by Erin Doane, Curator
On November 18, 1894, Fritz Up De Graff of Elmira
sailed from New York City on the SS Advance bound for Ecuador. The young man
had recently graduated from Union College in Schenectady, New York with an engineering
degree. While a student, he met Domingo Cordovez, the son of a wealthy
Ecuadoran. The pair became fast friends and spoke about going into business
together to bring much-needed modern improvements to the City of Quito. Fritz
had always had an adventurous spirit – he was an original member of Rufus
Stanley’s Rambling Club – so, with $100 in his pocket, Fritz left his
home in search of adventure and profit in South America.
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| Fritz Up de Graff, 1923 |
For two years, Fritz lived as a guest and then
employee of Domingo’s father. The Cordovez family occupied a position of
importance in Ecuador. They owned eight hundred square miles of forest in which
they operated large cattle and horse ranches and multiple plantations. Fritz
described those years as one long series of commercial disappointments. He got
involved with one get-rich-quick proposition after another with the family.
They were going to start a furniture factory, clear 50 acres of forest and
plant coffee, build roads, bring electric lights to Quito, build a tannery,
bore for oil, distill whiskey, and a whole host of other business ventures.
Fritz didn’t lose any of his own money in these schemes (most of the $100 he
left home with was spent on his trip south), but he did not make any money
either.
In January 1897, after a falling-out with the
Cordovez family regarding their treatment of workers, Fritz decided he was
ready to move on. Instead of shipping back to the United States, he chose to do
some exploring. He sent a letter home to his mother and sisters telling them
that he and ten natives were striking out for the Napo River, one of the
western tributaries of the Amazon River. They would take a dugout canoe some
3,000 miles through some of the wildest parts of South America. He expected
they would arrive in Para, Brazil by March or April where he could take a
steamer back to New York City.
The Star-Gazette
in July 1897 called Fritz’s expedition into the Amazon “the most exciting and
novel trip ever attempted by any Elmiran” and declared that “never was a
similar trip with more hazardous undertakings attempted by any white man of his
age.” These glowing words came in the same article that described how his
family had not heard from him in nearly eight months and how they had been
writing letters to the US consul in Para with the fears that he was dead.
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Elmira Star-Gazette, July 26, 1897
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In some ways, it is surprising that Fritz actually
survived his ordeals. The saying, “if it wasn’t for bad luck, he’d have no luck
at all,” certainly applied. His native
guides abandoned him within days of heading into the jungle. Fortunately, he
did not find himself entirely alone. He met up with another American named Jack
Rouse and they traveled together for four years. The pair suffered terribly through
that time. They were attacked by vampire bats and mosquitoes, had their canoe
destroyed by a panicked tapir, lost their belongings to unscrupulous outpost
managers, nearly starved to death on several occasions, were repeatedly
abandoned by their hired help, and suffered various severe fevers and
illnesses.
On the positive side of their adventures, they
profited from the rubber trade, ate new, exotic things like monkeys and
anteaters, killed at least one man without consequences, and rescued a young
native woman who had been captured by a rival tribe (though she seemed to help
them almost more than they helped her). The pair also successfully lived with
several tribes of the Jivaro people, or Shuar
as they call themselves, who were known for their practice of shrinking human
heads.
Fritz and Jack parted ways in April 1900 after
many adventures. Jack was ready to leave South America but Fritz was not yet prepared
to return home. He got involved in a couple more money-making schemes – one in
the rubber trade and one involving cattle and cedar. Finally, he had had enough
travel and boarded a steamship back to the United State. On November 18, 1901,
he arrived back in New York City; exactly seven years to the day that he had
left.
In 1921, after years of telling his stories to
family, friends, and other enthralled audiences, Fritz wrote Head Hunters of the Amazon. The book was
first published in November 1922 by Duffield & Co. in the United Kingdom
and then in February 1923 in the United States. Eventually it was translated
into 13 languages. The book, with a forward written by Kermit Roosevelt, was
wildly popular with readers and critics. A reviewer at the New York Times wrote: “The dominant note of Mr. Updegraff’s volume,
and at the same time its potent charm, is its personal, straightforward manner
of presentation.… His is the easy intimate style of a fluent narrator; his is
the art of transforming his thoughts into written words with a sure freedom
from hesitancy or affectation.” It is still available in print from several
online booksellers and is truly an enthralling read.
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Head Hunters of the Amazon by Fritz Up de Graff, 1923
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After his time in the Amazon, Fritz continued to
travel. He met his wife, Eleanor Grosvenor, on one of his many cross-country trips
as an electrical and construction engineer. They married in 1904 and had three
sons. They lived in many different place around the world including the U.S.,
England, Canada, Spain, and Cuba. They were living in Mexico in 1910 when
revolution led by democratic reformer Francisco I. Madero broke out against
dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. On December 24, 1927, Fritz died of injuries he
had sustained in an automobile accident in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
