From the Great Smoky Mountains to the Gran Pajonal

Abstract

In early November 1953, deep in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, in an area of jungle so remote and inhospitable that even the warlike Kampa Indians feared to travel there, a twenty-one-year-old secretary from Miami crouched behind a tall situlli bush.¹ She was holding her breath and her heart raced. A naked, long-haired warrior of a primitive jungle tribe stood only a short distance away, just across a shallow stream. He had stopped in his walk along the water’s edge, and he surveyed the opposite bank with squinted eyes. He seemed to sense her presence across the water without seeing her, seemed to smell her in the air as he tipped his head back and drew breath into his flaring nostrils. She kept still as death—yet, as if catching her scent, he began to move toward her hiding place, slowly then stopping, sniffing the air again. Then faster, raising his long wooden spear, he waded into the stream in the direction of the large bush that gave her meager protection.