STORY OF THE MONTH
Anaconda Bay
It wasn’t long after the Portuguese staked out a mission fortress on Brazil’s Negro River just above its confluence with the mighty Amazon River that Jesuit priests began venturing upriver in search of Indian converts. Some of these priests were of noble blood; most were just madmen. Father Samuel was one, and then the other. This is his story.
How exactly Father Samuel first reached the land known as the Amazon is unrecorded. It was in the early 19th century and before the most reliable chroniclers of the Amazon, the English Naturalists, were even born. A half dozen nations jostled for position and property in the new world and five countries were outrightly fighting wars with each other over an unexplored, supposedly rich, and certainly vast, river valley known as Amazonia. In 1799 Alexander von Humboldt reached the beginnings of the upper Negro River traveling south on the Orinoco River from Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. Since then only a handful of men had crossed the Amazon valley from Andes to Atlantic.
Under Portuguese law the native Indians who inhabited lands claimed by the new state were to be protected as new subjects of the realm. Whether this mandate was respected is difficult to judge. More often the exact opposite was the case. And what better means of covering up a campaign of rape, pillage, and slaughter than by taking along a priest in one’s company. Who, after all, would question the testimony of a servant of God? Conversely, what priest would be fool enough to bite the hand that feeds him? This, more than likely, is how Father Samuel came to the New World- as just one more manipulated chronicler of the Conquest.
In 18__ the islands, rivers and rainforest which lay beyond the mission fortress of Barra still lay unexplored. All was a vast and silent space. Solitary priests and lonely soldiers stationed at Barra had plenty of time on their hands to ponder the justice of their government’s actions no matter how committed they were to the cause.
Heading northwest up the Negro River from its confluence with the Amazon River the first significant geographical feature one encounters is a fantastic archipelago of seasonally flooded islands called the Anavilhanas. The broad bay that lies before the first of the islands is known as Buiacu (“the anaconda”) in the native Indian dialect. In his spare time amongst the Manoa Indians of the area Father Samuel was fascinated by talk of this fantastic serpent, a focal point of sorts in local Indian culture. Stormy waters, he was told, were said to reflect the anger of the snake-god. Violent and sudden death was his wrath as redeemer and judge of the local Indians.
To the Indians the Anaconda was the source of creation itself. Year in and year out the great water snake was celebrated in song and ceremony as benefactor and creator of all the world had to offer. He was a sacred and mysterious being, and the Indians held strange and secret ceremonies in his honor, ceremonies forbidden to the eyes of their women, however.
To Father Samuel, a literal reader of the Bible, the concept of a snake-as-god figure was magnificently blasphemous. It raised shackles beneath his long dark hair for it spoke directly against the word of God as expressed in the Book of Genesis. Was not the snake the devil himself, after all? Evil incarnate? The priest reasoned that the Indians were being held in the power of Satan, and that it was his duty to do all he could to save them from the evil that power represented.
Try as he might though Father Samuel could neither explain himself nor his beliefs to the Indians he met and lived amongst. His aim was to convert them to Christianity, of course, bit by bit, and by reason and common sense. But he quickly found he couldn’t even teach them to write their names. Initially he was pious and patient with his charges. He could have called the soldiers from Barra to assist him at any time in imposing his will upon them, but what lasting good would force have had upon the Indians, he reasoned?
Father Samuel was forever reminded of the experience of African slaves in Brazil's southern plantations. Harassed and persecuted by their Portuguese masters they had taken their faith- an animist faith not unlike that of the Amazonian Indians- underground and disguised their gods and oracles with the names and costumes of whatever number of Catholic Saints the Portuguese preferred they venerate. As such these slaves never converted to Catholicism. In fact, they developed a stronger, richer and, some might say, more serviceable religion of their own based upon these odd beginnings.
No, Father Samuel saw little need for force amidst his flock. Not yet at least. Manipulation and trickery, however, might prove more effective tools in the meantime.
Over time the Indians had grown used to the presence of Father Samuel amongst them. He was by nature a peaceful person. The Indians felt they had nothing to fear from the little man with the dark beard and braided hair even if he did represent the outstretched hands of those who oppressed them. Father Samuel grew honestly fond of his stubborn charges even if he was frustrated by their intransigence and shocked by their often-libertine behavior.
For the Manoa one particular ceremony, more than any other, celebrated the supreme power of the Anaconda. This was the secret ceremony of Jurupari which was closed to the eyes of women, as I have said. Specifically, women were forbidden to see the conical, bassoon-like instruments of the ceremony that were said to represent the power of the Anaconda. Should a woman be so unlucky as to catch a glimpse of the sacred instruments of Jurupari she was to be executed immediately or, at least, banished from the tribe forever.
Inspired by this unique form of apartheid- something that divided the Manoa Indians while at the same time forming the cement which kept them together as a people- a means of destroying the devil’s hold on the Indians suggested itself to Father Samuel. He began to lay the groundwork for a plan that would have the most unexpected and tragic results for everyone involved, himself included.
It could be said that the more obsessed Father Samuel became with the Indians the more like them he became in character as well as attitude. You wouldn't think that by watching him go about his duties though. The more he observed the Indians the more troubled (and in trouble) he became. Something odd stirred within him, something he could not readily identify or associate with. He grew restless and agitated. And he knew not why.
As mandated by his superiors, Father Samuel’s primary duty was to ensure that there was enough Indian labor employed in the many building projects the governor of the state had drawn up for his capital city, Barra. The slavers and soldiers had already done away with most of the lower Negro Indians, either killing them off outright in so-called “just wars” or carting them off in slave boats bound for the mission of Para at the mouth of the Amazon River.
Recent policy had altered the status of the local Indians, though their duties remained much the same. Before they had been hunted as slaves. Now they were workers for the state. The priests were ordered to round up whatever Indians were left and herd them into newly formed settlements dotted up and down the Negro. As townspeople the Indians would now pay monetary taxes in addition to those of blood, sweat and tears. No matter how they were defined the Indians remained slaves.
By day the Indians were driven hard by their masters, but by night they were turned loose, so to speak. No sooner had dusk fallen over the humid forest settlements set along the riverbanks of the mosquito-free Negro River then the Indians were off preparing themselves for another night of drinking, dancing, and mayhem.
The noise of these Bacchanal fetes made sleep difficult for poor, tortured Father Samuel. If it wasn’t the singing that kept him up, it was the screaming. If not the screaming, then the blundering drums rising and falling in sync with the passions of these dark forest people. Once the sun had set uncertainty held sway over the Indians of the Amazon. Father Samuel was convinced that all manner of sin and debauchery was being committed just out of sight beyond his long pock-marked nose. It was only a question of time before curiosity and its sister, temptation, took hold of him entirely. Earlier visits to the Indian’s communal hall had justified his keeping close guard over his subjects. He kept reminding himself that he would do something soon to stop the carnal goings-on he so often witnessed.
The more Father Samuel saw of the Indian ceremonies the more he reviled and, at the same time, adored them. In public he would joke about the Indian's awkward dances and make fun of their poorly made costumes. But under the cover of darkness, hidden behind his dark robes within the doorway of the large communal hall, the primordial pageantry of the dances stirred deep and long-buried desires within him. His soul cried out for salvation. Salvation or death.
The dance of Jurupari, in particular, fascinated him. And, perhaps, because the dance was forbidden to women, the priest was allowed a degree of self-indulgence he found impossible to enjoy during the other, more public dances. Women were forbidden to see the large, phallic, musical instruments used during the dance of Jurupari as it was believed their understanding of the secret powers of the Anaconda would destroy the mythic power the Indian men held over them. Without that power there would be no tribal cohesion, unity, or direction. The secret cult of Jurupari was the spirit which gave the Indians their strength and identity.
Father Samuel realized that the mystery of Jurupari was an asset the Indians could count upon in their struggle against colonial rule and oppression. For Jurupari represented freedom above all else, a sort of power where power was unknown. While Father Samuel plotted against this strange force, he also found himself being drawn towards it. His eventual conversion was almost natural, therefore. Certainly, it was without control. Beneath the smile of each new moon, when the dance of Jurupari was celebrated, Father Samuel came to dread that he would ultimately succumb to the dark eyes, swaying hips and glistening lips of the Indian women who gathered outside the dance halls waiting for their men to finish their abolitions.
Finally, the time came when Father Samuel could no longer contain his swollen desire. One night, standing among a group of half-naked women outside a closed dance hall, he found himself savoring the sweaty warmth which pressed up against him on either side. Eyes sparkled around him, and hands slowly began to roam freely over his stiffening body. Fearing for his soul he remembered his plan and threw himself against the doors of the hall, his intention being to douse the rabid sexual energy that surrounded him by exposing the Indian women suddenly and forcefully to the ceremonial instruments of Jurupari. One look at the tools of Jurupari and the power the devil held over these people would surely be destroyed once and for all, he believed. And by fracturing the tribe once and for all he would at the same time save and redeem himself in the eyes of his God.
Father Samuel stood framed in the open doorway, his arms spread wide, expectantly. Yet much to his surprise the hall was completely empty. He could still hear the loud drums of Jurupari but they were not being played in that hall. They were somewhere off in the distance in fact. Behind him the women of the tribe surged forward, and he fell down upon the dirt floor inside. He felt his clothes being torn from him. And he was shocked to feel oil being poured over his now naked body. His face and chest burned with the kisses and bites of a dozen hungry women. His screaming seemed only to drive them into a madder frenzy.
Finally, he was beaten to death. And the last thought the priest had in this world was that he had become the object itself of the Indian’s ceremony. He himself had become the serpent the men worshipped, and the Jurupari the women craved for but were until then forbidden to behold. God and the Devil were one and the same to these Indians, Father Samuel realized in horror. And violent death was both punishment and reward.