Until the 20th century, it was believed that there was a connection between the Xingu and Tapajós rivers in the Amazon, which could facilitate economic exploration and settlement in the region, but the site had never been mapped.
The first scientist to cross the rivers to investigate the hypothesis was a woman, the German ornithologist Emília Snethlage.. In 1909, she traveled the Xingu region by land and water for four months. With few resources for the expedition, she was guided by seven indigenous people from the Xipaya and Kuruaya peoples.
“It took more than 26 days just to reach the Tapajós, much longer than planned. They went hungry, and Emília had malaria, but they managed to cross and prove that there is no connection between the rivers”, says historian Miriam Junghans, researcher of the trajectory of the German woman in Brazil. “The location didn’t exist on maps until the expedition,” she points out.
The discovery had international repercussions, and the name of the ornithologist became known in scientific institutions around the world. Travel notes also led to the publication of a comparative vocabulary of the Xipaya and Kuruaya.
Born in Germany in 1868, Snethlage received her PhD in Natural History from the University of Freiburg in 1904. The following year, she moved to Brazil to take up the position of ornithologist at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, in Belém, Pará.
In 1914, Snethlage assumed the position of director of the Museum and became the first woman to direct a scientific institution in South America.
“The work on the classification of specimens collected by Emília not only in the Amazon, but in several regions of Brazil, is in scientific institutions all over the world”, says Junghans.
Her most important work is usually considered the “Catalogue of Amazonian Birds”, published in 1914, in which the scientist described, in more than 500 pages, 1,117 species of the region. According to the Goeldi Museum, the work served as a reference for scholars of Brazilian ornithology for 70 years.
The ‘Area of Emilia’
Before becoming an ornithologist, Snethlage was a teacher and worked educating children at home, but at age 31, she joined the faculty of Natural History at the University of Berlin. She was one of the first women at the institution, as well as one of the first in Germany to hold a PhD.
When she embarked for Brazil on her way to the Amazon, the German, then 37 years old, had never left Europe.
“Emília was nominated for the position at the Goeldi Museum when she was working at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin as an assistant in the zoology section. She accepted the nomination because she saw a concrete possibility of building a career in Brazil. In Germany, she would probably spend her life being assistant for being a woman”, points out Junghans.
At the Goeldi Museum, she became the first hired servant in the state of Pará. In addition to Emília, the Museum’s director, the respected naturalist Emílio Goeldi hired two other women at the time.
“This was very important on the one hand, but on the other hand, the director also hired them because with a man’s salary he paid for the work of two women”, says the historian.
Snethlage quickly stood out as an ornithologist at the museum and became known both to farmers, rubber tappers and other residents of the Pará region, as well as to the Xipaya and Kuruaya indigenous peoples, who helped her on the expeditions.
“When she went to work in the fields, she slept on farms. Always with very long hair and dresses, Emília said that she kept her feminine appearance so that the women of the region would not be surprised by her presence, even if it was more difficult to walk in the the bush with her shotgun wearing a skirt”, describes the historian.
Among her fellow scientists, the German was also respected. “The Lower Amazon region [centro do Pará] it was called among ornithologists the ‘Area of Emilia'”, says Junghans.
From travel reports, it is possible to understand why the ornithologist became such a well-known figure in the region, in addition to her scientific work.
“On a trip on the Iriri River, far from any city, Emília put her hand in the water when she was walking in a canoe and was bitten by a piranha”, narrates her biographer. “A finger on her right hand became very inflamed as the days went by, and she began to ask the people who accompanied her to cut the finger off. When no one was willing, she herself took an ax and cut the phalanx of the finger.”
Dismissed for being German
Snethlage took over the direction of the Goeldi Museum in the year that the First World War began. According to her biography in the museum’s archive, she was removed from her post in the context of the conflict.
“In 1918, in the midst of the First World War and with the rupture of diplomatic relations between Brazil and the Germanic bloc, the German ornithologist was removed by the government of the State of Pará from the activities of the museum”, says an excerpt from her biography.
Despite remaining neutral in much of the world conflict, Brazil broke diplomatic relations with Germany in 1917, after the Germans sank Brazilian ships.
That same year, President Wenceslau Braz sanctioned the War Law, which revoked the operating licenses of banks and insurance companies owned by Germans, creating a climate of hostility against German citizens who lived in Brazil.
“Emília was removed from the Museum simply because she was German. There was no evidence that she had any political involvement in the war”, says Junghans.
Difficulties of being a woman
The naturalist was readmitted in 1919, after the end of the First World War, but she faced a second accusation that would definitively remove her from the direction of the Museum: that of having acted as a “woman” to help the employees of the place.
“Emília was accused of diverting the leftover meat that came from the municipal slaughterhouse to the employees to feed the animals in the museum”, says Junghans. Pará was going through a difficult economic period with the end of the rubber cycle.
“Is it over there [Snethlage] she was also accused of letting ‘easy-going women’ into the museum. It was a very difficult time, there were criticisms and campaigns against her in the newspapers”, says the historian.
From letters sent to family and colleagues, Snethlage never claimed to be a feminist, but showed a strong awareness of the gender difficulties she faced as a woman and a scientist.
“Emília signed scientific articles as ‘Doctor Snethlage’. When she received correspondence addressed as ‘to the doctor’, ‘to the professor’, she said that it showed that she was doing a good job, because people thought she was a man”, she says. Junghans.
In love with Brazilian nature
In 1922, Snethlage ended up accepting an invitation from the director of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro to be a naturalist at the institution and moved to the capital of Rio de Janeiro. In his new place of work, he went on scientific expeditions throughout Brazil.
Snethlage never married or had children, but a nephew, who followed his aunt’s career, came to visit her in Brazil and travel through the Amazon.
“In the letters she sent to her family, she was very fascinated by the Amazon, very enthusiastic and passionate about the nature of Brazil. The passion for fieldwork was something that was always present in the letters throughout her life, not only at the beginning of the work”, describes Junghans.
In 1929, at age 61, Snethlage died of a heart attack during an expedition through Rondônia.
