The River of Doubt (31 page)

For European explorers, South America’s rivers had long been the only highways into the interior. It had been along the Amazon River and some of its thousands of tributaries that they had discovered the rain forest and its occupants, and the Indians had discovered another world beyond their own. Some Amazonian tributaries, however, were so rapids-choked that they were impossible to ascend and too dangerous to descend. The River of Doubt’s fierce rapids had dissuaded even the most determined settlers from exploring its course. The same
rapids that had already cost the expedition the life of one man and had nearly robbed Roosevelt of his son had kept the Cinta Larga in a time capsule, which had been sealed for millennia.

While the world in which Roosevelt lived had undergone dramatic recent changes, including skyscrapers, automobiles, and even airplanes (Orville and Wilbur Wright had made their first successful flight over Kill Devil Hill eleven years earlier), the Indians in this region were still using the simplest of tools. Their axes were ground and polished stone, and their cutting tools sharp slivers of bamboo. They made their fires by drilling a hard stick of wood into a softer one. The men all carried their hard “drills” with them while they were out hunting so that they could start a fire.

So cut off from the outside world were the Cinta Larga that, when they first saw the expedition, they were not even certain that Roosevelt, Rondon, and their men were human. By this point in their journey, most of the men in the expedition had grown rough beards, which looked strange and animalistic to the Cinta Larga, who, like all native Amazonians, had little facial or body hair. After watching the men from the shadows of the forest, the Cinta Larga mothers warned their children to sleep close to the fire at night so that they would not grow a patchy layer of fur like these strange creatures.

The Cinta Larga must also have been curious about the expedition’s canoes. As simple and crudely made as they were, the dugouts represented a level of technological sophistication that was unknown to the Cinta Larga. Although they lived on both sides of the River of Doubt, fishing from it, drinking from it, bathing in it, and traveling long distances along its banks, the Cinta Larga had not yet conceived of boats, even those as simple as the expedition’s dugout canoes. The only means they had developed for crossing the river were simple rope-and-plank bridges. Nor, despite their dependence on the river, had they yet developed the means of fishing with a hook and line, relying instead on spears or arrows to kill the fish that were so central to their diet.

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D
ESPITE THESE
limitations and, in part, because of their isolation, the Cinta Larga were masters at surviving in the jungle. During their portages, the men of the expedition crashed through the underbrush, scaring off game and announcing their presence to the Indians. Even when they did not have to wrestle with their dugouts, the men found it nearly impossible to fight their way through the jungle. Long vines crisscrossed the forest. Sharp branches caught their loose clothing, snagging and ripping it and holding them hostage while they struggled to set themselves free.

In contrast to Roosevelt and his men, the Cinta Larga moved through the rain forest quickly and silently. They wore no clothing and so were able to slip through the tangle of vegetation unrestrained. The women, who wore their hair long and parted down the middle, had nothing on their bodies but necklaces of black vegetable beads, which they strung around their necks, wrists, waists, and ankles. But for a simple liana covering to protect their penises, the men were similarly naked.

The Cinta Larga were also fast and invisible in the jungle because they had blazed trails that an outsider could not possibly discern or follow. Even if Rondon, in his ardor to make contact with this unknown tribe, had started down the Cinta Larga trail that he had found near Lobo’s body, it would have been useless to him. The Cinta Larga’s trails zigzagged through the forest, cutting in and out of thickets, crisscrossing the river, and going over rather than around any obstacle they encountered.

The tribe’s trails were marked, but ingeniously so. Markers appeared only once every twelve or eighteen feet and were simply small branches that the blazer had half broken and then bent backward. To anyone but a Cinta Larga, these markers were indistinguishable from any of a million other broken and bent branches in the rain forest. A change of direction was indicated by nothing more than a slightly
larger broken branch whose bent end vaguely pointed the way. Only the Cinta Larga knew, moreover, that the markers also showed the direction to and from their camp: In a system like that used in modern maritime navigation, markers were placed so that when approaching the tribe’s camp they appeared on the left side of the trail, and leading away from camp they appeared on the right.

The Cinta Larga were as skilled at hunting as they were at trailblazing. While the men of the expedition slowly starved, wandering through what seemed to them to be a lush but empty rain forest, the Indians saw, heard, and smelled game everywhere they turned. Their ability to move soundlessly through the forest also helped them to sneak up on their prey as the members of the expedition never could, and their skill with a bow and arrow was uncanny. These Indians were such expert hunters that they were even able to trick their game into coming to them. As Rondon had learned when they lured him with the whinny of the spider monkey, the Cinta Larga were talented mimics and could re-create nearly any animal call. In fact, so familiar were they with these calls that they used them not only to draw game within striking distance but even to express time. When referring to a time before sunrise, for example, they used the cry of the howler monkey.

One of the greatest frustrations that the men of the expedition faced on the River of Doubt was that they were descending a river crowded with fish that they could not catch. Those same fish, however, were easy prey for the Cinta Larga. The Indians made up for their lack of poles, lines, or hooks with the type of fishing basket that Rondon had found. More important, they had
timbó.
This milky liquid, which the Cinta Larga extracted from a vine by pounding it with a rock, stuns—or, depending on the quantity, kills—fish by paralyzing their gills. Used in slow-moving inlets and pools,
timbó
allowed the Indians to spear or scoop up the fish as they floated to the river’s surface.

As well as being expert hunters and fishermen, the Cinta Larga had access to crops that Roosevelt and his men did not, and they were willing to consume a larger variety of protein sources. The Indians
grew vegetables such as manioc, yams, and sweet potatoes, but even they struggled to do so. Clearing the land in the jungle was grueling work. It often took a man with a stone ax an entire day just to fell a single large tree. Then, while sowing his crops, he had to contend with the long tree roots that lay frustratingly near the surface of the soil. After only three or four years had passed, the cleared land—scorched by the sun, robbed of its nutrients by the growing crops, and deprived of the cyclical nutrient exchange that had sustained it when it supported a forest—would become depleted, and the Indians would be forced to find another patch of land to till.

Each Cinta Larga village, which had one or two large houses that each held three to five families, was almost completely autonomous from the larger tribe, and every one had its own chief. The chief had to exhibit strong leadership qualities, such as taking the initiative in building a house or clearing a garden, but he was not their commander in the traditional sense. The Cinta Larga would not allow their village chief to tell them how to live their lives. Instead, the chief’s job was to oversee the tribal ceremonies—an important role, because the Cinta Larga did not have a written language. Their only ceremonial guides were their own memories and the stories that they had heard their parents and grandparents tell.

Not only did the chief not command the village as a whole, he did not have power over any family within it but his own. Each man was the chief of his own family, which consisted of as many wives as he could convince to marry him and as many children as his wives could bear. A Cinta Larga man usually chose a new wife as soon as his first wife began to age. Girls were considered to be ready for marriage when they were between eight and ten years old, and they often married their mother’s brother. In such small communities, a young man ready to take his first wife often found that there were no eligible girls left in his village. He was then allowed to take a wife from a man who had three or more, or, failing that, he had to look for a wife in a neighboring village. It was not unusual for villages to trade women. The women, however, usually consented to the switch.

Like women in most early cultures, the Cinta Larga women did not have a voice in tribal or even family decisions. However, the Indian women did have a surprising amount of control over their own lives. For instance, if a Cinta Larga woman was unsatisfied in her marriage, she was free to do something about it. She could dissolve the marriage. She could marry another man. Or she could even stay with her husband and take a lover. In such circumstances, a husband would usually look the other way, unless he became the object of derision within his village.

As important as children were to the future of a village, they were far from coddled, and they were expected to take on the role of an adult by the time they turned twelve years old. Also, although the Indians lived together in one or two large huts, they did not appear to feel any particular responsibility for anyone outside their own immediate family. Each family had its own corner of the hut and its own fire, and when a man had been out hunting and returned with game, his neighbors rarely benefited from his good fortune. The hunter ate first, then his wives, children, and other relatives—in that order.

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A
LTHOUGH
R
OOSEVELT
and Rondon did not realize it, the Cinta Larga’s strong independence was probably keeping the men of the expedition alive. Because the Indians did not have a traditional chief, they were forced to make all of their decisions by consensus. If it was time to move the village, for instance, they had to agree on the time and location of the move. When it came to dealing with the expedition, the Cinta Larga were divided. Some of them believed that they should remain invisible to the outsider. Others, however, argued that they should attack. These men had invaded their territory, and there was no reason to believe they did not mean the Indians harm. By attacking first, the Cinta Larga would have the upper hand. They would also be able to loot the expedition, which was carrying valuable provisions and tools—especially those made of metal.

War was not a rare event for the Cinta Larga. The most common
cause was the death of one of their own, from an earlier attack or even from natural causes. The Cinta Larga believed that death was brought about by witchcraft. If a man became ill and died, the others in his village never blamed their healer, a man who used plants and religion to cure the sick. Instead, they looked around their own village, and if they did not find anyone suspicious, they assumed that someone from another village must have performed the dark magic. The only response was to avenge the death by attacking the offending village.

The Cinta Larga also occasionally went to war if the population of their own village had become so depleted by disease, murder, or both that they needed to steal women and children. Such attacks took place at night. The men would camp near their victims’ village, and then, after the sun had set, they would slip inside their communal hut. As the male members of the other village slept in their hammocks, the warriors would club them to death before rounding up as many women and children as they could find.

Although the Cinta Larga rarely wore much adornment, when they went to war they dressed for the part. They would cut their hair very short, place hawk-feather headdresses over their shorn heads, paint their bodies with animal and plant extracts, and hang bead necklaces from their necks. The most important item in the Cinta Larga’s war dress, however, was the wide belt for which the Portuguese would later name them. These belts were made from the couratari tree, which was difficult to find. The men were sometimes forced to walk for several days in order to harvest the smooth, mahogany-colored bark of this tree. They wrapped an eight-inch-wide strip around their waists one and a half times and then tied it tightly with a fine liana. The stiff bark, which was a tenth of an inch thick, was uncomfortable and often cut their stomachs and backs, thus exposing them to infection, but the belt was ubiquitous among the warlike Cinta Larga because it covered the abdomen and so was useful as body armor.

Although skilled with both clubs and poison, the Cinta Larga’s most lethal weapons were bows and arrows. As Rondon learned when
he examined the arrows that had killed Lobo, the Cinta Larga’s arrows were exquisitely made and deadly accurate. Made from bamboo, the shaft was adorned with braids of peccary hair and topped with a knife-shaped bamboo tip. The arrows were, on average, five feet long—nearly as tall as the Cinta Larga men, and taller than many of the women—and were adorned with hawk wings or curassow feathers, which stabilized them in flight. The tribesmen made several different types of arrows—for shooting fish, birds, monkeys, large animals, and men—but they used only one type of bow. About six feet long, the bows were made from the trunk of the peach-palm tree and were so stiff and difficult to pull that it is doubtful that any of the men in the expedition could have used a Cinta Larga bow had they found one.

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T
HE MOST
striking fact about the Cinta Larga—and one that would have alarmed the men of the expedition had they known it—was that these Indians were cannibals. Unlike the type of cannibalism much of the world had come to know—among desperate explorers, marooned sailors, and victims of famine—the Cinta Larga’s consumption of human flesh was born not out of necessity but out of vengeance and an adherence to tribal traditions and ceremony. The tribe had very strict rules for cannibalism. They could eat another man only in celebration of a war victory, and that celebration had to take place in the early evening. The man who had done the killing could not grill the meat or distribute it, and children and adults with small children would not eat it. If they did, the Cinta Larga believed, they would go mad.