The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey

“And as president of the United States for nearly eight years, he had been at the apex of power and prestige. Now, for the first time in his life, he was a pariah, and he was painfully aware of it.”

After his third party bid for the presidency in 1912 cost the Republican Party the election, Roosevelt was condemned by his upper-class peers. Whenever he had confronted setbacks previously, Roosevelt embarked on outdoor adventures and exploration. As a result, he was amenable to the idea of a South American expedition. Millard thus presents the expedition as holding a strong emotional appeal to Roosevelt as well as a scientific one.

“The expedition’s tentative plan was to start in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and then travel by boat northward up the length of the continent along well-known navigable rivers to the Amazon, giving Roosevelt a chance to observe a wide range of landscapes and animal life in relative comfort.”

It was this originally tame and safe itinerary that the American Museum of Natural History supported. The planners of the trip prepared for this type of expedition as well. When the itinerary was changed to explore an unknown river, with all the danger that entailed, the expedition proved to be woefully unprepared, introducing The Challenges and Achievements of Exploration.

“Roosevelt’s admission that his new plan was ‘slightly more hazardous’ than the original was, according to Frank Chapman, the understatement of the century.”

Chapman, the head of the American Museum of Natural History’s ornithology department, and others at the Museum were horrified at this change in plan. Instead of a leisurely and safe expedition, the former president was going to travel down an unknown river, whose waterfalls and rapids could arise suddenly and present deadly dangers, in the Amazon jungle. No one knew the direction or length of the river.

“It would have been difficult for Father Zahm to find a better or faster way to alienate Rondon than to make a racist comment about one of his men.”

Rondon, an advocate for the rights of Indigenous peoples and racially underrepresented groups, was disgusted with Zahm’s open racism against Black Brazilians in the expedition and Indigenous peoples. Ultimately, Zahm was dismissed from the expedition before it began its trek down the River of Doubt. His request to be carried by the Pareci people was the final straw for both Roosevelt and Rondon, who recognized The Importance of Racial Respect and Cooperation in the expedition’s success.

“Kermit had joined the expedition so that he could protect his father, but it was Roosevelt who now feared for his son.”

Having previously contracted malaria, Kermit was suffering from its symptoms early in the expedition. His illness, and Kermit’s recklessness in confronting danger, worried Roosevelt given The Nature of the Amazonian Environment. It was not a forgiving place to be ill and danger lurked everywhere.

“Rondon refused even to let his men retaliate when they had been attacked. It was not unusual for his soldiers to have to watch helplessly while their friends died brutal deaths at the hands of Indians, and then have no ability to avenge their loss, no recourse but tears.”

An advocate for the rights of Indigenous peoples, Rondon famously told his men to die if they must but not to kill. He had good relations with the Pareci people as a result and with some of the Nhambiquara. However, as the expedition proceeded deeper into the jungle, they were watched by Indigenous people unfamiliar with Rondon. Fortunately, the Cinta Larga never attacked the expedition.

“But it represented a gamble of life-or-death proportions, because, from the moment the men of the expedition launched their boats, they would no longer be able to turn around. The river would carry them ever deeper into the rain forest, with whatever dangers that might entail.”

In choosing to descend the River of Doubt, using its current to its advantage, the expedition had no option of retreating. The men would not be able to turn back and would have no choice but to follow the river to its merger with another, whatever the dangers they confronted. Rondon had to guess at the likely place the River of Doubt would flow to order men to be waiting for the group there.

“Its quiet, shady halls of leafy opulence were not a sanctuary but, rather, the greatest natural battlefield anywhere on the planet, hosting an unremitting and remorseless fight for survival that occupied every single one of its inhabitants, every minute of every day.”

Millard explains that evolution was supercharged in The Nature of the Amazonian Environment. As a result, plant and animal species formed sophisticated defense mechanisms to protect themselves from predators. They remained invisible to the naked eye. Even the Indigenous peoples stayed invisible and moved with stealth. In contrast, the expedition was loud and visible, and at a loss as to how to draw sustenance from the surrounding life.

“[T]he greatest challenge they faced from the rain forest came not from any creature or adversary that they could confront and defeat, but from the jungle as a whole—in the ruthless efficiency with which it apportioned food and nutrients, in the bewildering complexity of its defense mechanisms, in the constant demands that it placed upon every one of its inhabitants, and in the ruthlessness with which it dealt with the weak, the hungry, or the infirm.”

The men of the expedition were unprepared for The Nature of the Amazonian Environment. They did not know how to procure food and had very limited success hunting, as the animals and plants of the jungle had evolved to protect themselves from predators. It was an inhospitable place to be hungry, as the men of the expedition were.

“Within such an intricate world of resourcefulness, skill, and ruthless self-interest, refined over millions of years, Roosevelt and his men were, for all their own experience and knowledge, vulnerable outsiders.”

Millard emphasizes here The Challenges and Achievements of Exploration. The group was at an enormous disadvantage traveling in the Amazon rainforest. Their ability to survive the trip was both a testament to their courage and determination as well as the decision of the Cinta Larga not to attack the group.

“But the river’s myriad dangers paled in comparison with the threat of starving to death in the rain forest.”

Since the men could procure so little food from the natural environment and were running out of provisions, they had to take risks, such as traveling through rapids, on the river. They had reduced rations to near-starvation levels and were in a race against time to complete the trip. Food dominated the thoughts of all the hungry members of the expedition.

“Now retreat was impossible. In fact, in order to survive, they would have to go deeper into the territory of this unknown tribe—a land where, they now knew with certainty, they were not welcome.”

Hunting with his dog Lobo, Rondon thought he heard the cry of a spider monkey. When his dog followed the sound, he was shot with poisoned arrows. The cry had been an imitation made by an Indigenous person. While Rondon was able to get back to camp, he later discovered that the arrow was not the work of the Nhambiquara but an unknown people who were not friendly. Millard notes that the expedition’s survival was due to the indecision of that people, the Cinta Larga, not to attack. The Cinta Larga required unanimity in its decisions and it was divided on this issue.

“If Indians from other tribes were considered ‘other,’ then the men of the expedition, who did not even look human to the Cinta Larga, certainly fell into that category. Moreover, should the Indians attack the expedition, Roosevelt would likely be one of their first targets.”

Having never seen white men before, the Cinta Larga, who had very little body hair, must have thought the heavily bearded men of the expedition animalistic, according to Millard. After a military victory, it was the custom of the Cinta Larga to engage in cannibalism of one of the defeated enemies. Given his leadership role and girth, Millard asserts that Roosevelt would have likely suffered this fate had the Cinta Larga decided to attack the expedition.

“Like the men’s inability to find game animals, therefore, the difficulty of finding fruits and nuts reflected their own unfamiliarity with the rain forest, and the dizzying complexity of the reproductive systems at work around them.”

Increasingly feeling the impact of a starvation diet, the men were able to find some foods, such as the palmito (See: Index of Terms), but they had few nutrients. They were frustrated in their search for more satisfying foods because of the complexity of the plants in the jungle and their status as outsiders. Millard stresses the unpreparedness of the men for the realities of the rainforest.

“The River of Doubt, moreover, was one of the worst places on earth to be sick. Unless they were too weak even to walk, the men had no choice but to work in order to keep the expedition moving.”

Several of the men on the expedition battled against malaria and dysentery. However, they mainly worked through it. There was no choice given the dwindling supplies of food and the brutality of the tasks, such as dragging heavy boats over land.

“For Roosevelt, in a dripping rain forest where every muddy step throbbed with bacteria, parasites, and disease-carrying insects, this injury was potentially fatal.”

When the expedition was in danger of losing two boats pinned against boulders in the rapids, Roosevelt was the first to jump in the river to help. While the men were able to save the boats, Roosevelt slipped and cut his right leg on a sharp rock. With antibiotics non-existent at this time, the Amazon’s dangers could bring about a life-threatening infection.

“In the fraction of a second that passed between Roosevelt’s grim declaration and Kermit’s reaction, father and son reversed the roles that had defined their relationship, and which neither of them had ever questioned.”

When Roosevelt told Kermit of his plans to die by suicide so that the others in the expedition could proceed on land, his son refused to allow it. Roosevelt recognized his son’s resolve and vowed to live. Kermit saved his father’s life and found a way to transport the boats over the waterfalls so that the expedition could proceed on water. In this incident, both father and son embraced Conceptions of Masculinity and Endurance to help them survive together.

“The brutal job of getting through and around the rapids had begun to destroy what remained not only of the camaradas’ health but also of their hope.”

Descending an unknown river, the expedition repeatedly came across rapids, whirlpools, and waterfalls. When the men had to transport the boats over land, the work was grueling and slowed the expedition down. Alternatively, navigating the rapids cost them their boats at times, a development that forced them to build more boats or walk along the river. Millard highlights the unpreparedness of the expedition and The Nature of the Amazonian Environment.

“As his chest heaved with each step up the steep side of the gorge to the new camp, however, it was painfully apparent to them all that he had lost the vitality that had awed them at the outset of their overland journey not even three months earlier.”

Millard exposes the devastating effect of the expedition on Roosevelt, who would never fully recover his vigor and health. Characteristically, he had helped in the pursuit of de Lima but was weakened as a result. He nonetheless made the way on his own to a new campsite that night, but the others feared for his health. Roosevelt’s rapid physical decline reflects The Challenges and Achievements of Exploration.

“Laced with suspicions of ulterior motives, and fueled by the expedition’s desperate circumstances, the argument that ensued between the Brazilian and the American officers over Julio was so heated that it fractured the bond, born of a shared sorrow and renewed sense of common purpose, that had formed among all of the men after Paishon’s murder.”

Relations between the Brazilians and Americans had been very good up to this point in the expedition, reflecting The Importance of Racial Respect and Cooperation. Rondon, however, infuriated the Americans when he sought to halt the expedition to send two men back to rescue the murderer, Julio de Lima. The Americans strongly suspected that Rondon’s motive was to have time to survey the area. While relations among the leaders later improved, this was a low point and Roosevelt accused Rondon of endangering the expedition.

“The possibility that they might not return home alive, once a remote and abstract idea, had become a corrosive, everyday burden for the members of the expedition.”

The Nature of the Amazonian Environment took a cumulative toll on the men. As the sameness of the jungle depressed them, the illnesses from insect stings and starvation made them all acutely aware of their mortality. The men were close to the breaking point when they discovered a sign that other Brazilians were potentially close at hand.

“As significant as their own efforts had been in triumphing over the churning river, and the unforgiving rain forest that surrounded it, the men remained unaware of the single most important factor in their survival: the decision of the Cinta Larga to let them go.”

If the Cinta Larga had chosen to attack the expedition, there is almost no chance that the men would have survived. The expedition was visible and the Cinta Larga undoubtedly would have approached silently in the night. In their weakened condition, the men of the expedition would have made easy targets. Millard thus highlights how the success of the expedition also depended upon the Indigenous peoples’ tolerance of the outsiders.

“First, the green, gold, and blue of Rondon’s beloved Republic of Brazil. Then, fluttering beside them, the stars and stripes that had for so long driven and defined Roosevelt’s own life, and whose promise stirred him still.”

At last, the expedition made the rendezvous with Lieutenant Pyrineus and a small relief party that Rondon had assigned to meet it. When Roosevelt sat up, he caught sight of the two flags. The men gave shouts of joy, as they would be saved.