Nordenskjold Not Murdered

It’s not often that the New York Times runs an story about someone being not-murdered, but here you have it:

New York Times, May 19, 1914

NORDENSKJOLD IS SAFE Swedish Explorer in South America Not Murdered by Indians Berlin – May 18 – Baron Erland von Nordenskjold, the leader of a Swedish South American exploring expedition, who was reported to have been killed by Indians on March 14, is safe. The news of the Baron’s escape from the Indians reached here to-day in a letter from Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, dated March 21, which reported his arrival at Trinidad, the capital of the Bolivian Department of Beni.

Erland Nordenskiöld (or Nordenskjöld) was an Swedish geologist, paleontologist, linguist and anthropologist, son of the Baron Adolf Erik, discoverer of the Northwest passage. He traveled throughout Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Panama and Columbia from 1898 through 1927, writing a number of books, all of which continue to be valued, out-of-print titles today.

The ink was barely dry on his diploma from the University of Upsala in 1898 when he launched his first expedition to Patagonia. On the strength of his continued research in Argentina and Bolivia, he was appointed director of the ethnographic division of the Göteborg in Stockhom in 1913, and was a visiting professor at the University of California by 1926, when he undertook the expeditions to Panama and Columbia. About the time Nordenskiöld was not being killed in Bolivia, Ivor Thord-Gray was being hunted like a coyote by Mexican Federal troops through the Sierra Madre, escaping into Tarahumara Indian territory.

The summer after Thord-Gray’s narrow escape from the Federals, described in detail in Chapter IV of “Gringo Rebel”, he came into the heaviest fighting he was to see in the Mexican Revolution, with battles in Mezeala, Ocotlan, San Jose Poncitlan, La Barca, Tanhuato, Yurecuarot, Mirandilla, La Piedad, Irapuato, Hacienda Temaxcatio, Salamanca, Celaya, Queretaroy, Coachite, San Juan Del Rio, and Tula.

It was in Tula where Thord-Gray came to make a contribution to the career of Erland Nordenskiold:

“Tula was the ancient capital of the Toltec Empire which was defeated and subdued by the Chichimec Indians about the time of the Battle of Hastings. The streets and gardens of this lovely and peaceful town were practically littered with ancient sculptures in volcanic stone and many terracotta figurines. The place was a veritable treasure house of Toltec remains, and I estimated the larger pieces, some of them very large, to be over one thousand in numbers, and the figurines could easily have been over ten thousand. I purchased quite a number of large sculptures and hundreds of lesser ones, but since I could not take them with me, they were placed in the custody of a few families to await my return. Seven years elapsed, however, before returning, but all my things were intact except for a few which could not be found because the people had died. This archaeological collection of several hundred pieces was later given to Dr. Erland Nördenskiöld for the Ethnographical Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden."

--Chapter X of “Gringo Rebel”

“ Erland von Nordenskiöld died on July 5th, 1932 of malaria and complications derived from his hard explorers life.