Source Material Relating to Tewkesbury’s trips to the Darien in 1939 and 1940 –Tewkesbury in publicity – periodicals and publications

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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)
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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."