THE INDIAN UPRISING
It was in the cold dusk of the high altitude and tingling with the chill
winds that blew from Mount Sorata when we clattered through the streets
of Achicachi. Little crystals of ice were already forming in the
stagnant pools and little flurries of snow stung as it whistled through
the dull streets of this ancient town. On the edge of Lake Titicaca,
this ancient town of Achicachi is the home of petty smugglers who can
run their contraband in the native straw boats across from the Peruvian
shores. The remains of the old mud wall that surrounded it in the days
of the Incas are still fairly preserved in places and its population is
still practically Aymará, with only a sprinkling of half-breed Cholos.
On fiesta days the little police are held in their barracks on the big
open plaza and sally forth only in parties. The Aymarás gather in great
numbers from a score of tribal divisions and unite in the typical
drunken dances and festivities. Factions forget and renew old
differences and toward evening little battles break out in the streets
or the plaza. The streets are unsafe and the few white Bolivians and
better Cholos stay within. Always there is the danger of an Indian
uprising and that occasionally takes form. Between times in the fiestas
the Aymarás are handled without regard, at the first word--or less--they
are clubbed and for but little more shot.
The dusk of fiesta is filled with drunken, sullen Indians among whom
wander here and there dishevelled creatures with clotted wounds.
Occasionally the sullen buzz rises, a little restless movement begins
from some section of the big plaza, and in a moment a knot of Bolivian
police are plunging in to come back with bloody carbine butts. Always
there is the dull hatred of the Bolivian by the Aymará which comes
easily to the surface at these times. And there is not a Bolivian
statute governing the sale of liquor to an Aymará; if he gets dangerous
when drunk, beat him; if too dangerous, kill him.
In the "hotel" in Achicachi the rooms are windowless and range around
the four sides of the patio. You furnish your own bed and bedding and
each holds a heavy log with which to bar the door. In the patio and in
and out of the open rooms some native razor-back hogs wandered at their
will and off on one side, more exclusive, was a friendly peccary who
would sidle up and grunt sociably in return for a little back
scratching. Over by one of the rooms and tied outside was the queerest
animal; from across the patio it looked like a very small bear with
heavy, long fur yet with queer indefinable difference that explained
itself when a closer approach developed a monkey! He was a capucin, the
most friendly and delightful of the monkey tribe, and here he was, miles
from his warm, tropical home, cheerfully chattering by the side of a tin
can that was already filmed with ice and sticking out his pink tongue to
lick off the flakes of snow that gathered on his fur--a fur that had
grown to enormous length and thickness and left him peering with a
brown, quizzical face out from it like a shrivelled winter-clad
chauffeur of some stock broker's quean.
The next evening we arrived in Sorata--and from there on the
difficulties began to pile themselves, one on the other. A big, abrupt
and surly egotist had been carefully chosen by some Board of Directors
back in the States to manage a rubber proposition--in a frontier country
like that every one depends for countless things on neighbors, though
neighbors may mean separations that measure hundreds of miles--yet this
gentleman had left a trail of hostility from the coast, besides a record
for both Scotch and rye whiskey that could hardly be surpassed. He wore
khaki clothes and a Colt with a nine inch barrel on his strolls in
Sorata and he published conspicuously in bad Spanish and English, which
he ordered translated, his opinion of all, Bolivian, Cholo, Aymará, or
American.
His company had committed unutterable follies from a leather director's
chair seven thousand miles away and he proposed to see those follies
carried out to the letter. Sometimes we have wondered why our efforts in
South American trade and development have met with such scanty success.
He was one of the reasons. Rumors came that he had become hostile to our
camp down the river, that they encroached on his privileges or were
using men whom he had contracted, though we were miles from his
properties or influence. As a matter of fact the leather chair directors
had made a contract for callapos at a figure below cost to the
balseros--and for an advance payment--and had been swindled. The leather
chair directors had merely swindled themselves in what was at best an
oversharp Yankee bargain--and in a country where the law does not run
east of the Andes and only primitive justice prevails! In default of
either of the latter, he proposed to dictate to any one who went into
the montaña and down the river when and how they might or might not use
callapos offered by balseros. But I had at that time other things to
think of.
A pack train of some fifty mules with supplies had come in from La Paz
for our camp. Also some fifteen Cholo laborers, and a mechanic for the
camp and among them a Jap, a queer, silent, pink-cheeked Jap. He was
immaculate in appearance and always dapper; how or why he ever drifted
into that part of the world was a mystery. He had a little baggage in a
nice little lacquered box which, as was revealed later in the rainswept
stone hut of Tolopampa, contained the secret of his pink cheeks. In that
dull dawn he had out a little mirror and a bit of carmine and charcoal
with which he was adding beautifying touches. On down the river in camp
he always appeared the same; but he was a fine workman and could go
teetering along on the ridgepole of a house as easily as a Lecco could
run along the river bank. And this outfit arrived with no money to pay
for itself, money that the company should have, and had promised to send
in.
The agent left by the engineer in La Paz had sent no money and the
outfit promptly began eating its head off. The single wire that
irregularly kept La Paz in touch with Sorata was down--very likely one
of the times when an Aymará had needed some wire in wrapping his iron
ploughshare fast to the crooked tree trunk or for tying on his roof
tree--and I could not reach the agent. Another day and no wire fixed. On
the third came the news from the village of Illabaya, some fifteen miles
away that the Aymarás had broken loose and there was an Indian uprising.
From the valley of Sorata we could see the mountains with tiny fires
flickering at night, apparently as signals, and occasionally an Indian
driving a string of cattle into hiding along some far off Andean trail.
The householders in Sorata began storing water in ollas in their patios
and rifles and cartridges tripled in price. And still there was no wire
to La Paz by which either I or the intendente--who wanted
soldiers--could get a message through from Sorata.
The men were boarded out and money was absolutely essential to keep
their rations going and to pay any more bills that might come in with
more pack trains. Once let the slightest suspicion get the air that
there was no money at hand and the workmen would have fled like quail
and it would have been a matter of the utmost difficulty to secure them,
or any others, again. It meant a very serious emergency for the camp.
What had happened in La Paz I did not know, but it became imperative to
find out, Aymará outbreak or not. The only man available to go with me,
Skeffington, was a great tall man, proportionately built, and a splendid
fellow, whose weight would be a handicap to a horse in any emergency. So
I decided to go alone.
I started at dawn on a little, tough mountain-bred horse and had passed
the divide early in the afternoon. At Huaylata I stopped for
breakfast--a tin of salmon and some cakes of Aymará bread--a little
outside the sprawling collection of mud huts, and an Indian woman came
out and sold me a sheaf of barley for the horse. There were no signs of
Indian trouble here. The horse ate and then drank and as he finished
drinking he threw up his head and the blood trickled in a heavy stream
from his nostrils and he trembled.
If the horse was frightened he was not more so than I. To be horseless
and on foot in an Indian plain and with the uncertain rumors of Aymará
outbreaks that might have spread like a flame among that dull, hostile
population was the most unpleasant situation I have ever faced. The
little Indian towns where I expected to camp, Copencara and the tambo of
Cocuta, were safe enough, but the thought of getting even to
Achicachi--where I might be able to get a fresh horse--gave me five
minutes of cold and clammy quivers of panic at the pit of my stomach.
The horse stood with the blood dripping in a steady patter on the cold
ground while a puddle slowly grew into a great red blot; he looked at me
with what, to my understanding, appeared to be his final vision from
dulling eyes; the straggling population of the scattering huts of
Huaylata seemed to have become raised to the final power of sinister
hostility; there was no doubt that I was frightened. I took a box of
cartridges from my saddle bags and distributed them in my pockets so
their weight bore evenly and waited. There was nothing else to do. There
was no use in starting on foot till the horse was surely dead.
Presently the horse went back to the spring, took a little drink, and
then turned to the cebada and began nibbling. I felt better for no
seriously deranged animal would eat in its final moments. The trickling
of blood grew less and the animal showed in better shape. If he could
only last to Achicachi, that was all that I wanted.
I did not think it wise to start on foot and leading the horse--that
would advertise the fact that I was crippled--while I could wait in
Huaylata without betraying anything more than a sluggish and lazy
disposition. I tried mounting at last and the horse grunted and then
started slowly. How I nursed him those miles; out of sight of Huaylata I
walked; the bleeding had stopped, but he seemed weak; I took his
temperature with my hand, I petted him, I gave him a bite of chocolate,
and when any Aymará huts or little parties hove in sight I mounted and
rode by.
Steadily the horse improved and at times responded to a test trot
without difficulty so that I rode through Achicachi without stopping.
Only once had I had the sign of trouble and that was a little group of
Aymarás near the beginning of an old Inca causeway that cuts across one
arm of Lake Titicaca. They were drunk and I could hear snatches of their
thin, wailing songs while they were still dots in the distance. As I
rode by they were at one side of the trail where an old mud building
held forth as a _chicharia_ and struggling in that aimless drunken
fashion that seems so common to all topers and that divides all
wassailing bands into those prudent souls who are already drunk enough
and know it and those who won't go home until morning or till daylight,
or the day after, doth appear. They started for me uncertainly, one
reached for a stone, but an Aymará rushed out of the house and knocked
it from his hand. Some of the more sober came, too, and again the
wrangling started, apparently as to whether they should rush me or not.
And in the meantime I had ridden out of reach.
There was nothing to fear in that incident, at least so far as my
immediate safety had been concerned. But the critical point lay in
avoiding trouble; no one Indian or similar group would have had a
chance, unarmed as they were, against any man with a gun, but in a
peculiarly abrupt Indian fashion the countryside is aroused and trouble
is apt to close in on the trail ahead in a particularly congested and
fatal manner.
I had planned to camp in Copencara, but the delay left me plodding along
in the cold darkness and I was glad when I reached Guarina. In the
blackness I rode into a pack-train of sleepy llamas before they knew
it--or I either for that matter--and on the instant I could hear the
patter and thud of their padded feet as they scattered in a panic
stricken flight, while from out of the night came the hissing herd-calls
of the Aymará drivers trying to hold them together. Off from the highway
that led through the town and from somewhere beyond the walled streets
there came the dull beating of many Aymará drums and the mournful
tootling of their flutes. Now and again there was the bang of a dynamite
cartridge and the pop of firecrackers. An Aymará flitted by in the
streets and I called to him for the way to the house of the
corregidor--the chief official. All I could get of his reply was the
respectful "Tata" as he disappeared.
There was not a light that gleamed through a chink in any window or
door, the wretched streets were deserted, and only the noises of the
fiesta and the occasional glow from a big bonfire down some alley showed
where the only signs of life existed. It was possible that the
corregidor was barricaded in his house as in the very recent affair at
Illabaya and I had no mind to intrude on any collection of Aymarás
beating tom-toms and raising drunken memories of their abused ancestors.
It looked ominous.
Presently another dim figure pattered through the darkness and again I
asked for the way to the corregidor. The Aymará gave explanations that I
could not have followed in daylight and then started off to lead the
way, straight down an alley to the plaza where were the bonfires and the
drums and the dancing and the explosions. Along one side we skirted
until the farther side was reached. It was a big plaza--almost as big as
the town--and it was filled with Aymarás from miles around. A mass of
shifting groups shuffled in their trotting dance around the fires and
hundreds of unattached guests wandered drunkenly about or lay stupefied
as they fell with their faithful wife--or wives--taking care of the
bottle of alcohol till they should revive afresh and athirst.
At one end of this plaza my guide stopped, he was a tattered ragged
Aymará--a pongo--a carrier of water and of the lowest caste, and left me
at the headquarters of the corregidor to whom I had the customary right
of the country to appeal for shelter. When there is no corregidor you go
to the padre. He was a Cholo, a heavy, thick-set man with a strong face,
dressed in the ordinary clothes of a white man, whose peculiar dull
complexion alone marked him as Cholo. A couple of tattered police
lounged in the doorway and a half dozen Cholos were idling around this
headquarters. A Winchester leaned against the corregidor's chair, some
of the others carried theirs as they shuffled about, and back in the
dimness of the room could be seen extra carbines leaning against the
walls, and from every belt there was the bulge under the coat that
indicated a revolver.
The corregidor looked at me curiously; a lone traveler at night on the
high plateaus in these uncertain times and speaking bad Spanish was
something of a novelty. One of the ragged policemen took me in charge
and once again I was back in the dark alleys. Before a door in a long
wall we stopped and then a rusty key squeaked and both horse and I
walked through into the walled patio around whose sides opened the
windowless rooms. The policeman brought in a bundle of cebada for my
horse and a bowl of native Bolivian soup-stew, stinging with _aji_ and
grateful in its warmth. For the food and forage I paid, but for the
house and shelter the corregidor would accept nothing. There was no bed
nor did I need any, with my saddle and blankets. After the door had been
barricaded with the log used for the purpose, I was asleep at once to
the lulling of drums and flutes and banging dynamite.