The Exploration of South America

views updated

The Exploration of South America

Overview

By the end of the nineteenth century, South America had barely been explored by civilized man. In the first three decades of the twentieth century, however, several adventurers made extensive treks into the heavily forested and often treacherous interior of this continent. Their work offered a glimpse of South America's flora and fauna, along with a view of its human cultures and past histories. Among the many discoveries of the era, Percy Fawcett surveyed country boundaries and mapped rivers, including the Rio Verde, from 1906-10. In 1911, Hiram Bingham (1875-1956) discovered the ruins of the Incas at Machu Picchu, and three years later Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) and Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon (1865-1958) traveled the River of Doubt.

Background

South America in the early 1900s was a largely unexplored continent. It held few roads to connect major cities, relying instead on waterways for travel and trade. Often, the only available route between cities was a trip down a river that snaked through the thick vegetation of tropical forests. In many places, travel was blocked by groups of hostile, indigenous people who lived along the riverbanks. In other cases, travel was made impossible by powerful, white-water rapids.

As the times changed at the turn of the century, and the governments of South American countries sought to become more economically competitive, officials realized the importance of mapping their nations, cutting roads through the wilderness, and building cross-country communications systems. At the same time, educators and explorers from other countries saw the vast continent as a treasure trove filled with amazing potential for discovery.

One of the greatest South American explorers was Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon. His career as an explorer began in 1890 when he became a Brazilian army engineer charged with stringing a telegraph line across the state of Mato Grosso and later building a road from the state's capital in the center of the continent to Rio de Janeiro on Brazil's Atlantic coast. With those two tasks completed, from 1900-1906 he took on the challenge of building a telegraph line across the entire country. Rondon's adventures brought him into areas previously unseen by any civilized person.

As Rondon completed the Brazilian line, British army officer Percy Fawcett made his first trip to South America to survey the boundary between Bolivia and Brazil. Local residents piqued his interest with tales of lost cities in the South American interior, and he returned on several occasions to continue his investigation of this largely unknown territory. On his next job, surveying the Rio Verde in eastern Bolivia, he embarked with a ragtag team of men of different nationalities and specialties—including a waiter, a silversmith, and a baker. Although the trip was fraught with problems, the group completed the survey, although shortly thereafter five of the porters died, apparently from the rigors of the trip.

After Fawcett's Rio Verde journey in 1908 and a return trip in 1909, Hiram Bingham struck out into the South American wilderness in 1911 in search of the lost capital of the Inca. (The Inca were South American Indians whose empire, by the sixteenth century, ran along the western coast of South America, from the northern border of modern Ecuador to the Maule River in central Chile. By the time of the Spanish conquest, the Inca numbered about 12,000,000 people.) With several South American adventures already under his belt, including his journeys retracing historical routes through the wilderness, Bingham was searching for the city of Vilcabamba, from which the Inca had fought a last, desperate, and unsuccessful rebellion against the Spanish invaders in the 1572. In 1911 he discovered Vitcos, the last Incan capital, and the architectural wonder Machu Picchu, the most famous in a series of fortifications, inns, and signal towers along the network of Incan footpaths.

While Fawcett and Bingham were making their discoveries, Rondon continued his explorations. In 1914, he embarked on a journey with Theodore Roosevelt (U.S. president 1901-09) to traverse the River of Doubt, a waterway that Rondon had named after discovering it several years earlier. As with most other ventures into the South American forests, the team faced many difficulties; some did not make it out of the wilderness alive. In fact, Roosevelt died fewer than five years later, apparently from the lingering effects of his ordeal during the trip with Rondon. Nonetheless, the group completed its task and mapped the river, which had been unknown just a few years earlier.

Impact

Rondon, Roosevelt, Fawcett, and Bingham each made important contributions to the overall geographical and scientific knowledge of the South American wilderness. Rondon also made great strides in protecting the region's indigenous people and their cultures.

Rondon's construction work in early twentieth-century South America brought with it some of the first comprehensive studies of the continent's interior. He was able to produce some of the first biological specimens from these territories, and provided valuable insights into the geography of the expansive, unexplored lands within the massive country of Brazil. On one eight-month expedition from Mato Grasso to the Madeira River, he and his men ran out of food less than halfway through the journey and were forced to eke out a living from the land. Although weak, they eventually reached their goal on December 25, 1909. It was on this trip that Rondon discovered a river that the Brazilians did not even know existed. He named it the River of Doubt; he later renamed it the Roosevelt in honor of the former president who would accompany him as they surveyed it.

The trip along the River of Doubt brought many perils, but the team was able to map the entire length of the river, which runs north-south in approximately the center of the continent. It eventually connects with the Madeira, which meets the Amazon River farther northeast. The American public became interested in South America when in 1914 Roosevelt released his book Through the Brazilian Wilderness, which chronicled his adventures with Rondon.

Besides Rondon's contributions to the geography and biology of the region, his many journeys helped him learn a great deal about the different native peoples who sparsely populated the forests and river banks. Many of those he met while stringing telegraph wire or building roads were known only through legends or stories passed from village to village. Often, he found that he was the native people's first encounter with civilization, so he had not only to complete his construction work but also strike peaceable agreements with the people who laid claim to the land or the river on which he traveled.

Through the years, Rondon developed a sense of responsibility for the native people and their cultures, and became an activist on their behalf. Largely because of his efforts, the Brazilian government in 1910 formed the National Service for the Protection of the Indians, which was designed to help the native populations retain their cultures and avoid exploitation from outside businessmen and settlers. In addition, Rondon later began the national Indian Museum. Eventually his work as an explorer and protector of indigenous people brought him considerable accolades, including the honor of having a territory named for him; that territory of Rondônia is now a state.

Fawcett added to the geographical understanding of the region by mapping the Bolivia-Brazil boundary. Before his expedition, neither government was sure where one country ended and the other began. Fawcett not only mapped the area, but learned about great civilizations that were rumored to have remains hidden deep within the forests. His desire to find these lost cities brought him back to South America time and time again, yielding valuable information about the wilderness, including a comprehensive map of the Rio Verde in eastern Bolivia. Accompanied by his son and a friend, Fawcett embarked on his last South American expedition on April 20, 1925, in Mato Grosso. All members of his team disappeared a month later. Most historians believe they were killed by a group of hostile native people.

Bingham's most celebrated expedition was his 1911 journey in which he discovered the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu in the region surrounding Rio Urubamba. Local residents led him to the site, some 8,000 feet (2,438 m) above sea level. Surrounded by thick, lush forests, the ruins had survived in good condition for hundreds of years. There Bingham saw numerous finely crafted stone buildings, including palaces and a majestic three-sided temple. The area has since become a well-known tourist destination, and in 1983 was named a UNESCO World Heritage site. Throughout his life Bingham remained convinced that Machu Picchu was the elusive city of Vilcabamba; ironically, it was another of his discoveries, the Inca city of Espíritu Pampa, which American archaeologist Gene Savoy showed to be a more likely site in 1964.

In all, these four men, and the many others who helped them on their expeditions, battled repeated hardships to pave the way into a continent's interior and provide a glimpse into the mysteries of South America.

LESLIE A. MERTZ