The Mighty Orinoco

Chapter XIII Two Months at the Mission

348 chapter XIII Two Months at the Mission Fourteen years had passed since the disappearance of Colonel de Kermor and his departure for the New World. The history of those fourteen years can be told in a few lines. In 1872, he learned about the wreck of the Norton and that his wife and his child had perished in that maritime disaster. The circumstances following the catastrophe prevented him from realizing that one of these two beings so precious to him, his young daughter Jeanne, had been rescued. He had not yet even met her, since he had had to leave Martinique a few months before her birth. During the following year, Colonel de Kermor remained at the head of his regiment. Then, after announcing his retirement and no longer having any family ties in this world, he resolved to dedicate the rest of his life to doing humanitarian work as a foreign missionary. He had always possessed, along with his heart of a soldier, the soul of an apostle. The o~cer in him was now fully prepared to merge with the cleric, and he would become a warrior priest devoted to converting , or in other words, to civilizing native tribes.1 Colonel de Kermor, telling no one of his plans—not even Sergeant Martial—secretly left France in 1875 and journeyed to Venezuela, where so many Indian tribes were living in ignorance and in physical and moral degradation. When he had finished his ecclesiastical studies in this country, he received his ordination and entered into the Company of Foreign Missions under the name of Father Esperante, assuring that his new existence was incognito. His resignation as an o~cer was dated 1873, and his ordination took place in 1878, when he was forty-nine years old. While in Caracas Father Esperante decided to go to live in those almost unknown territories of southern Venezuela where missionaries seldom appeared. A number of Indian tribes there had never received the civilizing teachings of Christianity, and most remained in a savage 349 state. To seek them out, as far away as those distant regions bordering on Brazil, such was the task that the French missionary felt called on to pursue. And, with no one suspecting anything of his previous life, he left in the beginning of the year 1879. After traveling up the middle section of the Orinoco, Father Esperante , who spoke Spanish like a native, arrived in San Fernando, where he stayed for several months. It is from that town that he addressed a letter to one of his friends, an attorney in Nantes. This letter, the last to be signed with his real name, was necessary to settle a family a¬air—and he begged the person receiving it to keep it a secret. This letter, found in the papers of the lawyer after his death, was not forwarded to Sergeant Martial until 1891. At this time, Jeanne de Kermor had already been home for six years. In San Fernando, thanks to his personal resources, Father Esperante managed to procure the material necessary for the creation of a mission beyond the headwaters of the river. It was also in that town that he was joined by Brother Angelo, who, already familiar with Indian customs, would bring to his undertaking an assistance which was no less valuable than it was devoted. Brother Angelo called Father Esperante’s attention to the Guaharibos tribes, most of whom lived along the banks of the high Orinoco and in the neighborhood of the Sierra Parima. Evangelizing these Indians would be an act of compassion, for they were among the most wretched of people, as well as an act of civilization, for they were deemed to be among the most ferocious of the natives of Venezuela. The Guaharibos had a reputation of being pillagers, murderers, and even cannibals—a reputation which they did not merit. These rumors did not discourage a man as determined as the former Colonel de Kermor , and he decided to create a mission in the north of the Roraima territory and to gather about himself the natives of the region. Father Esperante and Brother Angelo left San Fernando in two dugouts well provisioned with the basic supplies necessary for their initial founding of a mission. The rest of the material was to be sent to them according to the needs of the small colony. The falcas went up the river, stopping at the principal towns and the riverside ranches, and they...