The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey

On Halloween 1912, the Progressive Party held its last major rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Hundreds of thousands gathered outside the facility to get a glimpse of its presidential candidate, Theodore Roosevelt. Two weeks before, Roosevelt had been shot giving a campaign speech in Milwaukee. Saved by a manuscript and an eyeglass case, Roosevelt proceeded to give the speech despite the bullet penetrating inches into his skin. At this venue in New York, Roosevelt delivered a lively speech about character, moral strength, compassion, and responsibility (11).

Since Roosevelt split the Republican vote with his third-party candidacy, the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, won in a landslide. There was blistering criticism of Roosevelt as a result. He spent the winter at his home in Sagamore Hill, a pariah among his class after having been at the top as president. When confronted with loss or setbacks in life, Roosevelt had the habit of taking on physical challenges and dangers. As a child, he had built body strength to overcome asthma. Later, after graduating from Harvard and winning a seat on the New York Assembly in 1884, he lost his mother to typhoid fever and his young wife—with whom he had one child—to Bright’s disease. He dealt with the losses by spending two years in the Dakota Badlands.

In February 1913, Argentina’s Museo Social, an institution devoted to a “progressive intellectual agenda” (19), invited Roosevelt to be a guest lecturer. While the offer came with financial compensation and prestige, it also allowed Roosevelt to visit his son, Kermit. Working for the Brazilian Railroad Company, Kermit suffered from intermittent fevers. At this time, South America was considered “remote, mysterious, and dangerous” (21). Much of the Amazon rainforest was unexplored.

Before becoming president, Roosevelt was a naturalist with a great interest in plant and animal species. With others, he founded the Roosevelt Museum of Natural History. He was bored by the university curriculum in the sciences, which was based in laboratories, and chose a career in politics instead. However, he still found ways to indulge his interest in nature. When Roosevelt received the invitation from the Museo Social, he consulted the American Museum of Natural History. There, Henry Osborn pledged the museum’s support of Roosevelt’s trip and offered the assistance of Frank Chapman, the head of the ornithology department.

Roosevelt had lunch with Chapman and Father John Zahm, a chemistry and physics professor at Notre Dame who had earlier urged Roosevelt to explore South America. Despite his Catholicism, Zahm was an advocate of evolution and he was skilled at self-promotion. Zahm assumed responsibility for planning the exploratory trip in South America, including ordering supplies. Millard notes that Zahm was not qualified for this role.

The original itinerary for the expedition, planned by Zahm, included trips down well-navigated rivers. Roosevelt viewed it as a holiday with some adventure. Zahm enlisted the services of Anthony Fiala to select and order the expedition’s provisions and equipment. With no experience in South America, Fiala was best known for a failed trip to the North Pole during which his ship was crushed in the ice with the crew stranded in dangerous conditions for two years. Fiala had a disagreement with Roosevelt’s secretary, Frank Harper, over the type of boats needed, with Fiala recommending North American canoes. In ordering provisions, Fiala paid as much attention to luxuries as necessities. No one planning the trip, except Zahm, had ever been to South America.

Frank Chapman, who very much wanted Roosevelt to return healthy, recruited George Cherrie to accompany him. Cherrie had spent 25 years collecting birds in South America. At Cherrie’s request, Leo Miller, another scientist from the American Museum of Natural History, also joined the expedition. Osborn was relieved with these two experienced naturalists in attendance and the tame route that was to be taken.

On October 4, 1913, Roosevelt boarded the Vandyck en route to Bahia, Brazil. Once away from New York, Roosevelt felt refreshed and better. South American ambassadors on board the ship did not remember Roosevelt’s presidency fondly. They objected to the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which claimed an American right to intervene in the domestic affairs of any country in the Western Hemisphere if compelled because of “chronic wrongdoing” (39). The doctrine was about to be tested in Mexico.

Roosevelt was accompanied by his wife Edith and cousin Margaret Roosevelt, as well as the expeditionary group on the boat. Edith and Margaret planned to stay for the speaking tour and then return via Panama. Concerned about the health of her son and husband, Edith was anxious to assure herself that Kermit was well. Not only did Kermit suffer from malaria but he was almost killed while building bridges in Brazil. A sensitive soul who was close to his mother, Kermit was to meet his parents in Bahia but he was not planning to join his father on this expedition. He had already done so in Africa. In love with Belle Willard, Kermit sent her a love letter proposing marriage.

Before leaving, Zahm had hired Jacob Sigg, a handyman with a “checkered career” (46) to join the expedition. Zahm also was pursuing a lucrative deal to sell photos from the trip.

The Amazon River accounts for approximately 15% of all freshwater carried to sea and is about 4,000 miles long, with thousands of tributaries that are “fast, twisting, and wild” (55). It runs through the northern part of Brazil, a country that is more than 250,000 “square miles larger than the contiguous United States” (55). In 1913, vast stretches of this area were unknown and unmapped.

When the Vandyck arrived in Bahia on October 18, thousands were there to greet the former president. The government had appointed Colonel Rondon, a man who had spent half of his life exploring the Amazon, to be Roosevelt’s guide for the expedition. In a chance comment, the foreign minister, Lauro Müller, asked Roosevelt why he was not going to explore an unknown river. In response, Roosevelt changed the expedition’s itinerary to an exploration of the River of Doubt.

Rondon had discovered and named this river in a previous expedition. Even the trip to the river was dangerous. When Roosevelt wrote to the Museum of Natural History telling of the change in plan, he said, in a gross understatement, that this trip would be “slightly more hazardous” (60). Alarmed by the change in plan, Osborn tried to get Roosevelt to change his mind, but to no avail. All the planning and packing had been for a very different type of expedition. There was, for example, too much baggage.

Before the expedition, Roosevelt endured a nonstop speaking tour with banquets. While he was eager to begin the expedition, Zahm enjoyed the luxurious dinners. On the tour, Roosevelt encountered protesters about his creation of the Panama Canal. Panama had been a state of Colombia at the time of its building. When Colombia sought to impose restrictions on the canal’s use, Roosevelt helped to instigate and defend a Panamanian revolution. The subsequent treaty with Panama gave the US control of the Canal Zone (65). Vigorously defending his decision, Roosevelt typically won the support of his audiences.

Kermit was ecstatic to receive Belle’s positive response to his proposal. His mother asked him, however, to accompany his father on this expedition. She was worried for her husband’s health. Out of a sense of duty, Kermit agreed to do so but was not excited about the prospect.