Richard Schultes Interview (page: 2 / 8) The Father of Modern Ethnobotany	Print Interview

How were you received by those Indians who had been so exploited by rubber producers in the past? How did you get along with them?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Richard Schultes: I never had any problems with Indians. The Indian in the Colombian Amazon -- and I suppose everywhere else, until he is civilized -- is a wonderful person. If he likes you -- and I guess they liked me, and I liked them -- if you act as a gentlemen among these people they are gentlemen.

I was with them all the time that I worked there, because we had very few European type people going down into that part of the Amazon. It's not easy to get around because of rapids, and waterfalls, and lack of air service and so forth.

How did you communicate with the Indians, in what language?

Richard Schultes: I always tried to find, an Indian who could speak Spanish. My Spanish, of course, was probably poorer than the Indian's at that time. As I got further and further inland this was much more difficult, but I was able to get along in two of the most widely spoken of the 14 Indian languages. I probably murdered them! The old folks wouldn't laugh, but when the kids went into hysterics, I knew I'd done something wrong.

Many of the Indian languages are used only by small groups that are dying out, or by a very limited number of people. If you learn one of or two of the languages of the big groups of Indians, you can almost always find an Indian in the small groups who could speak this other language. It's like going into Europe with English. If you get in trouble, you can almost always find somebody who can speak English. But as I say, you learn a lot by listening to the kids. They laugh when you say something wrong.

I understand that one group of Indians chose you to be a brother of the tribe. Why do you think they did that?

Richard Schultes: I could work for three or four months with one Indian or two Indians, and they'd go on trips with me, far away from their big round houses, which are called malocas. If one of these Indians says he will accompany you on a ten-day or two-week paddle upstream, you can be sure, if he is an uncivilized Indian, that he will do it and bring you back. If he knows that there is going to be a big tribal fiesta in a few days or a week, and he says he won't go, the atom bomb wouldn't make him go. There was one time they brought me back when I didn't know much about it.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I had a heavy malarial fever, and I woke up in one of these big round houses in my hammock, which they had stretched up, and I was in it. If they had been some of our so-called civilized people, they would have left me in the forest and taken everything I had -- adios! I never felt -- one time I had a boy who worked with me about six weeks, seven weeks. After the first week he told me he'd killed a white man, and I knew the white man. And, the white man had been bothering this boy's sister. There are no authorities down there, and they have to defend themselves that way. I kept right on working with this boy, and one of the best fellows I ever had. And, these are the experiences that I remember: kindness, if you want to use this term, of these people towards this intruder from outside.

[ Key to Success ] Courage

Was it difficult work?

Richard Schultes: People say it's hard work.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I would consider being a bank teller behind a glass cage all day long would be far more difficult day after day after day, than to be free in the jungle of the Amazon. Everyday something new happened. Every day I might be able to find a species new to science, which I was able to do. And any botanist who goes in a flora as big as that can do this. And, this is one reason why it's an invigorating job. It's not a difficult job. It becomes another job, a job that you are really interested in doing and knowing about people, different kinds of people, and in a flora so rich in species that the possibilities of becoming bored don't exist.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

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