The North-West Amazons: Notes of some months spent among cannibal tribes

by Thomas Whiffen

Eugene Robuchon, the adventurous French explorer whose notes on the Indians of the Putumayo are known to every investigator, left the Great Falls on the Igara Parana in November 1905. It was his intention to make for the head waters of the Japura and to explore that river on behalf of the Peruvian Government throughout its length for traces of rubber. He started with a party consisting of three negroes, one half-breed, and five Indians with one Indian woman. He carried supplies barely sufficient for two months. I carefully examined all the survivors of the expedition that I encountered, and from them gathered the following account of the journey:—

Having left the Great Falls, Robuchon proceeded by canoe up the Igara Parana to a point some ten miles above the mouth of the Fue stream. He left the river there, struck northward through the Chepei country, and reached the Japura approximately at 74° W., some thirty miles above the Kuemani River. The Indians encountered at this spot belonged to a Witoto-speaking tribe, the Taikene. They were friendly, but either could not or would not provide Robuchon with a canoe. Three valuable weeks were spent in the search for a suitable tree and in the construction of a canoe.

When at length this was finished, the party started down-stream, and for a time progressed without incident. No natives were seen for several days. At last Robuchon’s Indians called his attention to a narrow path that led up from the river-bank on the right. Anxious about his food supply, he landed and followed the path until he came upon a clearing and an Indian house. Eventually Robuchon arranged with the inhabitants that four of them should come down to the canoe with food and receive presents in exchange. But when a larger number than he expected appeared upon the bank, the explorer feared treachery and at once pushed off without waiting for the much-needed provisions. The Indians thereupon manned their canoes and started in pursuit, shouting the while to him to stop. But with his small party Robuchon dared take no chances. He pushed on until the pursuers had been satisfactorily outdistanced.

The boy who told me the tale was convinced that these Indians were perfectly friendly in intention, and the incident appeared to be proof of the nervous state of the party. Some time after this, while shooting the rapids at the Igarape Falls, the canoe was upset and the greater part of the remaining stores was swept away.

The details of this misadventure I was never able to extract in a coherent fashion from the followers I interviewed, but they agreed that very little food of any kind was left, and what was rescued had been almost entirely destroyed by water.

Short of food, and without a canoe, the boys became mutinous. The three negroes and the half-breed deserted, and sought to cut a way through the bush backward in the direction whence they had come. This task was beyond them, and, a few days later, weary, disheartened, and starving, they returned to beg Robuchon’s forgiveness. The reunited party improvised a raft, and, after undergoing the customary hardships of an unequipped expedition in this hostile country, reached the mouth of the Kahuinari. The whole party was weak with hunger and fever, Robuchon himself prostrate and incapable of going farther. He determined to remain where he was with the Indian woman and the Great Dane hound, Othello. He ordered the negroes and the half-breed to push on up the Kahuanari to a rubber-gatherer’s house which he believed was situated somewhere between the Igara Parana and the Avio Parana. They were to send back relief at the earliest possible moment. The boys left Robuchon on February 3, 1906. He was never again seen by any one in touch with civilisation.

The boys had journeyed for but a few hours when they came across a herd of peccary. They killed more than they could possibly use, but made no attempt whatever to carry any meat back to the starving and abandoned Frenchman. Instead they wasted two valuable days in gorging themselves and smoking the flesh for their own journey.

For days they followed the course of the Kahuinari, hugging its right bank, and in this way happened across a Colombian half-breed, from whom they sought assistance. The Colombian took them to his house near the Avio Parana but would not grant them even food until they paid for it with the rifles they carried. The idea of succouring Robuchon was far removed from his philosophy. The boys, then, having surrendered their rifles in return for the stores they so much needed, made the narrow crossing from the Avio Parana to the Papunya River, and followed that stream without deviation to its junction with the river Issa. Turning backward up the left bank of the Issa, they reached the military station at the mouth of the Igara Parana and there told their tale.

When at last a Relief Expedition was made up, it consisted of three negroes—John Brown and his comrades—and seventeen half-breeds. The party left on its search for Robuchon thirty-seven days after he had been abandoned at the mouth of the Kahuinari. It took ten days to reach the junction of the Avio Parana and the Kahuinari, and twenty-one days more to arrive at the camp on the Japura. It had taken ten weeks to bring help. The relief party found some tools, some clothes, a few tins of coffee, a little salt, and a camera. There was no trace of Robuchon, of the Indian woman, or of the dog. On a tree was nailed a paper, but the written message had been washed by the rain and bleached by the sun till it was illegible. Robuchon’s last message can never be known.