SHAMAN PHARMACEUTICAL
TRIP NOTES: Dec ‘93—Jan ‘94 PERU
FROM OUR ARRIVAL IN IQUITOS THROUGH THE REBUILDING OF THE JACARE, THE COLLECTION OF PLANTS ON THE RIO JIVARI AND THE RETURN TO IQUITOS
by Peter Gorman

NOTES ON A PLANT COLLECTING TRIP

After a small but successful trip collecting herbarium specimens and bulk medicines from the Matses in the Spring of 1993, Steven King okayed a similar trip to the Matses on the Rio Jivari for later in the year. This time though, it was to include Dr. Tom Carlson, whom I’d been told was marvelous to travel with.

As the trip was being planned, Dr. Carlson requested that his partner, Alison Wright, be permitted to join us as well. He argued that she was a world class photographer who had spent several years in Tibet and would not only travel well but would prove herself an asset with the cameras and an extra pair of good strong hands. I was skeptical: the jungle, with which she had no experience, is a difficult environment, and it’s easy to pick up tropical bugs and diseases. Too, 30 days on a small boat is very problematic, and each new passenger squares the probability of frayed nerves which can affect the success of the trip.

Ultimately I decided to welcome her to join us, in part because of Tom’s assurances that she would be an asset, and in part because my own partner, a Peruana, was scheduled to be along as our cook, and I thought that this would then be the most right, and perhaps only, time to have someone’s partner along.

It’s not a decision I regret, though I don’t know that I would make the same choice again. Notwithstanding Alison being terrific personally, proving herself an asset on several occasions, and a quality photographer, she did get bad secondary infections to mosquito bites over her entire body, something probably anyone without jungle experience would on a trip of that length. Did they interfere with the trip? No. But they were a cause for concern for all of us, and the less concerns on a long trip the better.

Once it was settled that Alison would be joining us I began purchasing the things I needed for the trip from the states with the Shaman expense advance, and called Iquitos to insure that the boats I’d arranged for a couple of months earlier would be ready, and that my guide Moises, who would be joining us for about a week, was getting things lined up.

Those things taken care of, I arrived in Iquitos on December 6, 1993, carrying some 48 plastic jugs for plant collecting, nearly 20 pounds of beads—which the people who live on the Rio Jivari really do insist on my bringing—a good supply of medicines, and a host of small presents I’d been asked to bring by friends and associates there. I’d run into Tom and Alison in the Miami airport enroute, and they were flying on to Lima, giving me a week to get things set up prior to their arrival. I was thankful for that since I assumed Gilma and I could get things set up more quickly alone than we could with other people around.

But problems arose immediately. On the personal front, Gilma, who had been such an asset on the previous trip for Shaman, had a new boyfriend, which was not only an emotional problem I was stuck dealing with, but a logistical one was well. She had learned what a trip like this entailed from her previous experience with me and I was counting on her to do a great deal of the work. Without her I was flying solo, a scary thought made scarier when neither of the two boats I had arranged to have ready, were.

One of them, the Lucerito, a two decked boat with cabins and a 100 hp motor—as well as having its own 45 hp outboard and a peque-peque, had just taken over a lucrative route delivering soda and beer on the Rio Napo and was not going to give that up for a one month run. The second, the Rey David, the same boat I’d previously used and which was getting a new motor, had been sold just a week earlier after the new motor proved good. The new owner was converting it to a fishing boat and had no interest in my renting it for a long trip during the height of the fishing season. A third boat I’d thought I’d lined up for just such emergencies—which was being built by an American working for PetroPeru—was unfinished and the owner needed several thousand dollars to complete it. Finishing his boat for him was out of the question.

Which meant that within a day of my arrival I found myself without the aid of my partner and without a boat. I began to take trips to every port in and around Iquitos looking for a boat but had no luck. Most of those that were river ready were already working; a couple of owners said they’d rent to me but wanted a thousand dollars or more a week; the remainder didn’t function.

But I’d put the word out and people began getting back to me, one of whom—a person I thought reasonably reliable—said he knew of a boat that was currently in dry dock and needed a little work, but would be perfect for what I wanted.

It turned out to be a big old fishing boat sitting on its side on a balsa raft in the middle of Belen, the locals’ port. It had no motor, half a roof, no kitchen or food storage cabinets: in short, it wasn’t really a boat at all, just a phosphorescent lime green carcass lying in the middle of the river. I met with the owner who assured me it was a good boat with a motor under ordinary repairs, and that if I wanted he would remove the camarote, the box fishermen hold their catches in to keep them alive on long trips, and put in a deck for me. And it did allegedly have a 36 HP Yagma and was large enough for us at 15 meters long and 3 1/2 meters wide. I told the owner, Hector, to start work but kept looking for something already in the water.

Nothing materialized, so I decided to put my money on Hector—I’d run into a couple of people who didn’t like him but did say his boat was a great boat, which gave me some solace—and gave him a hundred dollars to get started working on it.

Tom and Alison were to arrive just 7 days after me and at the appointed day I still had nothing visible ready for the trip. I didn’t want to blow things with Shaman, so I thought I’d lie to them, stall them a little hoping for a miracle. But at the last minute, actually while Tom was on the way down to the lobby of his hotel to meet me on the day of his arrival, I decided to go with the truth. He said hello, and asked how things were. I answered plainly. “No boat. No prospects. Uh-oh.”

I thought he might cancel things right then, but he just laughed. It was a good sign. I decided to take them for a beer on the Amazon, a local bar overlooking the river, and while there decided to try the truth even further: I asked if they wanted to go out to Belen to see the best boat I had lined up. I figured that might be the absolute end of the trip but I also figured that if Tom really did have experience in the Third World he would understand how you could have boats lined up and then have them disappear.

We canoed out to the green hulk at sunset to discover that Hector had taken the hundred bucks I’d bet on him and hired a work crew. Six or eight men had already stripped out the camarote and a master carpenter was working on measuring for a deck. It was something of a miracle, ants crawling all over this dead animal hoping to bring it back to life.

In nine days they did, and on the tenth we painted the interior and tested the motor. During those same nine days I got the boat’s papers in order, got our own permissions okayed with the local Generals and the Mayor, bought supplies and food, got a licence for a shotgun and purchased one, and looked for a peque-peque or an outboard to bring with us. Tom had some work to do with Franklin Ayala, so most of the boat and equipment was left to me—though he did shop with me on a couple of occasions and was a great painter at the boat painting party—a great but exhausting job. By the time we were ready I was several hundred dollars over budget, some for the added days in Iquitos, most for the boat which I chose to pay for and get done rather than balk at and not have done.

Just for the record, this is one of the lists I made after I’d already taken care of a lot for the trip:

SOME THINGS I NEED

Small boat.
Spare parts.
Oil drums
Cocina/pots/pans/plates/bowls/plastic containers/silverware
Large plastics for food
Food planning
Fish hooks/line, etc.
Boat plastic/boat paint/brushes/kerosene
Light bulbs/lanterns
Newspaper for herbarium specimens
Permissions from the military to pass the frontier
Zarpe to leave the port
Gun license
Hire a cook/motorist/timonel
Heavy ropes/
Spark plugs
Generator
Get benches made
Tables: two. One for team, one for me
Spare propeller
Hammocks/blankets
Plastics for washing clothes/scrubbers/soaps
Oil for motor/oil change
Kitchen stove/kerosene
Plastic containers for kerosene/oil/gasoline/alcohol
Alcohol for plant conservation
Remainder of Indian gifts: knives/pots/pans/machetes/more cartuches/batteries/dried bread
Go over medical kit. Tom says he has lots: let’s see Toilet paper/towelling/rags

THINGS TO SEE TO ON THE BOAT:

Get roof retarred
Get kitchen built
Get food locker built
Get locks for cabinets
See to finish of the deck/calking/trap door to below decks
Get it painted again
Get it named/register the name/paint name on boat
Get all documents and have them signed by military general and mayor of Iquitos to avoid future problems
Get hooks in place for lanterns
See to motobombe for hull water removal
Get a peque-peque motor
Get life jackets
See if there really are running lights for night travel
Ask Hector to list anything I might have forgotten

(NOTE: All of the above, with the exception of a small boat, were taken care of. We did bring a peque-peque motor, and could have used it on several occasions had we also had a small boat, but I just didn’t get it taken care of in time. I looked at dozens, but the best price I got was $200. American for the month. One of the problems of being a gringo! Next time I get the small boat first.)

During this time, while Tom didn’t say it, I knew he was annoyed at how slow things seemed to be moving, though for Iquitos they were happening at breakneck pace. I don’t think he really had any idea that there was no other feasable way to get the things we needed over to the Rio Jivari. Planes, with the exception of the Air Force cargo plane, are out, since none can carry much weight and certainly none will carry gasoline. And even if we rented the expensive cargo plane—which we didn’t have money for but which will carry gas and can carry whatever tonnage we were bringing—there was no guarantee of a boat being available at Angamos, the military base at the mouth of the Galvez. Even if there was, there is nothing there that can go all the way up to the Yagua to collect plants, a trip of several hundred kilometers from the Galvez.

So while Tom, I suspect, secretly fumed at the unexpected delay, I thought things were going well. I did determine never to have a Shaman collector wait in Iquitos again while I get things ready. Next time I’ll go on ahead and call when things are set. That way I’ll be waiting, and they—or he—will only need to spend a couple of days in Iquitos getting personal permissions to travel the restricted regions before leaving.

We left on the 11th day after Tom’s arrival, six days more than I thought it would take. (He arrived on a Saturday, you can’t get papers on Sunday, and Monday was a local holiday so again no papers; Tuesday and Wednesday I thought we could get the papers for Tom and Alison, as well as our zarpe, port permission to leave, and I thought we’d take off on Thursday. We actually left the following Wednesday.) But the extra days meant less time in the field, since Tom had a specific return date, something I regret.

Our crew consisted of Tom and Alison, myself and Moises, our motorist, Golber, and his assistant Lucio, and a cook, Lydia. None of the crew, typical of that part of the world, had ever been on the Jivari, but all had heard stories about its black crocodiles, wild Indians, and 20 meter anacondas. Moises was being paid in part to quell those fears and keep the crew from simply quitting when we reached the frontier.

We took two–and-a-half days to reach Letecia, at the mouth of the Jivari. There we got stuck for Christmas (celebrated on Christmas eve, so no permission to leave for both days), and didn’t finally get onto the Jivari until the 26th of December. It was a long and hard prep, and I knew that if I didn’t come up with some plants soon Tom would toss me to the fish.

We travelled Sunday night and stayed at Atalaya, where we spoke with several people about entering the Rio Itui. Concensus, among loggers who have worked there, is that with our boat we will need between 2 and 4 days to reach the first Indian villages, and from there another 2-4 days to reach the Matis who live upriver. I do not believe there is any river that is 8 days long in this part of the world, except for the Amazon: the entire Jivari is only 5 or 6, going upriver, in our boat. But four days I could believe, and that means 6 at least, including coming out, and another couple to collect plants. But Tom had an appointment at Peter Jensen’s camp in mid-January, and time wouldn’t allow for an 8 day game of chance in the hopes of getting plants, so we decided to forego it. That will be another trip. Besides, we had no plant collecting permits for Brazil, and we didn’t want to put Shaman in the position of doing something illegal. But we got the information we need, so we can do the Itui at a later date.

On Monday we reached the village of Buen Sucess. Though it looks like a mestizo village it is the home of the Yagua. Though all official reports say there are no Yagua on the Jivari, I met them years ago and knew we could find them, though I couldn’t remember the name of the village.

It was late in the afternoon by the time we reached them, and though they initially denied being Yagua and also denied that anyone knew plant medicines there, Moises worked his magic, and I a little too, and we were told that Jose Marin was the man we must see. He is called the Father of To-E, the Father of Datura. Said to be a very good healer.

We made our way up a hill to his hut: he was quite mestizoized, 40-ish, strong, slightly bandy-legged and full of good humor. Moises got to work quickly in the dying light: he was magnificent in explaining what we needed. Though Jose Marin spoke Spanish he needed to be cajoled into talking and then cooperating. Like the picunas, blow guns, they all use there, no one admits to having them.

Moises asked Tom for the book of disease photos and begins to go over them. I made notes as we went, on the herbarium collection sheets, so we’d have some specific things to look for the following day. Jose acknowledged hepatitis, Tinea Rosea, a variety of salpurgidas (spelling?)—fungal infections. He told us he has cures for many, many of the infirmities he was looking at. It was an exciting moment: I could almost hear Tom C breathe a sigh of relief.

In the morning, we went over the material again prior to setting out. This time it was Tom who went over the photos while I filled in the blanks on the interviews from last night: plant names, uses, preparations and applications. Jose was affable and more than a little happy that we were so interested in his work. Like so many communities in Peru, particularly indigenous communities, people are frequently embarrassed about their traditions, seeing them as old-fashioned and beneath them. So he, like so many Indians out here, has never before been asked about his knowledge by whites—most of whom want artifacts or to missionize—and was flattered by the thought. So he was more than willing to share a little of it.

I had Tom stop at six disease types and nine plants (three were combination cures) so that we could keep Jose focused. Tom was a little resistant at first, but when it was explained to him that the Indians out here would not work like some of the people he was used to working with—that is, they were not available to us for more than a day, or a day and a half, maximally—he went along with the idea. I saw on my first trip that these guys would collect 50 plants if you let them just go, but that they’d not stick around long enough to get the proper number of specimens and quantity of bulk collection, so I learned that it was better to go for five in the morning, and four or five in the afternoon, then finish the collection the following morning. That way you really get 8 or 10 plants and get them good, rather than having 20 or 30 incomplete and useless collections.

At 8:30 AM we set off to collect, a troup of Tom, Alison, Moises, myself, Jose Marin, a younger Yagua, and Golber, carrying Alison’s camera gear.

The first plant we went after was the Red Pinon, a beautiful cultivated Euphorbiaceae family member, and a cousin of the castor bean Tom explained. The family is heavy in latex and good for medicinal substances. It is a beautiful shrub of a plant used by Jose Marin for the treatment of Candida/oral thrush. We immediately got the herbarium specimens but were short on the bulk.

Moved to a second plant which had both red flowers and fruit. It was in the same Euphorbiaceae family as the Red pinon. Jose identified it as the White Pinon, which Tom disagreed with. The plant was a sort of thick woody shrub with two elongated (three meters each) branches coming right out of a short trunk at ground level. Like a knot of wood with two branches. The trunk and branches were covered in beautiful white bark; the leaves a lustrous green with a tart sap. The plant easily produces two kilos of material for us.

Tom was looking for 2-3 kilos of bulk per plant. This was up from 1-2 of the last trip. But with Tom making herbarium specimens and three of us collecting bulk (Alison photographing) the process was fast, efficient, smooth. In twenty minutes we had our collection. One plant in the bag.

Okay, Mr. King, send me back again. There are plants on the Jivari.

After the misnamed White Pinon we moved through the village chacras, fields, and under the canopy of a secondary forest. Jose seemed pleased to work with us and he was like a pied-piper leading us down the forest path until we reached legitimate first growth (or very advanced second) where the underbrush disappeared and the tall tall trees reigned. Flowers and fungus and llianas cascaded down and crawled up the thick and mottled trunks.

At the third plant we collected, clabowasca, a lliana, we had to begin working hard. We cut long sections and tore off full strips of bark and while we did Moises drank the sweet clabo water from the vine’s sections. Tom had the idea to cut the strips into sections right there, rather than waiting until we returned to the boat, and all of us went along. In short order the bark bulk was easily 3 kilos. The problem lay in the herbarium specimens. Clabowasca is generally found only in the tall old trees, and it flowers more than 80 feet above the ground. In this case it was probably closer to 100 feet above the ground, and despite having cut the vine it was impossible to pull it free.

Fortunately, Jose, with little urging and without the aid of a climbing ring, grabbed the now-free vine above the cut and made his way up its trunk until he could grab a slender tree and shinny up into the canopy. His legs were flat out parallel to the ground at the knees, haunches like two round fruits of pure muscle as he pulled himself up and up and into the lower foliage, then higher, into the thick green of the lower canopy, until he finally disappeared.

We called out for him to be careful: our trip depended on it, and we would rather have lost a plant than a man. But he knew what he was doing, moving easily in the high branches, tearing off leaves, stems and fruit and tossing them down through the canopy like spears to the forest floor.

Minutes later we saw the electric blue of his Adidas shorts and then the sinew of his muscled legs and finally his tee shirt and head appeared. He slid down the smooth bark of the tree quickly and without stopping.

I’d never seen anyone climb higher than 20 feet without a climbing ring before and may never again. It’s simply not done. He was an amazing sight.

Up the trail further we came on the cumala, a beautiful tree, the resin of which is used for the treatment of herpes when mixed with the White Pinon (sic). The bark was stripped from the tree trunk in a vertical motion with a machete held horizontal to the ground; It comes off easily and when it does a blood like red resin flows from the open wound.

Tom was pleased: he was confident that Jose was the real article because of the length of time he said it takes for his remedies to work. On one question Jose says it took a full month to treat a disorder; Tom later said that that is the same length of time it takes to treat it with Western medicine in the states.

We moved into a new chacra where we harvested the cascara , bark, of the chuchuwasca, a large tree which was cut down to make space for yucca. Jose said it was still potent.

The chuchuwasca’s outer bark was mottled, but it had a yellow inner bark, beneath which was a layer of rich red clay/sawdust material that crumbled to the touch. Boiled up it’s used for ringworm, Tinea Caporis, and that jibed with both Tom’s medical and botanical knowledge.

Once we finished the harvest we called it quits for the morning.

On the way back to the village we stopped to make one more collection, the carachapanga, used in the treatment of caracha, a ringworm.

It was a tall, stately, 100 foot monster of a tree, a key element of the canopy here, though it’s leaves were more like a strange mimosa than an oak, with sap, we were warned, that is extremely caustic.

From the carachapanga we took a layer of balsa-ish inner bark 1/2 inch thick and cut it into small pieces. Golber seemed to have learned how to do the cutting of the bark the way Tom likes, and he didn’t seem to mind. Still, I’d have preferred we brought a field hand along rather than work our motorist/captain this way.

Several species of ants lived on the outer layer of the carachapanga, many of which stung bitterly. But we got what we needed, though the herbarium specimens were collected from the ground, since there was no way to climb that monster (3 foot diameter) covered in stinging ants to collect fresher material.

By the time we returned to camp it was apparent that it was too late to go back out for an afternoon collection. So day one ended with 5 1/2 collections. (Day 2 opened with Jose coming to the boat with the remainder of the bulk we needed for the Red Pinon collection, so we started our second day with him with a legitimate six plants under our belt. All felt better after our first day with him than we had before.)

NOTE: A village man was bitten in the evening, one fang of the lorro machacko, a viper, he said, though it looked more like a scorpion bite. He wanted Tom to give him medication; we held off and gave him something for pain, that’s all. They know better there how to deal with things of that sort and all we’d have needed was to have his swollen foot and ankle take a turn for the worse because of a bad reaction to Western medication.

The second day we completed collecting nine of our initial 10 plants, bulk and herbarium specimens. We were missing one because the water was very high and Jose didn’t have a canoe big and stable enough to carry us into a lake across the river, the only place where we might find it during high water season.

The afternoon of the second day we cleaned up our notes, going over the interviews and plants a second time (something I learned was necessary, considering how little botanical knowledge I have, when I worked with Pablo last year. Sometimes they change their minds about a particular preparation, or the duration of a medication after they’ve thought about it for a while, and sometimes I just don’t get it right the first day, so it’s good to do the interviews a second time to make sure the information matches what was initially said.) Additionally, we took field notes from Tom, most on my tape recorder, of the locale, look of the plant, feel of the bark, what insects are around, things we might forget or mis-write later.

The third day, we went out and collected two more plants, one a soga, vine, and the other a black-palm fruit, which brought us to 11 collections.

Most of Jose Maren’s remedies were bark or fruit derived, most of his plants fairly local. There was the problem that a number of remedies he would have liked to give us were found in the river bed when the water is low, which was flooded while we were there so we couldn’t go after them. But he did offer us a return trip of 10-15 days if we like, when the water is low, in July. Promised that he knows more than 100 plants but we need time and low water. He also said there is another healer in the village who was out in the field.

NOTE: While at the village we were treated to a most rare and unusual sight: in one of the houses near where we were waiting for Jose I spied in and saw an elder, antigua, Yagua, making up curare darts. A cord of them being woven into a skein. His curare was in a small blue plastic jar, his row of darts lined up perfectly, curare applied by a cotton-tipped dart. He’d occasionally dip it into the jar and paint the dart tips a full inch deep with the rich rich thick brown paste. He handled it adroitly, drying each layer he painted over his fire before applying a second coat.

His wife, next to him, mashed fresh fruit of achote, red pulp she collected to color her food. She laughed when asked if she still painted her face with it. “Antigua” she said. Next to her were cooking and chicha pots she made with clay, and they sat next to gleaming aluminum pots and pans. How I wanted one of those pots for the museum! But I managed to keep my cool and not ask. Better to get it next time, when I find one that’s broken under her house.

But the curare was magnificent!

The couple was accommodating, allowing photos, moving into sunlight when asked, shooting the blow gun and so forth all at our request with no question of asking of gifts. Of course there were gifts: bread, salt, beads, kitchen knife, crackers, coffee and fish hooks in a nice white Shaman plant collection bag.

They in turn gave us 14 curare darts and a homemade wooden mortar and pestle. The darts, fresh and wet, were woven into a short skein. Tom was given four of them: One each for he and Alison; one for Steven King, and one for the offices of Shaman. Of the remainder, Moises got one, the museum got several, and I keep the few left over for my collection of things.

Before we left the village, Tom asked if there were any villagers who might need his medical attention. In short order we had a boat full of Yagua who needed a little doctoring: one child who had scabies and three who had severe diarrhea. After they left we stepped overboard for a last splash then set off for Angelica’s home. She’s the former Matses prisoner whom we met her years ago and I was hoping that she knew a little something about plants.

COLLECTION DATES WITH JOSE MAREN, YAGUA, ATPUEBLO BUEN SUCESS, RIO JIVARI:
DECEMBER 27, 28, 29, 30, 1993

December 30. Night. I knew there was a Mayoruna pueblo nearby—like the Yagua, I’d visited it in 1988—and began looking three hours after we left Buen Sucess. Found it 6 hours after we left Buen Sucess.

High on a hill, a dot of light. We pulled in under a bright but obscured full-moon, to a tiny port on the Brazilian side of the river. Expertly parked in the dark by our motorist, Golber. It was the village of El Moron.

Pulled up around 7 PM and Moises and I climbed up the long dark hill. Halfway up our flashlights shone on three young girls. There was an eerie moment: they giggled then and ran away. Though we knew there would be no trap it was still eerie that there were no men about. That lasted only a moment before we saw the light of a flash in the woods. We called out Bi-ram-bo, the Mayoruna greeting, and got no response. Again: Bi-ram-bo. Again nothing but the movement of a flash. And then Moises, taking the lead, ran towards it and I followed closely. If there was going to be a problem it was for both of us.

But there was none. It was only a young Matses man, and then another, and in a moment there are three or four, and others behind and around us, suddenly. I wondered if this is was the way they would have done it in warfare days, or if it just happened this way. Because we quite suddenly were surrounded.

They came down to the boat after an invite for coffee and we tried to establish good intentions. We asked about plants and were told that no one knew plants there. This is a FUNAI place. No curanderos. The FUNAI is the doctor and frowns on competition. We didn’t believe them but it was late and we didn’t want to argue and jeopardize a chance to work with them.

A short time after we woke the next morning, Dec. 31, our Mayoruna friends arrived. Among them a young man named Jose whom we met the previous night. Others joined and soon we had a boatload of Mayoruna and Jose was explaining that his wife’s father, Joachin Mayoruna, knew some plants. We sent for him and he came and was a perfect Matses: ancient tatoo, legs like a work horse, skin like a snake, eyes that simply don’t recognize you as human. We knew, Moises and I, that if he would take us out we’d get some plants. He was antigua and he would know, like all the antiguas, though he was probably only 45.

The village of El Moron proved fruitful. Cajoled by his son in law, who is also his apprentice, Joachin was willing to help us and wasted no time. He simply accepted that there was work to be done and when shown the photos began to talk about almost all of them. Plants for the grippe (di-un); for hepatitis (se-se dow-ud, nes-te!); for fungal infections; tinea corporis (Dash dow-ud!); for measles (shan-te!; the plant; gan-us!, the disease); for candida (sham-an nes-te!); for herpes (chi-wu, the disease; chi-wu dow-ud, the medicine); for tinea capitas (pinch-a dow-ud); for bronchial problems (ti-bo, the disease; ti-bo dow-ud, the plant cure).

I encouraged activity with a few beads and then, with Joachin recognizing everything in sight, we had to stop him after 10, then handed him a machete, and off we marched.

Moises, Tom, Alison, Golber and me, along with Joachin, Jose and three young Matses/Mayoruna. So quite a troop. We passed a soccer field behind the village and stepped beneath the second growth canopy and within a minute Joachin was pointing his machete at a tree. Jose picked up on it and told us we’d arrived at our first plant.

We set down to collect: Alison got her cameras out, I pulled a tape and had Tom do a quick botanical description of the plant and parts. He in turn got out collection bags and snipped off herbarium specimens, then we were off to the races.

While we were settling in to collecting the first plant he pointed out the second and then set off talking about two or three others that we hadn’t discussed. We were not halfway through the first collection when two of the boys went off for plant #2 and Joachin set off looking for #3.

We could see that would lead to mayhem. Tom noticed too and I tried to corral the boys; one at a time kids, but that’s not the Matses way, not in the woods.

Still, we refocused a bit, got #2, then 3 and 4; Alison had this great curandero Matses man to work and was snapping up a storm. Tom had more vouchers being brought to him than we knew what to do with: we’d been out less than 2 hours and filled 12 bags with leaves, bark, fruit which everyone carried some of; then we collected #5 and #6; before Joachin lost interest.

We broke for lunch and returned to the boat utterly exhausted. Six plants, five herbarium specimens and three collection bags jammed full of each between breakfast and lunch. Exhausting, Exhilarating!

After lunch we were out again and quickly get two new plants. Tom passed on one, #9 in our interviews, because he knew the family had been studied extensively, and then the #10 we were told to go back to the boat and wait for.

We didn’t understand but returned and soon saw one of the beautiful young Matses women we met last night in a canoe going across the river to gather the shan-te for us.

While we waited for her another canoe pulled up with a young girl and her mom, who asked us for chacira, the beads I had. We provided some and they returned the favor with a pair of bags of chambira, a palm fiber.

Soon the boat was swarming: word was out we had beads and all wanted some. Maybe 15 people—6 adults and lots of kids—in a sort of swarm. We did what we could then fled. We headed upriver with nine successful collections—all in less than a day’s work!—and made it to Angelica’s home in two hours.


FIELD DAY WITH JOACHIN MAYORUNA AT PUEBLO EL MORON, RIO JIVARI: 12/31/93
PARADISO: RIVER JIVARI

Angelica was home when we arrived at her pueblo, now called Paradiso. Her house had changed location since last we were here, but she greeted Moises and I like old friends. Her home was filled with bright-eyed children, two or three of whom had children of their own. We asked after her and were told all was great. She’s up to 12 children now, all very Matses: beautiful, dark-skinned, almond-eyed. She looked a bit haggard from her child bearing: she’s had five in the past six years alone, but her smile was infectious and her belly laugh fantastic.

Though she didn’t know many medicinal plants, her brother-in-law, Antonio, did. But he was upriver for a fiesta for New Years. We invited Angelica and her older daughters to come with us to the village and the fiesta; she said Antonio would retrieve them if there were girls there, but otherwise she’d skip the party: sometimes there were only drunken men at those affairs and she had to protect her girls. Having been stolen herself years ago, she had a point.

So we set off for an alleged 10 minute ride that took two hours, finally pulling into the flooded front yard of a small house where the party was going to take place.

Ten minutes later three or four Brazileros and a wild-eyed Matses man, also named Joachin, came on board. Joachin was wild:

“ Petro! Petro! Sapo! Champi! Bu-chi champi, Petro!” I know him from a previous trip. He really took over the boat; if we’d have tried to hold him in check I think he would have exploded. He enacted for us his dance of the New Year: A wild dance replete with sex and kissing and then asked if we were going to dance later and who our girl, Alison, was.

We were all exhausted and surprised that there was no party happening yet, so when we got a momentary reprieve we sent everyone off the boat, then opened one of our two remaining bottles of San Francisco champagne and toasted our New Year.

The first didn’t quite cut it so we opened the second as well, poured it out in one sweet blast and just as we did another wave of people came aboard, including Joachin again, who pressed us for petrol for the house lights. The party needed light, he said, and then he enacted frog sweat for us, a brilliant performance: Running, puking, shitting, shaking, mental disorientation, visions, trap-setting. “Five a day, five a day,” he said, and he counted on his fingers, “uno, dos, tres...” and then he got stuck, like Pablo. All of these 35-50 year old guys are much alike: animated, distant look in the eye—though their eyes sparkle—if only we could cut a little of the constant asking for things. This guy wanted money for frog sweat, petrol, canned food, machete, gun, shotgun cartridges, a whole list of things. He got the petrol and some cartridges, but it put us off going to the party, and instead, after a bowl of New Year’s eve chicha, we put them off the boat again then went to bed.

JANUARY 1, 1994. There was no Antonio that we could find at the party the next morning, and Angelica had never arrived so there was no one to point him out, which left us wondering whether to leave or not. But someone, a hip looking jungle guy wearing a mod-squad hairstyle and named Jose Curinugui and his wife Rosa, a beauty of a jungle girl with quick, quick eyes, joined us on the boat and we asked them if they knew Antonio. They did, and we explained we wanted plants from him. Jose and Rosa said the guy we wanted wasn’t around, but Jose said he knew a few things. Taking an instinctive lurch I had Tom show some photos and surprisingly, Jose recognized not only some of the photos but called three of the diseases by name: chicken pox, measles, and hepatitis. Which impressed Tom enough that we interviewed him on five plants and asked if he was free to get them. Sure, he said. We said now and he said okay, but that four of the five were back downriver at Paradiso (his was one of the houses built near Angelica’s).

We decided to get the one which was nearby first, and we soon were heading across the river into a flooded forest in a canoe with Jose and his friend George to skin a tree.

Our boat sailed down the river into a caybrada, a little stream, which opened up onto a beautiful, beautiful lake. Golber got us through the narrow waterway expertly. Then across the lake where we parked at woods’ edge and Tom, Alison and I climbed into a canoe, George at one end, Jose at the other, and took off beneath the trees into a wonderland of flooded forest. No sound except a paujil, no motion but our silent canoe. We spent a brilliant half-hour gliding among the trees before we came to the stately, black-barked, multi-buttressed Remo-caspi tree, the canoe-paddle tree. It soared fantastically skyward, it’s crown part of the canopy overhead through which only speckles of sunlight shone.

The canoe pulled up and George attacked one of the buttresses, chipping away at the cascara, the bark, we needed, trying to make the flying pieces land in the canoe while Alison caught photos and Tom grabbed and bagged the pieces. One buttress finished, it was our turn in the rear and we set to it wildly, Jose cutting, me tearing, grabbing pieces that fell into the water. In half-an-hour had two bottles worth of the bark, perhaps four kilos of material. We thanked the tree and set off looking for a younger one who’s leaves we might use for herbarium specimens.

We returned to the boat after collecting our vouchers, and returned George to his home, leaving him with a machete and a couple of cartridges for his work, then set off for Paradiso and Jose’s back-yard medicines. If we could collect what he said, four more, it would bring us to 25 real collections, half of our goal. Not bad, but always an if.

NOTE: One of the things about collecting with a doctor aboard, instead of alone or with a botanist, is that there is an understanding of the disease mode most of us don’t have. For instance, with the Tinea ungueuem, a mid-range but impossible to treat fungal infection, Tom gets excited when the man collecting the medicine for us explains that we have to cover our eyes when he cuts into the tree his remedy comes from to collect the sap because it’s so caustic. “They’re taking their most caustic medicine to treat a deep fungus,” he says, saying “that shows they’ve got an understanding of the disease.” And for another, Tinea Corporis, another deep fungal infection, when the healer says the treatment takes three months, instead of saying that’s an indication the medicine is weak, Tom gets excited and says, “See, they really understand. They got it. They have the real intimacy with the disease. If they’d said they treat it in a week I’d have thought they didn’t know, but three months! That’s wonderful! They may really have something for that.”

On the other hand, Tom is sometimes skeptical when he needn’t be. He’ll talk of the value of things like the Nicorette patch releasing nicotine through the skin over time but needs to be convinced that a plant used the same way is worth collecting. Of course, he’s not hip to the way these guys strap leaves on and keep them in place for days. He doesn’t have experience with a Matses bath either: sometimes every 10 minutes for days, rather than our idea of a single bath. But generally he knows his stuff. It’s only the particulars of the region he’s not familiar with.

So he brings the disease understanding to the botanical work and vice versa, offering us an insight into the way the two interact which we’d otherwise not have. Good work, Tom.

It was raining by the time we returned to Paradiso, but we were all fired up to try to get a couple of these things so we set off through the woods anyway, Jose in front, his wife Rosa right behind, me following and the rest close on our heels.

Up into the thick, lush underbrush, for half-an-hour we zoomed through the rich secondary forest looking for a catawa tree, and when we found it it was a beauty: tall, stately, its leaves well out of sight in the canopy. We were collecting bark for a resin extract but Rosa had thought to stop by her home to pick up an old coffee pot for direct resin collection and Jose cut into the bark and a river of this thin white latex began to pour from the tear in the cascara. The snout of the aluminum pot was shoved into the bark at the base of the cut and other cuts were added from which the resin flowed into the primary cut. It was the fourth or fifth collection method we’ve seen; a good variety. Then we went of to collect the Santa Maria, from the pepper family, but it was a plant that Tom had already collected, so we passed. But while at the Santa Maria there was a young catawa (ficus, fig family) nearby from which Tom collected voucher specimens to go with the resin.

On our return we found Moises had gotten some caustic catawa juice in his eye—he’d made some new cuts and the latex had spurted onto his face—and he was really hurting. He ran off to cut some roots containing natural mineral water with which to flush, then Tom flushed his eye some more and though he hurt like hell and his eye was red as a beet he wouldn’t go back to the boat.

We kept going, another half-hour through a downpour, to a newly chopped field, as yet unplanted, where Tom collected Lancitia, a measles medicine, and from there we headed back to the boat.

Moises was put to bed after some topical antibiotic cream was applied and we set off to find the ungurahui tree, the green fruit of which is pulped and drunk as a remedy for a deep fungal infection that results in horrible sores around the nose, ears, mouth and eyes, as well as in the lungs.

The locale for the ungurahui, a palm fruit which we all eat in ice cream form in Iquitos and which the Matses call I-san, was at the end of a logging road made by a huge tractor, one of the sorts of cuts into the earth you expect in Brazil but rarely see on the Jivari. On the muddy road, in a small leaf shack, was another Matses man. The river is now full of them it seems. This one is named Antonio and he is another wildman. He walked us through the muddy-water filled logging tracks for about a mile until we came to the beautiful I–san. Jose set to work cutting the tree; it was too slippery to climb. When Alison began to shoot Antonio went wild for the camera and she allowed him to take a few photos as well.

Unfortunately, after being soaked all day and halfway to our knees in mud, the damned tree got caught in the canopy. The tree it got stuck in was also cut and it also got stuck in the canopy, so here we were massacring trees while complaining about the loggers. Jesus, is there instant karma or what? Fortunately a young man who was with us found a young I-san palm full of fruit and felled it easily; We collected 5 kilos the fruits. Jose said it was a little more ripe than he preferred to use, but still green enough to use for medicinal purposes. Ripe it’s purple-black, like rich olives.

By the time we slogged—laughing—back to the boat it was too late to do anything else. But we had four plant collections for the day and we’re up to 24 all told; nearly half of our botanical goal.

By the time we reached the river there were also two or three canoes of natives at the boat wanting chacira. Some had bags to sell, one had a chambira hammock, so what the heck. We gave and gave and got and got and by the end we think everyone from El Moron had made their way down to Paradiso to meet us and get some beads.

We’d asked Rosa and Jose to join us in the morning for gifts and to try to collect the bark of the waca purana tree which serves as an ad mixture to the chuchuwasca, one of Jose Maren’s plants used in the treatment of Tinea Coporis. They arrived early and explained that the tree we wanted was across the river and we set off. Alison stayed behind to get an hour with Angelica, and her kids and Moises kidded that bythe time we returned the Matses men would have made off with her.

Across the river we didn’t even have to get our of the boat. The tree was right at river’s edge, and leaves and bark were easily collected. On the was back we stopped to pick up a little arthritis cure named una de gato (cat's claw) which also grew along water’s edge. Amazing. We were hoping to get four from Jose and ended up getting six.

Back at the boat we made our gifts: For Jose and Rosa: clippers, machete, kitchen knife, three shotgun shells, kilo of salt, bread, beads, fish hooks and line. Not bad, really. And Lydia gave Angelica and Rosa sewing needles as well.

But all got something for their hospitality: beads or knives or something. It’s too far from nowhere not to share a little, particularly when the river and its people are so generous with us.

Time is so short with these people, but so intense because of the nature of the work, that a bond is quickly forged and one of my complaints about work like this is that there is very little time to spend with people. On the other hand, without work there is very little reason to spend time with them. Their days are filled with hunting and gathering and tending their chacras, and they don’t really have time just to spend with us. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to take Alberto up on his offer to live with them on the Galvez, for a while at least.



DATES OF PLANT COLLECTING WITH JOSE CURINUGUI AT PARADISO ON THE RIO JIVARI:
JAN 1-2, ‘94

The remainder of the day and much of the night was spent heading to San Luis. When we didn’t reach it we crashed next to someone’s canoe for the night. Tom and I bagged the remainder of the plant bulk, then Tom went over the vouchers while I drove. Alison got to drive as well, and we all bagged another three kilos of beads. Alison took Benedril for her itching skin—she was having a hell of a reaction to the mosquito bites, almost an allergic reaction—and I didn’t think Benedril was the right thing. I prefer to use Moises’ method: fresh lemon or alcohol, sting like crazy, and be rid of them. The Benedril puts you a little out of it and could be dangerous on the river if something went wrong and we needed to swim in the Jivari. But I didn’t push: Tom was the one recommending the Benedril, after all, and he’s a doctor.

MONDAY, JAN. 3

Having collected near the mouth of the Jivari—within a couple of days of it, anyway—we faced heading up the river for 50-60 hours, a good three or four days, before we would arrive at the Matses pueblos I know best. Between Paradiso and Angamos, the mouth of the Galvez, there was the Curacao, a river which is only accessible when the Jivari is at its height, a small Indian community called San Luis, the Brazilian Military outposts of Peleton and Palmiera and little else.

Our supplies of fresh food were very low—the vegetables just don’t last more than a week or so in the heat—and I’d miscalculated on coffee, so we were out of that as well. And Tom and Alison were in for a long stretch of simply going from point A to point B.

I’d hoped to collect a few plants from the Canamarie Indians at San Luis, but like always they were uncooperative, playing the poor souls in an effort not to be bothered. They won’t speak Spanish, claim not to have fields, and so forth. We managed to get some limes and yucca for them in trade for shotgun shells, but little else. The village does not even exist in the anthropological literature. Moises calls them Brazilian/FUNAI slaves.

Our luck at supplies was a little better at Peleton, which we reached the following day. We were able to get a beer, sugar, a tin of coffee eggs and rice. We also got the info on the Curacao: within two days of the mouth we would hit the first Marubo malloca; after that we would pass one a day for 3 days. But we were told it’s a very serpentine river and could be better done in a boat smaller than ours. Like the Itui we now have reasonable information; if Shaman can get the Brazilian permissions we can plan a couple of great trips.

But then a bit of sadness as Moises decided to take a police boat leaving for Tabatinga in the morning. We made our goodbyes and I talked to the suddenly nervous crew, explaining that he always leaves the trip and that we’d all pitch in and cover what he did.

We passed the mouth of the Curacao on Jan. 5. It was so weed choked and so different than it had been when the water was really high the last time on the Rey David that we didn’t recognize it. We couldn’t have gone up in our boat at that time. We would have to enter in March or April to pass that mouth. Of course we’re getting that from Angelica and Joachin and they probably know, so we now consider that a doable trip once Shaman gets permission to collect in Brazil.

NOTE: Having more than three days of river travel with no plants to collect, we worked on the plant material. Tom went over and over the specimens, first in the field, later on the boat, and finally with alcohol prior to wrapping them and putting them in the plastic bags.

Many had great fruits and a few even had flowers. We could not have picked a better time to collect, fruit wise, I don’t think.

And the bulk we had was enormous. Two or three kilos of each and in several cases additional mesh bags full, which Tom dried on the roof. We had members of the palm, the fig, the solonacae, sarcopracae and a number of other families represented, none of which, to Tom’s knowledge, had ever been screened by Shaman before. The first half of the river produced 26 complete plant collections. Not bad. Of course, Tom was probably still wondering what took the first 16 or so days to get out here to begin collecting, but that’s Iquitos. We’re lucky we came as fast as we did. If it hadn’t been me and I hadn’t been lucky, we might still be looking for a boat. Even more importantly, if we didn’t have Golber tending the motor we might have been like the Rey David, breaking down for a couple of hours daily. As it was we didn’t lose one hour on the entire 2,400 km. trip to engine trouble.

NOTE: On the doctoring Thomas provides as part of Shaman’s policy of offering medical care to those communities in which they work, it should be noted that:

    1) 99% of all the people we’ve seen are healthier than any of us;

    2) He offered very restricted care and only in cases where people have no medicines
    for particular conditions. In Buen Sucess and El Moron, he treated some children for scabies,
    which can secondarily infect and go from annoying to awful. But in cases he saw
    which were getting better he did not hand out placebo. He seems very straight about that.

In the case of the alleged snake bit victim at Buen Sucess, for example, he let me do the reassuring and give Moises’ medicine, but he took pulses and found the man alright and let it go at that. He didn’t hand out any antibiotics or anything else for a condition he felt would heal basically on it’s own.

He did tell the man to get rid of his tourniquet, however, since he didn’t think that was doing any good.

So he’s cautious. More cautious than I. I often feel a little cortaid can do wonders temporarily, and that aspirin is a wonder drug, and I’ve even given out antibiotics two or three times over the years. But Tom is more careful, and he’s probably right, since he’s the doctor here and he’s worked places like India and been in the jungle a lot.

On the other hand, I have no doubt he’d operate if necessary, really necessary, and he was quick to provide first water and then topical antibiotic to Moises’ eye after the bad burn.

January 8, 1994

Reached the pueblo of Jorge Pedro, just above Angamos at about 9 AM and talked with Wilfredo’s mom (a stolen Mestizo woman who'd borne a Matses child with the man who stole her, then later escaped when three whites pretending to be missionaries began collecting blood from sick Matses at the village of Buenas Lomas where he'd lived) and one of his wives. It takes a minute but they finally remember me and we were told that Wilfredo was in his chacra and that it was more than a Matses hour’s walk. We decided not to try it, just to return at 3 PM, when he was expected back, more or less, then took the boat over to the Guarnation of Angamos to sign in.

The sign in went smoothly. The previous year’s second-in-command had replaced the young prick who was his boss, and he remembered me and we were invited in to talk and given 30-40 pounds of good looking yucca for free and some medicine for Alison's arm. Our papers were quickly signed and we were given the go ahead to pass at will.

At Angamos pueblo we ran into Robinson, the Matses who works part time at the guarnation and part time in the jungle and who worked with Gilma and me collecting plants on the last trip. All were fine on the Galvez, we were told, though Pablo had been coughing a lot.

By 1 PM we began a hike back to Wilfredo’s in the hopes he’d returned. The walk, impassable most of the year, was dry and beautiful. A few puentes, bridges, to cross, however, one of which, a wide log, 25 feet long, was high. I simply couldn’t do it, though Tom flew over it effortlessly. He’s good on the logs. I’m not. Alison is new to it.

I decided to straddle-pull my way across and took off my boots and tossed the first to Tom on the other side. Toss was short and it skidded down the short slope to the water. Tom went after it just like it was his own. Jumped into the water clothes and all, and when I finally got across I did the same, though naked. Beautiful water, but hard to find a boot among the sticks and debris at river’s edge, and you couldn’t open your eyes for fear of nailing yourself on a sharp submerged stick. Took several dives but we eventually came up with it.

By the time we reached Wilfredo’s we were hot and exhausted. The walk and the search for the boots in the heat of day did me in. Coupled with three straight days of boat and no exercise.

When there are no other takers, Wilfredo’s second wife, Manuela, put on a dress, put her hair up and said she would take us out to the chacra. We followed her down the path to Angamos' dirt airstrip, crossed the bone-dry, rutted field, and headed into the woods.

After 30 minutes of walking we ran into Manuela’s brother coming back from the same field as Wilfredo was in and he told us it’s another 40 minutes of Matses-walk time to the chacra. Considering the hour—late afternoon—we chose to wait a while and then return to the village rather than go on.

It was on the return, just before we reach the airstrip, that Manuela stopped to listen to something I could not hear. We waited a few minutes and out cames Demetrio, the craziest of the Matses here at Jorge Pedro, who was followed by one of the tall young athletes here; and finally Wilfredo, accompanied by his first wife, Gladys (Manuela’s sister). Wilfredo was carrying one of his children by templine, Gladys about 60 lbs of plantanos, also by templine.

Wilfredo seemed glad to see me. After a few minutes of talking he said he was willing to go plant collecting again.

We invited him down to the boat that evening, for coffee and a look at our disease photos. When they arrived we passed out bread and then got down to the business of disease-photo identification. Wilfredo got the picture quickly, as well as the notion that we didn’t want to re-collect the plants he collected last time. He sat through a two hour session, during which we targeted 11 plants and got full interviews for them. All done on the boat, in the dim light of kerosene lamps, with his wife and kids around. Then we set up the first collecting session for the morning and went to bed.

JANUARY 9, 1994

Wilfredo identified 10 plants in the morning after he had a chance to see his original 11 choices in better light, and by about 8 AM we set out with Manuela. Also along was Wilfredo’s apprentice, Roger Flores, the young athlete we’d run into a day earlier. Both were given new machetes for the work.

As we went Wilfredo paused frequently to point out some of his medicines: “Pedro, esta es un medicina para sangre de mujeres”—This is a medicine for menstrual problems— or “Pedro, esta acha es un medicine para duele de stomacho”—a stomach pain medicine. But he was not on the plants I had on my list for the day’s collection and I wanted him there, so I pulled the list and read what we were after. “Mas arriva, Pedro. Mi chacra.” Further up ahead, Peter, in my chacra.” he said. The plants were near his field. But he continued to point out various medicines to us and Tom and I began to take a leaf or two of each, me for my personal collection, he for possible collection if we ended up with extra time. Not likely when you’re with someone who loves stem-bark rasping for medicine instead of leaf collection off large trees. And of the 10 identified Wilfredo earmarked at least five as stem-bark remedies.

His incidental collection was enormous. Both Tom and I had parts from at least 10 or 12 plants each, most of them different: leaves, flowers, bits of bark and for all sorts of illnesses: earache, toothache, headache, women’s menstrual cycles, boils and so on.

But Tom finally put his food down and Wilfredo got the message to focus down from the larger pharmacopoeia to the smaller one and immediately picked one of our plants, a candida plant remedy. We grabbed scads of it, Wilfredo showing me, again, how to get the most out of a bark with the least effort and waste.

We soon had the first half of a collection, maybe 2 kilos, done. Tom, meanwhile, had pressed five voucher specimens for future identification and Alison had snapped shots of it all.

From the first plant site we walked down into a pretty ravine covered with a trailing vine with heart (spade) shaped leaves in couplets, and tiny red fruits running up the vine. It was not on our list but Wilfredo pointed it out as either a thrush, candida, or herpes of the mouth remedy. We asked Golber and Roger to collect some after Tom threw vouchers.

There was not enough for a real collection because the leaves were so tiny, but Tom said the plant was identifiable enough that he would keep his eyes out for it, and we’d finish a collection before the day was out.

Wilfredo picked another plant and had Roger scuttle up a tree after its high branches. While he grabbed the leaves and snipped branches and we collected, Tom threw vouchers and Alison shot photos. I taped the tree description and Manuela picked up some palms and began to make baskets for carrying fruits.

Soon we were onto the next plant and more bark scraping, this time with five of us scraping at once and while there Wilfredo saw something else on our list and we began to collect that too.

And on all morning, up and down the hills, adding to the few collections we already had started and picking an occasional new plant to it. By noon Wilfredo and Roger both had the drill down and when we came to a large clearing—“Diablo chacra”, the devil’s field, Roger called it—they had us sit and wait while Manuela headed off in one direction and they in another. Wilfredo and Roger soon returned, both holding lengths of thin sapling tree trunks and herbarium specimens as well.

An hour later, the mosquitos long ago having gotten maddening, we were more than halfway through eight of the plants on our list and had two or three new ones as well. Some were complete with vouchers and bulk; others just vouchers and others with partial bulk.

The field exhausted, as well as us, Wilfredo urged us on to his chacra, where Manuela stood with a plate of hot plantanos and a sweet mango, waiting for us. We ate and began moving back toward the house, filling our numbered sacks along the way and enjoying the lush forest around us.

The return probably took two hours: by the time we came out of the jungle in to the airfield we had eight or nine collections of plant vouchers and maybe six complete collections (including bulk) overall. A good day’s work.



NOTE ON WILFREDO’s PLANT TRAINING

(on tape too)

“ Pablo and I studied with the same man, an old man at Buenas Lomas. He knew so many medicines. Every day for two years I went out to the woods to study medicines and that’s why I learned them. The old man is dead now, but Pablo and I know the plants. People come from all parts of the river to get our medicine. Now Roger is learning from me, and Manuela (one of his wives) knows some medicine too.”

We agreed to return to Angamos and then come back in the morning for another couple of hours before heading out up the Galvez. We wanted to fill out the original ten plants we’d been after and maybe get a couple more, though we were going to be content just to make certain the six we got were really complete and maybe a couple more filled out.

NOTE: It seems that at each place we stopped on this trip, and on the last trip as well, there were always a couple of plants being sought which the healers don’t have. Perhaps it’s the wrong time of year, perhaps they’ve used up the available supply, perhaps they have to walk very far for them, but at the time it would have surprised me if Wilfredo could come up with all of the initial 10 for us.

The walks themselves have always been the same: go out in the morning, work till about 1 PM, break till 3PM, work another hour or two and then call it a day. It’s the jungle rhythm, what they all do who live out here in the forest, Indian or not.

That evening Robinson had a 30th birthday party at the municipal building in Angamos which we attended. I asked Robinson what he wanted and he said he had no aguar diente. So I bought 8 beer bottles worth, thinking that was a nice gesture. But that night at least a couple of the men, and Lucio, one of our men, got drunk. Alison was right in pointing out the next day that regardless of whether they asked for it or not, it was wrong of a gringo to supply alcohol to people, and particularly Indians, who had limited alcohol experience. She was right. I hadn’t given it a second thought, but it won’t happen a second time.

The next morning we headed over to Wilfredo’s and set off for the morning collect, joined by Wilfredo, Wilfredo’s other wife, Gladys, and Roger. From about 8 AM till just before 1 PM we went from six full and three partial collections to 15 full collections with voucher specimens and in addition we got vouchers for the new plant I collected last year. Unfortunately those specimens, like the ones I previously collected were sterile, but we did get larger branch portions that Tom thought might be enough to have identified. I reminded him the plant must have the name Matses or Pablo in it and he said okay.

By about 1 PM everyone was pooped, so we headed back to our boat.

We set a time for them to come and get gifts and go over the new plants in the official interview then headed down to the river for a swim and some lunch. An hour later Wilfredo and family trailed down to the boat. I gave pots and plates and cartridges and fishing lines and beads and kitchen knives and machetes and Tom threw in plant clippers for both Wilfredo and Roger. He gave them to all our teachers and their helpers.

Tom also asked if anyone in the village needs medicinal attention from him and Wilfredo said no, everyone was fine, the plant medicines were working well. And then, with a promise to say hello on our way out, we said goodbye and headed into Angamos.

A quick paper-check at the guarnation and then, before Sunday night fell we passed the mouth of the Yakirana and into the Galvez and started toward Pablo’s. Enroute to Pablo’s Tom and I put the plants from Wilfredo into the plastic jars and soaked them in alcohol. To our surprise we had 41 complete collections. The idea of collecting 50 was no longer so crazy.



DATES OF PLANT COLLECTION WITH WILFREDO RUIZ AT THE MATSES VILLAGE OF JORGE PEDRO, ON THE RIO JIVARI, JUST DOWNRIVER FROM COLONIA ANGAMOS:
JAN 8 and 9, 1994

We reached San Juan Anuchi at about 7 PM. A number of people were there to greet us but they didn’t include Pablo. I hoped he was not too ill to collect, and I hoped he was not too ill like he’s dying. That would be tragedy.

He doesn’t disappoint on any level: we were headed to his house when we heard a horrid, horrid cough. A wheezing, gathering of phlegm, a spitting sound, and then, from out of the darkness he came, dressed in his madras blue shirt and his red Adidas trunks. Next to him was Martha and a couple of the kids. I hugged him and he said “Petro. Bi-ram-bo. Bi-ram-bo Petro?”

We headed up to his house, where Martha, the youngest of his three surviving wives, serves us banana mash mani (masato) and hot yucca.

Amelia, another wife, was lying in her hammock and after introductions Pablo showed us several baby black caymen he had in plastic tubs and I asked him where the mom was and he laughs and said he ate her. Black caymen? He’s a fucking lunatic!

We arranged to head upriver to Pueblo Jorge Chavez in the morning to begin our collection, then went to sleep.

JANUARY 10, 1994/ Monday

We woke early and by 7 AM we were at Pablo’s. We were eating bananas with him when he suddenly got up and headed outside. I asked if we could come. He said yes, sort of, and we followed. He was going out looking for a medicine for a woman, Paula, from pueblo Paujil who had a stomach ache that was apparently related to her menstrual cycle. Accompanying us were three of his boys with bows and arrows.

First thing we came on unexpectedly was a large tree stump in a chacra. Pablo peeled off a chunk of the bark and ate it, then passed it on to me. “What the Matses used to eat when they didn’t have yucca,” he explained in Matses, Spanish and his hand language. Somehow, despite him knowing very little Spanish and I even less Matses, we communicate well.

The bark wasn’t very good but it may be anthropologically important and explain a riddle no one’s ever gotten yet: what kept the Matses and other noted walking tribals going on their 200–400 mile continuous hikes? Roots, berries, fruit. Yes. But what was the starch to fill them up?

And this may be part of the riddle. This was a huge tree with a 1/4 inch thick, easily peelable tree bark that was edible and weighs nearly half a pound in a 4” X 12” slab. This could be a lucky find like the sapo was. And just when I thought he might have been pulling my leg, the two wives that were with us, Amelia and Martha, explained that they preferred it mashed and boiled. While it’s not good, the couple of bites I take seem to swell in my stomach, like bread. If this has any good minerals in it, and if it also has a digestible starch, well, this could answer a question anthropologists have been curious about for years.

Tom said he’d have Shaman check it out when we returned.

Pablo soon came on some of the plants he wanted Paula to wear on her stomach. He gave it to her husband to hold. Actually he pointed them out and the husband, whose name I don’t know, collected them in a bundle he tied around his neck with a bit of soga.

Pablo explained the plants and their uses to us and the young husband and his children as well. Every walk with Pablo is a medicine walk and a nature walk. And this was no different. It didn’t matter that our time was short or that we wanted to leave for Jorge Chavez. He had work to do prior to leaving and we were going to do that before we went anywhere. Which was fine by me, because only Pablo makes the jungle so fascinating. He pointed to bird’s nests high in the canopy and out of sight and called their calls and they responded. He pointed to trails made by the mahass—large, delicious, fatty rodents—at night and talked about leaves to rub on his dog’s noses to make them better “sahineros,” sahino and wangana (wild boar) hunters. He pointed to fruits and roots and barks and edible beetles, made jokes about other plants that make your dick hard and needing to make a pusanga, love potion, for one reason or other.

As he walked he pointed occasionally to plants for the young husband to collect, until after an hour or so the man had three beautiful bundles wrapped around his neck.

When the plants were all collected Pablo had a coughing fit. Tom looked at him earlier and said he thought it wasn’t TB, because Pablo’s sputum was clear. If it were yellow/green and thick it would be bad. Tom gave him a start on Ciclor, a broad spectrum antibiotic. Pablo took his first in the morning. Anyway, Pablo was still coughing when he suddenly began pointing into the reaches of the gentle forest around us.

“ Bastante remedios,” he said. “Bastante!”

I told him I knew he knew a lot and we were hoping just to collect a few of them.

“ Bastante! Remedios bi-ram-bo!” he said again, mixing languages.

“ Quantas?” I asked. How many?

It was a good question, because Pablo suddenly sharpened his focus like a Matses hunter who’s heard an animal and he pointed to a vine.

“ Wangana remedio,” he said. And then another: “Sahino, remedio.” He pointed to a small tree: “Lorro remedio.” And then, suddenly he was flying, pointing around him at trees and vines and shrubs and flowers and crawlers and snapping out the words like a soldier.

“ Guacamayo remedio! Pero remedio! Gato remedio! Bo bo remedio! Paujil remedio! Puca cunga remedio! Tigrillo remedio!”

Like a mad dancer he turned and pointed, naming animals he associated with the medicines found in his plants. Around and around he turned, always stopping to point at particular plants so that we knew he was not pointing haphazardly. We’d evidently come on a Diablo Chacra, a place of medicines, a clearing in the jungle surrounded by useful plants, like the one where we gathered so many at Wilfredo’s village. He kept it up until he had counted off 43 separate plants and the problems they treated in one swoop. Like a plant dervish, he spun himself around and around, and when a new vine or root or flower or shrub or leaf or fruit caught his eye he’d jump up and down, point it out, name it, and act out the illness it cured. He danced madly for those that treated nervousness and insanity; clutched his groin for venereal infections; let his arms go limp for weakness. It was a wondrous show, a brilliant pharmacopoeic experience from a master of plants!

“ Boa remedio! Mahass remedio! Gallina remedio! Oso remedio! Achune remedio! Sapo remedio!”

He stopped and laughed. “Bastante remedios! Petro? Bi-ram-bo remedios, Petro?”

“ Bi-ram-bo, Pablo. Mas?” Yes, good. More?

“ Mas, Petro. Bastante!” Yes. Lots more.

And then we started back to the village.

En route he asked me how much of his medicine I’d learned. I told him a little. He looked at me like a disappointed teacher. He’d pointed things out and showed me characteristics. He’d torn off leaves had had me smell or chew them for years now and I’d only learned a little? How much more did I need?

I’d need a lifetime, really, though that wasn’t a thought I could express. I laughed and told him it wasn’t easy to learn, that he knew a lot of plants.

“ Mils,” he said. “Thousands.”

In some cases Pablo’s medicines are named for animals who like the plant’s food or fruit; in others it’s because the plant has a medicine used for a disease which sounds like the animal. Ringworm is treated by the cucuracha plant, sometimes called the curacha, so named because ringworm is like having cockroaches under your skin and so all the plants used to treat it are named cucuracha, or curacha, remedies. Unless I’m way off the mark.

In the ringworm case, the plants used are stripped of leaves, which are crushed in the hands and rubbed vigorously over the affected area. The leaves are rubbed hard enough to break the skin and the leaves have a caustic sap which apparently kills the ringworm. It’s a simple but effective remedy. Tom has seen the same method of application in other parts of the world as well.

By 1 PM we were headed to pueblo Jorge Chavez to begin our collection there. We had a boatful of Matses: two of Alberto’s wives, Martha, bunch of kids and Pablo.

We arrived at Jorge Chavez in about 2 1/2 hours. We said hello and greeted Alberto and the others, then were invited to Pablo’s first wife, Ma She’s home, lit by copal and a roaring fire, and were soon eating i-san, unguarahe, a banana masato, sahino and yucca.

We ask Pablo and Manuel—one of his older sons—to come to the boat in a while for coffee and photos and in an hour we had 15–20 visitors. Too many people so we gave up plant interviews after only five.

TUESDAY, JAN 11

Pablo appeared at the boat early and we had coffee, then gathered our things and hiked up to the village with Pablo, Manuel, another guy, Golber, Alison, Tom and me, and set off into the woods on a trail behind Ma She’s.

The hike took us into a beautifully hilly expanse of primary and secondary forest on well-worn paths. Pablo asked about the list of plants we were after then went after the first of them: a candida remedy and a herpes remedy.

He moved through the jungle like always: easily, swimming through it and being part of it, telling us what the plants are for and how they’re used, talking on the tape, letting us do the actual collecting while he looked around with eyes a sparrow would envy.

But Pablo’s mind was on gathering food and looking for a place to cut a new chacra, so we worked for several hours and only got two or three complete collections with another couple of collections of vouchers only. Since time was so short with Pablo I was disappointed with our numbers. I wanted Pablo to collect well so I’d have an excuse to come out collecting with him again.

Alison, Ma She and Martha joined us after a while, Ma She carrying a reed bag, templine style, which was full of I-san, unguarahe. At the sight of them Pablo told us to sit and went looking for more I–san. Two moments later I went after him and find him 20 feet up in an I-san palm and climbing fast. He hacked at the fruit with his machete until the fruit came down, then Ma She and Martha quickly began to gather it up, stuffing their booty into one of Tom’s collection bags. On the way back to the plant Manuel finds a large edible root, and Martha a cluster of small jungle coconuts.

Near the edge of the chacra closest to the village, Pablo pointed to a spine plant, like the ormega plant I collected last time, with all the ants on it, and said we’d get it later.

On the afternoon collection it was just Tom, Pablo and I. Tom and I right off collect the spine plant. That done we headed into the woods and in a clearing near where Alberto was carving out a new canoe the ground was covered with a small fern we were after. Pablo pointed out that those leaves with spores around their outer bottom edges are the best. We quickly filled both vouchers and bulk.

Once we were really into the forest we filled out the morning collections quickly and soon had nine complete collections. None of the plants were cultivated, though some appeared managed.

The walk was sterling. Just Pablo, Tom and I. Quiet, easy, great. At one point Pablo had us sit while he went off looking alone for two of the plants he’d identified the night before. He soon came back with samples of both, saying there was “ni-bu-ret”, no more there, but that we could get plenty of both at San Juan Anushi. So we decided to return there that evening after clean up.

Before we left we made presents to those people not returning to San Juan Anushi with us: Ma She got the large pot she’d asked for last year and a knife and fish line and hooks and beads and salt and a number of other things. Others in the village got smaller gifts, but all got something they liked: knives, machetes, cartridges, beads, salt, fish line. Then I pulled aside Pablo and gave him the new shotgun we’d brought for him: he motioned to me not to indicate that I’d given it to him in front of the others.

Two hours late we arrived at Anushi.

NOTE: While we were out in the morning gathering plants with Pablo at Jorge Chavez, Ma She and Martha came along, then split off with Alison. While Pablo gathered several plant medicines for us, the women made palm baskets, cut down an I-san palm, found jungle coconuts and jungle walnuts. Pablo cut a tree-climbing ring from soga, climbed a tree and cut I-san from two trees —the I-san in total weighed in at near 100 pounds—which the women gathered into their woven baskets and Tom’s collection bags. Then Pablo made Matses frond-headbands for all of us. While we worked Manuel found and dug up a sweet tuber from a small tree’s root and set an ocelot trap. Later we came on Alberto making a dugout canoe and sealing it with gathered copal.

What the heck: The people who say the Matses don’t gather anymore are crazy. Do these guys cook in the jungle or what?

JANUARY 12, 1994 Wednesday

We headed up to Pablo’s in the morning; he already had the bulk of a curacha medicine—for which we had previously collected vouchers—collected and bundled. Said he was up early and decided to get it done.

We headed out with a good-sized crew of two adult males and Pablo, who had his new gun, some children and Amelia and Martha. Amelia, concentrated on only one small plant, fairly rare, which she eventually gathered nearly two kilos of. Pablo gave us another at the edge of the forest and Tom found an abundance of one we only had vouchers for. Shortly afterward Pablo got our two plants from the previous day, which grow in abundance here. And then Pablo, extraordinarily, pulled a latex-filled stem from a tree and had Alison close her eyes, then dabbed the corner of them with the latex from the plant. A moment later she said her eyes hurt, but a moment more and she said they felt great. Tom collected vouchers, so the plant could be identified back in San Francisco.

Despite what looked like a poor start the previous morning, we ended up with 15 complete collections from Pablo in just a day and a half, none of them previously collected by me.

After giving gifts to all, and after we reminded Pablo to continue with his medicine until it was used up, we left and headed back toward Angamos.



PLANT COLLECTING DATES WITH PABLO AT JORGE CHAVEZ AND SAN JUAN ANUCHI ON THE RIO GALVEZ:
JAN 11 & 12, 1994

We made Angamos by 6 PM, but got there needing several things and being too late to leave that evening. Shortly thereafter Tom, who was trying to be in Iquitos by Sunday morning, and I had our only words of the trip. He said something about sitting around in Iquitos for 11 days and I burned on that for 10 minutes then told him that his comment was way out of line, that we were making miracles for him. Anyway, short words. I understood his impatience but not the remark and he said sorry and I invited him for a drink and we had one and then decided to drive day and night until we reached Letecia. Anyway, we both tried to forget it. And after a couple of hours I think we did.

January 13, 14, 15

We drove continually for three days—Tom I driving all day and then sitting up with the men at night—and reached Letecia on the 16th in the late afternoon. Of note was that enroute we picked up a riberino who was suffering delerium from malaria whom we dropped off at Peleton’s military hospital.

There, Tom explained what he thought was wrong and gave the newest medicine, Larium, for it if blood tests proved him right. The doc seemed to understand what Tom was saying and we left. Plasmodium Falciparum—cerebral malaria—is what Tom had field diagnosed. A malaria which mostly kills youngsters when left untreated, and could have killed him as well. The family said he’d been delirious for 6 days, a fairly dangerous amount of time to be without medication. “It’s the same form of malaria which has killed 10% of the Yanomami in parts of Brazil,” is how Tom put it.

On the way downriver we made a decision to take the rapido in from Letecia, and were lucky to run into a pilot who knows me and was willing to let us bring 90 kilos of excess weight aboard, all of the vouchers and about half the plant bulk. The rest was sent on with the Jacare, which I had refueled and resupplied in Letecia.

JANUARY 18, 1994, Tuesday

We passed the Jacare about 4 hours into our 12 hour ride, which meant they were about 1/3 of the way home. The dueno was nice enough to pull up next to it and let us see if all was going alright. It was. Great. Plenty of fuel and food, they said, and they’ve got a policeman I know with them who should help get them through the hercito, military, stations.

We arrived in Iquitos by 7 PM, and got things back to the hotels in the pick-up belonging to the Rapido company. Tom had the plants picked up by Ayala later that night, and I got the rest of them over when the Jacare came in a couple of days later.

Tom and Alison headed out to Peter Jensen’s Explorama Camp in the morning. A special boat was arranged for them to join the tour already in progress.

Tom arranged for me to get some money for tips for our crew through Franklin Ayala before we split up, and I took care of paying people and getting our rental things back to their owners. (The boys did not get their tips until I returned in June, because they both took boats out quickly and I couldn’t find them. But I kept their money and gave them the tips in late June, 1994, so as I type this out all have been paid and tipped in full.)

On the following Saturday morning I went out to meet Peter Jensen’s boat pulling in with Thomas and Alison and James Duke. Thomas and Alison, surprised to see me, looked great. Alison appeared to be completely over her secondary infections, though she may have a few good scars to show for it. And Tom got to give a few lectures during the last days of the trip. I explained to Duke that Tom’s being late was my fault, which he could care less about, but I figured I should explain anyway, so he didn’t think Tom didn’t take his offer to lecture seriously.

Then they were quickly put aboard a bus to the airport. See you next time, fellas.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ON TRIP:

Though I did not forsee losing two boats, and hence several days, I did manage to pull the thing together and we ended up with what I think was a very successful trip. We worked with five curanderos over a 500 kilometer stretch of river, made 54 full plant collections, and in no way exhausted any of the curandero’s remedies. Tom says that now that the plants have been looked at as many as 48-50 have never been screened by Shaman before. Additionally, each of the five collected different plants and in different ways, so I believe there was little or no overlap.

Personalities on the boat were not a problem: I spent part of each day mooning over my girl and both Tom and Alison cut me slack on that. I don’t believe it affected my work or the trip whatsoever, however, though I continue to believe that had Gilma (now my wife) been along we might have collected even more material, particularly from the women, many of whom have some plant knowledge but were not ready to give it to either Tom or I. Gilma, who has established relationships with the women on the Jivari, would have gotten us access to that element.

Things to do on the next trip: first and foremost, I should have things in place, prior to being joined by Tom or anyone else from Shaman. I realize that two boats and the promise of a third are not good enough. On the next trip I might have a boat waiting for me as planned, or I could run into the same problem. Since it takes a week from the time the boat is river ready until it’s possible to leave anyway, I would have plenty of time to have Shaman send someone to meet me—in Letecia or Angamos, for instance—without either losing my time or Shaman’s.

For either of those scenarios, I could arrange to have someone in Iquitos prepare the paperwork for the personnel from Shaman on their arrival, and a small plane, or rapido, lined up to take them, with minimal equipment, to our meeting place. Short, ideal job for Moises.

Another thing I would be wary of would be to have someone aboard who has a definite deadline for return. In our case, since we’d used up all the alcohol and the 135 bottles we’d brought—Tom says Shaman never thought we’d collect 50+ plants—we did not really lose anything. But had we more supplies, we could have spent an additional day or two with each of the curanderos—on the way back—and easily doubled our collection. And if we had, but someone along had a deadline, we might have lost that opportunity. So better to have a time frame that has some flexibility built into it. Of course, with Shaman’s permission I could fly the Shaman personnel out of Angamos and go back with the boat making collections on my own. Having done that already, and then having the additional experience of working with Tom Carlson, I don’t see that as a problem unless it conflicted with Shaman regulations.

NOTES: JIVARI INFORMATION FOR FUTURE TRIPS

#1 If I were to have the Shaman personnel fly into Angamos from Iquitos and met them there with the cargo boat, we could do a trip that begins and ends with Wilfredo and Pablo, but also includes going up the Yakirana from Angamos into the larger Matses communities there which have never been tapped for their botanical knowledge. Having the large boat would allow for cargo of all we’d need, but having the personnel meet me at Angamos would allow them to maximize time by flying in and out at start and end of actual collection sites. In 15 days we might get in a full eight days collecting. In 20 we might get 12.

#2 Four or five days up the Itui are the Marubo. Two days further the Matis. A large boat rented short time as a base in Benjamin Constant and a speedboat (with it’s fuel cargoed on the larger boat) rented in Letecia would allow us to cut the time on the Itui by 3/4. Small boat has limited cargo room, and weight cuts motor speed greatly, so maybe two would be the answer. Expensive, but would allow Shaman to tap an untapped group in a local never looked at for botanical information. The trip could be arranged when Shaman collector has limited time and wants to investigate a single river. Too, having the pueblos of Paradiso, Buen Sucess and El Moron nearby would assure a successful collecting trip since they have already proven to have curanderos who now have experience working with Shaman.

#3 Two to three days up from Atayala, on a small river called the Irari, there is allegedly a malloca in which the real Canamarie Indians live. If they are truly there they are an unknown commodity and would be worth persuing on the same trip as the Itui. Since the mouth of the Irari is near Atayala, refueling and resupplying would present no problem. As with the Itui, having El Moron, Paradiso and Buen Sucess nearby would assure a successful trip even if the Canamarie did not cooperate.

#4 On the Curacao. The first Marubo group allegedly live just two days up the river. A second and third malloca allegedly are located two days apart up the same river. This would also be new ground for botanical study. But it’s several days from Letecia, so location prohibits a short trip. Best approached on a longer trip, one on which the personnel from Shaman have joined me either in Iquitos or Letecia.

© by Peter Gorman, 1983-2007
Photographs Copyright information