This is a guest post by Champ Turner, a Junior Fellow in the Geography and Map Division.
Many of the things named after Theodore Roosevelt—a national park in North Dakota, a lake in Arizona, an island in the Potomac, and a ubiquitous stuffed toy bear—speak to the 26th president’s affinity for the outdoors and his legacy of conservation in the United States. But going farther afield, one finds a curious namesake with a fascinating backstory. This is the Roosevelt River, a 470-mile-long tributary of the Madeira River located deep in the Brazilian Amazon. The river—formerly called the “River of Doubt”—was named in Roosevelt’s honor after he explored it as part of the Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition of 1913–14, a voyage that nearly cost the former president his life.
Although the River of Doubt was uncharted at the time of Roosevelt’s exploration, much of the groundwork had already been laid by the other half of the Roosevelt-Rondon duo. Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon (1865–1968) was a Brazilian Army officer and explorer who led a series of important telegraph-laying and boundary expeditions in western Brazil between the 1890s and 1930s. Shown below are two maps from one of his border surveys (1927–30), depicting Brazil’s borders with Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia.
These maps illustrate the momentous task of building infrastructure in these isolated regions. Many of the telegraph lines, road networks, and railways visible here were established through Rondon’s previous efforts. In recognition of his pivotal role in modernizing Brazil and extending the reach of the government into remote territories, the western state of Rondônia was named in his honor.
Rondon’s unique ability to negotiate with and “pacify” Indigenous Brazilian tribes made his efforts especially effective. Himself of Indigenous descent, Rondon founded the Indian Protection Service (SPI) in 1910 to help safeguard Indigenous communities by supporting their integration into modern Brazilian society. Despite his good intentions, the SPI was disbanded in the 1967 after its agents were found responsible for serious abuses. Additionally, industries that benefited from these mapping projects—farming, ranching, and mining—were involved in displacing Indigenous communities. Though his pro-contact approach caused unintended harm, Rondon is remembered in Brazil for his early and forceful defense of Indigenous rights, encapsulated by the phrase “die if you must, but never kill.”
By the time Teddy Roosevelt came calling, Rondon had spent over twenty-five years exploring the Amazon. Roosevelt, fresh off his loss in the 1912 presidential election, sought the outdoors as a test of strength and character. To coincide with a speaking tour of South America, he set his sights on exploring the Amazon and was connected with Rondon, by then a national figure in Brazil. With the sponsorship of the American Museum of Natural History, Roosevelt travelled to Brazil in October 1913, along with his son Kermit and a team of naturalists. Against the reservation of his sponsors, Roosevelt and Rondon decided to explore and map an uncharted tributary—known only as the “River of Doubt”—whose source Rondon had previously established.
After documenting wildlife and encountering Indigenous groups along the Paraguay River, the party reached the River of Doubt’s headwaters on February 27, 1914. Navigating by canoe, Rondon led a methodical survey of the river. Frequent rapids meant long portages, and the four-month expedition was fraught with dangers: limited supplies, disease, injury, and even violence. Two deaths occurred—one porter drowned, and another was murdered in an intra-party dispute. Illness plagued the group, and Roosevelt himself was incapacitated for the latter part of the voyage with an infected leg wound and fever (likely malaria). He was reportedly near death when the party encountered rubber-tappers, who led them to safety.
When news of the expedition’s completion reached the U.S., publishers rushed to capitalize on the sensation, even before all the details were known. This map published by the July 1914 bulletin of the American Geographical Society depicts the “approximate route” followed by Roosevelt and Rondon.
Roosevelt published his account of the voyage, Through the Brazilian Wilderness, in 1914. Shortly after, an official map of the newly christened “Roosevelt River” was published by Rondon and Lt. João Salustiano Lyra, dated 1914 (with this edition being printed in 1917). The map credits Roosevelt for his “honorable leadership” of the expedition. Published in four sheets (two of which are held by the Library of Congress), Rondon’s map is a testament to his commitment to rigor and accuracy, even during the most harrowing parts of the expedition. Sheet 1 begins at the put-in point on the Roosevelt River and features numbered campsites, portages, tributaries, and topography. Sheet 4 depicts the final leg down the Aripuanã River to its confluence with the Madeira.
Roosevelt died in 1919. Although he published a memoir of the expedition, some of his claims were met with skepticism. It was not until 1927 that the Roosevelt River was explored again—this time by George Miller Dyott (1883–1972), who affirmed the findings of the Roosevelt–Rondon Expedition.
The map shown here is a partial copy of Rondon’s published survey, once owned and annotated by Dyott. In addition to tracking his route against Roosevelt’s (“TR arrived Assahy on March 6th ”), Dyott noted logistical and geographical observations (“3rd camp left gas”; “Indian houses”; “surveying instruments abandoned”). The map is a fascinating source of dialogue between two expeditions tracing thirteen years apart.
Though neither Roosevelt nor Rondon are best remembered (or would likely care to be) for the expedition, both of their names live on side-by-side in the Amazon: Roosevelt’s namesake river has its source in the state of Rondônia. Even Kermit got his own river, a tributary of the Roosevelt. The Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition is today a lesser-known and colorful chapter in American and Brazilian history, though it remains just shy of infamous.
Discover more about the Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition in this Library research guide.
Comments
Thank you for this hidden and wonderful review. These expeditions, which contributed to our understanding of these exotic and dangerous places, are fascinating and captivating—even with their dangers and risks. The figures of Roosevelt and Rondón—especially the latter—are truly admirable.