K. Bilby the Explorer As Hero: Le Fidèle Apatou in the French Wilderness
K. Bilby The explorer as hero: Le Fidèle Apatou in the French wilderness In: New West Indian Guide/ Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 78 (2004), no: 3/4, Leiden, 197-227 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl KENNETH BlLBY THE EXPLORER AS HERO: LE FIDELE APATOU IN THE FRENCH WILDERNESS For a brief spell during the closing years of the nineteenth century, a South American Maroon named Apatu became the toast of France, at least that portion of the French public that thrilled to the pages of Le Tour du Monde, a popular adventure series that inspired the likes of Jules Verne.1 Hailing from the borderlands between French and Dutch Guiana, a part of the Amazon basin that was still only nominally under the control of the two competing European powers that had laid claim to the area, Apatu had joined forces with the French explorer Jules Crevaux. In doing so, he had caused alarm among his own people, the Aluku, who continued to regard whites with great suspicion. Over a period of several months, Crevaux and Apatu had penetrated rivers and forests that had yet to appear on European maps; by the time they arrived at the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil, they had also cemented a friendship that was to bring them together for a number of other journeys over the next few years, a friendship that would last until Crevaux's death in 1882.2 By Crevaux's own account, Apatu had not only 1. An earlier version of this article was presented at the lOlst meeting of the Ameri- can Anthropological Association in New Orleans in November 2002, in a session titled "Old Colonies, New Post-Colonies: The French West Indies and the End of Postcolonial Theory." The field research on which it is partially based received support at various points from the Fulbright-Hays program, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the (U.S.) National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, and the (U.S.) National Endowment for the Humanities, for which I remain grateful.
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