THE history of the Putumayo occurrences after the exposure by Messrs. Hardenburg and Perkins, due to the persistence of the Anti-Slavery Society and the courage of the editor of Truth, who alone incurred the risk of libel proceedings attaching to such exposures, so performing a notable service to humanity,[123] is contained in the Blue Book, or Foreign Office Report, already quoted. The proceedings leading to the sending of Consul Casement to the Putumayo by Sir Edward Grey and the Report itself are worthy of wider notice than that received by an official pamphlet. The Report itself is of much geographical and ethnological value and of general interest as a work of travel, apart from its purpose of confirming the existence of the terrible and almost incredible abuses.

Mr. Casement went to Peru in July, 1910, and transmitted his Report in January, 1911.[124] The result was transmitted by the Foreign Office to the British Consul in Lima, with instructions to lay particulars before the Peruvian Government, and to the British Minister at Washington in order that the United States Government should be informed of the action of the British Government. The British Foreign Office repeatedly urged upon the Lima Government that the criminals, whose names had been immediately transmitted by cable, should be arrested. The Peruvian Government promised to take action and sent a commission to Iquitos, but failed to arrest the criminals. In July, 1911, they were informed that the Report would be made public, but the chief criminals were not arrested. Further promises to the same effect made by the Peruvian Government were unfulfilled, and the British Government asked for the support of the United States Minister at Lima, which was accorded in October, 1911. After repeated communications had passed, during which the Peruvian Government had not prevented the escape of several of the criminals, or taken adequate steps to protect the Indians, the British Foreign Office laid the correspondence before Parliament in July, 1912, and published the Report.

In the preliminary Report received in January, 1911, by Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, Consul Casement said:—

“My conclusions are chiefly based on the direct testimony of Barbados men in the company’s service, who brought their accusations on the spot, who were prepared to submit them to investigation, and to make them in the presence of those they accused, and whose testimony, thus given to me, was accepted without further investigation by SeÑor Juan Tizon, the Peruvian Amazon company’s representative at La Chorrera, on the ground that it was sufficient or could not be controverted. It was equally potent with the members of the Peruvian Amazon Company’s commission, who expressed themselves as fully convinced of the truth of the charges preferred, they themselves being often present when I interrogated the British witnesses. There was, moreover, the evidence of our own eyes and senses, for the Indians almost everywhere bore evidence of being flogged, in many cases of being brutally flogged, and the marks of the lash were not confined to men nor adults. Women, and even little children, were more than once found, their limbs scarred with weals left by the thong of twisted tapir-hide, which is the chief implement used for coercing and terrorising the native population of the region traversed. The crimes charged against many men now in the employ of the Peruvian Amazon Company are of the most atrocious kind, including murder, violation, and constant flogging. The condition of things revealed is entirely disgraceful, and fully warrants the worst charges brought against the agents of the Peruvian Amazon Company and its methods of administration on the Putumayo. I append to my Report a list of those agents of the company against whom the worst charges were preferred and against whom the evidence in my possession is overwhelmingly strong. The prefect of Loreto again and again assured me that his Government was determined to deal with the criminals and protect the Indians. The charges brought by the Barbados men were of the most atrocious kind, and, added to the accumulating weight of evidence that we had gathered from station to station, and the condition of the Indian population as we had opportunity to observe it in passing, they left no doubt in our minds that the worst charges against the company’s agents were true. Many of the acts charged against agents whom we met were of the most revolting description, and the Barbados men bringing these charges did not omit, in several cases, to also accuse themselves of shocking crimes, committed, they averred, under compulsion.”

“Fidel Velarde: a Peruvian, chief of Occidente. Alfredo Montt: a Peruvian, chief of Atenas. Charged with atrocious crimes. Augusto JimÉnez: a Peruvian. Is a half-caste. Age about 26. Has been for years the lieutenant of AgÜero, under whom he has committed appalling crimes upon the Boras Indians in the section Abisinia. He was sub-chief of Morelia, and is often mentioned in the Truth charges. He begged me to listen to his statement, and said he could prove that one of the charges against him in Truth was not true. On the other hand, the evidence against him is overwhelming. Armando Normand: a Bolivian, I believe of foreign parentage. Largely educated in England. A man of whom nothing good can be said. The crimes committed by this man are innumerable, and even Peruvian white men said to me that Normand had done things none of the others had done. If any one on the Putumayo deserves punishment this man should be made an example of. He was under sentence of dismissal, and would have left Chorrera by the Liberal with me only I objected to travel with him, and begged SeÑor Tizon to send him by another vessel. JosÉ Inocente Fonseca: a Peruvian, about 28 years old. Has committed innumerable crimes upon the Indians. Abelardo AgÜero: about 35 or 36 years of age. Chief of Abisinia, of which section he has had charge for years. Has committed innumerable crimes. Elias Martinengui: The charges against him are many. Aurelio RodrÍguez: a Peruvian, whose crimes were vouched for by many and are widely known. A. Vasquez Torres, or Alejandro Vasquez. Rodolfo RodrÍguez: a Colombian, charged with many murders. Miguel Flores: a Peruvian. Armando Blondel. AquilÉo Torres: a Colombian. Innumerable crimes against this man. He was made prisoner by Normand in January, 1907, and kept chained up for a year by Velarde and others, and then released on condition he joined them, and was first employed in flogging Indians. He improved on his masters, and has killed scores, and cut ears off, and done things that even some of the worst Peruvians say they could not tolerate. He was once a Colombian magistrate, and was captured by Macedo’s orders along with a lot of other Colombians because they were ‘poaching’ on the company’s territory, and trying to get Indians to work for them. Jermin, or Filomene, Vasquez. This man is charged with many crimes. The latest of them only in August, 1910, when he had thirteen Indians—men, women, and children—murdered on the road between the CaquetÁ and Morelia. He boasted on his return to Abisinia ‘he had left the road pretty.’ Simon AngÚlo: a Colombian black man. Is the flogger or executioner of Abisinia under AgÜero. Has flogged many to death. There is also a Barbados man named King, calls himself Armando King, who is at Encanto under Loayza. I believe King to be as bad as any of the others almost. There are a great many others charged with crimes whose names will be submitted.”

In his detailed Report, submitted in January, 1911, Consul Casement says:—

“The true attraction from the first to Colombian or Peruvian caucheros was not so much the presence of the scattered Hevea braziliensis trees throughout this remote forest as the existence of fairly numerous tribes of docile, or at any rate of easily subdued, Indians. The largest gathering of these people was a tribe termed the Huitotos, a mild and inoffensive people subdivided into many sub-tribes or families, each dwelling apart from its neighbour, and ruled by its own hereditary cacique or capitÁn.

“The Huitotos chiefly dwelt along the courses of the CaraparanÁ and Upper and Middle IgaraparanÁ, and occupied all the country between these two rivers. On the north of the IgaraparanÁ they extended some distance, in various settlements, into the thick forest towards the great JapurÁ (or CaquetÁ) River until they merged in the Andokes, Ricigaros, and Boras, tribes doubtless of a kindred far-off origin, but wholly differing to-day in speech from the Huitotos, as also from each other. While these tribes were in each case of one family, speaking the same language, little or no cohesion existed among the scattered sub-tribes into which they were split. On the contrary, enmity more often than friendship ruled the relations between neighbours.

“Thus the 30,000 Huitotos, instead of uniting as one people, were split up into an infinity of ‘families’ or clans and inter-clan fighting and raids perpetuated for generations disputes of obscure and often trivial origin. So with the Boras, the Andokes, or other agglomerations inhabiting the neighbouring regions. While, collectively, each of these tribes might have put large numbers of men into the field, they were so divided by family quarrels that no one cacique probably could ever count on more than 200 men, and in the majority of cases on very many less.

“They were therefore an easy enough prey to the ‘civilised’ intruders, who brought to their conquest arms of precision against which the Indian blow-pipes or throwing-spears could offer but a paltry resistance.

“The object of the ‘civilised’ intruders, in the first instance, was not to annihilate the Indians, but to conquistar—i.e., to subjugate them, and put them to what was termed civilised, or at any rate profitable, occupation to their subduers.

“These subduers formed themselves into bands and parties, dubbed ‘commercial associations,’ and, having overcome the resistance of the Indians, they appropriated them to their own exclusive use along with the rubber-trees that might be in the region they inhabited. Henceforth to the chief of the band they became ‘my Indians,’ and any attempt by one of his civilised neighbours to steal, wheedle, or entice away his Indians became a capital offence.

“Thus where the primitive savage raided his savage neighbour for reasons that seemed good to him, the white man who came on an alleged mission of civilisation to end this primal savagery himself raided his fellow white man for reasons that seemed to the Indian altogether wrong, viz., his surer enslavement. Constant thefts of Indians by one cauchero from another led to reprisals more bloody and murderous than anything the Indian had ever wrought upon his fellow-Indian. The primary aim of rubber-getting, which could only be obtained from the labour of the Indian, was often lost sight of in these desperate conflicts.

“When the first contingent of Barbados men reached the Putumayo at the end of 1904 the firm of Arana Brothers had not complete control of the region in which it carried on its dealings with the Indian dwellers in the forest. The majority of those who then exploited the Indians and obtained rubber from them were Colombians, men who had come down the Putumayo from that republic and established themselves on different sites along the banks of these two tributaries. In some cases these Colombian settlers appear to have held concessions from their Government. As it was not easy to obtain supplies from Colombia owing to the mountainous nature of the country in which the Putumayo rises, and as the market for the rubber obtained lay down-stream, where the Amazon forms the natural outlet, it was more profitable to open up relations with traders in Brazil or Peru, and to obtain from them what was required, than to seek supplies over the distant and difficult route from Pasto, in Colombia. The Iquitos house of Arana Brothers had at an early date entered into relations with these Colombian settlers, and, by means of steamers between Iquitos and the two tributaries of the Putumayo named, had supplied their wants and brought their rubber to be disposed of in the Iquitos market. Little by little these relations changed, and from being merely intermediaries the firm of Arana Brothers acquired possession of the majority of the Colombian undertakings in these regions. These transfers were sometimes effected by sale and purchase and sometimes by other means.

“Throughout the greater part of the Amazon region, where the rubber trade flourishes, a system of dealing prevails which is not tolerated in civilised communities. In so far as it affects a labouring man or an individual who sells his labour, it is termed peonage, and is repressed by drastic measures in some parts of the New World. It consists in getting the person working for you into your debt and keeping him there; and in lieu of other means of discharging this obligation he is forced to work for his creditor upon what are practically the latter’s terms, and under varying forms of bodily constraint. In the Amazon Valley this method of dealing has been expanded until it embraces, not only the Indian workman, but is often made to apply to those who are themselves the employers of this kind of labour. By accumulated obligations contracted in this way, one trader will pledge his business until it and himself become practically the property of the creditor. His business is merged, and he himself becomes an employee, and often finds it very hard to escape from the responsibilities he has thus contracted. At the date when the Barbados men were first brought to the Putumayo, the methods of exploiting the Indian population in the interests of the Colombian or Peruvian settlers were mainly confined to the river banks. They were more or less haphazard methods. An individual with two or three associates squatted at some point on the river-side, and entered into what he called friendly relations with the neighbouring Indian tribes. These friendly relations could not obviously long continue, since it was to the interest of the squatter to get more from the Indian than he was willing to pay for. The goods he had brought with him in the first case were limited in quantity, and had to go far. The Indian, who may correctly be termed ‘a grown-up child,’ was at first delighted to have a white man with attractive articles to give away settling in his neighbourhood, and to bring in exchange india-rubber for these tempting trifles seemed easy. Moreover, the Amazon Indian is by nature docile and obedient. His weakness of character and docility of temperament are no match for the dominating ability of those with European blood in their veins. Yielding himself, first, perhaps, voluntarily, to the domination of these uninvited guests, he soon finds that he has entered into relations which can only be described as those of a slave to a master, and a master, be it observed, who can appeal to no law that recognises his rights. The system is not merely illegal in civilised parts of the world, but is equally illegal in the Amazon forests, since those regions are all claimed by civilised Governments which absolutely prohibit any form of slavery in their territories. The Barbados men on being brought into these regions found themselves face to face with quite unexpected conditions and duties. Already at Manaos, on their way up the river, some of them had been warned by outsiders that in the countries to which they were going they would not be employed as labourers, but would be armed and used to force the Indians to work for their employers; they were further told that the Indians, being savages, would kill them. Several of them, taking alarm, had protested at Manaos, and had even appealed to the British Vice-Consul to interfere so that they might be released from their engagement. This was not done. They were assured that their contracts, having been lawfully entered into in a British colony, would be faithfully observed in Peru, and that they must fulfil them. In some cases the men were not reassured, and had to be taken on board the river steamer waiting to convey them to the Putumayo under police supervision.[125]

“The first party to disembark in the Putumayo consisted of thirty men with five women. They were landed at La Chorrera, on the IgaraparanÁ, the headquarters station of the Arana Brothers, in November, 1904. Here they were armed with Winchester rifles and a large supply of cartridges for these weapons, and, headed by a Colombian named RamÓn Sanchez, with a man called Armando Normand, who served as interpreter, and several other white men, Colombians or Peruvians, they were dispatched on a long journey through the forest to open up what were styled trade relations with an Indian tribe called the Andokes. This tribe inhabits a district between the IgaraparanÁ and the JapurÁ, but lying closer to the latter river. On arrival in this region the men were employed at first in building a house, and then on raids through the surrounding forests in order to capture Indians and compel them to come in and work for SeÑor Sanchez. They were also used on what were termed ‘punitive expeditions’ sent out to capture or kill Indians who had killed not long before some Colombians who had settled in the Andokes country with a view to enslaving that tribe and forcing it to work rubber for them. These men had been killed by the Andokes Indians and their rifles captured, and it was to recover these rifles that many of the first raids of the Barbados men were directed by Sanchez and Normand. In this way the station of Matanzas was founded, and the man Normand soon afterwards, on the retirement of Sanchez, became its chief. At the date of my visit to the Putumayo he was still in charge of this district as representative of the Peruvian Amazon Company. The station at Matanzas was founded at the very end of 1904. I visited it on foot in October, 1910. It lies some seventy miles by land from La Chorrera, and the route followed by the Barbados men would occupy some four to five days of hard marching. The forest tracks in the Putumayo present innumerable obstacles. Owing to the very heavy rainfall, water and mud accumulate, many streams—some of them even rivers—have to be crossed either by fording or upon a fallen tree, roots of trees and fallen tree-trunks innumerable bar the path, and the walker either knocks his shins against these or has to climb over obstacles sometimes breast high. No food is to be obtained on these routes except from the few Indians who may be dwelling in the neighbourhood, and these poor people now have little enough for themselves. For several years after its foundation all the rubber collected at Matanzas was carried down this route by Indian carriers to La Chorrera. The Indians were not supplied with food for this journey. They were guarded by armed men both going and returning, and Barbados men frequently were employed for this work, just as they were used, in the first instance, in forcing the Indians to collect the rubber in the forest and bring it into Matanzas. During the last three years the journey from Matanzas to Chorrera has been shortened by the placing of a small launch on the river above the cataract which blocks river navigation at Chorrera. Rubber from Matanzas still goes under armed escort a distance of forty-five or fifty miles through the forest to be shipped in this launch at a place called Puerto Peruano for conveyance thence to Chorrera by water. The duties fulfilled by Barbados men at Matanzas were those that they performed elsewhere throughout the district, and in citing this station as an instance I am illustrating what took place at a dozen or more different centres of rubber collection.

“At the date of my visit there were only two Barbados men left in Matanzas, one of whom had been there six years from the foundation of that station. I found the twenty men still remaining in the company’s service when I was on the Putumayo scattered at various points. With the exception of three men at La Chorrera itself, whose duties were those of ordinary labour, all the men still remaining at the time of my visit were employed in guarding or coercing, or in actively maltreating, Indians to force them to work and bring in india-rubber to the various sections. The men so employed at the time of my visit were two men at Matanzas, one man at Ultimo Retiro, four men at Santa Catalina, three at Sabana, one at Oriente, and three at Abisinia, and two others temporarily employed on the river launches who had just come in from forest duties. Another man was employed at the headquarters station of the CaraparanÁ at the place called El Encanto. This man was sent for to Chorrera while I was there, and I interrogated him. In addition to La Chorrera, the headquarters station, I visited in succession the following among its dependent stations, or succursales: Occidente, Ultimo Retiro, Entre RÍos, Matanzas, Atenas, and Sur, the latter practically an outpost of La Chorrera, being situated less than two hours’ march away. With the exception of La Matanzas, which is situated in the Andokes country, all these stations are in the country inhabited by the Huitoto tribe. This tribe, formerly the most numerous of those inhabiting the so-called Putumayo region, at the date of my visit was said to have considerably diminished in numbers. One informant assured me that there were now not more than 10,000 Huitotos, if, indeed, so many. This decrease in population is attributed to many causes. By some it is stated to be largely due to smallpox and other diseases introduced by white settlers. The Indians themselves in their native state are singularly free from disease. From trustworthy evidence placed before me during my visit I have no doubt that, however high the deaths from imported diseases may have been, the deaths from violence and hardship consequent upon the enforced tribute of rubber required from these people have been much higher.

“Statements made to me by the Barbados men, and which could not be controverted on the spot, made this abundantly clear. Many, indeed all, of the men had been for several years in the closest contact with the Indians, and their duties, as they averred, chiefly consisted in compelling the Indians to work india-rubber for the white man’s benefit, and otherwise to satisfy his many wants. It would be tedious to go through statements made by these different British witnesses, and it may be sufficient to say that they left no doubt in my mind or in the minds of the commission sent out by the Peruvian Amazon Company that the method of exacting rubber from the Indians was arbitrary, illegal, and in many cases cruel in the extreme, and the direct cause of very much of the depopulation brought to our notice. The Barbados men themselves complained to me that they too had frequently suffered ill-treatment at the hands of agents of the company, whose names were given to me in several cases, and several of whom were still employed on the Putumayo in the service of the company at the date of my visit. On closer investigation I found that more than once these British employees of the company had been subjected to criminal ill-treatment.”

“These men had been tortured by being put in the stocks for misdemeanours, or for refusing to maltreat the Indians, under the orders of Normand, RodrÍguez, SÁnchez, and other chiefs of sections. Normand and others afterwards attempted to bribe them into lying or concealment of facts in their testimony before the Consul. The stocks are described by Consul Casement:—

“The accused man was hung up by the neck, beaten with machetes, and then confined by the legs in heavy wooden stocks, called locally a cepo. Each station is furnished with one of these places of detention. The stocks consist of two long and very heavy blocks of wood, hinged together at one end and opening at the other, with a padlock to close upon a staple. Leg-blocks so small as just to fit the ankle of an Indian are cut in the wood. The top beam is lifted on the hinge, the legs of the victim are inserted in two of these holes, and it is then closed down and padlocked at the other end. Thus imprisoned by the ankles, which are often stretched several feet apart, the victim, lying upon his back, or possibly being turned face downwards, remains sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, often for weeks, and sometimes for months in this painful confinement. Prisoners so detained are released from these stocks only to obey the calls of nature, when for a few moments, guarded by armed men, they enjoy a brief release. Some of these implements of torture that I saw ready for use had nineteen leg-holes. In one case I counted twenty-one. The stocks at Ultimo Retiro, where Dyall was confined, were, in my opinion, the cruellest of those I actually saw. The ankle-holes were so small that, even for an ordinarily well-built Indian, when closed the wood would often have eaten into the flesh. For an ordinary-sized European or negro the top beam could not close upon the leg without being forced down upon the ankle or shinbone, and this was what happened to Dyall. He and men who had witnessed his imprisonment assured me that to make the top beam close down so that the padlock could be inserted in the staple two men had to sit upon it and force it down upon his legs. Although more than three years had passed since he suffered his punishment, both his ankles were deeply scarred where the wood (almost as hard as metal) had cut into the ankle flesh and sinews. The man’s feet had been placed four holes apart—a distance, I should say, of from three to four feet—and with his legs thus extended, suffering acute pain, he had been left all night for a space of fully twelve hours. When released next day he was unable to stand upright, or to walk, and had to reach his quarters crawling on his belly propelled by his hands and arms. I have no doubt of the truth of this man’s statement. I saw the stocks just as they had been used to confine him. I caused a man of ordinary stature, a Barbados man, to have his legs enclosed before me. The stock did not close upon the legs, and to have locked the two beams together at the end could only have been done by great pressure and weight exerted upon the top beam so as to force it down upon the leg and thereby undoubtedly to inflict much pain, and cause lasting wounds.

“By RodrÍguez’ direction a special cepo, or stocks, for the confinement, or torture rather, of the recalcitrant india-rubber workers was made. Not satisfied with the ordinary stocks to detain an individual by the legs alone, RodrÍguez had designed a double cepo in two parts, so formed as to hold the neck and arms at one end and to confine the ankles at the other. These stocks were so constructed that the leg end could be moved up or down, so that they might fit any individual of any size. For a full-grown man they could be extended to the length of his figure, or contracted to fit the stature of quite a child. Small boys were often inserted into this receptacle face downwards, and they, as well as grown-up people, women equally with men, were flogged while extended in this posture. Crichlow, quite an intelligent carpenter for an ordinary labouring man, had faithfully carried out the design of his master, and this implement of torture remained in use at the station at Santa Catalina until the early part of 1909. In May, 1908, Crichlow had a dispute with one of the other employees, named Pedro Torres. The quarrel was of no importance, but Torres was a white man and Crichlow was a black man. The former appealed to his chief, and RodrÍguez at once took the part of his Peruvian fellow-countryman. He struck Crichlow over the head with a loaded revolver, and called other white employees to seize him. Crichlow tried to defend himself with a stick, but was overpowered, and his hands were tied behind his back. He was then beaten by many of them and put in the cepo, or stocks, to spend the night. When released next day for a few moments for an obvious reason he was chained round the neck, one end of the chain being held in the hand of a guard. The same day, with his hands tied and this chain padlocked round his neck, he was dispatched under guard to the neighbouring station of La Sabana, a full day’s march. A certain Velarde was at the time the chief of this section, and at the date of my visit I found him chief of the section Occidente. Velarde put Crichlow in the stocks at his station with his legs five holes apart—an almost insupportable distance—in which posture he remained all night. Next day a SeÑor Alcorta, employed at a neighbouring section, who was on a visit to La Sabana, interceded for him and he was released from the stocks, but was sent down to La Chorrera as a prisoner. Here he was again confined in the stocks by the sub-agent, SeÑor Delgado, and was finally only released through the friendly intervention of the captain of the port of Iquitos, who happened to be on a visit to the Putumayo at the time. No compensation of any kind was ever offered to these injured men. On the contrary, they had been forced to buy at their own expense medicines, in addition to many other things required (when ill from this bad treatment), that, by the terms of the original contract, should have been supplied free by their employers. Not only were they not compensated, but no reproof or punishment of any kind had been inflicted upon the agents so grossly maltreating them. With one exception, that of RodrÍguez, these agents were still in the service of the company at the time I was on the Putumayo, and I met all three of them. I have dealt at length with these cases of assault upon the British employees because they are typical of the manner of dealing of so-called white men with inferiors placed under their orders in that region. The Barbados men were not savages. With few exceptions they could read and write, some of them well. They were much more civilised than the great majority of those placed over them—they were certainly far more humane.

“The man Dyall, who had completed nearly six years’ service when I met him at Chorrera on the 24th of September, appeared to be in debt to the company to the sum of 440 soles (say, £44) for goods nominally purchased from its stores. Some of this indebtedness was for indispensable articles of food or clothing, things that the working-man could not do without. These are all sold at prices representing often, I am convinced, 1,000 per cent. over their cost prices or prime value. Much of the men’s indebtedness to the company was also due to the fact that they were married—that is to say, that every so-called civilised employee receives from the agent of the company, on arrival, an Indian woman to be his temporary wife. Sometimes the women are asked; sometimes, I should say from what I observed, their wishes would not be consulted—they certainly would not be consulted in the case of a white man who desired a certain Indian woman. With the Barbados men it was, no doubt, a more or less voluntary contract on each side—that is to say, the agent of the company would ask one of the numerous Indian women kept in stock at each station whether she wished to live with the new arrival. This man Dyall told me, in the presence of the chief agent of the Peruvian Amazon Company at La Chorrera, that he had had nine different Indian women given to him as ‘wives’ at different times and at the various stations at which he had served. When an employee so ‘married’ leaves the station at which he is working to be transferred to some other district, he is sometimes allowed to take his Indian wife with him, but often not. It would depend entirely upon the goodwill or caprice of the agent in charge of that station. As a rule, if a man had a child by his Indian partner he would be allowed to take her and the child to his next post, but even this has been more than once refused. In Dyall’s case he had changed his wives as often as he had changed his stations, and always with the active approval of the white man in charge, since each new wife was the direct gift or loan of this local authority. These wives had to be fed and clothed, and if there were children, then all had to be provided for. To this source much of the prevailing indebtedness of the Barbados men was due. Another fruitful cause of debt was the unrestricted gambling that was openly carried on up to the period at which I visited the district. The employees at all the stations passed their time, when not hunting the Indians, either lying in their hammocks or in gambling. As there is no money in circulation, gambling debts can only be paid by writing an I O U, which the winner passes on to the chief agency at La Chorrera, where it is carried to the debit of the loser in the company’s books.

“The wild forest Indians of the Upper Amazon are very skilful builders with the materials that lie to their hands in their forest surroundings. Their own dwellings are very ably constructed. Several Indian families congregate together, all of them united by close ties of blood; and this assembly of relatives, called a tribe or ‘nation,’ may number anything from 20 to 150 human beings. In many cases such a tribe would live practically in one large dwelling-house. A clearing is made in the forest, and with the very straight trees that abound in the Amazon woods it is easy to obtain suitable timber for house-building. The uprights are as straight as the mast of a ship. The ridge-pole will often be from thirty to forty feet from the ground, and considerable skill is displayed in balancing the rough beams and adjusting the weight of the thatch. This thatch is composed of the dried and twisted fronds of a small swamp palm, which admirably excludes both rain and the rays of the sun. No tropical dwelling I have ever been in is so cool as one roofed with this material. The roofs or thatches of Indian houses extend right down to the ground. They are designed to keep out wet and sunlight, not to bar against intruders. They afford no protection against attack, and are not designed for defence, except against climatic conditions. The white settlers in the forest, from the first, compelled the Indians to build houses for them. The plan of the house would be the work of the white man, but the labour involved and all the materials would be supplied by the neighbouring Indian tribe or tribes he had reduced to work for him. All the houses that I visited outside the chief station of La Chorrera in which the company’s agents lived, and where their goods were stored, were and are so constructed by the surrounding Indians, acting under the direct supervision of the agent and his white or half-caste employees. This labour of the Indians goes unremunerated. Not only do they build the houses and the stores for the white men, but they have to keep them in repair and supply labour for this purpose whenever called upon. The Indian in his native surroundings is satisfied with quite a small clearing in the forest around his own dwelling, but not so the white man who has come to live upon the Indian. These decree that their dwelling-houses shall stand in the midst of a very extensive clearing, and the labour of felling the forest trees, and clearing the ground over an area of often two hundred acres, or even more, falls upon the surrounding Indian population. Here, again, neither pay nor food is supplied. The Indians are brought in from their homes, men and women, and while the men fell the trees and undertake the heavier duties, women are put to clearing the ground and planting a certain area of it. Those of the stations I visited outside La Chorrera—viz., Occidente, Ultimo Retiro, Entre RÍos, Matanzas, Atenas, and Sur, in addition to a large and extremely well-built dwelling-house for the white man and his assistants, as well as suitable dependencies for servants, women, &c., were each surrounded by immense clearings, which represented a considerable labour in the first case, and one which had fallen wholly upon the Indian families in the vicinity. Sometimes these clearances were put to economic use—notably that at Entre RÍos, where quite a large area was well planted with cassava, maize, and sugar-cane; but this was the only station which can be said to maintain itself, and all the work of clearing and of planting here had fallen, not upon the employees of the company but upon the surrounding Indian population. At other stations one found the dwelling-houses standing in the midst of a very extensive clearing, which apparently served no other purpose beyond giving light and air. At Atenas, for instance, the station houses are built on a slope above the River Cahuinari, and an area of fully two hundred acres has been cleared of its original forest trees, which lie in all stages of decay encumbering the ground, but scarcely one acre is under any form of cultivation. At Matanzas a somewhat similar state of neglect existed, and the same might be said in varying degree of the stations of Ultimo Retiro and Occidente. Large areas of fairly fertile cleared ground are lying waste and serve no useful purpose. Food which might easily be raised locally is brought literally from thousands of miles away at great expense, and often in insufficient quantity.

HUITOTOS AT ENTRE RIOS AND BARBADOS NEGRO OVERSEER. [To face p. 296.
HUITOTOS AT ENTRE RIOS AND BARBADOS NEGRO OVERSEER.
[To face p. 296.

“The regular station hands—that is to say, the employees in receipt of salaries—do no work. Their duties consist in seeing that the surrounding forest Indians work rubber and supply them so far as may be with what they need. For this purpose the principal requisite is a rifle and a sufficiency of cartridges, and of these there are always plenty.”

A further Report was transmitted by Consul Casement to Sir Edward Grey in March, 1911, giving a general description of methods of rubber-collecting and treatment of Indians on the Putumayo by the Peruvian Amazon Company, containing the following information:—

“The region termed ‘the Putumayo,’ consisting principally of the area drained by two tributaries of the IÇa or Putumayo River, the IgaraparanÁ and the CaraparanÁ, lies far from the main stream of the Amazon, and is rarely visited by any vessels save those belonging to the Peruvian Amazon Company. The only other craft that penetrate that district are steamers of the Peruvian Government sent occasionally from Iquitos. Brazilian vessels may ascend the JapurÁ, known in Peru and Colombia as the CaquetÁ, until they draw near to the mouth of the Cahuinari, a river which flows into the JapurÁ, flowing in a north-easterly direction largely parallel with the IgaraparanÁ, which empties into the Putumayo after a south-easterly course. The region drained by these three waterways, the CaraparanÁ, the IgaraparanÁ, and the Cahuinari, represents the area in part of which the operations of the Peruvian Amazon Company are carried on. It is impossible to say what the Indian population of this region may be. Generally speaking, the upper and middle courses of these rivers are, or were, the most populous regions. This is accounted for by the greater absence of insect pests, due to the higher nature of the ground, which rises at La Chorrera to a level of about 600 feet above the sea, with neighbouring heights fully 1,000 feet above sea-level. The lower course of the IgaraparanÁ, as well as of the Putumayo itself, below the junction of the IgaraparanÁ down to the Amazon, is through a thick forest region of lower elevation, subject largely to annual overflow from the flooded rivers. Mosquitoes and sand flies and the swampy soil doubtless account for the restriction of the Indians to those higher and drier levels which begin after the IgaraparanÁ has been ascended for about one hundred miles of its course. In this more elevated region there are no mosquitoes and far fewer insect plagues, while permanent habitations and the cultivation of the soil are more easily secured than in the regions liable to annual inundation.

“In a work officially issued by the Peruvian Government at Lima in 1907, entitled ‘En el Putumayo y sus Afluentes,’ by Eugenio Robuchon, a French explorer who was engaged in 1903 by SeÑor Julio C. Arana in the name of the Government to conduct an exploring mission in the region claimed by the firm of Arana Brothers, the Indian population of that firm’s possessions is given at 50,000 souls. M. Robuchon lost his life near the mouth of the Cahuinari in 1906, and the work in question was edited from his diaries by SeÑor Carlos Rey de Castro, Peruvian Consul-General for Northern Brazil. The figure of 50,000 Indians is that given by this official as ‘not a chance one.’

“In the prospectus issued at the formation of the Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company in 1908, SeÑor Arana is represented as claiming that there were then 40,000 Indian ‘labourers’ dwelling within the area of his Putumayo enterprise.

“Whatever the true figures may have been, it is certain that the region laying between the Putumayo and the JapurÁ (or CaquetÁ) was for many years known to be prolific in native life, and furnished therefore the most attractive field for slave-raiding in the earlier years of the last century. No civilised settlements would seem to have arisen in this region until towards the close of the nineteenth century, and the Indian tribes continued to dwell in their primitive state, subject only to visits from slave-searching white or half-breed bands until a quite recent period.

“The four principal tribes were the Huitotos (pronounced Witotos), the Boras, the Andokes, and the Ocainas, with certain smaller tribes, of which the Ricigaros and the Muinanes are frequently mentioned. These tribes were all of kindred origin and identical in habits and customs, although differing in language and to some extent in feature, complexion, and stature. The Huitotos are said to have been the most numerous, and may at one time recently have numbered 30,000 individuals, although to-day they amount to nothing like that figure.

“The Huitotos, although the most numerous, were physically the least sturdy of the four chief tribes named. The name ‘Huitotos’ is said to signify ‘Mosquito,’ I know not with what truth, and to have been applied to these people by their stouter neighbours in derision of their attenuated extremities, for neither their arms nor legs are shapely or muscular. The Boras are physically a much finer race than the Huitotos, and, generally speaking, are of a lighter hue. While some of the Huitotos are of a dark bronze or chocolate complexion, I have seen Boras little, if at all, of darker skin than a Japanese or Chinese. The Mongolian resemblance was not alone confined to similarity of colour, but was often strikingly apparent in features as well as in stature, and in a singular approximation of gait to what may be termed ‘the Asiatic walk.’ So, too, with the hair and eyes. Both are singularly Mongolian, or at least Asiatic, in shape, colour, and, the former, in texture, although the Indian hair is somewhat less coarse and more abundant than either Chinese or Japanese.

“A picture of a Sea Dyak of Borneo using his sumpitan, or blow-pipe, might very well stand for an actual presentment of a Boras Indian with his cerbatana. The weapons, too, are identical in structure and use, and in several other respects a striking similarity prevails between two races so widely sundered.

“These Putumayo Indians were not only divided tribe from tribe, but within each tribe more or less constant bickerings and disunion prevailed between the various ‘families’ or naciones into which each great branch was split up. Thus, while Huitotos had a hereditary feud with Boras, or Ocainas, or Andokes, the numerous subdivisions of the Huitotos themselves were continually at war with one another. Robuchon enumerates thirty-three sub-tribes or families among the Huitotos, and he by no means exhausts the list. Each of these, while intermarriage was common and a common sense of origin, kinship, and language prevailed as against all outsiders, would have their internal causes of quarrel that often sharply divided neighbour from neighbour clan.

“Such conflicts led to frequent ‘wars,’ kidnappings and thefts of women being, doubtless, at the bottom of many disputes, while family grievances and accusations of misuse of occult powers, involving charges of witchcraft and sorcery, made up the tale of wrong. As a rule, each family or clan has its great central dwelling-house, capable often of housing two hundred individuals; and around this, in the region recognised by tribal law as belonging to that particular clan, individual members of it, with their families, would have smaller dwellings scattered at different cultivated spots through the neighbouring forest. The wars of those clans one with another were never bloodthirsty, for I believe it is a fact that the Amazon Indian is averse to bloodshed, and is thoughtless rather than cruel. Prisoners taken in these wars may have been, and no doubt were, eaten, or in part eaten, for the Amazon cannibals do not seem to have killed to eat, as is the case with many primitive races, but to have sometimes, possibly frequently, in part eaten those they killed. More than one traveller in tropical South America records his impression that the victims were not terrified at the prospect of being eaten, and in some cases regarded it as an honourable end. Lieutenant Maw mentions the case of a girl on the Brazilian Amazon in 1827 who refused to escape, to become the slave of a Portuguese ‘trader,’ preferring to be eaten by her own kind.

“The weapons of the Putumayo Indians were almost entirely confined to the blow-pipe, with its poisoned darts, and small throwing-spears with poor wooden tips, three or more of which, grasped between the fingers, were thrown at one time. The forest must have been fairly full of game up to quite recently, for the Indians seem to have had a sufficiency of meat diet; and, with their plantations of cassava, maize, and the numerous fruits and edible leaves their forest furnished, they were not so short of food that cannibalism could be accounted for as a necessity. They were also skilled fishermen, and as the forests are everywhere channelled with streams of clear water, there must have been a frequent addition of fish diet to their daily fare.

“No missions or missionaries would seem to have ever penetrated to the regions here in question. On the upper waters of the Putumayo itself religious instruction and Christian worship appear to have been established by Colombian settlers, but these civilising influences had not journeyed sufficiently far downstream to reach the Huitotos or their neighbours. Save for the raids of slavers coming up the JapurÁ or Putumayo, their contact with white men had been a distant and far-off story that in little affected their home life, save possibly to add an element of demoralisation in the inducements offered for the sale of human beings.

“Lieutenant Maw, an officer of the British Navy who crossed from the Pacific to the Atlantic by way of the Amazon early in the last century, in his work speaks of the Putumayo in the vaguest terms, and it is clear that then, in 1827, and later on in 1851, when Lieutenant Herndon, of the United States Navy, went down the Amazon in a canoe, nothing was really known either of the river or of its inhabitants. They were practically an untouched, primitive people when the first Colombian caucheros, coming down the Putumayo from the settled regions on its upper waters, located themselves at different points along the head waters of the CaraparanÁ and IgaraparanÁ, and entered into what are termed trade dealings with those unsophisticated tribes.

“This first Colombian invasion of the Putumayo regions took place, I am informed, in the early eighties, some of my informants stated about 1886. The earliest of these conquistadores were CrisÓstomo Hernandez and Benjamin LarraÑaga, who entered the region in search of the inferior kind of rubber there produced, known as sernambi or jebe debil (weak, fine rubber). The banks of these two rivers, and the whole of the region inhabited by the Huitotos, the Andokes, and the Boras Indians, are fairly well stocked with trees that furnish the milk out of which an inferior rubber is elaborated. The Putumayo Indians merely gash the tree with a knife or machete, and, catching the milk as it exudes in little baskets made of leaves, they wash it in their streams of running water and pound it with wooden pestles into long sausage-shaped rolls, termed in Peruvian rubber parlance chorizos, which ultimately are put upon the market just as the Indian carries them in to whoever may be locally exploiting him and his neighbourhood. That these wild Indians welcomed the coming into their country of Hernandez, LarraÑaga, and the other Colombians who succeeded these earliest of the modern conquistadores it would be absurd to assert. They were, doubtless, glad to get machetes, and powder and caps for the few trade guns they possessed, with the prospect even of acquiring more of these priceless weapons themselves, along with such trifles as beads, mirrors, tin bowls, fish-hooks, and tempting tins of sardines or potted meats—all of them articles of little intrinsic value, but of very attractive character to the Indian dwelling in so inaccessible a region. Had any form of administrative authority accompanied the early settlers or searchers for Indians, as they should rightly be termed, their relations with these wild inhabitants of the forest might have been controlled and directed to some mutually useful end. But the caucheros came as filibusters, not as civilisers, and were unaccompanied by any executive officers representing a civilised control. The region was practically a no-man’s land, lying remote from any restraining authority or civilising influence, and figuring on maps of South America as claimed by three separate republics.

“Those who came in search of rubber had no intention of dwelling longer in the forest than the accumulation of the wealth they hoped to amass necessitated. They wanted to get rich quickly, not to stay and civilise the Indians or make their homes among them. The rubber-trees of themselves were of no value; it was Indians who could be made or induced to tap them and to bring in the rubber on the white man’s terms that all the invading conquistadores were in search of. Generally a leading man fitted out an expedition with a few companions, partners in effort and initial expenditure; and with a gang of hired peons, or, as they are called in that region, racionales (half-breeds mostly who can read and write to distinguish them from the Indios, who are ignorant of all save forest lore), he journeyed to some part of the forest in search of tribes of wild Indians—infieles or “infidels”—who could be easily subdued and reduced to work the wild rubber-trees in the territory they inhabited. An Indian would promise anything for a gun, or for some of the other tempting things offered as inducements to him to work rubber. Many Indians submitted to the alluring offer only to find that once in the conquistadores’ books they had lost all liberty, and were reduced to unending demands for more rubber and more varied tasks. A cacique or capitÁn might be bought over to dispose of the labour of all his clan, and as the cacique’s influence was very great and the natural docility of the Indian a remarkable characteristic of the Upper Amazon tribes, the work of conquering a primitive people and reducing them to a continual strain of rubber-finding was less difficult than might at first be supposed. Their arms of defence were puerile weapons as opposed to the rifles of the blancos.”

The terrible floggings practised upon the Indians are lengthily described by Consul Casement, and it is said that 90 per cent, of them, men and women, bear scars therefrom.

Further describing the outrages committed, Mr. Casement quotes from the Annual Report of the Minister of Justice, presented to the Peruvian Congress in 1907:—

“Coming to more distant regions, where executive authority is necessarily weaker, the missionary brother informs the Minister of Justice of the state of things on the Putumayo itself:—

“‘River Putumayo. In this river it is not possible to establish any mission owing to the abuses of the caucheros against the Indians (los infieles), whom they maltreat and murder for no reason (por motivos frivolos), seizing their women and children.’ (P. 782 of the Ministerial Report.)

“Lest this may be thought a vague indictment, I append a further extract from the same Report, this time directed by the Apostolic Prefect of the district of San Francisco de Ucayali to the Minister of Justice. It is dated from Contamana, on the Ucayali, the chief place of the province, on the 27th August, 1907, and deals at some length with the condition of religion and education on that great river, the main feeder and source of the Amazon, and one that has been largely occupied and in civilised hands for the better part of the last century:—

“‘Before speaking of the region of the Ucayali I wish to draw the attention of the Supreme Government to the infamous trade in buying and selling boys and girls which for years has been practised in these parts of the montaÑa (i.e., the forest region), in spite of the repeated prohibitions of the Government, just as if these poor savages were irrational beings (seres irracionales), or, to be still more clear, just as if they were sheep or horses. This is intolerable in such an illustrious country as Peru. This trade excites and foments the hunting (correrÍas, literally “chasings”) so frequently indulged in of these poor savages, so as to seize them in their houses in the moment when they least expect it. This is done by different traders (comerciantes) by means of their peÓns, particularly some of those of the Upper Ucayali. I could cite many examples in confirmation of this, but I will cite one alone which took place last year (1906). Here it is:—

“‘The Campas Indians of the River Ubiriqui were dwelling peacefully in their houses when suddenly, as is reported, there fell upon them men sent on a correrÍa by one of the traders of the Upper Ucayali, who lives near Unini. These, without warning, attacked the innocent Campas, seizing those whom they could, killing many of them so that few escaped their cruelties, so that even up to now the number of their victims is not known. It is certain that many bodies have been found in a state of putrefaction, and that all the houses of the Ubiriqui are burnt. These deeds have exasperated the Indians (los infieles), and if no effective remedy is applied, later on we shall not be safe even in the mission villages (pueblocitos de la misiÓn), nor shall we be able to spread our winning over and civilising of the savages who dwell in our forests.’ (P. 783 and following of the Report.)

“I do not know what steps were taken to deal with this state of things on the Upper Ucayali, but no steps of any kind followed on the Putumayo the notification, as quoted, made to the Minister of Justice by Frei Prat. That the representations of these Peruvian missionaries had not escaped the eyes of the Minister himself is clear from his own remarks. In his prefatory address to the members of Congress the Minister of Justice states in his Report (p. 48 of the Part InstrucciÓn y Culto) as follows:—

“‘The apostolic prefectures have continued their work of civilisation and evangelisation of the Indians of the Oriente, and in their reports, which are inserted as an annex, will be found detailed accounts of its progress.’”

Consul Casement continues:—

“Before my visit ended more than one Peruvian agent admitted to me that he had continually flogged Indians, and accused more than one of his fellow-agents by name of far greater crimes. In many cases the Indian rubber-worker—who knew roughly what quantity of rubber was expected of him—when he brought his load to be weighed, seeing that the needle of the balance did not touch the required spot, would throw himself face downwards on the ground, and in that posture await the inevitable blows. An individual who had often taken part in these floggings and who charged himself with two murders of Indians has thus left on record the manner of flogging the Indians at stations where he served. I quote this testimony, as this man’s evidence, which was in my possession when I visited the region, was amply confirmed by one of the British subjects I examined, who had himself been charged in that evidence with flogging an Indian girl whom the man in question had then shot, when her back after that flogging had putrefied, so that it became ‘full of maggots.’ He states in his evidence—and the assertion was frequently borne out by others I met and questioned:—

“‘The Indian is so humble that as soon as he sees that the needle of the scale does not mark the 10 kilos he himself stretches out his hands and throws himself on the ground to receive the punishment. Then the chief or a subordinate advances, bends down, takes the Indian by the hair, strikes him, raises his head, drops it face downwards on the ground, and after the face is beaten and kicked and covered with blood the Indian is scourged.’

“This picture is true; detailed descriptions of floggings of this kind were again and again made to me by men who had been employed in the work. Indians were flogged, not only for shortage in rubber, but still more grievously if they dared to run away from their houses, and, by flight to a distant region, to escape altogether from the tasks laid upon them. Such flight as this was counted a capital offence, and the fugitives, if captured, were as often tortured and put to death as brutally flogged. Expeditions were fitted out and carefully planned to track down and recover the fugitives, however far the flight might have been. The undisputed territory of the neighbouring Republic of Colombia, lying to the north of the River JapurÁ (or CaquetÁ), was again and again violated in these pursuits, and the individuals captured were not always only Indians.

“The crimes alleged against Armando Normand, dating from the end of the year 1904 up to the month of October, 1910, when I found him in charge of this station of Matanzas or Andokes, seem wellnigh incredible. They included innumerable murders and tortures of defenceless Indians—pouring kerosene oil on men and women and then setting fire to them, burning men at the stake, dashing the brains out of children, and again and again cutting off the arms and legs of Indians and leaving them to speedy death in this agony. These charges were not made to me alone by Barbados men who had served under Normand, but by some of his fellow-racionales. A Peruvian engineer in the company’s service vouched to me for the dashing out of the brains of children, and the chief representative of the company, SeÑor Tizon, told me he believed Normand had committed ‘innumerable murders’ of the Indians.

“Westerman Leavine, whom Normand sought to bribe to withhold testimony from me, finally declared that he had again and again been an eye-witness of these deeds—that he had seen Indians burned alive more than once, and often their limbs eaten by the dogs kept by Normand at Matanzas. It was alleged, and I am convinced with truth, that during the period of close on six years Normand had controlled the Andokes Indians he had directly killed ‘many hundreds’ of those Indians—men, women, and children. The indirect deaths due to starvation, floggings, exposure, and hardship of various kinds in collecting rubber or transferring it from Andokes down to Chorrera must have accounted for a still larger number. SeÑor Tizon told me that ‘hundreds’ of Indians perished in the compulsory carriage of the rubber from the more distant sections down to La Chorrera. No food is given by the company to these unfortunate people on these forced marches, which, on an average, take place three times a year. I witnessed one such march, on a small scale, when I accompanied a caravan of some two hundred Andokes and Boras Indians (men, women, and children) that left Matanzas station on the 19th of October to carry their rubber that had been collected by them during the four or five preceding months down to a place on the banks of the IgaraparanÁ, named Puerto Peruano (Peruvian Port), whence it was to be conveyed in lighters towed by a steam launch down to La Chorrera. The distance from Matanzas to Puerto Peruano is one of some forty miles, or possibly more. The rubber had already been carried into Matanzas from different parts of the forest lying often ten or twelve hours’ march away, so that the total journey forced upon each carrier was not less than sixty miles, and in some cases probably a longer one. The path to be followed was one of the worst imaginable—a fatiguing route for a good walker quite unburdened.

“For two days—that is to say, from Matanzas to Entre Rios—I marched along with this caravan of very unhappy individuals, men with huge loads of rubber weighing, I believe, sometimes up to 70 kilos each, accompanied by their wives, also loaded with rubber, and their sons and daughters, down to quite tiny things that could do no more than carry a little cassava-bread (prepared by the mothers before leaving their forest home), to serve as food for parents and children on this trying march. Armed muchachos, with Winchesters, were scattered through the long column, and at the rear one of the racionales of Matanzas, a man named Adan Negrete, beat up the stragglers. Behind all, following a day later, came SeÑor Normand himself, with more armed racionales, to see that none fell out or slipped home, having shed their burdens of rubber on the way. On the second day I reached Entre Rios in the early afternoon, the bulk of the Indians having that morning started at 5.15 from the place where we had slept together in the forest. At 5.15 that evening they arrived with Negrete and the armed muchachos at Entre Rios, where I had determined to stay for some days. Instead of allowing these half-starved and weary people, after twelve hours’ march, staggering under crushing loads, to rest in this comparatively comfortable station of the company, where a large rest-house and even food were available, Negrete drove them on into the forest beyond, where they were ordered to spend the night under guard of the muchachos. This was done in order that a member of the company’s commission (Mr. Walter Fox), who was at Entre Rios at the time along with myself, should not have an opportunity of seeing too closely the condition of these people—particularly, I believe, that we should not be able to weigh the loads of rubber they were carrying. I had, however, seen enough on the road during the two days I accompanied the party alone to convince me of the cruelty they were subjected to, and I had even taken several photographs of those among them who were more deeply scarred with the lash.

“Several of the women had fallen out sick on the way, and five of them I had left provided for with food in a deserted Indian house in the forest, and had left an armed Barbados man to guard them until SeÑor Tizon, to whom I wrote, could reach the spot, following me from Matanzas a day later. An opportunity arose the next day to weigh one of these loads of rubber. A straggler, who had either fallen out or left Matanzas after the main party, came into Entre Rios, staggering under a load of rubber, about mid-day on the 21st October, when Mr. Fox and I were about to sit down to lunch. The man came through the hot sun across the station compound, and fell before our eyes at the foot of the ladder leading up to the veranda, where, with the chief of the section (SeÑor O’Donnell), we were sitting. He had collapsed, and we got him carried into the shade and revived with whisky, and later on some soup and food from our own table. He was a young man, of slight build, with very thin arms and legs, and his load of rubber by no means one of the largest I had seen actually being carried. I had it weighed there and then, and its weight was just 50 kilos.[126]

“This man had not a scrap of food with him. Owing to our intervention he was not forced to carry on his load, but was permitted the next day to go on to Puerto Peruano empty-handed in company with SeÑor Normand. I saw many of these people on their way back to their homes some days later after their loads had been put into the lighters at Puerto Peruano. They were returning, footsore and utterly worn out, through the station of Entre Rios on their way back to their scattered houses in the Andokes or Boras country. They had no food with them, and none was given to them at Entre Rios. I stopped many of them, and inspected the little woven string or skin bags they carry, and neither man nor woman had any food left. All that they had started with a week before had been already eaten, and for the last day or two they had been subsisting on roots and leaves and the berries of wild trees they had pulled down on the way. We found, on our subsequent journey down to Puerto Peruano, a few days later, many traces of where they had pulled down branches and even trees themselves in their search for something to stay the craving of hunger. In some places the path was blocked with the branches and creepers they had torn down in their search for food, and it was only when SeÑors Tizon and O’Donnell assured me that this was done by ‘SeÑor Normand’s Indians’ in their hungry desperation that I could believe it was not the work of wild animals.

“Indians were frequently flogged to death. Cases were reported to me where men or women had died actually under the lash, but this seems to have been infrequent. Deaths due to flogging generally ensued some days afterwards, and not always in the station itself where the lash had been applied, but on the way home to the unfortunate’s dwelling-place. In many cases where men or women had been so cruelly flogged that the wounds putrefied the victims were shot by one of the racionales acting under the orders of the chief of the section, or even by this individual himself. Salt and water would be sometimes applied to these wounds, but in many cases a fatal flogging was not attended even by this poor effort at healing, and the victim, ‘with maggots in the flesh,’ was turned adrift to die in the forest or was shot and the corpse burned or buried—or often enough thrown into the ‘bush’ near the station-houses. At one station—that of Abisinia (which I did not visit)—I was informed by a British subject who had himself often flogged the Indians that he had seen mothers flogged, on account of shortage of rubber by their little sons. These boys were held to be too small to chastise, and so, while the little boy stood terrified and crying at the sight, his mother would be beaten ‘just a few strokes’ to make him into a better worker.

“Men and women would be suspended by the arms, often twisted behind their backs and tied together at the wrists, and in this agonising posture, their feet hanging high above the ground, they were scourged on the nether limbs and lower back. The implement used for flogging was invariably a twisted strip, or several strips plaited together, of dried tapir-hide, a skin not so thick as the hippopotamus-hide I have seen used in Africa for flagellation, but still sufficiently stout to cut a human body to pieces. One flogger told me the weapon he used was ‘as thick as your thumb.’

“After the prohibition of flogging by circular I have referred to, at some of the less brutal or more cautious centres of rubber-collection defaulting Indians were no longer, during the months of 1910, flogged with tapir-hide, but were merely chastised with strokes of a machete. These machetes are almost swords, and shaped something like a cutlass. They are used for gashing the trees in tapping them for rubber milk, and they also serve as weapons in the hands of the Indians. Blows with these laid across the shoulder-blades or back might be excessively painful, but would be unlikely to leave any permanent scar or traces of the beating. At the station of Occidente this form of beating had in June, 1910, been varied with a very cowardly torture instituted by the chief of that section, a Peruvian named Fidel Velarde. This man, who was found in charge of that section when I visited it in October, 1910, in order to still inspire terror and yet leave no trace on the bodies of his victims, since Occidente lay close to La Chorrera and might be visited unexpectedly by SeÑor Tizon, had devised a new method of punishment for those who did not bring in enough rubber to satisfy him. Their arms were tied behind their backs, and thus pinioned they were taken down to the river (the IgaraparanÁ), and forcibly held under water until they became insensible and half-drowned. One of the Barbados men related circumstantially how on the 20th of June, 1910, only a few hours after SeÑor Tizon had quitted Occidente on a visit of inspection proceeding upriver to Ultimo Retiro, four Indian youths had been ordered by Velarde to be taken down to the river, their arms tied together, and to be then held under water until they filled—or, as James Mapp, the Barbados man put it, until ‘their bowels filled with water.’ Mapp had been ordered to perform this task, and had point-blank refused to obey, declaring he would not lay a finger on the Indians, whereupon a racional employee, by name Eugenio Acosta (whom I had met at Occidente), had carried out SeÑor Velarde’s orders. The four Indians, with their arms tied, had been thrust into the river by Acosta and an Indian he forced to help him and held forcibly under water. The whole station and the kinsmen of the four Indians were gathered on the high bank to witness this degrading spectacle, the Indian women weeping and crying out. One of the young men in his struggles had kicked free from the grasp of the man holding him down, and as his arms were fastened he had been unable to save himself by swimming, and had sunk in the deep, strong current at the spot described.

“Indians were often flogged while confined in the cepo, this notably in the special flogging cepo, with movable extremities, made by order of Aurelio RodrÍguez at Santa Catalina, and referred to by its maker, Edward Crichlow, in his testimony to me. Sometimes the most abominable offences were committed upon Indians while held by the legs or leg in this defenceless position (see particularly the statement of James Chase, borne out by Stanley Lewis, as to the crime committed by JosÉ Inocente Fonseca at Ultimo Retiro upon a young Indian man). Some of the British subjects I questioned declared to me that they had known Indian women to be publicly violated by the racionales while in this state of detention. As an added punishment, the legs of a man or woman would be distended and confined several holes apart in the stocks—some of the Barbados men asserted that they themselves had been confined with their legs ‘five holes apart,’ a distance, I should say, intolerable to be borne for any length of time. The Ultimo Retiro stocks were the worst I saw, for the leg-holes were smaller, and the beams to have locked on any ordinary sized leg must have forced down into the flesh.

“An individual confined with his legs ‘five holes apart’ would have had them extended almost a yard at the extremities, and if confined for a few hours in this posture, he must have been in acute pain. Indians who spent long periods in the stocks were sometimes confined by only one leg. Whole families were so imprisoned—fathers, mothers, and children, and many cases were reported of parents dying thus, either from starvation or from wounds caused by flogging, while their offspring were attached alongside of them to watch in misery themselves the dying agonies of their parents. One man at Ultimo Retiro, himself a living witness to the enforced starvation he denounced, in the presence of SeÑor JimÉnez and his subordinates, related before me and the members of the commission on the 8th of October how, in SeÑor Montt’s time, a year previously, many of his countrymen and women had been so starved to death or flogged to death in the station cepo that we were then inspecting and experimenting with.

“Some of these agents drew fully £1,000 a year from the rubber they forced by this means and by other lawless methods from the surrounding native population.

“Flogging was varied with other tortures designed, like the semi-drownings of Velarde, to just stop short of taking life while inspiring the acute mental fear and inflicting much of the physical agony of death. Thus, men and lads, rubber defaulters or fugitives from its collection, were suspended by a chain fastened round the neck to one of the beams of the house or store. Sometimes with the feet scarcely touching the ground and the chain hauled taut they were left in this half-strangled position until life was almost extinct. More than one eye-witness assured me that he had seen Indians actually suspended by the neck until when let down they fell a senseless mass upon the floor of the house with their tongues protruding.

“Several informants declared they had witnessed Indians, chained round the arms, hauled up to the ceilings of the houses or to trees, and the chain then suddenly loosed so that the victim fell violently to the ground. One case of this kind was circumstantially related to me where the Indian, a young man, dropped suddenly like this from a height of several feet, fell backwards, and his head hit the ground so violently that his tongue was bitten through and his mouth full of blood.

“Deliberate starvation was again and again resorted to, but this not where it was desired merely to frighten, but where the intention was to kill. Men and women were kept prisoners in the station stocks until they died of hunger.

“These starvations, as specifically related to me by men who witnessed them and were aware of the gravity of the charge they brought, had not been due to chance neglect, but to design. No food was given to the Indians, and none could be given save by the chief of the section. One man related how he had seen Indians thus being starved to death in the stocks ‘scraping up the dirt with their fingers and eating it’; another declared he had actually seen Indians who had been flogged and were in extremity of hunger in the stocks ‘eating the maggots from their wounds.’

“Wholesale murder and torture endured up to the end of Aurelio RodrÍguez’ service, and the wonder is that any Indians were left in the district at all to continue the tale of rubber-working on to 1910. This aspect of such continuous criminality is pointed to by those who, not having encountered the demoralisation that attends the methods described, happily infrequent, assert that no man will deliberately kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. This argument would have force if applied to a settled country or an estate it was designed to profitably develop. None of the freebooters on the Putumayo had any such limitations in his view, or care for the hereafter to restrain him. His first object was to get rubber, and the Indians would always last his time. He hunted, killed, and tortured to-day in order to terrify fresh victims for to-morrow. Just as the appetite comes in eating so each crime led on to fresh crimes, and many of the worst men on the Putumayo fell to comparing their battues and boasting of the numbers they had killed.

“Every one of these criminals kept a large staff of unfortunate Indian women for immoral purposes—termed by a euphemism their ‘wives.’ Even pÉons had sometimes more than one Indian wife. The gratification of this appetite to excess went hand in hand with the murderous instinct which led these men to torture and kill the very parents and kinsmen of those they cohabited with.

“The Indian communities had been everywhere deprived of their native weapons. Perhaps a greater defence than their spears and blow-pipes even had been more ruthlessly destroyed. Their old people, both women and men, respected for character and ability to wisely advise, had been marked from the first as dangerous, and in the early stages of the occupation were done to death. Their crime had been the giving of ‘bad advice.’ To warn the more credulous or less experienced against the white enslaver and to exhort the Indian to flee or to resist rather than consent to work rubber for the new-comers had brought about their doom. I met no old Indian man or woman, and few had got beyond middle age. The Barbados men assured me that when they first came to the region in the beginning of 1905 old people were still to be found, vigorous and highly respected, but these had all disappeared, so far as I could gather, before my coming. At Entre Rios I learned of an Indian chief named Chingamui, who at SeÑor O’Donnell’s arrival in 1903 had exercised a widespread influence over all the Huitotos in that district. This man had fallen at the hands of a Colombian named Calderon, who then directed the neighbouring district of Atenas, but not before he had shot at and wounded his murderer. So, too, I learned of an ‘old woman’ who was beheaded in the station of Sur by order of its chief, and whose crime had been the giving of ‘bad advice.’ Her head had been held up by the hair in the presence of my informant as a warning to the assembled Indians of the fate they too would incur if they did not obey the white man.

“Perhaps the bravest and most resolute opponent the murderers had encountered had met his death only a few months, or even weeks, before my arrival in the district. This was a Boras cacique, or capitÁn—often referred to in the depositions of those I examined—named Katenere. This man, who was not an old man, but young and strong, lived on the upper waters of the PamÁ, a small stream that empties into the Cahuinari not far from its mouth in the JapurÁ. My interpreter, Bishop, had seen this chief in 1907, when Normand had gone to find him in order to induce him to work rubber. He had, from necessity no doubt, consented to bring in rubber, and for some time had worked voluntarily for Normand, until, through bad treatment, he, like so many others, had fled. He had been captured later on, along with his wife and some of his people, and confined in the stocks of the Abisinia district, to undergo the taming process. While thus himself a prisoner, his wife, so I was informed by a Peruvian white man holding a well-paid post in the company’s service, had been publicly violated before his eyes by one of the highest agents of the Syndicate, a Peruvian whose name and record was frequently brought forward in the course of my inquiry. This man had been obliged to fly from the CaraparanÁ agency on account of his crimes in that region in 1908.

“As a rule, the criminals who controlled the Indian population of the Putumayo were chary of robbing an Indian husband of his wife. The harems were maintained mainly by orphans, generally girls whose parents were ‘dead.’ Asking once why it was that the wives of the Indians seemed usually to be spared this contamination, a reliable witness answered me: ‘Because, sir, if they takes an Indian’s wife, that Indian don’t work rubber.’ I urged that since these men stuck at no act of terrorisation to make Indians work rubber, a husband could be forced, even if robbed of his wife, to go and get rubber. ‘No, sir,’ my informant said, ‘the Indians loves their wives, and if she is taken they won’t work rubber. They can kill them, do anything they like to them, but the Indian won’t work rubber.’

“This assertion was made more than once by men who, like this man, had taken an active part in making Indians work rubber, and I believe that this obstinate prejudice of the Indian preserved a native marriage from invasion more surely than any respect the cauchero has for its sanctity. An Indian marriage is not a ceremony, but a choice sanctioned by the parents of the bride, and once a child or children result from the union there is rarely infidelity or separation. The very conditions of Indian life, open and above board, and every act of every day known to wellnigh every neighbour, precluded, I should say, very widespread sexual immorality before the coming of the white man. Certain it is that immoral intercourse among Indians, leading their natural lives, is rare, and as polygamy scarcely existed, only a few of the bigger men having more than one wife, the affection that grew up between an Indian man and his wife was very often sincere and deep-rooted, just as the love of parents for their children was.

“The Indians often displayed a fortitude in the face of impending torture and death that speaks for itself of the excellence of some of their qualities. Thus, it will be seen in the depositions accompanying this Report how, on more than one occasion, men had refused to betray the hiding-place of fugitives under terrible threats of torture if they did not point out the retreat of the runaways. Normand is charged with having cut the arms and legs off a chief he captured and questioned, who preferred to suffer such a death to betraying the refuge of those who had fled. I learned of more than one case of the kind, and have no doubt of the truth of the accusation against the white man as of the fortitude of the Indian. The tribes of the Putumayo in the hands of good men could be made into good men and women, useful and intelligent workers under an honest administration. Trained to be murderers, with the worst example men ever gave to men daily held up for imitation, with lust and greed and cruelty so often appealed to, I daily wondered that so much goodness still survived among the remnant we encountered. That that remnant itself would soon be gone I became convinced. A Peruvian who spoke good English, having spent some years in England, confessed as much to me two days before I left Chorrera. I said to this man that under the actual rÉgime I feared the entire Indian population would be gone in ten years, and he answered, ‘I give it six years—not ten.’

“The unrelieved barbarity of this Report does not rest alone on the testimony of the Barbados men whose depositions accompany it. I had other evidence to go by at the outset, and this was found to be in more than one instance amply confirmed by the independent statements of the British witnesses and again and again borne out by the evidence of our own eyes and the general conditions of the Indians. Could these people have been themselves fully interrogated, the weight of testimony would have been far greater, but could not have been more convincing.

“A magistrate was said to be residing at one of the company’s stations on that river, but I never heard him once referred to, and when peculiarly atrocious crimes were dragged to light, admitted, and deplored, the criminal charged with them would be sitting at table with us, and the members of the company’s commission and myself were appealed to to give no indication of our disgust lest this man ‘might do worse things’ to the Indians or provoke an impossible situation with the armed bandits under his orders. The apology for this extraordinary situation was that there was ‘no authority, no administration, no one near to whom any appeal could be made,’ and that Iquitos was 1,200 miles away. Every chief of section was a law unto himself, and many of the principal agents of this British company were branded by the representative of that company, holding its power of attorney, in conversation with me as ‘murderers, pirates, and bandits.’”

A considerable part of Consul Casement’s Report is taken up with the depositions, sworn before him, of the Barbados men; one of these, by name Stanley Lewis, stated:—

“I have seen Indians killed for sport, tied up to trees and shot at by Fonseca and the others. After they were drinking they would sometimes do this. They would take a man out of the cepo and tie him to a tree, and shoot him for a target. I have often seen Indians killed thus, and also shot after they had been flogged and their flesh was rotten through maggots.”

This man also described terrible barbarities committed on and murder of two Indian girls by Fonseca. James Chase, another Barbados man, gave a long account of Indians being flogged to death, starved, or shot, and describes the terrible occurrence connected with the murdering of the family of Katerene as follows:—

“They were also to hunt for a Boras Indian named Katenere, a former rubber-worker of the district of Abisinia, who had escaped, and, having captured some rifles, had raised a band of his fellow-Indians, and had successfully resisted all attempts at his recapture. Katenere had shot BartolemÉ Zupaeta, the brother-in-law of Julio C. Arana, and was counted a brave man and a terror to the Peruvian rubber-workers. The expedition set out from Morelia, and at the first Indian ‘house’ they reached in the forest they caught eight Indians, five men and three women. They were all tied up with ropes, their hands tied behind their backs, and marched on farther. At the next house they reached they caught four Indians, one woman and three men. Vasquez, who was in charge, ordered one of the muchachos to cut this woman’s head off. He ordered this for no apparent reason that James Chase knows of, simply because ‘he was in command, and could do what he liked.’ The muchacho cut the woman’s head off; he held her by the hair of her head, and, flinging her down, hacked her head off with a machete. It took more than one blow to sever the head—three or four blows. The remains were left there on the path, and the expedition went on with the three fresh male prisoners tied up with the others. The date would be about May, 1910.

“They were then approaching the house where they believed Katenere to be living. He was the chief of the Indians in whose direction they were going—the fugitives from the rubber-work. At a point about half an hour’s walk from this Indian house Vasquez ordered him, Ocampo, and two of the muchachos to remain there to guard the prisoners, while he himself (Vasquez) went on with the rest of the expedition. This party, so Vasquez told them when he had returned, reached the house of Katenere about six in the evening. Katenere and his wife, or one of his wives, were in the house—only these two persons. Vasquez caught the woman, but Katenere got away. Vasquez stayed there and sent four of the muchachos into the forest to find and capture the rifles that Katenere had got. When the muchachos got to this other house in the forest they found several Indians in it, whom they captured, and four rifles. The Indians were tied up with their hands behind them, but after a time the head muchacho, a Boras Indian, nicknamed Henrique, ordered them to be released. He then sent on his three muchachos to another house to bring in some Indians whilst he stayed with the men whom he had just released. These Indians, it should be noted, were all Boras Indians, Henrique as well as the rest of the muchachos. Whilst Henrique was with these men he found amongst them an Indian girl of whom he was very fond and who had probably joined them in their flight. He endeavoured to seize this girl, and in a quarrel that followed he was killed. The three muchachos, on their return with two prisoners, found their leader killed and his rifle in the hands of the released Indians, with the four guns they already had belonging to Katenere. Each party fired at the other, the forest Indians without effect. The three muchachos killed two of the Boras Indians and then returned to the house where Vasquez was spending the night and where he held the wife of Katenere prisoner. In the morning Vasquez returned to Ocampo and Chase, bringing only this woman with them. It was then that Chase learned from Vasquez’ own lips what had happened. They had then, Chase states, twelve Indians as prisoners, who included Katenere’s wife, and also of the original party that left Abisinia two Indians, who were in chains, who had been brought as guides to point out where Katenere and his fugitive people were living. These were some of Katenere’s men who had not succeeded in escaping when he got away. The whole party set out to return to Morelia through the forest, having lost Henrique and his rifle. Soon after they began their march in the morning they met in the path a child—a little girl—who was said to be a daughter of Katenere by another wife he had once had, not the woman they now held as prisoner. This child, Chase states, was quite a young girl, some six or eight years of age. She was frightened at the sight of the armed men, the Indians in chains and tied up, and began to cry as they approached. Vasquez at once ordered her head to be cut off. He knew it was Katenere’s child because Katenere’s wife, in their hands, told them so. There was no reason that Chase knew for their crime, save that the child was crying. Her head was cut off by a muchacho named Cherey, a Recigiro Indian boy. He was quite a young boy. They came on about half an hour’s march past that, leaving the decapitated body in the path, and as one of the women prisoners they had was not walking as fast as the rest Vasquez ordered a muchacho to cut her head off. This was done by the same boy Cherey in the same way, he flinging the woman on the ground and chopping her head off with several blows of his machete. They left this body and severed head right in the path and went on again towards Morelia. They were walking very fast because they were a bit frightened, thinking the Indians were pursuing them. One of the male Indian prisoners, a boy, about fifteen or sixteen [Chase indicated the boy’s height with his hand], a lad who could work rubber, was lagging behind and could not keep up with them as they were going very fast. The Indian was hungry and probably weak. Vasquez ordered his head to be cut off. This execution took place there and then in the same way and was performed by the same boy Cherey. The Indian’s hands were tied behind him. Cherey took hold of the lad’s long hair, threw him on the ground, and cut his head off. They came on after this towards Morelia, walking as fast as they could, and when they were getting near it in the evening-time and perhaps three-quarters of an hour’s distance Vasquez was in a great hurry to reach the station. Three of the Indian men who were weak through hunger and not able to walk fast could not keep up with them, so Vasquez himself shot one and he ordered Cherey, the muchacho, to shoot the other two. These were all grown-up men, Boras Indians, and belonging to Gavilanes, and were part of Katenere’s people. The three bodies were left lying there on the path, and the place where they were killed was so near Morelia that when they reached it they learned that the station hands had heard the shots of the rifles that had killed the men.

“They reached Morelia in the evening, and of their five prisoners three were put with their feet in the cepo, while the fourth was hung up by his neck with a chain round it. The chain was pulled taut over a beam in the roof of the house, so that the man’s toes rested on the ground, but he could not budge or even move his head. He had to stand like this with his head and neck stretched up all night. Those in the cepo, two men and a woman, also had chains round their necks. They got no food.”

Evidence confirmatory of James Chase’s statement with regard to this expedition of Vasquez was subsequently obtained by the Consul-General from other quarters. The Report continues:—

“Allan Davis, a Barbados man who was in Abisinia when Vasquez arrived there, stated in his examination that Vasquez declared on arrival ‘he had left the road pretty.’ Davis saw him arrive with the emaciated prisoners, who were put in stocks, and all of whom subsequently met their deaths in Abisinia, as averred by Davis and Evelyn Baston, another Barbados man, whose testimony was subsequently taken. One of them was murdered by being shot, and the others were deliberately starved to death while confined in the stocks.

“Asked if he had seen women thus killed, he replied, ‘Yes. They were shot and died from blows’ (from floggings). They were cut to pieces sometimes and smelt dreadfully. Once he himself was put in cepo alongside some of these rotting human beings who had been inhumanly flogged, and the smell was so bad he begged and implored to be taken out—he could not stand it—but Fonseca kept him in all night. He saw these people die from these floggings; their bodies would sometimes be dragged away and thrown in the bush around the station or burned. He has seen the muchachos shoot Indians under the order of Fonseca. Continual floggings went on at that time among women and children.

“Further statements were from time to time received from James Chase in the course of the journey made by Mr. Casement in the company of the commission, and finally on the 5th of November at La Chorrera he gave still further testimony in the presence of several of his countrymen. He states that amongst other things he saw Fonseca do was to kill an Indian man who was at the time confined in the stocks, or cepo, at Ultimo Retiro. The Indian in question had run away from working rubber, but had been caught and brought in a prisoner. Fonseca said to him, ‘I am going to kill you.’ The man protested, and said he had done no harm. He had not killed a white man, he had not injured any one or killed any one, and could not be killed for running away. Fonseca laughed at him, and had him hung up by the neck first with a chain drawn tight, and then when let down from this torture he had him put in the cepo with one foot only, the other leg being free. Fonseca came up to the cepo with a stick with a club head much bigger than the handle of the stick. He put one of his legs against the Indian’s free leg and stretched it apart from the confined leg. He then pulled off the man’s fono, or loin-cloth made of beaten bark, so that he was quite naked, and then struck the man many times with the club-end of the stick on his exposed parts. These were ‘smashed,’ and the man died in a short time. Deponent described the occurrence fully, declaring that he was an eye-witness.

“This statement was confirmed by the Barbados man, Stanley S. Lewis, who stated he also saw Fonseca commit this deed.

“Chase states that Fonseca at Ultimo Retiro would shoot Indians with a long rifle which he had. He thinks it was a Mannlicher. Sometimes he shot at them whilst they were actually prisoners in the stocks, and others were taken out in the open ground round the house, and he shot at them from the veranda. The last case of this kind that Chase witnessed was that of a young girl. Fonseca bandaged her eyes and face so that even her mouth and nose were covered. She was then made to walk away, and whilst she was thus blindfolded Fonseca shot her ‘as a sport for his friends.’

“Chase further states that he has seen AquilÉo Torres cut the ears off living Indians for sport. Torres took deponent’s own knife from him. It was an open knife, and he used this knife for the purpose. He saw him do this several times. Once he cut off a man’s ears and then burned his wife alive before his eyes. This was done by Torres.

“In the summer of 1909 Chase accompanied Torico on a journey. Asked what they were doing, he states that Torico, he thinks, was going round on a sort of inspection for Macedo, or else to give warning to all the sections that things must be put straight, because an Englishman, Captain Whiffen, was then in the country and visiting the company’s territories. He remembers Torico taking the names of the Indians at each station, and talking to the agents about Captain Whiffen’s coming. Chase states that he was with Sealey in the expedition under JimÉnez, later described.”

Stanley Sealey, another Barbados, described to the Consul a rubber raid and its results in the following terrible story:—

“A party of armed employees is sent out to collect the Indians of a certain division on the day when their puesta of rubber is due, and to march them into the station with their loads of rubber, after this has been weighed and found sufficient. The man in charge of the expedition will have a list of the Indians he is to collect, and the amount of rubber each is to bring in, and he proceeds to summon or find them. They call the chief, or capitÁn, of these Indians, and if all his people do not appear with him he may be put in the cepo, made out in the forest, and kept guarded there. Sometimes he, deponent, and others of the expedition would be sent to look for the missing Indians. If the Indians do not all come in, the capitÁn will be treated in a variety of ways. Sometimes they tie his hands behind his back, and then by a rope through his bound wrists he will be hauled up off the ground, the rope passing over a tree-branch. Sometimes his feet would be three or four feet off the ground. They kept him in this position for sometimes an hour or an hour and a half, he screaming out with pain. This is to make him confess where the missing Indians are. When he admits this, and says he will go for the truants, they let him down, and, keeping him tied, they go with him to where the people are hiding. If they find his people, they may still keep him tied up. They do not then flog the Indians. They collect all they can, those with the rubber, and those who have failed to get it, and march them all down to the station. The arms of the capitÁn will be loosed on reaching the station, but his legs put in the cepo. Then they weigh the rubber, and if any man has not brought the right weight he is flogged. The severity of the flogging depends on the amount of rubber the man is short. The deponent has not seen more than two dozen stripes thus given. With regard to the Indians who had not appeared in the first instance, and had to be collected, they would be flogged and put in the cepo; they would get ‘a good flogging.’ Sometimes the capitÁn himself would be flogged in the station. Whole families would be marched down in these gatherings, men with their wives and children who would help the men with their rubber. On all these marches the Indians would have to carry their own food too; they get no food except what they bring themselves. They would only get food from the white men during the time they are actually kept in the station. The station would have a big pot of rice and beans boiled. This would be the food. He has seen sometimes one hundred and fifty people thus marched in. Those who have brought the fixed amount of rubber are allowed to go back after this meal. The others are punished by being kept in cepo. Some are put in a hole in the cellars of the house. There is such a hole at Ultimo Retiro which the Consul can see when he gets there.

“The Indians are not paid at all on these occasions for such rubber as they bring in. They only get payment when the full fabrico—say, seventy-five days—is completed. These commissions take place sometimes every ten days, sometimes every fifteen days, according to the period fixed for each puesta, depending on the neighbourhood. Sealey gives this as a general indication of the manner in which he has been employed on ‘commissions’ and collecting the Indians from the forest. He next states he wishes to describe what took place on a certain occasion when he with other Barbados men went on a commission from Abisinia under JimÉnez. They were stationed at Morelia at the time, and went under JimÉnez to the CaquetÁ. It was a journey to catch fugitive Indians who had fled from the rubber-working, and was soon after Sealey had gone to Abisinia; he thinks it was in June, 1908. On the first day’s march from Morelia, about five o’clock in the afternoon, when they were some one and a half day’s distance from the CaquetÁ, they caught an old Indian woman in the path. JimÉnez asked the old woman where the rest of the Indians were. Sealey states she was a bit frightened. She told him that the next day at eleven o’clock he would get to the house where some Indians were. She was an old woman, not able to run. They did not tie her up. They went on with her, keeping her all night in camp until about two o’clock of the next day, and then JimÉnez asked her, ‘Where is the house; where are the Indians?’ The old woman stood up, and said nothing. She could not speak; she kept her eyes on the ground. JimÉnez said to her: ‘You were telling me lies yesterday, but now you have got to speak the truth.’ With that he called his wife—he had an Indian woman, the woman who is still with him—and he said to his wife: ‘Bring me that rope off my hammock.’ She took the rope off and gave it to him, and with that he tied the old woman’s hands behind her back. There were two trees standing just like that—one there and one there. He made an Indian cut a post to stretch across between the two trees. Then he hauled the old woman up, her feet were not touching the ground at all. He said to one of the boys, a muchacho: ‘Bring me some leaves—some dry leaves,’ he said, and he put these under the feet of the old woman as she hung there, her feet about a foot or so above the ground; and he then take a box of matches out of his pocket and he light the dry leaves, and the old lady start to burn. Big bladders [blisters] I see on her skin up here’ (he pointed to his thighs). “All was burned; she was calling out. Well, sir, when I see that, sir, I said, ‘Lord, have mercy!’ and I run ahead that I could not see her no more.”

“You did not go back?”

“I stayed a little ways off to where she was. I could hear him speaking. He say to one of the boys, ‘Loose her down now,’ and they loose her but she was not dead. She lay on the ground—she was still calling out. He tell one of the Indians: ‘Now, if this old woman is not able to walk, cut her head off,’ and the Indian did so—he cut her head off.”

“You saw that?”

“Yes, sir, he leave her there in the same place. We left her there, going a little ways into the forest; it was about four hours’ walk; after we left the old woman we met two women. They had no house—they had run away. One had a child. JimÉnez axed the one that had the child: ‘Where is these Indians that has run away?’ she tell him that she don’t know where they were. He tell her after she tell him that she don’t know that she was a liar.”

“Did he tell her this himself in her own language?”

“He tell his wife to tell her. His wife speaks Spanish, too. His wife is up there with him now at Ultimo Retiro. He tell his wife that she was a liar. He took the child from the woman and he gave it to an Indian, one of the Indians who had been collected to work rubber. ‘Cut this child’s head off!’ he say, and he did so.”

“How did the Indian cut the child’s head off?”

“He held it by the hair and chop its head off with a machete. It was a little child walking behind its mother.”

“Was it a boy or a girl?”

“It was a boy. He left the child and the head in the same place, everything there, on the path. He went on then; he take the two women with him, but the woman was crying for her child. Well, sir, we got a little ways more inside the wood; walking, we met an Indian man—a strong young fellow he was, too. That is, after we gets over to near the CaguetÁ. JimÉnez say he wanted to go to the next side—the other side—of the CaquetÁ, but he do not know where he would get a boat, a canoe, to go over. So this time he tell his woman, his wife, to ax the Indian to tell where the boat is. Well, sir, the Indian say he do not know where it is. By that time JimÉnez say the Indian lie—he was a liar, and he got a rope and he tie the Indian’s hands like that behind his back. It was in the same way with the post across between two trees. He made the Indians tie a post across between two trees, and he haul the Indian, like that, up to the post. His feet could not touch the ground, and he call for some dry leaves, and tell the boys to bring some dry leaves, same as the old woman. He put the leaves under his feet, and he take a box of matches out of his pocket. The man was there shouting out, greeting. JimÉnez draw a match and light the leaves, and this time, sir, the Indian start to burn, big bladders going out from his skin. The Indian was there burning, with his head hanging like that—moaning, he was. JimÉnez say: ‘Well, you will not tell me where the canoe, where the boat is,’ he says, ‘so you must bear with that.’ Well, the Indian was not quite dead, but was there with his head hanging, and JimÉnez he tell the capitÁn, by name JosÉ Maria, a Boras Indian [he is chief capitÁn of the Abisinia muchachos]; he says, ‘Give him a ball!’ he says, and the Indian took his carbine and give him a ball here, shooting him in the chest. Well, sir, after I saw how the blood started, I ran. It was awful to see, and he left the Indian hanging up there with the rope and everything on him.”

“Was the Indian dead?”

“Yes, sir, he was dead with the ball, and we left him there in the same place. That’s all.”

“Sealey states that he had reported these things to his fellow-countryman, John Brown, who when he had reached Chorrera had become the servant of a Captain Whiffen, an English officer who had arrived there. He hoped that Captain Whiffen, hearing of it, might be able to do something and so told John Brown.[127] Sealey states that Chase was with him on the expedition.”

Another Barbados man’s (Westerman Leavine’s) examination includes the following:—

“He confirms the statement made by Genaro Caporo, in the Truth charges read out to him, who had declared what he saw in the middle of 1907. The statement made by Caporo, that three old Indians and two young women, their daughters, were murdered by Normand in cold blood and their bodies eaten by the dogs, was corroborated by Leavine. He saw this take place, and saw the dogs eating them. As to the starving to death of Indians in the cepo, it was a common occurrence, and the dead and stinking bodies left there alongside still living prisoners he declares he more than once witnessed. The statement made by Caporo as to an Indian chief who was burnt alive in the presence of his wife and two children, and the wife then beheaded and the children dismembered, and all thrown on the fire, Leavine says he remembers, and was a witness to it. He also remembers the occurrence narrated by Caparo of an Indian woman who was cut to pieces by Normand himself, because she refused to live with one of his employees as he directed her to do. He was a witness to the woman being set fire to with the Peruvian flag soaked in kerosene wrapped round her, and of her then being shot. The statement made by Caporo as to the ground round Andokes being sown with skulls was then read out by the Consul-General to Leavine. He (Leavine) of himself stated that there were days in 1906 and 1907 ‘when you could not eat your food on account of the dead Indians lying around the house.’ He frequently saw the dogs eating them, and dragging the limbs about. The bodies and arms were thrown all round and were not buried.

“With regard to the statement of Roso EspaÑa, read over to him from the Truth charges, he saw one child rammed head first down one of the holes being dug for the house timbers.

“The statement of Julio Muriedas, made in the same quarter, who stated that he had been at Matanzas, was then read over to Leavine. He remembers Muriedas. With regard to the statement that two hundred lashes were given to Indians, Leavine says this often took place, also the burning alive of children to make them reveal where their parents were hidden. This he declares he has seen SeÑor Normand do more than once. The eating of the limbs of the dead people by the house-dogs attested by Muriedas he again confirms, and says it was ‘a common occurrence.’ The statement of ‘M. G.,’ from the Truth accusations, was then read to Leavine. He recalls this man, named Marcial, being a short time at Matanzas when SeÑor Normand wished to make him a station cook, and this man had refused and they had quarrelled. This man’s statement that he had seen in one month and five days ‘ten Indians killed and burnt’ Leavine declares is in no wise remarkable. He has himself seen twenty Indians killed in five days in Matanzas. As to the ‘stinking’ of this section referred to by ‘M. G.’ he affirms that this was often the case to a revolting degree. He recalls ‘M. G.,’ or Marcial, shooting the little Indian boy by SeÑor Normand’s orders as he, ‘M. G.,’ accuses himself of doing.

“Leavine finally declares that SeÑor Normand killed many hundreds of Indians during his six years at Matanzas, during all which time he (Leavine) served under him, and by many kinds of torture, cutting off their heads and limbs and burning them alive. He more than once saw Normand have Indians’ hands and legs tied together, and the men or women thus bound thrown alive on a fire. The employees on the station would look on or assist at this. The station boys, or muchachos, would get the firewood ready, acting under SeÑor Normand’s orders. He saw Normand on one occasion take three native men and tie them together in a line, and then with his Mauser rifle shoot all of them with one bullet, the ball going right through. He would fire more than one shot into them like this.”

On arriving in London, in January, 1912, Consul Casement gave in a further Report to the Foreign Office, of which the following are extracts:—

“The managing director of the company at Iquitos, SeÑor Pablo Zumaeta, against whom had been issued a warrant of arrest, had, I found, not been arrested, but, with the connivance of the police, had merely remained in his private residence at Iquitos during the hearing of an appeal he was permitted to lodge. This appeal being considered by the Superior Court of Iquitos during my stay there, resulted in the court annulling the warrant issued by the Criminal Court below, and the return to public life of the accused man without trial or public investigation of the charges against him.”[128]

“Following my return to Iquitos in the 16th of October, an effort was apparently made to arrest some twenty of those still employed by the company on the Putumayo towards the very end of October and in the early days of November. Although the localities where all of them were at work were well known, the comisario or commissioner of the Putumayo, one AmadÉo Burga, a paid employee of the company, and a brother-in-law of its managing director, in each case took action just too late, so that all those incriminated were either absent in the forest or said to have gone away only a few hours before the officer’s arrival. The vessel reporting this unsatisfactory ending to this, the latest attempt[129] to bring to justice the authors of so many crimes, returned to Iquitos on the 25th of November, bringing only one man in custody, a subordinate named Portocarrero, who was among those implicated. All the rest of the accused were stated to have ‘escaped,’ in some cases, it was reported, taking with them large numbers of captive Indians, either for sale or for continued forced labour in other regions of the rubber-bearing forests.

“Some of those wanted, however, I learned subsequently, had returned to their stations when the officer, who had failed to find them, had left the neighbourhood, and were at work again in the service of the company at the date of my departure from the Amazon. Others of the individuals charged by the judge, I found, were, or had been, actually in Iquitos at the time the police there held warrants for their arrest, and no attempt had been made to put these warrants into execution.

“The evidence that I obtained during my stay in Iquitos, coming as it did from many quarters and much of it from the Putumayo itself, induced in me the conviction that the punishment of the wrongdoers was a thing not to be expected, and, from a variety of causes I need not dwell upon here, possibly a matter beyond the ability of the local executive to ensure. Suffice it to say I saw no reason to modify the opinion expressed in my Report of the 17th of March last, that ‘custom sanctioned by long tradition, and an evil usage whose maxim is that “the Indian has no rights,” are far stronger than a distant law that rarely emerges into practice.’

“In the Amazon territories of Peru—the great region termed the MontaÑa—the entire population, it may be said, consists of native Indians, some brought into close touch, as at Iquitos and in the settled mission centres of the Ucayali, with white civilisation, but a great proportion of them, like those on the Putumayo, still dwelling in the forest, a rude and extremely primitive existence. To these remote people civilisation has come, not in the guise of settled occupation by men of European descent, accompanied by executive control to assert the supremacy of law, but by individuals in search of Indian labour—a thing to be mercilessly used, and driven to the most profitable of tasks, rubber-getting, by terror and oppression. That the Indian has disappeared and is disappearing rapidly under this process is nothing to these individuals. Enough Indians may remain to constitute, in the end, the nucleus of what is euphemistically termed ‘a civilised centre.’

“The entire absence of government, which has not kept pace with the extension of revenue-yielding communities, has left the weaker members of those communities exposed to the ruthless greed of the stronger. The crimes of the Putumayo, horrible as they are, have their counterpart, I am assured, in other remote regions of the same lawless forest—although possibly not to the same terrifying extent.

“In this instance the force of circumstance has brought to light what was being done under British auspices—that is to say, through an enterprise with headquarters in London, and employing both British capital and British labour—to ravage and depopulate the wilderness. The fact that this British company should possibly cease to direct the original families of Peruvian origin who first brought their forest wares (50,000 slaves) to the English market will not, I apprehend, materially affect the situation on the Putumayo. The Arana Syndicate still termed itself the Peruvian Amazon Company (Limited) up to the date of my leaving Iquitos on the 7th of December last. The whole of the rubber output of the region, it should be borne in mind, is placed upon the English market, and is conveyed from Iquitos in British bottoms. Some few of the employees in its service are, or were when I left the Amazon, still British subjects, and the commercial future of the Putumayo (if any commercial future be possible to a region so wasted and mishandled) must largely depend on the amount of foreign, chiefly British, support those exploiting the remnant of the Indians may be able to secure.

“A population officially put at 50,000 should in ten years have grown by natural increase to certainly 52,000 or 53,000 souls, seeing that every Indian marries—a bachelor or spinster Indian is unknown—and that respect for marriage is ingrained in uncivilised Indian nature and love of children, probably the strongest affection these people display. By computations made last year and the year before, by officials and by those interested in the prosperity of the Peruvian Amazon Company, the existing population of the entire region is now put at from 7,000 Indians, the lowest calculation, to 10,000, the highest. Around some of the sections or rubber centres whence this drain of rubber has been forced, the human sacrifices attained such proportions that human bones, the remains of lost tribes of Indians, are so scattered through the forests that, as one informant stated, these spots ‘resemble battlefields.’ A Peruvian officer, who had been through the Putumayo since the date of my visit in 1910, said that the neighbourhood of one particular section he had visited recalled to him the battlefield of Miraflores—the bloodiest battle of the Chilean War. Moreover, these unarmed and defenceless people, termed, indeed, in the language of prospectuses, the ‘labourers’ of this particular company, were killed for no crime or offence, and were murdered by the men who drew the highest profits from that company. They comprised women and children—very often babies in arms—as well as men and boys. Neither age nor sex was spared; all had to work rubber, to perform impossible tasks, to abandon home and cultivation of their forest clearings, and to search week by week and month by month for the juice of rubber-yielding trees, until death came as sudden penalty for failing strength and non-compliance, or more gently overtook them by the way in the form of starvation or disease. With all that it has given to the Amazon Valley of prosperity, of flourishing steamship communications, of port works, of growing towns and centres of civilisation, with electric light and tramways, of well-kept hospitals and drainage schemes, it may well be asked whether the rubber-tree has not, perhaps, taken more away.

“However this be, it is certainly in the best interests of commercial civilisation itself, and of the vital needs of the trading communities upon the Amazon River, that the system of ruthless and destructive human exploitation which has been permitted to grow up on the Putumayo should be sternly repressed. Peru herself can only greatly benefit from the establishment of a civilised and humane administration—a task of no great magnitude—in those regions hitherto abandoned to the cauchero and the vegetable filibuster. The healthy development of the Amazon rubber industry, one of the foremost of Brazilian needs, calls for that humanity of intercourse civilisation seeks to spread by commerce, not for its degradation by the most cruel forms of slavery and greed.

“All that is sensible of this among those interested in the rubber industry, whether of Europe, the United States, or Brazil, should heartily unite in assisting the best elements of Peruvian life to strengthen the arm of justice, and to establish upon the Putumayo and throughout the MontaÑa, wherever the rubber-seeker seeks his profits, a rule of right dealing and legality. It may be long before a demoralisation drawing its sanction from so many centuries of indifference and oppression can be uprooted, but Christianity owns schools and missions as well as Dreadnoughts and dividends. In bringing to that neglected region and to those terrorised people something of the suavity of life, the gentleness of mind, the equity of intercourse between man and man that Christianity seeks to extend, the former implements of her authority should be more potent than the latter.

“I have, &c.,
“Roger Casement.”