“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 PartInstrucción y Culto) as follows:—
“‘The apostolic prefectures have continued their work of civilisation and evangelisation of theIndians 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 Barbadosmen 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 placeon 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. Armedmuchachos, with Winchesters, were scattered through the long column, and at the rear one of theracionalesof Matanzas, a man named Adan Negrete, beat up the stragglers. Behind all, following a day later, came Señor Normand himself, with more armedracionales, 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 theforest. At 5.15 that evening they arrived with Negrete and the armedmuchachosat 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 themuchachos. 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 tolunch. 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 downto 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 theracionalesacting 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 amachete. Thesemachetesare 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 thatsection 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 aracionalemployee, 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 tosave himself by swimming, and had sunk in the deep, strong current at the spot described.
“Indians were often flogged while confined in thecepo, this notably in the special floggingcepo, 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 theracionaleswhile 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 stationcepothat 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 witnessedIndians, 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 methodsdescribed, 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.’ Evenpéonshad 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 experiencedagainst 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, orcapitán—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. Theycan 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 thecaucherohas 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 deathto 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 neverheard 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 thecepoand 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 todeath, 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 themuchachosto 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.’ Themuchachocut 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 weregoing—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 themuchachosto 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 themuchachosinto the forest to find and capture the rifles that Katenere had got. When themuchachosgot 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 headmuchacho, a Boras Indian, nicknamed Henrique, ordered them to be released. He then sent on his threemuchachosto 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 themuchachos. 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 threemuchachos, 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 threemuchachoskilled 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 amuchachonamed 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 theyhad was not walking as fast as the rest Vasquez ordered amuchachoto 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 hismachete. 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, themuchacho, 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 thatthe 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 thecepo, 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 thecepo, 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 incepoalongside some of these rotting humanbeings 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 themuchachosshoot 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, orcepo, 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 thecepowith one foot only, the other leg being free. Fonseca came up to thecepowith 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’sfono, 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 givewarning 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 theirpuestaof 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, orcapitán, of these Indians, and if all his people do not appear with him he may be put in thecepo, 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, thecapitánwill 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 himconfess 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 thecapitánwill be loosed on reaching the station, but his legs put in thecepo. 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 thecepo; they would get ‘a good flogging.’ Sometimes thecapitánhimself 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 incepo. Some areput 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 fullfabrico—say, seventy-five days—is completed. These commissions take place sometimes every ten days, sometimes every fifteen days, according to the period fixed for eachpuesta, 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 theIndians?’ 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, amuchacho: ‘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 ableto 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 amachete. 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 theCaguetá. 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 thecapitán, by name José Maria, a Boras Indian [he is chiefcapitánof the Abisiniamuchachos]; 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 theTruthcharges 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 thecepo, 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 womanwho 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 theTruthcharges, 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 theTruthaccusations, was then read to Leavine. He recalls this man, named Marcial, being a short time atMatanzas 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, ormuchachos, 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 hadbeen 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, thecomisarioor 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, bringingonly 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 thesettled 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 onthe 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 visitin 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 greatmagnitude—in those regions hitherto abandoned to thecaucheroand 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 asDreadnoughtsand 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.”