Argonauts of the Amazon - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 239

not at all, even as their skills provided the logistic and intellectual foundations that un-
derpinned European “discovery.” Graham Burnett has explained the quotidian reliance
on such natives by Richard Schomburgk in his expedition, his research, and his coloni-
al recommendations, all enabled by vast indigenous traditions. Von Humboldt describes
in detail the roles of bearers and native informers in his Amazon efforts; 23 Bates relied
on his collector Vincenti. 24 Coudreau depended on the quilombola Apatú as his guide
throughtheinteriorbetweentheAmazonandtheOrinoco.WadeDavis,inhisbiography
of Richard Schultes, describes movingly how important these local informants became
as Schultes's friends, companions, and intellectual muses. 25
APATOU PRIMITIF.
Figure 15.2. Apatú, Henri Coudreau's Amazon guide.
Collecting was one thing, but often the most arduous and treacherous work in these
travels was navigating the rivers and tributaries. This was generally carried out by Afro-
Brazilian boatmen in the eastern and Caribbean Amazon and tributaries of the Madeira,
perhaps a consequence of West African resistance to both Vivax and Falciprium forms
of malaria in these famously fever-ridden rivers. Often members of quilombos , they had
a long history of occupation in remote interiors and headwaters and as interlocutors and
traders on the major rivers that made their skills and detailed knowledge of the rapids
and the cataracts incomparably valuable. 26
One of the Brazilian guides for several distinguished expeditions in the Upper
Amazon was Manoel Urbano, a cafuz —a product of black and Indian parents who
traveled with Silva Coutinho, Chandless, Agassiz, and James in the 1850s. Chandless,
theexceptionthatprovedtherule,wastostatethathisentireexplorationmerelyreprised
Urbano's remarkable earlier travels on the many rivers of the “land of the Amazons.”
Even Agassiz, who was habitually dismissive of blacks and mestizos, was to credit him
with a “rare intelligence.”