A hundred years before Joe Biden became the first sitting president to visit the Amazon rainforest while dodging reporter’s questions, Teddy Roosevelt almost died on his own far more daring expedition.
While the 81-year-old Biden took a helicopter tour, the 55-year-old two-term Republican toured an uncharted territory, ended up with malaria and was nearly bitten by a venomous snake that latched itself onto his leather boot.
Roosevelt was fresh off a humiliating defeat in the 1912 election and looking for adventure. His third party ‘Bull Moose’ run ended in the defeat of his successor and the election of Woodrow Wilson.
Restless and ready for challenge no matter the risk, Roosevelt contacted Brazilian authorities to propose an expedition.
He ended up teaming up with indigenous Brazilian explorer Cândido Rondon, and undertaking a 2,500 mile trek. Not everyone in their traveling party made it back alive.
‘I have already lived and enjoyed as much of life as any nine other men I know. I have had my full share, and if it is necessary for me to leave my bones in South America, I am quite ready to do so,’ Roosevelt told friends.
The months long adventure would bring toil, triumph and treachery, which stood in stark contrast to Biden’s four-hour visit to the region Sunday to promote preservation.
(Biden, 81, who is overcoming his own party’s defeat in the November elections, took a 57-minute helicopter tour, visited a museum, and gave remarks to a group of reporters. The sound of maracas played by indigenous tour guides drowned out a shouted question as he walked away on a dirt path).
The Roosevelt-Rondon expedition involved 100 men, who travelled the unexplored River of Doubt by canoe, barge, and steamboat during the treacherous journey, sometimes traveling on foot and by horseback, according to a detailed 2023 Smithsonian Magazine look back at the epic expedition.
They spent more than two months traversing a swamp, then switched to leaky canoes for the river descent punctuated by rapids.
Sometimes they ate spider monkeys and turtle for sustenance when supplies ran low. ‘The fresh meat was most acceptable to all,’ wrote naturalist George Cherrie.
Like Biden, Roosevelt had family along for support.
His son Kermit came in part to look after his 54 year old father at his mother’s request.
Biden had granddaughter Natalie and daughter Ashley in tow for one of his last foreign trips as president.
Biden was accompanied on his jaunt by a team of armed Secret Service agents, plus his longtime press secretary Karine-Jean Pierre and Communications Director Ben LaBolt as well as advisors.
TR had a team of indigenous, and mixed African and European ‘backwoodsmen’ to lead the way. Some of them also bore arms, which played a role in a tragic turn.
‘They were expert river-men and men of the forest, skilled veterans in wilderness work,’ according to Roosevelt. ‘They were equally at home with pole and paddle, with ax and machete.’
Their aptitude was needed when calamities struck. They had to stop repeatedly to get their bearings on the winding river as it made its way to Manaus, where Biden stopped Sunday.
They faced perilous rapids. Kermit developed boils on his thighs. They had to portage canoes across rough terrain and try to lower them down rapids.
At one point, the former president’s son had to cling, exhausted, to a capsized canoe. One boatman, Antônio Simplício da Silva, was presumed drowned. His body was never found.
‘This morning our first serious misfortune faces us! The two old big canoes forming the larger of the two balsas broke away last night and are smashed on the rocks!’ wrote Cherrie, who accompanied Roosevelt.
Newly encountered indigenous tribes were a concern. A dog that was guarding their encampment was found killed by poison-tinged arrows. Mosquitoes, ants, and dwindling provisions posed risks.
Roosevelt groused about the threats to his son in the lead canoe and the slow pace of advancement amid Rondon’s meticulous scientific mapping. ‘Great men don’t concern themselves with minor details,’ he said, using a phrase that Donald Trump sometimes fancies.
A paddler, Julio de Lima, who had been stealing supplies, ended up shooting another member of the party, Manoel Vicente da Paixão, killing him. The group captured his rifle and left him in the jungle.
The men encountered the body ‘where the murderer had turned into the forest after committing his cowardly awful deed,’ wrote Cherrie in his diary.
Roosevelt had gashed his knee and had other health difficulties. He told Rondon dramatically: ‘The expedition cannot delay. On the other hand, I can’t go on. Move on and leave me!’ He caught a fever and bizarrely started reciting Coleridge’s poem ‘Kubla Khan.’ He would have to go an operation on his leg during the journey. Roosevelt, who liked to go on safari and as president liked to around Washington D.C.’s Rock Creek park, got an abscess on on his right buttock and couldn’t sit.
Finally on April 26 they reached the confluence of the Castanho and the Aripuanã Rivers.
Rondon renamed the River of Doubt after his exploring partner to Roosevelt River, a name that remains today.
Roosevelt completed his excursion in May by doing something Biden didn’t hazard in the jungle: holding a press conference. ‘We have put on the map a river nearly one thousand miles long,’ he told reporters. ‘It is the biggest tributary of the biggest tributary of the most magnificent river in the world.’
