A Glimpse into the Legacy of Spix and Martius's Journey Through Brazil

This long journey, which required great dedication and persistence from Spix and Martius, could never have been accomplished without the support and help of guides, interpreters, muleteers, slaves, and indigenous people. In short, people from all social strata who knew the country, its nature, and culture.

The results of this journey would have been lost if Spix and Martius had not turned it into an inexhaustible source for their intellectual output. And in this, Martius in particular was successful – unlike his traveling companion, who returned very ill and died six years later.

The expedition along the Japurá River in the upper Amazon also inspired Martius to write a novel, very much in the romantic style, which discusses the action of white colonizers, the attempt to catechize the indigenous people, and their tragic extermination.

The novel "Frey Apollonio" remained in manuscript form for over 150 years, being published only in 1994.  In this novel, Martius adopts a more humanist stance, making a kind of self-critique of his negative and racist views on the indigenous people.

The correspondents include Alexander von Humboldt, Georges Cuvier, linguists like Jakob Grimm, poets like Goethe, and colleagues who had been to Brazil, like Wilhelm von Eschwege, Prince Wied-Neuwied, Alcide Orbigny, Ferdinand Denis, and August Saint-Hilaire, among others.

On the Brazilian side were Dom Pedro II, the painter Araújo de Porto Alegre, the historian Francisco A. Varnhagen, the botanists Francisco Freire Alemão and José de Saldanha da Gama, the writer and journalist Januário da Cunha Barbosa, the naturalist and engineer Baron of Capanema, and many more.

Today, Spix and Martius’ vast work (published and in manuscripts), herbaria, mineralogical and zoo-botanical collections, of indigenous artifacts and melodies, form an incredible resource for research in all disciplines, making it possible to understand the past.