than a
pirate; but most of them were hard-working, willing, and cheerful.”I say without shame, my heroes.
Lesson #17
“By these rapids, at the fall, Cherrie found some strange carvings on a bare mass of rock. They were evidently made by men a long time ago. As far as is known, the Indians thereabouts make no such figures now. They were in two groups, one on the surface of the rock facing the land, the other on that facing the water. The latter were nearly obliterated. The former were in good preservation, the figures sharply cut into the rock. They consisted, upon the upper flat part of the rock, of four multiple circles with a dot in the middle (O), very accurately made and about a foot and a half in diameter; and below them, on the side of the rock, four multiple m's or inverted w's (M). What these curious symbols represented, or who made them, we could not, of course, form the slightest idea. It may be that in a very remote past some Indian tribes of comparatively advanced culture had penetrated to this lovely river, just as we had now come to it. Before white men came to South America there had already existed therein various semi-civilizations, some rude, others fairly advanced, which rose, flourished, and persisted through immemorial ages, and then vanished. The vicissitudes in the history of humanity during its stay on this southern continent have been as strange, varied, and inexplicable as paleontology shows to have been the case, on the same continent, in the history of the higher forms of animal life during the age of mammals. Colonel Rondon stated that such figures as these are not found anywhere else in Matto Grosso where he has been, and therefore it was all the more strange to find them in this one place on the unknown river, never before visited by white men, which we were descending.”
I cannot even grasp the thrill of discovery that must imbue such a moment.
We are now proud if we share a “funny” meme we ourselves did not create.
Lesson #18
“These are real pioneer settlers. They are the true wilderness-winners. No continent is ever really conquered, or thoroughly explored, by a few leaders, or exceptional men, although such men can render great service. The real conquest, the thorough exploration and settlement, is made by a nameless multitude of small men of whom the most important are, of course, the home-makers. Each treads most of the time in the footsteps of his predecessors, but for some few miles, at some time or other, he breaks new ground; and his house is built where no house has ever stood before. Such a man, the real pioneer, must have no strong desire for social life and no need, probably no knowledge, of any luxury, or of any comfort save of the most elementary kind. The pioneer who is always longing for the comfort and luxury of civilization, and especially of great cities, is no real pioneer at all. These settlers whom we met were contented to live in the wilderness. They had found the climate healthy and the soil fruitful; a visit to a city was a very rare event, nor was there any overwhelming desire for it.”
Lesson #19
“It is easy to go where other men have prepared the way.”
Let’s all put that quote on our participation trophy mantelpiece.
Lesson #20
[Lest some of us think, well, “Teddy ain’t speaking to me cuz I do adventurous things, too!”]
“Of course travellers of this kind need to remember that their experiences in themselves do not qualify them to speak as wilderness explorers. Exactly as a good archaeologist may not be competent to speak of current social or political problems, so a man who has done capital work as a tourist observer in little-visited cities and along remote highways must beware of regarding himself as being thereby rendered fit for genuine wilderness work or competent to pass judgment on the men who do such work. To cross the Andes on mule-back along the regular routes is a feat comparable to the feats of the energetic tourists who by thousands traverse the mule trails in outof-the-way nooks of Switzerland. An ordinary trip on the highway portions of the Amazon, Paraguay, or Orinoco in itself no more qualifies a man to speak of or to take part in exploring unknown South American rivers than a trip on the lower Saint Lawrence qualifies a man to regard himself as an expert in a canoe voyage across Labrador or the Barren Grounds west of Hudson Bay.”
Lesson #21
[A fascinating benchmark for how to view the “adventures” of others.]
“A hundred years ago, even seventy or eighty years ago, before the age of steamboats and railroads, it was more difficult than at present to define the limits between this class and the next; and, moreover, in defining these limits I emphatically disclaim any intention of thereby attempting to establish a single standard of value for books of travel. Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle" is to me the best book of the kind ever written; it is one of those classics which decline to go into artificial categories, and which stand by themselves; and yet Darwin, with his usual modesty, spoke of it as in effect a yachting voyage. Humboldt's work had a profound effect on the thought of the civilized world; his trip was one of adventure and danger; and yet it can hardly be called exploration proper. He visited places which had been settled and inhabited for centuries and traversed places which had been travelled by civilized men for years before he followed in their footsteps. But these places were in Spanish colonies, and access to them had been forbidden by the mischievous and intolerant tyranny— ecclesiastical, political, and economic—which then rendered Spain the most backward of European nations; and Humboldt was the first scientific man of intellectual independence who had permission to visit them. To this day many of his scientific observations are of real value. Bates came to the Amazon just before the era of Amazonian steamboats. He never went off the native routes of ordinary travel. But he was a devoted and able naturalist. He lived an exceedingly isolated, primitive, and laborious life for eleven years. Now, half a century after it was written, his "Naturalist on the Amazon" is as interesting and valuable as it ever was, and no book since written has in any way supplanted it. Travel of the third category includes the work of the true wilderness explorers who add to our sum of geographical knowledge and of the scientific men who, following their several bents, also work in the untrodden wilds. Colonel Rondon and his associates have done much in the geographical exploration of unknown country, and Cherrie and Miller have penetrated and lived for months and years in the wastes, on their own resources, as incidents to their mammalogical and ornithological work. Professor Farrabee, the anthropologist, is a capital example of the man who does this hard and valuable type of work.”
If you’ve got this far, I wager it is because you find something inspiring in such exploits and the first-hand observations from folks who do and dare.
Such people and voyages spur those who feel that internal chord struck.
If you’ve come this far, may that chord do more than resonate, may it lead to a bit more than, well, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
You’ve come this far, why not go further on our own?
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