21-07-022.Tewkesbury.0001-010-002 |
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1 " ~ THIS WEEK MAGAZINE) Ihtqu"$* I TOO CLOSE TO THE CANAL It's the Panama jungle village of Wla -where no white man ~as ever been permitted to set foot. That is why a North Carolina schoolteacher named Tewkesbury is trying to get in there now-alone! And the U. S. ·government is watching by lldhul' Badlell IT DIDN~T make ~uch sense to. the Indian . chief. Here was this young whIte ma?" who had come out of the jungle - a Jungle. that white men had never before dared ~o explore. And when asked who he was, thIS strange young white man said he was a teac~er of mathematics. And mathematics, he ~ld, had to do with numbers. It was very baffimg to.the chief. , . , It has baffled a lot of Richard Tewkesbury s friends at home, too. A slight, blond young man with a modest manner, he is a teacher of mathematics, holding forth among the students of Harding High, School at C~arlotte, North Carolina. If you should see hIm at a teachers convention, he would fit perfectly into the scene: an earnest young pedagogue with the pleasant persuasiveness that makes a man popular in the classroom. You certainly never would pick him as a swashbuckling adventurer. Yet the fact remains that for several years his regular summer relaxation from algebra and trigonometry has been a singlehanded trek into some part of the world where he could match his will and wits and endurance against dangerous uncertainties and unknowns. Poking on foot into place~ where tourists never go, climbing mountams that couldn't be climbed, following trails that led from nowhere to nowhere - that has been Richard Tewkesbury's idea of fun for ye~rs . India, Japan, Mexico and all sorts of outlymg places have been his summerplaygro~ds .. Last summer, Richard Tewkesbury s vacation trip began):o interest a lot of important people. And ,right now a lot more important people - people who, in the face of a. wOrld . crisis, are charged with the perfection of America's plans for a hemisphere defenseare waiting for the return of Richard TewIresbury from tltis summer's vacation trip. If he returns. For · the high-school teacher fr0fD Charlotte has gone back to the junglea&:~m in what might well be called Darkest Amenca. Few realize that almost · at our own back door there lies a region still uncivilized, s~iIl closed to white men - a region that rem~ms in the hands of primitive Indians, whose cluefs rule without regard to the constituted author: ities of the land, and who have a reputation for killing any outlander who intrudes upon , them. Yet fifty miles or so ?eyond the Panama Cat1<!l, such .,! territory begins. Courtesy Grace Line Ready to cut his way through the jungle Courtesy SweJisb Americon Line - . A "civilized" Pancima Indian. Tewkesbury is out to deal with wild ones Regarded as Murderolls TECHNICALLY it is a part of the Republic of, Panama, but actually the Indians' run it in their own way. Some of the Indians, particularly along the coast, are partially civilized, but others in the jungle interior have long , been regarded as hostile and murderous, and much of their land no white man has ever seen - not, at least, to live and tell the story. For several yea.rs our ~overnment and the , governments of the Central and South American countries, urged on by the Pan-American Union, have been projecting . a great PanAmerican highway, to run the 'length of the two continents - Ii strong link .of friendship ' to foster trade and neighborliness. Many sections Qf it already have been built, and all of , it has been at least tentatively laid out ..:.-.- all, that is, except the stretch that must go right through the Indian country in Panama.-That I has not been laid out because no outsider has ever been able to go overland from Panama City to the Colombian border, as the highway must do. Tewkesbury came nearer to accomplishing the trip last summer than anybody has ever done before. He found out where hitherto unexplored rivers run, where the highlands are. He demonstrated that there are no impassable marshes in certain areas where such barriers had been thought probable. This and . the more general information that he brought back gives the engineers more definite data on which to plan a road than they had ever . had before. And this summer, Tewkesbury is I seeking to finish the job, and get all the way through the Indian country; ~- I That is why officials of the Pan-American I !:~:~~ ~~~~~:~~o;~~:et_!~;e fo~n: , schoolteacher's summer-vacation journey, and ; why they are waiting eagerly for news from him. I Army as well,as civilIan officials are waiting; I for the highway project has taken on new military importance since Tewkesbury's trip i of last summer. Suddenly we have become : conscious of the need for hemisphere defense. I We have become conscious, too, of the part played . in modem war by fast-moving maI chines_ But how could fast-moving machines roll through an impenetrable jungle to meet ' - -- an enemy that had established ' bases to the south for the purpose of destroying the Panama Canal-our very life line? As long, as that highway remains unbuilt, no troops, no tanks, no artillery could move south overland either to meet an enemy beyond the canal or to go to the aid of our South Amer-ican neighbors. . I Army authorities have been considering , sending a military expedition into the jungle to learn the lay of the land and report·-on . possible routes for the highway, and also on I the .attitude of the Indians. It would un- , doubtedly mean bloodshed, most informed people think, because the Indians have a special hate of men in uniforms, regarding them I as the symbols of an authority that they are determined to resist. But the military expedition has not yet gone. Instead, a mildmannered man with a smile instead of a gun is wandering alone among the Indians. And it isn't costing the government a cent. "But he has already accomplished more than any I armed expedition could," one interested official told me recently, "because he has made friends with the Indians, got them used to the idea that white men are not necessarily I oppressors. It wilL be easier to deal with them because of that." "I'm ~rfectly sure the Indians won'~ harm me," Tewkesbury himself told me as he was sailing from New York for Panama again a few weeks ago. "When I started out last ' summer I wasn't so sure. I didn't know what · they might do. But I found them human · beings like anybody else. A smile goes a long , way. I wouldn't be afraid now to walk into any Indian settlement in Panama." He is more certain of that, apparently, than are the Indians themselves. Last summer, though the Indians in several ·jungle villages took hini in, they warned him not to I try to go deeper into the territory of neigh · boring tribes. And when one jungle chief conI tracted, for eight dollars, to send two tribes-men to guide him to the coast, the two led ' I him into the jungle for two days ... and then disappeared. I . Vanishing Act WHAT a spot to be in! Two whole days he had been pushing into the jungle - a jungle , so dense that it was all but impossible to get through anywhere except along the streams. Miles back the Indians had left their cayuca, a hollowed-out log boat, because they couldn't push it any farther· over the rocky, shallow rapids, and had led on afoot, wading. Now they had vanished, with their cayuca. Tewkesbury knew that he couldn't get back as he had come: the river below was much too deep for wading. He had to go on. But on- to where? Well, they had been climbing constantly; Tewkesbury figured that j he must. be nearly to the top of the range of mountains that runs along the Isthmus. He . finally verified this by climbing to an eminence , from which, in the distance, he could see the I Caribbean. Obviously he wouldn't be able to go on seeing it once he plunged into the jungle again, but by following the streams I down he had a chance of reaching the shore. The distance he estimated at about thirty miles, a terrific journey considering the kind , of travel it would involve: walking in the ~ater, skirting deep pools, letting himself down over waterfalls. The provisions left in his pack .consisted of one can of corned beef and a couple of handfuls of rice. And his compass was broken. . It took two grueling days to get out, tlle latter part of the trip being negotiated in a soggy, abandoned cayuca that he found on a bank - and' in \)'hich, though a complete novice, he had to shoot rapids that seemed to threaten sure destruction. Long before he found the cayuca his hands were lacerated from graspirig at thorny trees and vines as he scrambled along steep banks, and his clothes were tattered from sliding down precipices. I · It was after all this that he finally got to the coastal village of the Grand Chief Nele de Cantule and explained himself to that puzzled dignitary as a teacher just out for a walk. (Continued on page 13) \ t I TOO Cr.OS. TO TBB CllNAr. Continu.d from page four When he left this summer he was actually hoping that the same situation would arise again. "But this time," he told me, "I'll be ready for it, and instead of making for the coast, I'll head for the Chucunaque River and try to follow it through the interior. I'll try to get to the Indian village of Wla. That's the place I was , ' particularly warned to keep away from; the other Indians refused to take me there. But I'm sure that if I just walk in, they'll accept me. It'll be easy enough." Easy enough! Well, perhaps it would seem easy to a young man who, with no knowledge of the Indian language, thinks nothing of hopping off alone into the Panama jungle. It was on July 6 of last year that Tewkesbury left Balboa for Chepo, the last outpost of vehicular travel. In his , knapsack he had a camera and some film, a compass, a flashlight and a sleeping bag. With the aid of his wife, who is a dietician, he had worked out , a minimum-weight food supply: two cans of corned beef, four cans of sardines, two pounds of rice, a box of oatmeal, saccharine, quinine. That, plus some salt and trinkets for gifts to the Indians, was virtually all of civilization that he was taking. At Chepo, he engaged passage in a cayuca up the Bayano River to EI Llano, the last Panamanian village at the edge of the Indian country,and then on up the river into the Indian , country itself. Days of strenuous paddling and poling over placid waters arid up swirling rapids brought him, about a week after his departure from Balboa, to the Indian village of Pintupu. Here his boatmen left him. The schoolteacher-an-vacation stepped out of his boat and walked up into the village of grass houses as if it were an American summer resort. A brave in a red shirt was leisurely swinging in a hammock. Women with gold rings in their noses, peered out of the doors. Naked children with black streaks painted down their foreheads tagged curiously after him. Tewkesbury bowed to the brave, and inquired: "Fernandus?" That, be had been told, was the name of the village chief. The Indian called several other braves, one of whom knew a few words of English. Femandus, it developed, was away fishing; but an acting chief came, with more braves. Was the white man seeking gold? Tewkesbury assured them he was not. "And after that," he told me, "they were as friendly as anybody could ask. They put 'me up in the chief's house, and I didn't feel any different than I would have felt in a New York note!." Always Good Hosts THAT was the beginning and for a month Tewkesbury lived in Indian villages, where he found his hosts always responsive to a deferential, friendlY approach. Often he had no way of conversing with them except , by' 'sign language, but that sufficed. They always wanted to be sure he was not looking for gold. He ate boiled bananas and mangoes with them, and drank the cocoa soup that seemed to be their main item of fare. From Pintupu he went with two Indians in a cayuca (for five dollars) up the Bayano to the village of Piria. It was the Piria Indians who finally left him alone on the way to the supposedly hostile village of Wla. After he had made his remarkable trek to the coast, he visited several of the coastal Indian villages. He saw and made friends with a number of the albino "white Indians," about whom many weird tales have been told. He sailed do,,\,n the coa.st with THIS WEEK MAGAZINE the Indians, got them to take him inland and show him their trail to the top of the mountain range. Then, leaving the Indians, he went into the jungle again to explore the range. ' This last venture was the most wearing of his whole expedition. For three days he pushed his way along the ridges with only a few sardines and a little rice for nourishment. But the worst part of it was the rainrain that poured down as only tropic rain can, and kept him drenched day and night. It was impossible to start a fire. His fingemail's turned blue and his whole body shook. By the time he got out . of the jungle he had lost fifteen pounds- he weighed only a hundred and ten in the beginning. Even after he got out of the jungle, though, his journey was not ended. The Indians took him to an outpost Panamanian town; and to reach Acandi, Colombia, where he hoped to get passage home, he had to take a perilous night voyage in a flimsy and overcrowded little sailbOat. "All in aU," he wrote in his iiatebook, as he ' was at last sailing home again, "it has been an experience that one should not allow himself to be subjected to a second time." When he sailed again for Panama this summer, I asked him about that seemingly sensible conclusion. He grinned. "I was still a Ii ttle shaky and done-in when I wrote that," he said . . . "I think I really knew all the time that I would be going back." Anyway, now he's there againfinding out, perhaps, whether or not it is true that those Wla Indians will shoot an arrow into the back of any white man who' approaches. If it isn't true, he may bring back information that will affect vital plans for hemisphere defense. If it is true .. . "I have no fears," he said to me as I bade him good-by. He said it calmly, casually, as if he were. informing his mathematics class of an axiom. "I'll see you in the fall."
Object Description
Title | Source Material Relating to Tewkesbury’s trips to the Darien in 1939 and 1940 –Tewkesbury in publicity – periodicals and publications |
Subject |
Exploration Travel Central America Panama Darien |
Description | Box 1: folder 10, Source Material Relating to Richard A. Tewkesbury’s trips to the Darien in 1939 and 1940. Contains excerpts from various periodicals and publications highlighting Tewkesbury and his expeditions. |
Creator | Tewkesbury, Richard Albert (1907-1969) |
Date | 1940-41 |
Collection | Richard Albert Tewkesbury Papers, 1934-1976, n.d. http://findingaids.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/arch/rgrp/21-7-22.html |
Location | Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives; http://archives.lib.iastate.edu/ |
Call Number | RS 21/07/022 |
Identifier | 21-07-022.Tewkesbury.0001-010 |
Rights | U.S. and international copyright laws protect this digital image. Commercial use or distribution of the image is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. For permission to use the digital image, please contact Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives at archives@iastate.edu For reproductions see: http://archives.lib.iastate.edu/using-our-materials/making-copies/photographs-and-documents |
Hardware/Software | Manager's Power Mac G5; Mac OS X; Creo iQsmart3; Kodak oXYgen Scan ver 2.6.1 |
Image Manipulation | none |
Date-Created | 2010-02 |
Description
Title | 21-07-022.Tewkesbury.0001-010-002 |
Collection | Richard Albert Tewkesbury Papers, 1934-1976, n.d. http://findingaids.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/arch/rgrp/21-7-22.html |
Transcription | 1 " ~ THIS WEEK MAGAZINE) Ihtqu"$* I TOO CLOSE TO THE CANAL It's the Panama jungle village of Wla -where no white man ~as ever been permitted to set foot. That is why a North Carolina schoolteacher named Tewkesbury is trying to get in there now-alone! And the U. S. ·government is watching by lldhul' Badlell IT DIDN~T make ~uch sense to. the Indian . chief. Here was this young whIte ma?" who had come out of the jungle - a Jungle. that white men had never before dared ~o explore. And when asked who he was, thIS strange young white man said he was a teac~er of mathematics. And mathematics, he ~ld, had to do with numbers. It was very baffimg to.the chief. , . , It has baffled a lot of Richard Tewkesbury s friends at home, too. A slight, blond young man with a modest manner, he is a teacher of mathematics, holding forth among the students of Harding High, School at C~arlotte, North Carolina. If you should see hIm at a teachers convention, he would fit perfectly into the scene: an earnest young pedagogue with the pleasant persuasiveness that makes a man popular in the classroom. You certainly never would pick him as a swashbuckling adventurer. Yet the fact remains that for several years his regular summer relaxation from algebra and trigonometry has been a singlehanded trek into some part of the world where he could match his will and wits and endurance against dangerous uncertainties and unknowns. Poking on foot into place~ where tourists never go, climbing mountams that couldn't be climbed, following trails that led from nowhere to nowhere - that has been Richard Tewkesbury's idea of fun for ye~rs . India, Japan, Mexico and all sorts of outlymg places have been his summerplaygro~ds .. Last summer, Richard Tewkesbury s vacation trip began):o interest a lot of important people. And ,right now a lot more important people - people who, in the face of a. wOrld . crisis, are charged with the perfection of America's plans for a hemisphere defenseare waiting for the return of Richard TewIresbury from tltis summer's vacation trip. If he returns. For · the high-school teacher fr0fD Charlotte has gone back to the junglea&:~m in what might well be called Darkest Amenca. Few realize that almost · at our own back door there lies a region still uncivilized, s~iIl closed to white men - a region that rem~ms in the hands of primitive Indians, whose cluefs rule without regard to the constituted author: ities of the land, and who have a reputation for killing any outlander who intrudes upon , them. Yet fifty miles or so ?eyond the Panama Cat1 |
Format | |
File Size | 1571812 Bytes |