IT is something of a terrible irony of fate that in a land whose people for unknown centuries, and up to only four hundred years ago, lived under social laws “so beneficent as had never been known under any ancient kings of Asia, Africa, or Europe, or under any Christian monarch”—laws recorded by a reliable historian and partly capable of verification by the traveller and student to-day—should, in the twentieth century, have been the scene of the ruination and wholesale torture and murder of tribes of its defenceless and industrious inhabitants. Under the Incas of Peru, as recorded by the Inca-Spanish historian Garcilaso de la Vega[1] and other early writers, human blood was never shed purposely; every inhabitant was provided for and had a place in a well-ordered social economic plan; there was no such condition as beggary or destitution; the people were instructed by statute to help each other co-operatively; injustice and corruption were unknown; and there was a belief in a Supreme Director of the Universe. Under the Peruvian republic and the regimen of absentee capitalism to-day, tribes of useful people of this same land have been defrauded, driven into slavery, ravished, tortured, and destroyed. This has been done, not in single instances at the command of some savage potentate, but in tens of thousands under a republican Government, in a Christianised country, at the behest of the agents of a great joint-stock company with headquarters in London: the “crime” of these unfortunates being that they did not always bring in rubber sufficiently fast—work for which they practically received no payment—to satisfy their taskmasters. In order to obtain rubber so that the luxurious-tyred motor-cars of civilisation might multiply in the cities of Christendom, the dismal forests of the Amazon have echoed with the cries of despairing and tortured Indian aborigines. These are not things of the imagination, but a bare statement of actual occurrence, as set forth by the various witnesses in this volume.

The occurrences in the Amazon Valley which, under the name of the Putumayo[2] Rubber Atrocities of Peru, have startled the public mind and aroused widespread horror and indignation—atrocities worse than those of the Congo—cannot be regarded merely as an isolated phenomenon. Such incidents are the extreme manifestation of a condition which expresses itself in different forms all over the world—the condition of acute and selfish commercialism or industrialism whose exponents, in enriching themselves, deny a just proportion of the fruits of the earth and of their toil to the labourers who produce the wealth. The principle can be seen at work in almost any country, in almost every industry; and although its methods elsewhere are lacking in savage lust and barbarity, they still work untold suffering upon mankind. It is easy to condemn offhand the nation of Peru, under whose nominal control the foul spot of the Putumayo exists, and to whose negligence and cupidity the blame for the occurrences is largely to be laid, but the conscience of world-wide commercialism ought also to be pricked.

Leaving, however, that broader aspect of the subject, it is necessary to understand the local conditions which could have brought about such occurrences. The region of the Amazon Valley—a region nearly as large as the whole of Europe without Russia—was early divided between Spain and Portugal. Brazil to-day occupies the eastern and most extensive portion of the valley; and the various Andine republics, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela, cover the upper and western portion. The Amazon is the largest river in the world; the entire fluvial system, with perhaps an aggregate of a hundred thousand miles of navigable rivers and streams, gives access to an enormous territory of forests and plains, which neither road nor railway has yet penetrated.

It is to be recollected that the interior of South America is the least known of any of the continents at the present time. Large areas of territory are practically unexplored. The backward state of the Amazon Valley is largely due to the fact that during three hundred years of Portuguese dominion it was closed commercially to the outside world. Slave-raiding by the Portuguese and the Brazilians went on unchecked. The colonists even fought against and destroyed the Jesuit missions which the devout and humane of their priests had established. The whole valley has existed under a dark cloud ever since the time when, in 1540, the first white man, Orellana, Pizarro’s lieutenant, descended the Napo, MaraÑon, and Amazon from Quito to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1638 Pedro de Texiera performed his great feat of ascending the Amazon from the Atlantic to Quito, and descending it again in 1639, one of the most noteworthy explorations in history. Exaggerations of Indian savagery and dangers of climate have deterred settlers in later times. As for the Putumayo region, it was practically unknown until the last decade of the nineteenth century. The name “Amazon” was probably a result of the experiences of Orellana and his followers, who were attacked by a tribe of Indians, the Nahumedes, on the river of the same name, whose long hair and dress of chemises or shirts caused the explorers to think their attackers were women-warriors, or “amazons.” There is no proof of the existence of any empire of women in South America, although there is a legend bearing on the subject.

The Putumayo River rises near Pasto, in the Andes of Colombia, and traverses a vast region which forms one of the least-known areas of the earth’s surface. This river is nearly a thousand miles long, flowing through territory which is claimed both by Peru and Colombia, and enters the main stream of the Amazon in Brazil. The river crosses the equator in its upper portion. The notorious rubber-bearing region upon the Putumayo and its affluents, the IgaraparanÁ and the CaraparanÁ, lies within a square formed by the equator on the north, the 2nd parallel of latitude on the south, and the 72nd and 74th degrees of longitude west of Greenwich. Like most of the Amazon tributaries, the Putumayo and its two affluents are navigable throughout the greater part of their courses, giving access by water up to the base of the Andes; and the rubber traffic is carried out by means of steam-launches and canoes.

The CaraparanÁ and IgaraparanÁ rivers, both flowing from the north-west, run parallel for about four hundred miles through dense, continuous forests, discharging into the Putumayo, the first some six hundred miles and the second some four hundred miles above the confluence of that river with the Amazon. The accompanying map renders clear these conditions, and it will be seen that the region is a considerable distance from Iquitos, nearly a thousand miles by water, the small, intermittent river steamers of the rubber traders occupying two weeks in the journey; and a part of the course lies through Brazilian waterway. A much more direct route can be made by effecting a portage from the Putumayo to the Napo River, which enters the Amazon about fifty miles below Iquitos. The Putumayo region, therefore, must be regarded as an extremely outlying part of Peru, with corresponding difficulties of access and governance.

The native people inhabiting the region are mainly the Huitotos, with other tribes of more or less similar character, but with different names. These people, although known as infieles and salvages—that is, “un-faithed” and “savage”—cannot be described as savages in the ordinary sense of the term. They have nothing in common with the bloody savages of Africa and other parts of the world. Their weapons are not adapted for taking life so much as for hunting, and although the tribes of the Amazon Valley have always fought against each other and have reduced their numbers by inter-tribal strife, they are not generally a fortress-building people, and the noiseless blow-pipe takes the place of the blood-shedding weapons of the indigenes of other lands. The Agarunas of the MaraÑon, however, build war-towers for defence, as do some other tribes.[3] The tunday or manguare, the remarkable instrument for signalling or communicating by sound through the forest, is used by various tribes in the Amazon Valley. Most of the tribes live in great community-houses. The Indians of the Amazon Valley in general are docile and have good qualities; they are naturally free from immorality and disease; they have a strong affection for their women and children and a regard for the aged. They are well worthy of preservation, and might have been a valuable asset to the region. The particular people of the Putumayo region have decreased greatly since the advent of the rubber “industry,” as has been the case all over the Amazon Valley: on the Putumayo they have been reduced, it is calculated, from forty or fifty thousand to less than ten thousand, partly by abuse and massacre, partly by having fled to more remote districts away from their persecutors.

The local conditions which rendered possible the Putumayo atrocities are to be found, first, in the character of the Iberian and Iberian-descended peoples of South America, and, second, in the topographical formation of the country. To take the last-mentioned first. The condition must be borne in mind that the region of the Amazon forests is in every way separate from the region of the mountains and that of the coast. The coast region of Peru, bordering upon the Pacific Ocean, is a rainless, treeless zone, upon which vegetation is only possible under irrigation, but upon which the modern Peruvian civilisation flourishes; Lima, the capital of the country, being situated only a dozen miles from the sea. To the east of this Europeanised region arise the mountain ranges of the Andes, which cut off the forest lowlands so completely from the coast that the two may be regarded as separate countries. The mountain regions embody vast, treeless tablelands, broken by more or less fertile valleys, and overlooked by snow-clad peaks and ranges, and are subject in general to a cold, inclement climate, with heavy rainfall. The uplands lie at an elevation of 12,000 ft. and upwards above sea-level, and the dividing ranges are crossed at 14,000 to 17,000 ft., with only one or two passes between Western and Eastern Peru, at a lower elevation. The line of tree-life begins at an elevation of about 10,000 to 11,000 ft., this forest region being known as the MontaÑa of Peru, merging by degrees into the great selvas or forests of Brazil. These topographical details serve to show how greatly Western and Eastern Peru are cut off from each other. The conditions similarly, affect Colombia and Ecuador, and, to a certain extent, Bolivia, but the last-named country does not extend to the Pacific coast. It is in the isolation of the cis-Andine from the trans-Andine regions that Peru may claim some palliation for the offences on the Putumayo. The river port of Iquitos is from thirty to forty days’ journey from Lima under existing means of travel. The easiest method of reaching the one from the other is by way of Southampton, or New York, and Panama. A system of wireless telegraphy is now in operation across the six hundred miles of coast, mountain, and forest territory separating the two cities.

The topographical conditions described had influenced the human inhabitants of Peru before the time of the Spaniards. The aboriginal race inhabiting the highlands and the coast lived then, as they do to-day, in a manner distinct from each other. The highland and coast people were those who formed the population under the Inca government, and under whose control they had reached a high degree of aboriginal civilisation; whilst the indigenes of the forests were more or less roving bands of savages, dwelling on the river banks, without other forms of government than that of the curacas, or petty chiefs of families or tribe. The influence of the Incas did undoubtedly extend into the forest regions in a degree, as evidenced by remaining customs and nomenclature, but the Incas did not establish order and civilisation in the forests as upon the highlands. The Incas and their predecessors built a series of fortresses which commanded the heads of the precipitous valleys leading to the forests, whose ruins remain to-day, and are marvels of ingenuity in megalithic construction. After the conquest the Inca population of the highlands and coast became Christianised, and at the present time the whole of the vast territory of the Pacific coast and Andine uplands, extending throughout Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia for two thousand miles, is under the regimen of the Romish Church, and every village contains its iglesia and village priest. In very different condition are, on the other hand, the aborigines of the forests, who live neither under civil nor religious authority. But there was probably no fundamental or racial difference between the upland and forestal Indians, and they resemble each other in many respects, with differences due to climate and environment. Remains of ancient civilisations, in the form of stone ruins and appliances, are found east of the Andes, in the Amazon forest regions, and the Chaco plains, arguing the existence of prehistoric conditions of a superior character. Legends and customs among the forest tribes seem to refer in a dim, vague way to ancient conditions and happenings of other environments; and there can be little doubt that the archÆology and origin of the South American people are far from being fully understood. Further exploration of this little-known region may produce much of interest, and unravel mysteries which the dense forest at present conceals.

One of the principal tributaries of the Amazon is the River MaraÑon, which flows from the south for a thousand miles between two parallel chains of the Andes, and breaking through a remarkable caÑon, known as the Pongo de Manseriche, turns suddenly to the east and forms the main Amazon waterway. Above the Pongo, or rapids, the river is navigable only for very small craft, but below it forms the head of steam navigation. The upper MaraÑon flows down through a high, difficult territory, with many fertile valleys, and upon its headlands and the adjacent slopes of the mountains are freely scattered the ruins of the Inca and pre-Inca peoples, who inhabited the region in pre-Hispanic times and even contemporaneously with the Spaniards.[4] From this district, and from the valleys to the west of Cuzco and Titicaca, it was that the Inca influence mainly entered the forest regions of the Peruvian MontaÑa.

It is interesting to note that the “Mongolian” resemblance to the Huitotos Indians of the Putumayo is again observed in Sir Roger Casement’s Report.[5] The resemblance between the aboriginals of the Andine and Amazon regions of South America and Asiatic peoples is striking, as indeed it is with the natives in some parts of Mexico. The present writer has dealt fully with the matter, as bearing upon the possible peopling of America by Tartars in remote times, in a book recently published.[6] The subject is one of great interest. One school of thought denies any imported origin for early American culture, and considers the Aztec and Inca civilisations to have been autochthonous, a natural reaction of man to his environment; whilst the other points to the great probability, as adduced in archÆological and other matters, of some prehistoric Asiatic influence.

The abuses connected with rubber-gathering in the Amazon Valley are not a new or sudden condition. The ill-treatment of the Indians in the rubber-bearing regions of Peru were brought to public notice in England and the United States in the book before mentioned, published in 1907, showing that the aborigines were being destroyed, sold into slavery, and murdered by the white rubber-gatherers or merchants several years before the matter culminated in the publication of the Putumayo atrocities. The present writer also wrote to various London periodicals in an endeavour to arouse interest in the subject, but none of the journals specially took the matter up.

The Peruvian Government and the Press of the Republic have long been aware that the Indians of the forest regions were brutally exploited by the rubber merchants and gatherers. Reports and articles have been made and published both by officials and travellers. That Indians were sold at Iquitos and elsewhere as slaves and that there was a constant traffic in Indian women has been known to the authorities ever since rubber-gathering began. In 1906, in Lima, the Director of Public Works, one of the most important of the Government departments, handed the present writer an official publication[7] dealing with Eastern Peru, which contained among other matters an account by a Government official of that region of the barbarities committed upon the Indians, a translation of a portion of which is given here. The present writer had undertaken to make a preliminary survey or reconnaisance on behalf of the Government of a route for a railway from the Pacific coast to the MaraÑon, which would give access to the interior and be of considerable strategic importance.

The following translation of part of a Report in the official publication, dated February, 1905, by a Peruvian engineer in the service of the Government[8] shows that the abuse of the Indians was a matter of current knowledge:—

“Marked changes have been produced among the savage tribes of the Oriental regions of Peru by the industry of collecting the ‘black gold,’ as the rubber is termed. Some of them have accepted the ‘civilisation’ offered by the rubber-merchants, others have been annihilated by them. On the other hand, alcohol, rifle bullets, and smallpox have worked havoc among them in a few years. I take this opportunity of protesting before the civilised world against the abuses and unnecessary destruction of these primitive beings, whom the rapacity of so-called civilised man has placed as mere mercantile products in the Amazon markets; for it is a fact known to every one that the native slaves are quoted there like any other merchandise. Throughout the forest region under the control of the Governments of Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, and Brazil the natives are exposed to attack without protection of the law by the whites, who hunt and persecute them like animals of the jungle, recognising as their only value the sum represented by their sale. If protection is not afforded these unhappy beings, the just Judge of the doings of all will condemn the generation which annihilates without cause the indigenous races, the real owners of the soil.”

The principal newspaper of Lima, El Comercio, a journal of high standing, has repeatedly drawn attention to the ill-treatment and exploitation of the Indians, not only in the regions of the Putumayo and Iquitos but much farther to the south—as, for example, in the district round Port Maldonado. This river port is nearly two thousand miles from the Putumayo region, southward across Peru, reached by launch and canoe upon a different river system, that of the Beni River. The upper courses of this river are known as the Madre de Dios, upon which Port Maldonado is situated, and whose lower course is the enormous Madera River, which runs into the Amazon in Brazil in latitude 59°, more than one thousand miles below Iquitos. At Port Maldonado is the confluence of the Tambopata River with the Madre de Dios, and farther upstream is the Inambari River. The whole of this region is rich in rubber forests, and several companies are engaged in rubber-gathering, including British, American, Bolivian, and Peruvian. The following translation from El Comercio of Lima in an edition of February, 1906, shows that more or less similar methods were employed at points so far apart as Maldonado and the Putumayo:—

“In the basin of the Madre de Dios and its affluents, where it is easy to navigate with the help of the ‘terrible’ Chunchos,[9] who in reality are good and hospitable, exist immense quantities of rubber, rich and abundant rubber forests of easy exploitation. It would appear that the new Commissioner is resolved to put a stop to the barbarous custom of the correrrias[10] organised by the authorities themselves or by the rubber-merchants, who carry on the repugnant business of selling the poor Chunchos. As labour and women are both scarce, and as there is a strong demand for the one and the other, bands of armed men are constantly organised for sudden descents upon groups or communities of the savages, no matter whether they are friendly or hostile, making them prisoners in the midst of extermination and blood. Urged on by the profit resulting from the sale of boys, robust youths, and young women (frescas mujeres), they tear children from mothers and wives from husbands without pity, and pass them from hand to hand as slaves. It were well to take the savages from their forests to use their labour and to cultivate their intelligence, but not for business purposes to make them victims of the knife and the lash.”

THE PERUVIAN AMAZON. FREE INDIANS OF THE UCAYALI RIVER. (Observe their robust appearance when not enslaved.) To face p. 24.
THE PERUVIAN AMAZON.
FREE INDIANS OF THE UCAYALI RIVER.
(Observe their robust appearance when not enslaved.)
To face p. 24.

Thus the Press of the country itself shows that these things are done, not only with the connivance of the authorities but are “organised by the authorities themselves.” The expected improvements mentioned above took place very slowly, and in some cases not at all. To replace one Commissioner by another is insufficient. All are equally venal or influenced, and King Log does but give place to King Stork. Barbarities committed by the rubber-merchants upon the Indians of the Ucayali and MaraÑon were brought to the knowledge of the Peruvian Government in 1903 and 1906 by Roman Catholic missionaries established there and published by the Minister of Justice.[11]

After extensive journeys in the interior of Peru, upon returning to the capital, the present writer wrote various articles, which were published in the Press of Lima and Arequipa, drawing attention to the miserable condition of life of the labouring Indian class. Among these evils is abuse by petty authorities and estate-owners, who employ the Indians and fail to pay them their agreed wages or pay them in goods of inadequately low value; the extortions of the village priests under the cloak of religious customs; and, most serious of all, the ravages resulting upon the consumption of aguardiente, or fiery sugar-cane rum, which is responsible for the ruination and decrease of the working population. This cane spirit is manufactured largely by the sugar-estate owners, and is often a more profitable product than the sugar, whose output is sacrificed thereto; but as the large estate-owners are often influential personages or politicians and members of the Legislature, the prohibition of the profitable sale of alcohol among the Indians is not likely to be brought about. The leading newspaper of Lima, El Comercio, in a leading article, of which the following is a partial translation, said:—

“It is not rare, unfortunately, in the Republic that the authorities of all kinds raise up abuses as a supreme law against the villages of the interior. For the Indians of the mountains and the uplands there often exists neither the Constitution nor positive rights. It would be useless to seek in the indigenous race beings really free and masters of their acts and persons. It looks as though independence had only been saved for the dwellers of the coast. From the moment that the traveller’s gaze ceases to observe the ocean and is directed over the interminable chain of the Andes it ceases also to observe free men, the citizens of an independent republic. To this condition, which is not abnormal because it has always existed, the ignorance of the Indian contributes, but also the abuses of the authorities, who, with rare exceptions, make of them objects of odious spoliation. Such depredations are aggravated when its victims are unfortunate and unhappy beings, towards whom there is every obligation to protect, and not to exploit.”

The most remarkable fact about the maltreatment of the South American Indians is that—admitted and specially alluded to in the Peruvian Press, as the foregoing extracts show—abuses are carried out often by the petty authorities themselves. It is painful for a foreigner, one, moreover, who has enjoyed hospitality both from the authorities and from the village priests in the interior of Peru, to record these matters, but it is manifestly a duty. Moreover, it is a service to the country itself to draw attention to the evil. The extinction of the indigenous labour of the Andine highlands and of the rubber forests will render impossible for a long period the internal development of the country. No foreign or imported race can perform the work of the Peruvian miner or rubber-gatherer. Due to the peculiar conditions of climate—the great altitude in the one case and the humidity in the other—no European or Asiatic people could take the place of these people, whose work can only be accomplished by those who have paid Nature the homage of being born upon the soil and inured to its conditions throughout many generations.[12] It might have been supposed that from economic reasons alone the exploiters of native labour would have endeavoured to foster and preserve it, even if it were simply on the principle of feeding and stabling a horse in order to use its powers to the utmost. But this is not the case. The economic principle of conserving the efficiency of human labour by its employer, remarkable as it may seem, has never been recognised even in the most enlightened communities, or only very recently and in a very few instances. It is not necessary to go to the tropics to seek instances; they are evident no farther afield than among the ill-paid mining, dock, manufacturing, and other labour in Great Britain and the United States. The very abundance of labour has been its own undoing; the supply has seemed exhaustless and the tendency has been to squander it. The question is one of degree rather than of principle in any community or industry and at any time in history. But in the persecuted districts of Latin America native labour is practically being hounded off the face of the earth.

The Putumayo atrocities were first brought to public notice by an American engineer and his companion, Messrs. Hardenburg and Perkins, and the interesting narrative by the former of their travels upon the Putumayo River forms a large part of the subject of this book. Mr. Hardenburg and his companion suffered great hardships and imprisonment at the hands of the Peruvian agents of the rubber company on the Putumayo, and barely escaped with their lives. For these outrages some time afterwards they were awarded the sum of £500 damages by the Peruvian Government, due to the action of the United States. Mr. Hardenburg came to London from Iquitos in financial straits, but only with considerable difficulty was able to draw public attention to the occurrences on the Putumayo. Messrs. Hardenburg and Perkins’s account and indictment of the methods employed by the company’s agents on the Putumayo, under the name of “The Devil’s Paradise,” was a terrible one. It was averred that the peaceful Indians were put to work at rubber-gathering without payment, without food, in nakedness; that their women were stolen, ravished, and murdered; that the Indians were flogged until their bones were laid bare when they failed to bring in a sufficient quota of rubber or attempted to escape, were left to die with their wounds festering with maggots, and their bodies were used as food for the agents’ dogs; that flogging of men, women, and children was the least of the tortures employed; that the Indians were mutilated in the stocks, cut to pieces with machetes, crucified head downwards, their limbs lopped off, target-shooting for diversion was practised upon them, and that they were soused in petroleum and burned alive, both men and women. The details of these matters were almost too repugnant for production in print, and only their outline was published.

The first result of the publication of the Putumayo atrocities in the London Press was denial. The Peruvian Amazon Company denied the truth of the matter: the Peruvian Government denied the existence of such conditions; whilst the Peruvian Consul-General and ChargÉ d’Affaires in London denied them even more emphatically. In the minds of those acquainted with Latin-American methods denials would not carry much weight. To deny is the first resource of the Latin-American character and policy. It is an “Oriental” trait they possess, the curious obsession that efficient and sustained denial is the equal of truth, no matter what the real conditions. The Peruvian Consul in London wrote vehement letters of denial and re-denial to the London Press, among them the following, published by Truth in September, 1909:—

“This Legation categorically denies that the acts you describe, and which are severely punished by our laws, could have taken place without the knowledge of my Government on the Putumayo River, where Peru has authorities appointed direct by the supreme Government, and where a strong military garrison is likewise maintained.”[13]

Unfortunately, the statements of the representatives of certain of the South American republics in London cannot always be regarded as disinterested. Their Governments in some cases pay them no salary, and they are concerned in promoting and earning commissions from the flotation of rubber and mining companies in the particular regions they represent. Such a condition is often discreditable to the Latin-American republics. Officials who are shareholders in and recipients of commission from rubber company promoters with whom they are hand-in-glove are not likely to take an impartial view of the unfortunate native workers.

The Secretary of the Peruvian Amazon Company wrote in September, 1909, to the Anti-Slavery Society and Truth as follows:—

“The Directors have no reason to believe that the atrocities referred to have, in fact, taken place, and indeed have grounds for considering that they have been purposely mis-stated for indirect objects. Whatever the facts, however, may be, the Board of the company are under no responsibility for them, as they were not in office at the time of the alleged occurrences. It was not until your article appeared that the Board were aware of what is now suggested.”

The publication of the Putumayo occurrences has revealed once more that tinge of hypocrisy in the British character of which other nations have accused us. Or, rather than hypocrisy, it should perhaps be termed an intensive shopkeeping principle. Due to this spirit the exposure was greatly delayed. No one would publish the Hardenburg account, because as a book it might not have been a paying venture. Only when the way had been prepared for a successful book, by the public scandal which resulted after attention had been drawn to the matter, was it resolved to publish it. The London Press at first was equally negligent or timorous, with the exception of Truth. It showed little disposition to take the matter up, until that paper, whose business it is to expose scandals and abuses, exposed the horrors to public gaze. Then, when the matter had reached the stage of useful “copy,” it appeared in all the papers—in some cases with startling headlines. The daily papers feared that they would incur risk of libel proceedings in attacking what was regarded as a powerful London Company, with a capital of a million pounds and an influential Board of Directors, and at first hesitated to take the matter up. Had it not been for the work of the philanthropic society already mentioned, the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society,[14] in London, and the courage of the Editor of Truth, to both of whom Hardenburg went, followed by the prolonged publications in Truth, the sinister occurrences of the Putumayo might have remained unrevealed, and the unspeakable outrages on the Huitotos Indians have gone on unhindered. The Anti-Slavery Society showed that “nothing reported from the Congo has equalled in horror some of the acts alleged against the rubber syndicate,” and the reader of the present work will not dispute the truth of the statement. The Society brought the matter with such insistence before the Foreign Office that questions were asked in the House of Commons and inquiries set on foot by Sir Edward Grey, to whose everlasting credit it is that vigorous action was at length taken.

The Peruvian Amazon Company protested that the allegations were made by blackmailers. This was denied by Hardenburg, and by Truth on Hardenburg’s account. There were, however, accusations of blackmail against others.[15]

The first reply to the letters of the Anti-Slavery Society, from the Foreign Office, was in December, 1909, when it was stated that the Foreign Office had the subject under consideration. In July, 1910, a British Consul, Mr. Roger Casement, well known for his investigations into the Congo atrocities, was instructed to proceed to the Putumayo, his locus standi being secured on the grounds that a number of British subjects, coloured men of Barbadoes, had been employed by Arana and the Peruvian agents of the company as slave-drivers. The securing of Mr. Casement for the work was due to the endeavour of the Anti-Slavery Society. The directors of the company, aroused at length by public opinion, or the representations of the Foreign Office, sent out a commission of inquiry at the same time.[16] Both the consul and the company’s Commission faithfully carried out their task, and Mr. Casement handed in his report to Sir Edward Grey in January, 1911. The conclusions reached were terrible and damning. The worst accounts were confirmed in the words of Consul Casement: “The condition of things fully warrants the worst charges brought against the agents of the Peruvian Amazon Company and its methods on the Putumayo.”[17]

The great delay in publishing this report, which was only laid before Parliament in July, 1912, a year after being made, caused some protest by the Press. The Foreign Office had withheld it out of a desire to afford the Peruvian Government an opportunity of taking action to end the abuses, but, as this was not done, the report was made public as a means of arousing public opinion. The press of the whole civilised world then took the matter up.

It may well be asked how it was possible that such occurrences could take place in a country with a seat of government such as Lima, where dwell a highly civilised and sensitive people, whose public institutions, streets, shops, and churches are not inferior to those of many European cities. The reply is, first, in the remoteness of the region of the Putumayo, as explained, and secondly in political and international matters. Peru is constantly torn by political strife at home, and between the doings of rival factions, the outlying regions of the country are overlooked. But Peru was largely influenced by its own insecure possession of the Putumayo region; and it had greatly welcomed the establishing of the Peruvian Amazon Company, a powerful organisation, in the debatable territory. Under such circumstances few questions were likely to be asked about such matters as treatment of the natives. The existence of the company was a species of safeguard for Peruvian possession of the region. Furthermore, a central Government such as that at Lima might be well-intentioned, but if distances are vast and without means of communication, and distant officials hopelessly corrupt, the situation was extremely difficult for the Government. Another circumstance affecting the action of the Peruvian Government is that, in the republican form of government, the judicial authorities are independent of the Executive. The educated people of the Peruvian capital and coast region must, in general, be exonerated from knowledge of the occurrences of the Putumayo.

The difficulties of Peru in the government and development of their portion of the Amazon Valley, known as the Oriente, or MontaÑa, must not be lightly passed over. The physical difficulties against what has been termed the Conquest of the MontaÑa are such as it is impossible for the European to picture. Nature resists at every step. Hunger, thirst, fever, fatigue, and death await the explorer at times, in these profound, unconquerable forests. Peru has sent forth many expeditions thereto; brave Peruvians have given their lives in the conquest. The authorities at different points have frequently organised bands of explorers, and the Lima Geographical Society has done much valuable work in sending out persons to explore and map these difficult regions. Yet the possession of the MontaÑa is a heritage of incalculable value to Peru. It is a region any nation might covet. The Peruvians are alive to its value and possibilities, but they are poor. Days, weeks, months of arduous travel on mule-back, on foot, cutting trochas, or paths, through the impenetrable underbrush, by raft and by canoe, suffering all the hardships of the tropics, of torrential rain, burning sun, scarcity of food—all these are circumstances of venturing off the few trails into the vast and almost untravelled trans-Andine regions of Peru, divided by the lofty plateaux and snowy summits of the Andes from the temperate lowlands where the Europeanised civilisation of the Pacific flourishes.

It is not to be supposed that the Indians are all pacific or docile in the Peruvian MontaÑa. Whole villages which were established in earlier times by the Spaniards and afterwards enlarged by the Peruvians, with buildings, plantations, and industries, have been wiped out by attacks of the Indians, probably in reprisals. In some districts the danger from savages prevents settlement, and the blow-pipe and the spear greet the traveller who ventures there incautiously. Tales of savagery have been told in which the white man has been the sufferer; and there has always existed an animus against the Indian, although less acute than that which the white settler in North America displayed against the “redskin” in earlier times, and without the same cause.

AN AFFLUENT OF THE PERUVIAN AMAZON. To face p. 36.
AN AFFLUENT OF THE PERUVIAN AMAZON.
To face p. 36.

In the Peruvian MontaÑa, in its upper regions, Nature has been lavish of her products and opportunities. The rancher who should take up his abode there, with a small amount of capital, can rapidly acquire estates and wealth. Abundant harvests of almost every known product can be raised in a minimum of time. It is sufficient to cut down and burn the brush and scratch the soil and sow with any seed, to recover returns of a hundred for one. Sugar-cane, vines, maize, cocoa, coffee, and a host of products can be raised. The sugar-cane, once planted, yields perpetually, some existing plantations being more than a hundred years old. The cane frequently measures thirty feet in height, and is cut seven to nine months after sprouting. The whole Amazon Valley, when it shall have been opened up, will prove to be one of the most valuable parts of the earth’s surface.

Apart from topographical considerations, the sinister occurrences on the Putumayo are, to some extent, the result of a sinister human element—the Spanish and Portuguese character. The remarkable trait of callousness to human suffering which the Iberian people of Portugal and Spain—themselves a mixture of Moor, Goth, Semite, Vandal, and other peoples—introduced into the Latin American race is here shown in its intensity, and is augmented by a further Spanish quality. The Spaniard often regards the Indians as animals. Other European people may have abused the Indians of America, but none have that peculiar Spanish attitude towards them of frankly considering them as non-human. To-day the Indians are commonly referred to among Spaniards and Mestizos as animales. The present writer, in his travels in Peru and Mexico, has constantly been met with the half-impatient exclamation, on having protested against maltreatment of the Indian, of “Son animales, SeÑor; no son gentes.” (“They are animals, SeÑor; they are not folk”). The torture or mutilation of the Indian is therefore regarded much as it would be in the case of an ox or a horse. This attitude of mind was well shown in the barbarous system of forced labour in the mines in the times of the viceroys of Peru and Mexico, where the Indians were driven into the mines by armed guards and branded on the face with hot irons. When their overtaxed strength gave way under the heavy labour, which rapidly occurred, their carcasses were pitched aside and they were replaced by other slaves. These operations of the time of the Spaniards have their counterpart in the Amazon Valley to-day. There is yet a further trait of the Latin American which to the Anglo-Saxon mind is almost inexplicable. This is the pleasure in the torture of the Indian as a diversion, not merely as a vengeance or “punishment.” As has been shown on the Putumayo, and as happened on other occasions elsewhere, the Indians have been abused, tortured, and killed por motivos frivolos—that is to say, for merely frivolous reasons, or for diversion. Thus Indians are shot at in sport to make them run or as exercise in tiro al blanco or target practice, and burnt by pouring petroleum over them and setting it on fire in order to watch their agonies. This love of inflicting agony for sport is a curious psychic attribute of the Spanish race. The present writer, when in remote regions in Peru and Mexico, has had occasion to intervene, sometimes at personal risk, in the ill-treatment of Indians and peones, who were being tortured or punished to extort confession for small misdemeanours, or even for purely frivolous reasons. The Indians of Latin America are in reality grown-up children, with the qualities of such, but the Spaniards and Portuguese have recognised in these traits nothing more than what they term “animal” qualities.

The indictment of Peruvian officials in the Hardenburg narrative is extremely severe, and they are contrasted unfavourably with the Colombians. In reality there is little to choose between the methods of the representatives of any of the South American republics as regards the administration of justice in remote regions. Power is always abused in such places by the Latin American people, be they Peruvians, Colombians, Bolivians, Brazilians, Argentinos, or others. Tyranny is but a question of opportunity, in the present stage of their development. Justice is bought and sold, as far as its secondary administrators are concerned. The otherwise good qualities and fine latent force of the Latin American character are overshadowed by its more primitive instincts, which time and the growth of real democracy will eliminate.[18]

Furthermore, there are other rubber-bearing regions in the Amazon Valley where hidden abuses are committed, in the territory of other South American republics; and Peru does not stand alone, and atrocities are not confined to the Putumayo.

It was shown that many of the murders and floggings at the rubber stations were committed by the Barbadian negroes at the order of the Peruvian chiefs of sections. These negroes were forced at their own peril to these acts. But probably the savage depth of the negro is easily stirred, as all know who have had dealings therewith. There can be little doubt that the Peruvian rubber-agents knew the negro character and secured them for that reason. On the other hand, it is shown that some of these Barbadian negroes rebelled against going to the Putumayo—protested to the British Consul at Manaos, but were ordered on board by that official under police supervision.[19] When they reached the rubber stations on the remote Putumayo it was difficult to rebel against the orders of the Peruvian agents or chiefs of sections. In some cases, when they did so, they themselves received ill-treatment and were subjected to torture, for which they do not appear to have received any compensation as British subjects. The lack of advice and investigation into the conditions of their contract and service which appears to have befallen them at the hands of the British Consul at Manaos is a matter for reflection. The investigation carried out by the Consular Commission showed that some of these Barbadian negroes committed terrible crimes at the instigation of their superiors. The first contingent of these men, imported by Arana Brothers, reached the Putumayo at the end of 1904. These Barbadoes men generally term themselves “Englishmen”[20] rather than “British subjects.” They are good workers generally, and to their labour it is that the work of the Panama Canal owes its speedy execution.

It is noteworthy that one of the worst criminal chiefs of sections was a Peruvian or Bolivian who had been educated in England, frequently referred to.

After the exposure of the scandals the Peruvian Government sent a commission of its own to the Putumayo, which confirmed all that had been published. The principal official of this commission was Judge Paredes, the proprietor of El Oriente, an Iquitos newspaper; and he made a full report “embodying an enormous volume of testimony, of 3,000 pages involving wellnigh incredible charges of cruelty and massacre” and “issued 237 warrants” against the criminals, as stated in Sir Roger Casement’s Report. But between issuing warrants and actually making arrests and convictions, in South America, there is a wide gulf. Furthermore, Judge Paredes endeavoured, in a recent statement, to show[21] that the “English Rubber Company” was solely responsible for the atrocities, and that the English Consul at Iquitos has been aiding the guilty parties in keeping from the Peruvian Government an exact knowledge of what was taking place, is the contention of Peru. Mr. David Cazes, English Consul in Iquitos since 1903, would have been in a good position to find out about the management of the rubber plantation. All the rubber gathered in the Putumayo is shipped from Iquitos. And yet he always swore that he knew nothing. No one can enter the territory of the rubber company without the permission of the Company’s representative in Iquitos. The twenty-one constables whom the Peruvian Government kept in the Putumayo in those days had all been bribed by the English traders and shut their eyes to what was happening in the jungle.

In this way the Peruvian Commissioner seeks to excuse his country, laying stress on the term “English company and traders,” when he knows that the only representatives of the English company were its Peruvian directors and managers. The judge adds: “You must not imagine that the Indians are any less protected than the white man in Peru. Barring, of course, the times of the early Spanish conquerors, the native Indians have been treated very humanely in Peru.” This latter statement, read in conjunction with the translations from official documents and El Comercio of Lima, previously given, about Peruvian treatment of the Indians, will enable this statement of the judge to be judged in its turn.

SeÑor Paredes, when asked by his American interviewer “to what he attributed the recent exposure of wrongs committed several years ago,” replied, “It may be that certain Englishmen are a little jealous of the cordial relations existing between Peru and the United States.” There is revealed here the somewhat singular situation of Peru’s international relations, with its atmosphere of jealousies. Peru strives to look towards what it considers the dominant power in that hemisphere, and years past has been engaged in what might be termed a one-sided political flirtation with the United States. Peru has hoped to enlist the sympathy of the great northern republic, which might strengthen her hands against her old enemy Chile, between whom and the United States there exists a veiled antagonism. The rankling question of Tacna and Arica has been at the base of the Peruvian attitude. The friendship of the United States would be more valuable, in Peruvian eyes, than that of Great Britain. Furthermore, questions between Peru and the Peruvian Corporation, the powerful company which controls all Peru’s railways and which, though international as regards its shareholders and its capitalisation of £22,000,000 sterling, is operated and controlled from London, have often been acute. Each claims that the other has failed to fulfil its contracts, and whilst there have been faults on both sides, the Peruvian Governments of past years were those who first created the difficult situation. The Corporation has been accused of a sustained, unfriendly attitude towards Peru and of an endeavour to block outside foreign enterprise in the country. It is, however, in Paris that feeling among financiers against Peru has been most acute, and Peru has been in the past practically shut out from the French financial market owing to the unsettled claims of French creditors. In general terms the United States is considered to be the more desirable friend, not Europe, and thus it is that North American friendship is cultivated. There is, however, no unfriendliness between Peru and Great Britain, and the best Peruvian statesmen have done their best to cultivate good relations. But, like all American people, the Peruvians are sensitive, and they deeply resent outside criticism.

The work of Messrs. Hardenburg and Perkins, to whom the exposure of the Putumayo atrocities is primarily due, has scarcely received sufficient acknowledgment. The risks they ran in obtaining evidence were considerable, and such as can only be understood by a traveller accustomed to Latin American ways. Human life is held cheap in such communities. Murder and treachery to secure personal or political ends are only repressed in the Latin American republics by the presence of collective opinion. Where that is absent or perturbed there is no restraining influence, such as the personal sense of fair play and hatred of treachery which the British character affords. It is not only a matter of education, but of soil, climate, race, and character. Those who arouse the antagonism of any person in power, where the law is weak, may expect anything, from charges of blackmail to the knife or bullet of the assassin. The terrible political murders constantly taking place in the Latin American republics indicate the ruthless spirit prevalent among certain classes in those communities. The trouble taken by Hardenburg to collect his evidence, and the repugnance displayed towards the authors of the crime, and the appeal to English justice are worthy of recognition.[22]

The British public might feel constrained to ask how it was possible that the British Consul at Iquitos—whence all the rubber is shipped—who has been stationed at that town since 1903, had never heard of nor investigated the abuses committed against the Indians; that it remained for a chance traveller to bring them to general notice. Furthermore, the British Vice-Consul at Manaos appears to have had no knowledge of the subject. When the Peruvian Amazon Company imported foremen from Barbadoes—British subjects—and these men learned of the terrible nature of the duties they were to perform, which was that of slave-driving and flagellating the Indians, and complained to the Consul, asking for an annulment of their contracts, they were unable to obtain release by the official. The rubber from the Amazon Valley is all exported in English vessels, moreover. Notwithstanding the extensive British interests in Peru, no inkling of the treatment and fate of the unfortunate Indians had reached the outside world before.

It is to be noted that the American Consul at Iquitos appears not to have been able to afford any assistance to Mr. Hardenburg and his companion, and that action was taken by the American Government consequent upon the ill-treatment of its citizens, only after a considerable lapse of time. The ill-treatment of the two travellers afforded an opportunity for intervention by the United States Government, even if it had not been aroused to action on grounds of humanity alone. It was only in July, 1911, a year after Consul Casement had been dispatched by the British Government to Peru, and after six months of telegraphic dispatches between the British Foreign Office and the British Minister in Lima—dispatches communicated to the Peruvian Government—that the United States Government, having been urged thereto by the British representative, consented to make “informal representations” at Lima. Again urged by the British Government to support their representations, as no progress was being made in bringing the criminals to justice, the United States Minister, six months afterwards, was instructed to support the British representative. Thus, had action not been taken by Great Britain none would have been forthcoming by the United States, a condition which, for a nation that has assumed and been granted the position of policeman in South America, must be regretted. The Monroe Doctrine carries with it a greater responsibility than has been exercised so far by the United States in Latin American affairs, and this is becoming plainer to the great body of well-meaning American people. The United States at the present time are actively engaged in increasing their commercial standing with their southern neighbours, but it is the case that these doubt the moral superiority of their neighbour, and naturally resent his right to interfere in their political and international affairs.

Under the most favourable conditions the collection of rubber is an arduous and generally unhealthy work. Years ago an estimate was made that every ton of rubber from the Amazon Valley cost two human lives, and although at that time the estimate seemed to be an exaggerated one, the methods of the Putumayo must have quadrupled it. If the native rubber-gatherer were treated as an ordinary labourer and paid a due wage, it is safe to say that it would not pay to gather wild rubber at all, or only by increasing its price in the world’s market very considerably. As a cheap commodity it represents a definite ratio of human lives lost. In Sir Roger Casement’s Report it is shown that for the twelve years 1900 to 1911 the Putumayo output of 4,000 tons of rubber cost 30,000 lives. Various rubber companies in Peru and Bolivia have been obliged already to suspend operations due to scarcity of labour. The remedy lies in planting, in conjunction with the wild rubber forests. The amount of rubber collected by the slave labour in the Putumayo district for the benefit of the company and its predecessors, for six years ending in December, 1910, was 2,947,800 kilogrammes, of the value on the London market of nearly £1,000,000. The output from Iquitos, however, has not decreased, which has been taken as a proof that native labour is still being hard-driven. The crop-year 1911-12 shows a considerable increase over that for 1910-11.[23]

Perhaps one of the most remarkable circumstances affecting the rubber company is the ease with which it was possible to float, in London, a property of which, to a large extent, possession was imaginary and without proper title. It is but another instance of the astute methods of company promoters and the gullibility of the British shareholder. It will be recollected that in 1909 shares in rubber companies to the amount of £150,000,000 sterling were taken up, a great part of which have proved useless or fraudulent. Laws seem inadequate against the combination of knave, fool, and victim which is so marked a feature of modern company-promoting finance.

The occurrences on the Putumayo accentuate a moral which is bound to be presented to the conscience of the investing British public. In South America, as in Latin America generally, and in many other parts of the world where aboriginal labour is cheap, great sums of British capital are invested, and a steady stream of gold turns its course therefrom towards the British Isles. But these numerous and complacent shareholders in their comfortable surroundings know nothing, and have not made it their business to care anything, about the conditions of life of the humble workers who produce the dividends. Do they know that their gains are often secured by the labour of ill-paid, half-starved, and often grossly abused brown and black folk? How long does the British shareholder of foreign enterprises expect to live upon the toil of distant “niggers,” who themselves reap little or nothing from the soil upon which they were born? There are approximately £600,000,000 sterling of British money invested in bonds, stock, and shares in South American enterprises, quoted on the London Stock Exchange, which return in the aggregate a steady average dividend of nearly 5 per cent. per annum. Some of these enterprises pay 12, 20, and 25 per cent. interest. Much of this is the result of poor native labour. In various instances what amounts to spoliation is practised upon the cheap labour by British-owned companies. Similar conditions hold good with American concerns—mining and rubber-gathering in Mexico and Central and South America. The Americans are often extremely oppressive to the Indian labourer. In the American-owned copper-mines of Peru serious outbreaks due to this cause have occurred of recent years. The white American foreman rapidly gets used to oppressing the Indian. The miserable conditions of native labour in Latin America ought to be brought home to the directors and shareholders of British and other foreign companies. There are hundreds of rubber, mining, oil, plantation, railway, and other companies with scores of noblemen—lords, dukes, baronets—as well as doctors of science, bankers, and business-men, and even ministers of religion, distributed among their boards of directors. What knowledge have these gentlemen of the conditions of the poor native labourers under their control? There is a grave responsibility, which has been very easily carried, about this system of absentee capitalism.

British investment in and trade with the Latin American countries is an important part of British commercial prosperity. But this trade is not increasing in nearly the same ratio as that of other countries, notably the United States and Germany. In some cases it is falling off. This is due partly to a lack of organisation, and is constantly pointed out in consular and trade reports.[24]

The occurrences on the Putumayo have at least tended to arouse the religious element, if not the commercial conscience, of the British people. A severe indictment of the directors of the Peruvian Amazon Company was made from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, in August, 1912, in a sermon by Canon Henson. The English directors were denounced by name, and the demand made that they should be arrested and brought to public trial, the preacher stating that he chose that famous pulpit for delivering the indictment in order that the widest possible publicity might be given to the subject. The directors, in the public Press, then made through their solicitors an emphatic and indignant denial of their responsibility, alleging that in the first place they were ignorant of the occurrences, and that when these were shown to have some foundation in fact they voluntarily dispatched a commission to inquire into the matter.

Aroused by the revelations made, several religious missions started to being in London, asking for support by public subscription to enable missionary work to be carried out and stations established in the Peruvian Amazon region. There is a strong religious moral to be drawn from the occurrences. In all probability such a terrible situation would never have grown to being if the fine work of the old Jesuit and Franciscan friars in Brazil and Peru had been allowed to flourish. One of the greatest names associated with the Amazon is that of the famous Padre Samuel Fritz, a Bohemian by birth, who passed the larger part of his life in the service of Spain in Peru as a Jesuit missionary, working from 1686 to 1723, among the Indians of the Amazon forests. Living with the native tribes of the Huallaga, the Napo—which parallels the Putumayo—the Ucayali, and others of the great affluents of the Amazon, this devoted priest carried on his Christianising work, winning the natives to Christianity in a way so remarkable as has never been equalled since. Venturing at length farther down the Amazon into Portuguese territory, Fritz fell ill, and was detained for two years at Para by the Portuguese, who were jealous and fearful of Spanish domination in the Amazon Valley. The Portuguese built forts at the confluence of the Rio Negro, where Manaos now stands, in order to assert their sovereignty over that part of the river, and dispatched armed bands upstream which destroyed the Christian missions and settlements Fritz had founded. The atrocious cruelties practised in these slave-raids, for such in effect they were, caused the tribes to flee to remoter regions, and a great diminution of the population followed in the first half of the eighteenth century. Thus the Portuguese conquistadores accomplished for the Amazon what the Spaniards had performed for the Andine highlands, and what the commercial conquest of rubber-gathering, nominally conducted from London, has accomplished in the twentieth century.

There can be no doubt of the value of religious missions in the Amazon Valley. A mission which should establish itself in these regions ought to be provided with well-appointed launches and motorboats, and to be prepared to exercise a more or less “muscular” kind of Christianity. Between the rival claims that have been advanced for Roman Catholic and Protestant Missions it is difficult to judge. The existing Romish Church in the Andean highlands is a valuable restraining force, but its methods often partake of spoliation of the Indian under the cloak of religion, and of what, as regards certain of its attributes, is practically petty idolatry; whilst the moral character of the village priests leaves much to be desired. There seems little reason why both sects should not exercise their sway. Protestant public worship or proselytising is against the Peruvian laws, but is tolerated. Nevertheless, bitter hostility is shown to it in the upland regions, which are absolutely under priestly control. In the Amazon lowlands and rivers this obstacle would possibly be less formidable.

The occurrences of the Putumayo have aroused public feeling in Lima, where a pro-indigena, or native protection society, has been established, based upon a former, feebler association of similar character; for there has always existed a party protesting against the abuses practised upon the Indians. The change of Government in the Republic has brought promises of betterment. Telegraphic communications to the London Press have announced, on the one hand, that the Peruvian Chambers of Congress have “moved a resolution protesting against the attitude of Great Britain and the United States,” and, on the other, “that inhumanity in the Putumayo has been absolutely abolished.” Apart from electioneering devices, it cannot be doubted that the Government has been aroused. But those acquainted with social conditions in South America will greatly doubt if, apart from mutilations and assassination, the social condition of the Indian will yet be bettered or the ruinous system of peonage replaced by civilised labour conditions. If peonage and forced labour still exist in the more civilised upland regions, as they do, the conditions are not likely to be banished in the Amazon forestal lowlands. The subject must not be allowed to sink into oblivion, and the pressure of public opinion must be sustained.

AN INCIDENT OF THE PUTUMAYO. INDIAN WOMAN CONDEMNED TO DEATH BY HUNGER: ON THE UPPER PUTUMAYO. (The Peruvians state that this was the work of Colombian bandits.) Photo reproduced from “Variedades” of Lima, Peru.
AN INCIDENT OF THE PUTUMAYO.
INDIAN WOMAN CONDEMNED TO DEATH BY HUNGER: ON THE UPPER PUTUMAYO.
(The Peruvians state that this was the work of Colombian bandits.)
Photo reproduced from “Variedades” of Lima, Peru.

If the occurrences which have been exposed lead to an awakening of the commercial conscience as regards investments in countries where poor native labour is employed, and to the consequent betterment of the lot of the humble worker in Latin America, the cruel sacrifice of the poor Indians in the dismal forests of the Putumayo will not have been in vain.

C. Reginald Enock.