In March 1825, the British artist, botanist and traveller William John Burchell (1781-1863) set sail for Brazil as member of a British diplomatic mission led by the British diplomat Sir Charles Stuart – in order to recognize Brazil’s political independence and negotiate Anglo-Brazilian commercial treaties. From 1825 to 1830, Burchell travelled through coastal places to the Brazilian Backlands (Figure 1). Burchell collected over 50,000 plant specimens, 16,000 insects, and 817 bird skins representing 362 species. In doing so he produced hundreds of visual documents and noted in the Manuscript Catalogue of Brazilian Plants (hereafter Catalogue) – which comprises nine volumes written in situ – geographical, geological and astronomical information.¹

Analysing Burchell’s letters to family and friends from his travels in St Helena (1805-1810), South Africa (1810-1815) and Brazil, he often described himself as a solitary traveller. Of course, it was true that Burchell was not the leader of a large-scale expedition or accompanied by members of his own class for any prolonged period. On the other hand, he faced obvious challenges which required the assistance of intermediaries: how could he travel alone through unknown lands occupied by inhabitants who may be suspicious of outsiders? How could he manage his journeys and transport his large boxes of collections and instruments across large distances, keeping himself and his baggage safe while also collecting, cataloguing, writing and drawing in the field?

Like every other Western traveller in his position, Burchell relied on local labour, expertise and the advice of a variety of “Indigenous intermediaries.”

Like every other Western traveller in his position, Burchell relied on local labour, expertise and the advice of a variety of “Indigenous intermediaries.”² By analysing the valuable but fragmentary evidences in Burchell’s archives held by the Oxford University: Museum of Natural History and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, this post explores the role played by Indigenous peoples and intermediaries in Burchell’s Brazilian journey.

Writing to William Hooker in 1828 from Goiás, Burchell reported that he was {“travelling in the same solitary, unassisted manner as in Africa.”³ However, what he did not explain to Hooker was that at this point of the expedition, he was travelling with his personal servant and collector Joaquim Congo.

Joaquim Congo – one of Sir Charles Stuart’s retinue – was hired by Burchell in the city of Rio de Janeiro in November 1825.⁴ Burchell reported to his family that the cost of the Brazilian expedition was such that he could not afford to bring over his English servant.⁵ Unfortunately, Burchell obscured Joaquim’s name from his family letters, only mentioning Congo, “my black boy” or “my negro boy”– racist expressions that highlight Joaquim’s enslaved condition and the idea that he amounted to the traveller’s personal belonging.⁶ When returning to England in February 1830, Burchell decided to bring Joaquim Congo.⁷ We know that Joaquim was a servant at Burchell’s house for a while, but unfortunately, records remain silent about Joaquim’s subsequent life in England.⁸

Burchell’s actions were consistent with common exploration practices at the time. In the city of Rio de Janeiro, many nineteenth-century European naturalists exploited enslaved population to collect botanical and zoological specimens for them. Besides employing Joaquim Congo as his servant and collector, Burchell paid enslaved individuals called money-earning slaves (escravo de ganho) to collect butterflies for him in the Atlantic rainforest (Figure 2).

The use of female assistance in Burchell’s journey was very limited, and perhaps hidden in his private documents – a common practice amongst nineteenth-century Western explorers. The only evidence about a woman being employed in his party was during his stay in the city of São Paulo.⁹ Burchell rented a large house on the edge of the city and hired a female cook, who was also probably responsible for serving, cleaning and caring labour of Burchell’s party.

Burchell left São Paulo in July 1827 and in November 1827 arrived at the interior of Brazil. In Goiás, an unnamed Brazilian rancher (vaqueiro) mentioned to Burchell some native plant names, as well as their traditional uses by local people.¹⁰ A close analysis of Burchell’s Catalogue suggests that the vaqueiro joined Burchell’s expedition for a significant period of time, as the records in the Catalogue were found for plants gathered in distinct places in the savannas (Cerrado).

Although Burchell often omitted in his accounts the name and identity of the individuals who facilitated his journey, he interestingly pictured his party in a base camp in Goiás in November 1828. Besides Joaquim Congo, Burchell’s party was also formed by three muleteers (tropeiros) who helped him with the mules and the considerable quantity of baggage full of collections, provisions and delicate instruments (Figure 3).¹¹ The illustration gives us some sense of the muleteers’ labour and knowledge involved in the expedition such as preparing the ranch (usually next to a river), cooking for the party, caring for and tracking the animals and organising the traveller’s apparatus and equipment.

From Goiás, Burchell decided to travel northwards to the city of Belém (Pará), situated in the Amazonia biome, to return directly to England. Burchell was the first Englishman (and one of the first European travellers) to attempt a journey from Goiás to Pará. In this journey, Burchell depended on the expertise and bodywork of local pilots and Indigenous rowers to drive him (and his collections) safely through the strong currents of the Amazon Rivers. The crew of these boats usually consisted of fifteen to twenty people from Ribeirinho people or Indigenous population (called Indígenas canoeiros), because they had the “practical knowledge” to navigate, and to find edible food and shelter on the riverbank.¹²

During the replenishing stops on the riverbank of the Tocantins River, travellers had the chance to establish contact with Indigenous groups, visiting and staying for a couple of days at a time in their Indigenous communities (aldeias) (Figures 4 and 5). As Burchell learned Portuguese during his travels, this enabled him to establish significant and direct communications with native Brazilians. In the Catalogue, Burchell reported the several stops he made along river villages, and Indigenous communities in 1829.¹³

It seems that Burchell’s interaction with ribeirinho and Indigenous peoples from the Amazonia region contributed to improve his collection with useful plants, like Bactris setosa (tucum), Bertholletia excelsa (Brazil nut tree) and Dipteryx odorata (Aubl.) Forsyth f. (cumaru),  just to name a few. These plants were traditionally used by the Indigenous peoples in construction of handmade rafts, clothing and fishing artefacts (tucum fibre) and culinary, respectively. Burchell also brought from the Brazilian Amazon raw rubber from a seringueira (Hevea brasiliensis) (Figure 6), and described in the Catalogue the traditional uses by local people (Figure 7).

At some point after the completion of his journey, Burchell decided to organise the vernacular plant names in the Index of the Aboriginal, Brazilian and Portuguese names of plants (1825-1839). It comprises about 300 plant specimens listed alphabetically with their vernacular name and a reference number (linking to the Catalogue).¹⁴ This unique manuscript is itself an original contribution to botanical science representing how traditional Indigenous knowledge was translated into the universal grid of European science, while also being intended as a tool for future travelling naturalists in Brazil.

Exploration was a joint project of work, and Burchell’s travels were clearly supported and, indeed, made possible by Indigenous and local intermediaries who played important role in his expedition as guides, servants, collectors, informants, and pilots.

Exploration was a joint project of work, and Burchell’s travels were clearly supported and, indeed, made possible by Indigenous and local intermediaries who played important role in his expedition as guides, servants, collectors, informants, and pilots. Given that the information about useful plants and their common names was gathered in a number of different Brazilian biomes, it appears that Burchell had access to a variety of different non-European people during his journey. By retrieving their role and significance from the archive, glimpses of the hidden presence and contributions of the Indigenous intermediaries to Burchell’s travels can be found, providing valuable evidence for questioning the myth of the “lone and self-sufficient traveller,” and contributing to enlarging the histories of colonial exploration.  

Feature Image: Cubatão: muleteer’s ranch (1826) by William J. Burchell. Source: Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS), public domain. (last accessed 6 September 2024).

---

Notes

¹ Luciana Martins and Felix Driver, “The struggle for luxuriance: William Burchell collects tropical nature”, in Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire, ed. byF. Driver and L. Martins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 59-74; Manuscript Catalogue of Brazilian Plants (1825-1830), WJB/3, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (hereafter RBGK). 

² Shino Konishi, Maria Nugent and Tiffany Shellam, “Exploration archives and indigenous histories: an introduction”, in Indigenous intermediaries: new perspectives on exploration archives, ed. by Shino Konishi, Maria Nugent and Tiffany Shellam (Canberra: ANU Press, 2015), pp. 1-11 (p. 2).

³ William Hooker, “Mr. Burchell Brazilian Journey”, Botanical Miscellany 2 (1831): 128-133 (p. 130).

⁴ William Burchell to Matthew Burchell, 25 November 1825, WJB/C/2/057, Oxford University: Museum of Natural History (hereafter OUM Archives).

⁵ Burchell to Mary Burchell, 15 March 1826, WJB/C/2/028, OUM Archives.

⁶ Burchell to Mary Burchell, 29 August 1826, WJB/C/2/029, OUM Archives; Burchell to Jane Burchell, 10 June 1827, WJB/C/2/018, OUM Archives.

⁷ Burchell to J. Burchell, 1 December 1829, WJB/C/2/020, OUM Archives

⁸ Jane Pickering, “William John Burchell’s travels in Brazil, 1825-1830, with details of the surviving mammal and bird collections”, Archives of Natural History 25 (1998): 237-265.  

⁹ Burchell to Mary Burchell, 23 March 1827, WJB/C/2/030, OUM Archives.

¹⁰ Catalogue, WJB/3/5, RBGK. 

¹¹ Burchell to Mary Burchell, 23 March 1827, WJB/C/2/030, OUM Archives.

¹² Kátia M. Flores, Caminhos que andam: o rio Tocantins e a navegação fluvial nos sertões do Brasil (PhD thesis, Federal University of Minas Gerais, 2006).    

¹³ Catalogue, WJB/3/5, RBGK.

¹⁴ Index of the Aboriginal, Brazilian and Portuguese names of plants; with references to the Catalogus Geographicus Plantarum Brasilia Tropicae (1825-1839), WJB/3/6, RBGK.