Background
Maccreagh was born on August 8, 1886 in Perth, Indiana, to Scottish parents. His father, a naturalist and historian, had come to the United States to study the culture and history of Native Americans.
(With a wicked eye for absurdities, Gordon MacCreagh recou...)
With a wicked eye for absurdities, Gordon MacCreagh recounts his adventures with eight "Eminent Scientificos" as they set out to explore the Amazon in 1923 without any idea of what lies ahead of them: rapids, malaria, monkey stew, and "dangerous savages." A combination of Twain's The Innocents Abroad and a cautionary tale for explorers, this is one of the most honest accounts ever written of a scientific expedition.
https://www.amazon.com/White-Waters-Black-Gordon-MacCreagh/dp/0226500187/?tag=2022091-20
Maccreagh was born on August 8, 1886 in Perth, Indiana, to Scottish parents. His father, a naturalist and historian, had come to the United States to study the culture and history of Native Americans.
After attending public schools in Perth, he was sent to Scotland, where he was educated by his grandfather, a church deacon. Because his grandfather traveled widely, MacCreagh attended schools in Adelham and Glenalmond, Scotland, and then enrolled at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
While still a student of the University of Heidelberg MacCreagh was provoked into a sword duel with another student. Mistakenly believing he had killed a fellow student, he fled to Southeast Asia. He later learned that the student had not died, but recovered from the wound. Nevertheless, MacCreagh kept traveling, and reached India after several months on the road.
He worked his way to Darjeeling in India, where he worked as overseer of a tea plantation. This proved to be boring, so he left and went to Kenya, where he got a contract to provide wild animals for the Hagenbeck-Wallace circus, which was traveling through Germany. MacCreagh accumulated more animals than the circus could use, and spent all his funds taking care of the surplus, so he returned to India, where he spent five years working for British Post Office Intelligence.
After five years he was thoroughly bored, so he decided to become a writer. He wrote a two-act play that was performed by a Hindu princess and other Hindu actors, and it was so successful that a New York producer brought the play to New York; however, it contained too much nudity for the tastes of the time, and it was quickly shut down.
MacCreagh, now living in New York City, continued to write, selling adventure stories set in India to Adventure magazine; his first story appeared in October of 1913. He continued to write throughout his life, but only when he needed money. During World War I he served in the U.S. Air Force, spending a year in Europe.
In 1926 MacCreagh published White Waters and Black, the journal of a two-year expedition to the Amazon jungle which MacCreagh undertook in 1922-23.
Between June of 1927 and May of 1928 MacCreagh published a series of seven articles in Adventure magazine describing his experiences as a member of an archeological expedition to look for the biblical Ark of the Covenant. MacCreagh had spent 1926 and 1927 in Abyssinia in search of the Ark, and returned there with a second expedition in 1928. In 1928, he published The Last of Free Africa, based on these articles.
MacCreagh's activities during the 1930s are not known; he wrote some stories, but not enough to support himself and his wife. At the outbreak of World War II he took a job with Douglas Aircraft Corporation, which supplied fighter planes for the war. The company sent him to Africa on mysterious missions; although he was officially on the Douglas payroll, he worked for the British government and then the American government. In 1943 or 1944, enemy forces shot at his plane and wounded him. The pilot landed safely, and MacCreagh eventually recovered from his wounds.
After World War II MacCreagh and his wife, Helen, moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, but left after a year to explore the then-unfinished Pan-American Highway. They drove in a hearse that was so old it had become a jalopy; the hearse was destroyed when a decaying adobe wall collapsed on it. After this adventure they returned to St. Petersburg, where MacCreagh worked as a lecturer and writer.
On August 30, 1953, MacCreagh died from abdominal cancer at the age of sixty-eight.
(With a wicked eye for absurdities, Gordon MacCreagh recou...)
(The Complete Tales of Kingi Bwana, Volume 3)
2014(The Complete Tales of Kingi Bwana, Volume 1)
2014(The Complete Tales of Kingi Bwana, Volume 2)
2014(The Complete Tales of Kingi Bwana, Volume 4)
2014MacCreagh was a member of the American Society of Mammalogists and Ends of the Earth Club.
Gordon MacCreagh was described as "altogether a happy man, an excellent bagpiper and guitarist, [with] a soft, haunting singing voice."
It is possible that MacCreagh was the inspiration for the fictional character of Indiana Jones.
Quotes from others about the person
Peter Rubers: "One is left with the feeling that had he written a book about himself, it would have topped the bestseller lists. [His life was] one continuing adventure after another, often filled with mishaps and danger, some of which he documented for posterity with irreverent good humor.
In August 1922 Gordon MacCreagh married Helen Komlosy. She was as adventurous as he was, and joined him on trips to Borneo and to Ethiopia.