CHAPTER VIII

CONSUL CASEMENT'S REPORT

The history of the Putumayo occurrences after the exposure by Messrs.

Hardenburg and Perkins, due to the persistence of the Anti-Slavery

Society and the courage of the editor of _Truth_, who alone incurred the

risk of libel proceedings attaching to such exposures, so performing a

notable service to humanity,[123] is contained in the Blue Book, or

Foreign Office Report, already quoted. The proceedings leading to the

sending of Consul Casement to the Putumayo by Sir Edward Grey and the

Report itself are worthy of wider notice than that received by an

official pamphlet. The Report itself is of much geographical and

ethnological value and of general interest as a work of travel, apart

from its purpose of confirming the existence of the terrible and almost

incredible abuses.

Mr. Casement went to Peru in July, 1910, and transmitted his Report in

January, 1911.[124] The result was transmitted by the Foreign Office to

the British Consul in Lima, with instructions to lay particulars before

the Peruvian Government, and to the British Minister at Washington in

order that the United States Government should be informed of the action

of the British Government. The British Foreign Office repeatedly urged

upon the Lima Government that the criminals, whose names had been

immediately transmitted by cable, should be arrested. The Peruvian

Government promised to take action and sent a commission to Iquitos, but

failed to arrest the criminals. In July, 1911, they were informed that

the Report would be made public, but the chief criminals were not

arrested. Further promises to the same effect made by the Peruvian

Government were unfulfilled, and the British Government asked for the

support of the United States Minister at Lima, which was accorded in

October, 1911. After repeated communications had passed, during which

the Peruvian Government had not prevented the escape of several of the

criminals, or taken adequate steps to protect the Indians, the British

Foreign Office laid the correspondence before Parliament in July, 1912,

and published the Report.

In the preliminary Report received in January, 1911, by Sir Edward Grey

at the Foreign Office, Consul Casement said:--

"My conclusions are chiefly based on the direct testimony of Barbados

men in the company's service, who brought their accusations on the spot,

who were prepared to submit them to investigation, and to make them in

the presence of those they accused, and whose testimony, thus given to

me, was accepted without further investigation by Señor Juan Tizon, the

Peruvian Amazon company's representative at La Chorrera, on the ground

that it was sufficient or could not be controverted. It was equally

potent with the members of the Peruvian Amazon Company's commission, who

expressed themselves as fully convinced of the truth of the charges

preferred, they themselves being often present when I interrogated the

British witnesses. There was, moreover, the evidence of our own eyes and

senses, for the Indians almost everywhere bore evidence of being

flogged, in many cases of being brutally flogged, and the marks of the

lash were not confined to men nor adults. Women, and even little

children, were more than once found, their limbs scarred with weals left

by the thong of twisted tapir-hide, which is the chief implement used

for coercing and terrorising the native population of the region

traversed. The crimes charged against many men now in the employ of the

Peruvian Amazon Company are of the most atrocious kind, including

murder, violation, and constant flogging. The condition of things

revealed is entirely disgraceful, and fully warrants the worst charges

brought against the agents of the Peruvian Amazon Company and its

methods of administration on the Putumayo. I append to my Report a list

of those agents of the company against whom the worst charges were

preferred and against whom the evidence in my possession is

overwhelmingly strong. The prefect of Loreto again and again assured me

that his Government was determined to deal with the criminals and

protect the Indians. The charges brought by the Barbados men were of the

most atrocious kind, and, added to the accumulating weight of evidence

that we had gathered from station to station, and the condition of the

Indian population as we had opportunity to observe it in passing, they

left no doubt in our minds that the worst charges against the company's

agents were true. Many of the acts charged against agents whom we met

were of the most revolting description, and the Barbados men bringing

these charges did not omit, in several cases, to also accuse themselves

of shocking crimes, committed, they averred, under compulsion."

"_Names of some of the worst Criminals on the

Putumayo, all of them charged with atrocious

Offences against the Indians._

"Fidel Velarde: a Peruvian, chief of Occidente. Alfredo Montt: a

Peruvian, chief of Atenas. Charged with atrocious crimes. Augusto

Jiménez: a Peruvian. Is a half-caste. Age about 26. Has been for years

the lieutenant of Agüero, under whom he has committed appalling crimes

upon the Boras Indians in the section Abisinia. He was sub-chief of

Morelia, and is often mentioned in the _Truth_ charges. He begged me to

listen to his statement, and said he could prove that _one_ of the

charges against him in _Truth_ was not true. On the other hand, the

evidence against him is overwhelming. Armando Normand: a Bolivian, I

believe of foreign parentage. Largely educated in England. A man of whom

nothing good can be said. The crimes committed by this man are

innumerable, and even Peruvian white men said to me that Normand had

done things none of the others had done. If any one on the Putumayo

deserves punishment this man should be made an example of. He was under

sentence of dismissal, and would have left Chorrera by the _Liberal_

with me only I objected to travel with him, and begged Señor Tizon to

send him by another vessel. José Inocente Fonseca: a Peruvian, about 28

years old. Has committed innumerable crimes upon the Indians. Abelardo

Agüero: about 35 or 36 years of age. Chief of Abisinia, of which section

he has had charge for years. Has committed innumerable crimes. Elias

Martinengui: The charges against him are many. Aurelio Rodríguez: a

Peruvian, whose crimes were vouched for by many and are widely known. A.

Vasquez Torres, or Alejandro Vasquez. Rodolfo Rodríguez: a Colombian,

charged with many murders. Miguel Flores: a Peruvian. Armando Blondel.

Aquiléo Torres: a Colombian. Innumerable crimes against this man. He was

made prisoner by Normand in January, 1907, and kept chained up for a

year by Velarde and others, and then released on condition he joined

them, and was first employed in flogging Indians. He improved on his

masters, and has killed scores, and cut ears off, and done things that

even some of the worst Peruvians say they could not tolerate. He was

once a Colombian magistrate, and was captured by Macedo's orders along

with a lot of other Colombians because they were 'poaching' on the

company's territory, and trying to get Indians to work for them. Jermin,

or Filomene, Vasquez. This man is charged with many crimes. The latest

of them only in August, 1910, when he had thirteen Indians--men, women,

and children--murdered on the road between the Caquetá and Morelia. He

boasted on his return to Abisinia 'he had left the road pretty.' Simon

Angúlo: a Colombian black man. Is the flogger or executioner of Abisinia

under Agüero. Has flogged many to death. There is also a Barbados man

named King, calls himself Armando King, who is at Encanto under Loayza.

I believe King to be as bad as any of the others almost. There are a

great many others charged with crimes whose names will be submitted."

In his detailed Report, submitted in January, 1911, Consul Casement

says:--

"The true attraction from the first to Colombian or Peruvian _caucheros_

was not so much the presence of the scattered Hevea braziliensis trees

throughout this remote forest as the existence of fairly numerous tribes

of docile, or at any rate of easily subdued, Indians. The largest

gathering of these people was a tribe termed the Huitotos, a mild and

inoffensive people subdivided into many sub-tribes or families, each

dwelling apart from its neighbour, and ruled by its own hereditary

cacique or _capitán_.

"The Huitotos chiefly dwelt along the courses of the Caraparaná and

Upper and Middle Igaraparaná, and occupied all the country between these

two rivers. On the north of the Igaraparaná they extended some distance,

in various settlements, into the thick forest towards the great Japurá

(or Caquetá) River until they merged in the Andokes, Ricigaros, and

Boras, tribes doubtless of a kindred far-off origin, but wholly

differing to-day in speech from the Huitotos, as also from each other.

While these tribes were in each case of one family, speaking the same

language, little or no cohesion existed among the scattered sub-tribes

into which they were split. On the contrary, enmity more often than

friendship ruled the relations between neighbours.

"Thus the 30,000 Huitotos, instead of uniting as one people, were split

up into an infinity of 'families' or clans and inter-clan fighting and

raids perpetuated for generations disputes of obscure and often trivial

origin. So with the Boras, the Andokes, or other agglomerations

inhabiting the neighbouring regions. While, collectively, each of these

tribes might have put large numbers of men into the field, they were so

divided by family quarrels that no one cacique probably could ever count

on more than 200 men, and in the majority of cases on very many less.

"They were therefore an easy enough prey to the 'civilised' intruders,

who brought to their conquest arms of precision against which the Indian

blow-pipes or throwing-spears could offer but a paltry resistance.

"The object of the 'civilised' intruders, in the first instance, was not

to annihilate the Indians, but to _conquistar_--_i.e._, to subjugate

them, and put them to what was termed civilised, or at any rate

profitable, occupation to their subduers.

"These subduers formed themselves into bands and parties, dubbed

'commercial associations,' and, having overcome the resistance of the

Indians, they appropriated them to their own exclusive use along with

the rubber-trees that might be in the region they inhabited. Henceforth

to the chief of the band they became 'my Indians,' and any attempt by

one of his civilised neighbours to steal, wheedle, or entice away his

Indians became a capital offence.

"Thus where the primitive savage raided his savage neighbour for reasons

that seemed good to him, the white man who came on an alleged mission of

civilisation to end this primal savagery himself raided his fellow white

man for reasons that seemed to the Indian altogether wrong, viz., his

surer enslavement. Constant thefts of Indians by one _cauchero_ from

another led to reprisals more bloody and murderous than anything the

Indian had ever wrought upon his fellow-Indian. The primary aim of

rubber-getting, which could only be obtained from the labour of the

Indian, was often lost sight of in these desperate conflicts.

"When the first contingent of Barbados men reached the Putumayo at the

end of 1904 the firm of Arana Brothers had not complete control of the

region in which it carried on its dealings with the Indian dwellers in

the forest. The majority of those who then exploited the Indians and

obtained rubber from them were Colombians, men who had come down the

Putumayo from that republic and established themselves on different

sites along the banks of these two tributaries. In some cases these

Colombian settlers appear to have held concessions from their

Government. As it was not easy to obtain supplies from Colombia owing to

the mountainous nature of the country in which the Putumayo rises, and

as the market for the rubber obtained lay down-stream, where the Amazon

forms the natural outlet, it was more profitable to open up relations

with traders in Brazil or Peru, and to obtain from them what was

required, than to seek supplies over the distant and difficult route

from Pasto, in Colombia. The Iquitos house of Arana Brothers had at an

early date entered into relations with these Colombian settlers, and, by

means of steamers between Iquitos and the two tributaries of the

Putumayo named, had supplied their wants and brought their rubber to be

disposed of in the Iquitos market. Little by little these relations

changed, and from being merely intermediaries the firm of Arana Brothers

acquired possession of the majority of the Colombian undertakings in

these regions. These transfers were sometimes effected by sale and

purchase and sometimes by other means.

"Throughout the greater part of the Amazon region, where the rubber

trade flourishes, a system of dealing prevails which is not tolerated in

civilised communities. In so far as it affects a labouring man or an

individual who sells his labour, it is termed _peonage_, and is

repressed by drastic measures in some parts of the New World. It

consists in getting the person working for you into your debt and

keeping him there; and in lieu of other means of discharging this

obligation he is forced to work for his creditor upon what are

practically the latter's terms, and under varying forms of bodily

constraint. In the Amazon Valley this method of dealing has been

expanded until it embraces, not only the Indian workman, but is often

made to apply to those who are themselves the employers of this kind of

labour. By accumulated obligations contracted in this way, one trader

will pledge his business until it and himself become practically the

property of the creditor. His business is merged, and he himself becomes

an employee, and often finds it very hard to escape from the

responsibilities he has thus contracted. At the date when the Barbados

men were first brought to the Putumayo, the methods of exploiting the

Indian population in the interests of the Colombian or Peruvian settlers

were mainly confined to the river banks. They were more or less

haphazard methods. An individual with two or three associates squatted

at some point on the river-side, and entered into what he called

friendly relations with the neighbouring Indian tribes. These friendly

relations could not obviously long continue, since it was to the

interest of the squatter to get more from the Indian than he was willing

to pay for. The goods he had brought with him in the first case were

limited in quantity, and had to go far. The Indian, who may correctly be

termed 'a grown-up child,' was at first delighted to have a white man

with attractive articles to give away settling in his neighbourhood, and

to bring in exchange india-rubber for these tempting trifles seemed

easy. Moreover, the Amazon Indian is by nature docile and obedient. His

weakness of character and docility of temperament are no match for the

dominating ability of those with European blood in their veins. Yielding

himself, first, perhaps, voluntarily, to the domination of these

uninvited guests, he soon finds that he has entered into relations which

can only be described as those of a slave to a master, and a master, be

it observed, who can appeal to no law that recognises his rights. The

system is not merely illegal in civilised parts of the world, but is

equally illegal in the Amazon forests, since those regions are all

claimed by civilised Governments which absolutely prohibit any form of

slavery in their territories. The Barbados men on being brought into

these regions found themselves face to face with quite unexpected

conditions and duties. Already at Manaos, on their way up the river,

some of them had been warned by outsiders that in the countries to which

they were going they would not be employed as labourers, but would be

armed and used to force the Indians to work for their employers; they

were further told that the Indians, being savages, would kill them.

Several of them, taking alarm, had protested at Manaos, and had even

appealed to the British Vice-Consul to interfere so that they might be

released from their engagement. This was not done. They were assured

that their contracts, having been lawfully entered into in a British

colony, would be faithfully observed in Peru, and that they must fulfil

them. In some cases the men were not reassured, and had to be taken on

board the river steamer waiting to convey them to the Putumayo under

police supervision.[125]

"The first party to disembark in the Putumayo consisted of thirty men

with five women. They were landed at La Chorrera, on the Igaraparaná,

the headquarters station of the Arana Brothers, in November, 1904. Here

they were armed with Winchester rifles and a large supply of cartridges

for these weapons, and, headed by a Colombian named Ramón Sanchez, with

a man called Armando Normand, who served as interpreter, and several

other white men, Colombians or Peruvians, they were dispatched on a long

journey through the forest to open up what were styled trade relations

with an Indian tribe called the Andokes. This tribe inhabits a district

between the Igaraparaná and the Japurá, but lying closer to the latter

river. On arrival in this region the men were employed at first in

building a house, and then on raids through the surrounding forests in

order to capture Indians and compel them to come in and work for Señor

Sanchez. They were also used on what were termed 'punitive expeditions'

sent out to capture or kill Indians who had killed not long before some

Colombians who had settled in the Andokes country with a view to

enslaving that tribe and forcing it to work rubber for them. These men

had been killed by the Andokes Indians and their rifles captured, and it

was to recover these rifles that many of the first raids of the Barbados

men were directed by Sanchez and Normand. In this way the station of

Matanzas was founded, and the man Normand soon afterwards, on the

retirement of Sanchez, became its chief. At the date of my visit to the

Putumayo he was still in charge of this district as representative of

the Peruvian Amazon Company. The station at Matanzas was founded at the

very end of 1904. I visited it on foot in October, 1910. It lies some

seventy miles by land from La Chorrera, and the route followed by the

Barbados men would occupy some four to five days of hard marching. The

forest tracks in the Putumayo present innumerable obstacles. Owing to

the very heavy rainfall, water and mud accumulate, many streams--some

of them even rivers--have to be crossed either by fording or upon a

fallen tree, roots of trees and fallen tree-trunks innumerable bar the

path, and the walker either knocks his shins against these or has to

climb over obstacles sometimes breast high. No food is to be obtained on

these routes except from the few Indians who may be dwelling in the

neighbourhood, and these poor people now have little enough for

themselves. For several years after its foundation all the rubber

collected at Matanzas was carried down this route by Indian carriers to

La Chorrera. The Indians were not supplied with food for this journey.

They were guarded by armed men both going and returning, and Barbados

men frequently were employed for this work, just as they were used, in

the first instance, in forcing the Indians to collect the rubber in the

forest and bring it into Matanzas. During the last three years the

journey from Matanzas to Chorrera has been shortened by the placing of a

small launch on the river above the cataract which blocks river

navigation at Chorrera. Rubber from Matanzas still goes under armed

escort a distance of forty-five or fifty miles through the forest to be

shipped in this launch at a place called Puerto Peruano for conveyance

thence to Chorrera by water. The duties fulfilled by Barbados men at

Matanzas were those that they performed elsewhere throughout the

district, and in citing this station as an instance I am illustrating

what took place at a dozen or more different centres of rubber

collection.

"At the date of my visit there were only two Barbados men left in

Matanzas, one of whom had been there six years from the foundation of

that station. I found the twenty men still remaining in the company's

service when I was on the Putumayo scattered at various points. With the

exception of three men at La Chorrera itself, whose duties were those of

ordinary labour, all the men still remaining at the time of my visit

were employed in guarding or coercing, or in actively maltreating,

Indians to force them to work and bring in india-rubber to the various

sections. The men so employed at the time of my visit were two men at

Matanzas, one man at Ultimo Retiro, four men at Santa Catalina, three at

Sabana, one at Oriente, and three at Abisinia, and two others

temporarily employed on the river launches who had just come in from

forest duties. Another man was employed at the headquarters station of

the Caraparaná at the place called El Encanto. This man was sent for to

Chorrera while I was there, and I interrogated him. In addition to La

Chorrera, the headquarters station, I visited in succession the

following among its dependent stations, or _succursales_: Occidente,

Ultimo Retiro, Entre Ríos, Matanzas, Atenas, and Sur, the latter

practically an outpost of La Chorrera, being situated less than two

hours' march away. With the exception of La Matanzas, which is situated

in the Andokes country, all these stations are in the country inhabited

by the Huitoto tribe. This tribe, formerly the most numerous of those

inhabiting the so-called Putumayo region, at the date of my visit was

said to have considerably diminished in numbers. One informant assured

me that there were now not more than 10,000 Huitotos, if, indeed, so

many. This decrease in population is attributed to many causes. By some

it is stated to be largely due to smallpox and other diseases introduced

by white settlers. The Indians themselves in their native state are

singularly free from disease. From trustworthy evidence placed before me

during my visit I have no doubt that, however high the deaths from

imported diseases may have been, the deaths from violence and hardship

consequent upon the enforced tribute of rubber required from these

people have been much higher.

"Statements made to me by the Barbados men, and which could not be

controverted on the spot, made this abundantly clear. Many, indeed all,

of the men had been for several years in the closest contact with the

Indians, and their duties, as they averred, chiefly consisted in

compelling the Indians to work india-rubber for the white man's benefit,

and otherwise to satisfy his many wants. It would be tedious to go

through statements made by these different British witnesses, and it may

be sufficient to say that they left no doubt in my mind or in the minds

of the commission sent out by the Peruvian Amazon Company that the

method of exacting rubber from the Indians was arbitrary, illegal, and

in many cases cruel in the extreme, and the direct cause of very much of

the depopulation brought to our notice. The Barbados men themselves

complained to me that they too had frequently suffered ill-treatment at

the hands of agents of the company, whose names were given to me in

several cases, and several of whom were still employed on the Putumayo

in the service of the company at the date of my visit. On closer

investigation I found that more than once these British employees of the

company had been subjected to criminal ill-treatment."

"These men had been tortured by being put in the stocks for

misdemeanours, or for refusing to maltreat the Indians, under the orders

of Normand, Rodríguez, Sánchez, and other chiefs of sections. Normand

and others afterwards attempted to bribe them into lying or concealment

of facts in their testimony before the Consul. The stocks are described

by Consul Casement:--

"The accused man was hung up by the neck, beaten with _machetes_, and

then confined by the legs in heavy wooden stocks, called locally a

_cepo_. Each station is furnished with one of these places of detention.

The stocks consist of two long and very heavy blocks of wood, hinged

together at one end and opening at the other, with a padlock to close

upon a staple. Leg-blocks so small as just to fit the ankle of an Indian

are cut in the wood. The top beam is lifted on the hinge, the legs of

the victim are inserted in two of these holes, and it is then closed

down and padlocked at the other end. Thus imprisoned by the ankles,

which are often stretched several feet apart, the victim, lying upon his

back, or possibly being turned face downwards, remains sometimes for

hours, sometimes for days, often for weeks, and sometimes for months in

this painful confinement. Prisoners so detained are released from these

stocks only to obey the calls of nature, when for a few moments, guarded

by armed men, they enjoy a brief release. Some of these implements of

torture that I saw ready for use had nineteen leg-holes. In one case I

counted twenty-one. The stocks at Ultimo Retiro, where Dyall was

confined, were, in my opinion, the cruellest of those I actually saw.

The ankle-holes were so small that, even for an ordinarily well-built

Indian, when closed the wood would often have eaten into the flesh. For

an ordinary-sized European or negro the top beam could not close upon

the leg without being forced down upon the ankle or shinbone, and this

was what happened to Dyall. He and men who had witnessed his

imprisonment assured me that to make the top beam close down so that the

padlock could be inserted in the staple two men had to sit upon it and

force it down upon his legs. Although more than three years had passed

since he suffered his punishment, both his ankles were deeply scarred

where the wood (almost as hard as metal) had cut into the ankle flesh

and sinews. The man's feet had been placed four holes apart--a distance,

I should say, of from three to four feet--and with his legs thus

extended, suffering acute pain, he had been left all night for a space

of fully twelve hours. When released next day he was unable to stand

upright, or to walk, and had to reach his quarters crawling on his belly

propelled by his hands and arms. I have no doubt of the truth of this

man's statement. I saw the stocks just as they had been used to confine

him. I caused a man of ordinary stature, a Barbados man, to have his

legs enclosed before me. The stock did not close upon the legs, and to

have locked the two beams together at the end could only have been done

by great pressure and weight exerted upon the top beam so as to force

it down upon the leg and thereby undoubtedly to inflict much pain, and

cause lasting wounds.

"By Rodríguez' direction a special _cepo_, or stocks, for the

confinement, or torture rather, of the recalcitrant india-rubber workers

was made. Not satisfied with the ordinary stocks to detain an individual

by the legs alone, Rodríguez had designed a double _cepo_ in two parts,

so formed as to hold the neck and arms at one end and to confine the

ankles at the other. These stocks were so constructed that the leg end

could be moved up or down, so that they might fit any individual of any

size. For a full-grown man they could be extended to the length of his

figure, or contracted to fit the stature of quite a child. Small boys

were often inserted into this receptacle face downwards, and they, as

well as grown-up people, women equally with men, were flogged while

extended in this posture. Crichlow, quite an intelligent carpenter for

an ordinary labouring man, had faithfully carried out the design of his

master, and this implement of torture remained in use at the station at

Santa Catalina until the early part of 1909. In May, 1908, Crichlow had

a dispute with one of the other employees, named Pedro Torres. The

quarrel was of no importance, but Torres was a white man and Crichlow

was a black man. The former appealed to his chief, and Rodríguez at once

took the part of his Peruvian fellow-countryman. He struck Crichlow over

the head with a loaded revolver, and called other white employees to

seize him. Crichlow tried to defend himself with a stick, but was

overpowered, and his hands were tied behind his back. He was then

beaten by many of them and put in the _cepo_, or stocks, to spend the

night. When released next day for a few moments for an obvious reason he

was chained round the neck, one end of the chain being held in the hand

of a guard. The same day, with his hands tied and this chain padlocked

round his neck, he was dispatched under guard to the neighbouring

station of La Sabana, a full day's march. A certain Velarde was at the

time the chief of this section, and at the date of my visit I found him

chief of the section Occidente. Velarde put Crichlow in the stocks at

his station with his legs five holes apart--an almost insupportable

distance--in which posture he remained all night. Next day a Señor

Alcorta, employed at a neighbouring section, who was on a visit to La

Sabana, interceded for him and he was released from the stocks, but was

sent down to La Chorrera as a prisoner. Here he was again confined in

the stocks by the sub-agent, Señor Delgado, and was finally only

released through the friendly intervention of the captain of the port of

Iquitos, who happened to be on a visit to the Putumayo at the time. No

compensation of any kind was ever offered to these injured men. On the

contrary, they had been forced to buy at their own expense medicines, in

addition to many other things required (when ill from this bad

treatment), that, by the terms of the original contract, should have

been supplied free by their employers. Not only were they not

compensated, but no reproof or punishment of any kind had been inflicted

upon the agents so grossly maltreating them. With one exception, that of

Rodríguez, these agents were still in the service of the company at the

time I was on the Putumayo, and I met all three of them. I have dealt at

length with these cases of assault upon the British employees because

they are typical of the manner of dealing of so-called white men with

inferiors placed under their orders in that region. The Barbados men

were not savages. With few exceptions they could read and write, some of

them well. They were much more civilised than the great majority of

those placed over them--they were certainly far more humane.

"The man Dyall, who had completed nearly six years' service when I met

him at Chorrera on the 24th of September, appeared to be in debt to the

company to the sum of 440 _soles_ (say, £44) for goods nominally

purchased from its stores. Some of this indebtedness was for

indispensable articles of food or clothing, things that the working-man

could not do without. These are all sold at prices representing often, I

am convinced, 1,000 per cent. over their cost prices or prime value.

Much of the men's indebtedness to the company was also due to the fact

that they were married--that is to say, that every so-called civilised

employee receives from the agent of the company, on arrival, an Indian

woman to be his temporary wife. Sometimes the women are asked;

sometimes, I should say from what I observed, their wishes would not be

consulted--they certainly would not be consulted in the case of a white

man who desired a certain Indian woman. With the Barbados men it was, no

doubt, a more or less voluntary contract on each side--that is to say,

the agent of the company would ask one of the numerous Indian women

kept in stock at each station whether she wished to live with the new

arrival. This man Dyall told me, in the presence of the chief agent of

the Peruvian Amazon Company at La Chorrera, that he had had nine

different Indian women given to him as 'wives' at different times and at

the various stations at which he had served. When an employee so

'married' leaves the station at which he is working to be transferred to

some other district, he is sometimes allowed to take his Indian wife

with him, but often not. It would depend entirely upon the goodwill or

caprice of the agent in charge of that station. As a rule, if a man had

a child by his Indian partner he would be allowed to take her and the

child to his next post, but even this has been more than once refused.

In Dyall's case he had changed his wives as often as he had changed his

stations, and always with the active approval of the white man in

charge, since each new wife was the direct gift or loan of this local

authority. These wives had to be fed and clothed, and if there were

children, then all had to be provided for. To this source much of the

prevailing indebtedness of the Barbados men was due. Another fruitful

cause of debt was the unrestricted gambling that was openly carried on

up to the period at which I visited the district. The employees at all

the stations passed their time, when not hunting the Indians, either

lying in their hammocks or in gambling. As there is no money in

circulation, gambling debts can only be paid by writing an I O U, which

the winner passes on to the chief agency at La Chorrera, where it is

carried to the debit of the loser in the company's books.

"The wild forest Indians of the Upper Amazon are very skilful builders

with the materials that lie to their hands in their forest surroundings.

Their own dwellings are very ably constructed. Several Indian families

congregate together, all of them united by close ties of blood; and this

assembly of relatives, called a tribe or 'nation,' may number anything

from 20 to 150 human beings. In many cases such a tribe would live

practically in one large dwelling-house. A clearing is made in the

forest, and with the very straight trees that abound in the Amazon woods

it is easy to obtain suitable timber for house-building. The uprights

are as straight as the mast of a ship. The ridge-pole will often be from

thirty to forty feet from the ground, and considerable skill is

displayed in balancing the rough beams and adjusting the weight of the

thatch. This thatch is composed of the dried and twisted fronds of a

small swamp palm, which admirably excludes both rain and the rays of the

sun. No tropical dwelling I have ever been in is so cool as one roofed

with this material. The roofs or thatches of Indian houses extend right

down to the ground. They are designed to keep out wet and sunlight, not

to bar against intruders. They afford no protection against attack, and

are not designed for defence, except against climatic conditions. The

white settlers in the forest, from the first, compelled the Indians to

build houses for them. The plan of the house would be the work of the

white man, but the labour involved and all the materials would be

supplied by the neighbouring Indian tribe or tribes he had reduced to

work for him. All the houses that I visited outside the chief station

of La Chorrera in which the company's agents lived, and where their

goods were stored, were and are so constructed by the surrounding

Indians, acting under the direct supervision of the agent and his white

or half-caste employees. This labour of the Indians goes unremunerated.

Not only do they build the houses and the stores for the white men, but

they have to keep them in repair and supply labour for this purpose

whenever called upon. The Indian in his native surroundings is satisfied

with quite a small clearing in the forest around his own dwelling, but

not so the white man who has come to live upon the Indian. These decree

that their dwelling-houses shall stand in the midst of a very extensive

clearing, and the labour of felling the forest trees, and clearing the

ground over an area of often two hundred acres, or even more, falls upon

the surrounding Indian population. Here, again, neither pay nor food is

supplied. The Indians are brought in from their homes, men and women,

and while the men fell the trees and undertake the heavier duties, women

are put to clearing the ground and planting a certain area of it. Those

of the stations I visited outside La Chorrera--viz., Occidente, Ultimo

Retiro, Entre Ríos, Matanzas, Atenas, and Sur, in addition to a large

and extremely well-built dwelling-house for the white man and his

assistants, as well as suitable dependencies for servants, women, &c.,

were each surrounded by immense clearings, which represented a

considerable labour in the first case, and one which had fallen wholly

upon the Indian families in the vicinity. Sometimes these clearances

were put to economic use--notably that at Entre Ríos, where quite a

large area was well planted with cassava, maize, and sugar-cane; but

this was the only station which can be said to maintain itself, and all

the work of clearing and of planting here had fallen, not upon the

employees of the company but upon the surrounding Indian population. At

other stations one found the dwelling-houses standing in the midst of a

very extensive clearing, which apparently served no other purpose beyond

giving light and air. At Atenas, for instance, the station houses are

built on a slope above the River Cahuinari, and an area of fully two

hundred acres has been cleared of its original forest trees, which lie

in all stages of decay encumbering the ground, but scarcely one acre is

under any form of cultivation. At Matanzas a somewhat similar state of

neglect existed, and the same might be said in varying degree of the

stations of Ultimo Retiro and Occidente. Large areas of fairly fertile

cleared ground are lying waste and serve no useful purpose. Food which

might easily be raised locally is brought literally from thousands of

miles away at great expense, and often in insufficient quantity.

[Illustration: HUITOTOS AT ENTRE RIOS AND BARBADOS NEGRO OVERSEER.

[To face p. 296.]

"The regular station hands--that is to say, the employees in receipt of

salaries--do no work. Their duties consist in seeing that the

surrounding forest Indians work rubber and supply them so far as may be

with what they need. For this purpose the principal requisite is a rifle

and a sufficiency of cartridges, and of these there are always plenty."

* * * * *

A further Report was transmitted by Consul Casement to Sir Edward Grey

in March, 1911, giving a general description of methods of

rubber-collecting and treatment of Indians on the Putumayo by the

Peruvian Amazon Company, containing the following information:--

"The region termed 'the Putumayo,' consisting principally of the area

drained by two tributaries of the Iça or Putumayo River, the Igaraparaná

and the Caraparaná, lies far from the main stream of the Amazon, and is

rarely visited by any vessels save those belonging to the Peruvian

Amazon Company. The only other craft that penetrate that district are

steamers of the Peruvian Government sent occasionally from Iquitos.

Brazilian vessels may ascend the Japurá, known in Peru and Colombia as

the Caquetá, until they draw near to the mouth of the Cahuinari, a river

which flows into the Japurá, flowing in a north-easterly direction

largely parallel with the Igaraparaná, which empties into the Putumayo

after a south-easterly course. The region drained by these three

waterways, the Caraparaná, the Igaraparaná, and the Cahuinari,

represents the area in part of which the operations of the Peruvian

Amazon Company are carried on. It is impossible to say what the Indian

population of this region may be. Generally speaking, the upper and

middle courses of these rivers are, or were, the most populous regions.

This is accounted for by the greater absence of insect pests, due to the

higher nature of the ground, which rises at La Chorrera to a level of

about 600 feet above the sea, with neighbouring heights fully 1,000 feet

above sea-level. The lower course of the Igaraparaná, as well as of the

Putumayo itself, below the junction of the Igaraparaná down to the

Amazon, is through a thick forest region of lower elevation, subject

largely to annual overflow from the flooded rivers. Mosquitoes and sand

flies and the swampy soil doubtless account for the restriction of the

Indians to those higher and drier levels which begin after the

Igaraparaná has been ascended for about one hundred miles of its course.

In this more elevated region there are no mosquitoes and far fewer

insect plagues, while permanent habitations and the cultivation of the

soil are more easily secured than in the regions liable to annual

inundation.

"In a work officially issued by the Peruvian Government at Lima in 1907,

entitled 'En el Putumayo y sus Afluentes,' by Eugenio Robuchon, a French

explorer who was engaged in 1903 by Señor Julio C. Arana in the name of

the Government to conduct an exploring mission in the region claimed by

the firm of Arana Brothers, the Indian population of that firm's

possessions is given at 50,000 souls. M. Robuchon lost his life near the

mouth of the Cahuinari in 1906, and the work in question was edited from

his diaries by Señor Carlos Rey de Castro, Peruvian Consul-General for

Northern Brazil. The figure of 50,000 Indians is that given by this

official as 'not a chance one.'

"In the prospectus issued at the formation of the Peruvian Amazon Rubber

Company in 1908, Señor Arana is represented as claiming that there were

then 40,000 Indian 'labourers' dwelling within the area of his Putumayo

enterprise.

"Whatever the true figures may have been, it is certain that the region

laying between the Putumayo and the Japurá (or Caquetá) was for many

years known to be prolific in native life, and furnished therefore the

most attractive field for slave-raiding in the earlier years of the last

century. No civilised settlements would seem to have arisen in this

region until towards the close of the nineteenth century, and the Indian

tribes continued to dwell in their primitive state, subject only to

visits from slave-searching white or half-breed bands until a quite

recent period.

"The four principal tribes were the Huitotos (pronounced _Witotos_), the

Boras, the Andokes, and the Ocainas, with certain smaller tribes, of

which the Ricigaros and the Muinanes are frequently mentioned. These

tribes were all of kindred origin and identical in habits and customs,

although differing in language and to some extent in feature,

complexion, and stature. The Huitotos are said to have been the most

numerous, and may at one time recently have numbered 30,000 individuals,

although to-day they amount to nothing like that figure.

"The Huitotos, although the most numerous, were physically the least

sturdy of the four chief tribes named. The name 'Huitotos' is said to

signify 'Mosquito,' I know not with what truth, and to have been applied

to these people by their stouter neighbours in derision of their

attenuated extremities, for neither their arms nor legs are shapely or

muscular. The Boras are physically a much finer race than the Huitotos,

and, generally speaking, are of a lighter hue. While some of the

Huitotos are of a dark bronze or chocolate complexion, I have seen Boras

little, if at all, of darker skin than a Japanese or Chinese. The

Mongolian resemblance was not alone confined to similarity of colour,

but was often strikingly apparent in features as well as in stature,

and in a singular approximation of gait to what may be termed 'the

Asiatic walk.' So, too, with the hair and eyes. Both are singularly

Mongolian, or at least Asiatic, in shape, colour, and, the former, in

texture, although the Indian hair is somewhat less coarse and more

abundant than either Chinese or Japanese.

"A picture of a Sea Dyak of Borneo using his _sumpitan_, or blow-pipe,

might very well stand for an actual presentment of a Boras Indian with

his _cerbatana_. The weapons, too, are identical in structure and use,

and in several other respects a striking similarity prevails between two

races so widely sundered.

"These Putumayo Indians were not only divided tribe from tribe, but

within each tribe more or less constant bickerings and disunion

prevailed between the various 'families' or _naciones_ into which each

great branch was split up. Thus, while Huitotos had a hereditary feud

with Boras, or Ocainas, or Andokes, the numerous subdivisions of the

Huitotos themselves were continually at war with one another. Robuchon

enumerates thirty-three sub-tribes or families among the Huitotos, and

he by no means exhausts the list. Each of these, while intermarriage was

common and a common sense of origin, kinship, and language prevailed as

against all outsiders, would have their internal causes of quarrel that

often sharply divided neighbour from neighbour clan.

"Such conflicts led to frequent 'wars,' kidnappings and thefts of women

being, doubtless, at the bottom of many disputes, while family

grievances and accusations of misuse of occult powers, involving

charges of witchcraft and sorcery, made up the tale of wrong. As a rule,

each family or clan has its great central dwelling-house, capable often

of housing two hundred individuals; and around this, in the region

recognised by tribal law as belonging to that particular clan,

individual members of it, with their families, would have smaller

dwellings scattered at different cultivated spots through the

neighbouring forest. The wars of those clans one with another were never

bloodthirsty, for I believe it is a fact that the Amazon Indian is

averse to bloodshed, and is thoughtless rather than cruel. Prisoners

taken in these wars may have been, and no doubt were, eaten, or in part

eaten, for the Amazon cannibals do not seem to have killed to eat, as is

the case with many primitive races, but to have sometimes, possibly

frequently, in part eaten those they killed. More than one traveller in

tropical South America records his impression that the victims were not

terrified at the prospect of being eaten, and in some cases regarded it

as an honourable end. Lieutenant Maw mentions the case of a girl on the

Brazilian Amazon in 1827 who refused to escape, to become the slave of a

Portuguese 'trader,' preferring to be eaten by her own kind.

"The weapons of the Putumayo Indians were almost entirely confined to

the blow-pipe, with its poisoned darts, and small throwing-spears with

poor wooden tips, three or more of which, grasped between the fingers,

were thrown at one time. The forest must have been fairly full of game

up to quite recently, for the Indians seem to have had a sufficiency of

meat diet; and, with their plantations of cassava, maize, and the

numerous fruits and edible leaves their forest furnished, they were not

so short of food that cannibalism could be accounted for as a necessity.

They were also skilled fishermen, and as the forests are everywhere

channelled with streams of clear water, there must have been a frequent

addition of fish diet to their daily fare.

"No missions or missionaries would seem to have ever penetrated to the

regions here in question. On the upper waters of the Putumayo itself

religious instruction and Christian worship appear to have been

established by Colombian settlers, but these civilising influences had

not journeyed sufficiently far downstream to reach the Huitotos or their

neighbours. Save for the raids of slavers coming up the Japurá or

Putumayo, their contact with white men had been a distant and far-off

story that in little affected their home life, save possibly to add an

element of demoralisation in the inducements offered for the sale of

human beings.

"Lieutenant Maw, an officer of the British Navy who crossed from the

Pacific to the Atlantic by way of the Amazon early in the last century,

in his work speaks of the Putumayo in the vaguest terms, and it is clear

that then, in 1827, and later on in 1851, when Lieutenant Herndon, of

the United States Navy, went down the Amazon in a canoe, nothing was

really known either of the river or of its inhabitants. They were

practically an untouched, primitive people when the first Colombian

_caucheros_, coming down the Putumayo from the settled regions on its

upper waters, located themselves at different points along the head

waters of the Caraparaná and Igaraparaná, and entered into what are

termed trade dealings with those unsophisticated tribes.

"This first Colombian invasion of the Putumayo regions took place, I am

informed, in the early eighties, some of my informants stated about

1886. The earliest of these _conquistadores_ were Crisóstomo Hernandez

and Benjamin Larrañaga, who entered the region in search of the inferior

kind of rubber there produced, known as _sernambi_ or _jebe debil_

(weak, fine rubber). The banks of these two rivers, and the whole of the

region inhabited by the Huitotos, the Andokes, and the Boras Indians,

are fairly well stocked with trees that furnish the milk out of which an

inferior rubber is elaborated. The Putumayo Indians merely gash the tree

with a knife or _machete_, and, catching the milk as it exudes in little

baskets made of leaves, they wash it in their streams of running water

and pound it with wooden pestles into long sausage-shaped rolls, termed

in Peruvian rubber parlance _chorizos_, which ultimately are put upon

the market just as the Indian carries them in to whoever may be locally

exploiting him and his neighbourhood. That these wild Indians welcomed

the coming into their country of Hernandez, Larrañaga, and the other

Colombians who succeeded these earliest of the modern _conquistadores_

it would be absurd to assert. They were, doubtless, glad to get

_machetes_, and powder and caps for the few trade guns they possessed,

with the prospect even of acquiring more of these priceless weapons

themselves, along with such trifles as beads, mirrors, tin bowls,

fish-hooks, and tempting tins of sardines or potted meats--all of them

articles of little intrinsic value, but of very attractive character to

the Indian dwelling in so inaccessible a region. Had any form of

administrative authority accompanied the early settlers or searchers for

Indians, as they should rightly be termed, their relations with these

wild inhabitants of the forest might have been controlled and directed

to some mutually useful end. But the _caucheros_ came as filibusters,

not as civilisers, and were unaccompanied by any executive officers

representing a civilised control. The region was practically a no-man's

land, lying remote from any restraining authority or civilising

influence, and figuring on maps of South America as claimed by three

separate republics.

"Those who came in search of rubber had no intention of dwelling longer

in the forest than the accumulation of the wealth they hoped to amass

necessitated. They wanted to get rich quickly, not to stay and civilise

the Indians or make their homes among them. The rubber-trees of

themselves were of no value; it was Indians who could be made or induced

to tap them and to bring in the rubber on the white man's terms that all

the invading _conquistadores_ were in search of. Generally a leading man

fitted out an expedition with a few companions, partners in effort and

initial expenditure; and with a gang of hired _peons_, or, as they are

called in that region, _racionales_ (half-breeds mostly who can read and

write to distinguish them from the _Indios_, who are ignorant of all

save forest lore), he journeyed to some part of the forest in search of

tribes of wild Indians--_infieles_ or "infidels"--who could be easily

subdued and reduced to work the wild rubber-trees in the territory they

inhabited. An Indian would promise anything for a gun, or for some of

the other tempting things offered as inducements to him to work rubber.

Many Indians submitted to the alluring offer only to find that once in

the _conquistadores_' books they had lost all liberty, and were reduced

to unending demands for more rubber and more varied tasks. A cacique or

_capitán_ might be bought over to dispose of the labour of all his clan,

and as the cacique's influence was very great and the natural docility

of the Indian a remarkable characteristic of the Upper Amazon tribes,

the work of conquering a primitive people and reducing them to a

continual strain of rubber-finding was less difficult than might at

first be supposed. Their arms of defence were puerile weapons as opposed

to the rifles of the _blancos_."

The terrible floggings practised upon the Indians are lengthily

described by Consul Casement, and it is said that 90 per cent, of them,

men and women, bear scars therefrom.

Further describing the outrages committed, Mr. Casement quotes from the

Annual Report of the Minister of Justice, presented to the Peruvian

Congress in 1907:--

"Coming to more distant regions, where executive authority is

necessarily weaker, the missionary brother informs the Minister of

Justice of the state of things on the Putumayo itself:--

"'River Putumayo. In this river it is not possible to establish any

mission owing to the abuses of the _caucheros_ against the Indians

(_los infieles_), whom they maltreat and murder for no reason (_por

motivos frivolos_), seizing their women and children.' (P. 782 of the

Ministerial Report.)

"Lest this may be thought a vague indictment, I append a further extract

from the same Report, this time directed by the Apostolic Prefect of the

district of San Francisco de Ucayali to the Minister of Justice. It is

dated from Contamana, on the Ucayali, the chief place of the province,

on the 27th August, 1907, and deals at some length with the condition of

religion and education on that great river, the main feeder and source

of the Amazon, and one that has been largely occupied and in civilised

hands for the better part of the last century:--

"'Before speaking of the region of the Ucayali I wish to draw the

attention of the Supreme Government to the infamous trade in buying and

selling boys and girls which for years has been practised in these parts

of the montaña (_i.e._, the forest region), in spite of the repeated

prohibitions of the Government, just as if these poor savages were

irrational beings (_seres irracionales_), or, to be still more clear,

just as if they were sheep or horses. This is intolerable in such an

illustrious country as Peru. This trade excites and foments the hunting

(_correrías_, literally "chasings") so frequently indulged in of these

poor savages, so as to seize them in their houses in the moment when

they least expect it. This is done by different traders (_comerciantes_)

by means of their _peóns_, particularly some of those of the Upper

Ucayali. I could cite many examples in confirmation of this, but I will

cite one alone which took place last year (1906). Here it is:--

"'The Campas Indians of the River Ubiriqui were dwelling peacefully in

their houses when suddenly, as is reported, there fell upon them men

sent on a _correría_ by one of the traders of the Upper Ucayali, who

lives near Unini. These, without warning, attacked the innocent Campas,

seizing those whom they could, killing many of them so that few escaped

their cruelties, so that even up to now the number of their victims is

not known. It is certain that many bodies have been found in a state of

putrefaction, and that all the houses of the Ubiriqui are burnt. These

deeds have exasperated the Indians (_los infieles_), and if no effective

remedy is applied, later on we shall not be safe even in the mission

villages (_pueblocitos de la misión_), nor shall we be able to spread

our winning over and civilising of the savages who dwell in our

forests.' (P. 783 and following of the Report.)

"I do not know what steps were taken to deal with this state of things

on the Upper Ucayali, but no steps of any kind followed on the Putumayo

the notification, as quoted, made to the Minister of Justice by Frei

Prat. That the representations of these Peruvian missionaries had not

escaped the eyes of the Minister himself is clear from his own remarks.

In his prefatory address to the members of Congress the Minister of

Justice states in his Report (p. 48 of the Part _Instrucción y Culto_)

as follows:--

"'The apostolic prefectures have continued their work of civilisation

and evangelisation of the Indians of the Oriente, and in their reports,

which are inserted as an annex, will be found detailed accounts of its

progress.'"

Consul Casement continues:--

"Before my visit ended more than one Peruvian agent admitted to me that

he had continually flogged Indians, and accused more than one of his

fellow-agents by name of far greater crimes. In many cases the Indian

rubber-worker--who knew roughly what quantity of rubber was expected of

him--when he brought his load to be weighed, seeing that the needle of

the balance did not touch the required spot, would throw himself face

downwards on the ground, and in that posture await the inevitable blows.

An individual who had often taken part in these floggings and who

charged himself with two murders of Indians has thus left on record the

manner of flogging the Indians at stations where he served. I quote this

testimony, as this man's evidence, which was in my possession when I

visited the region, was amply confirmed by one of the British subjects I

examined, who had himself been charged in that evidence with flogging an

Indian girl whom the man in question had then shot, when her back after

that flogging had putrefied, so that it became 'full of maggots.' He

states in his evidence--and the assertion was frequently borne out by

others I met and questioned:--

"'The Indian is so humble that as soon as he sees that the needle of the

scale does not mark the 10 kilos he himself stretches out his hands and

throws himself on the ground to receive the punishment. Then the chief

or a subordinate advances, bends down, takes the Indian by the hair,

strikes him, raises his head, drops it face downwards on the ground, and

after the face is beaten and kicked and covered with blood the Indian is

scourged.'

"This picture is true; detailed descriptions of floggings of this kind

were again and again made to me by men who had been employed in the

work. Indians were flogged, not only for shortage in rubber, but still

more grievously if they dared to run away from their houses, and, by

flight to a distant region, to escape altogether from the tasks laid

upon them. Such flight as this was counted a capital offence, and the

fugitives, if captured, were as often tortured and put to death as

brutally flogged. Expeditions were fitted out and carefully planned to

track down and recover the fugitives, however far the flight might have

been. The undisputed territory of the neighbouring Republic of Colombia,

lying to the north of the River Japurá (or Caquetá), was again and again

violated in these pursuits, and the individuals captured were not always

only Indians.

"The crimes alleged against Armando Normand, dating from the end of the

year 1904 up to the month of October, 1910, when I found him in charge

of this station of Matanzas or Andokes, seem wellnigh incredible. They

included innumerable murders and tortures of defenceless

Indians--pouring kerosene oil on men and women and then setting fire to

them, burning men at the stake, dashing the brains out of children, and

again and again cutting off the arms and legs of Indians and leaving

them to speedy death in this agony. These charges were not made to me

alone by Barbados men who had served under Normand, but by some of his

fellow-_racionales_. A Peruvian engineer in the company's service

vouched to me for the dashing out of the brains of children, and the

chief representative of the company, Señor Tizon, told me he believed

Normand had committed 'innumerable murders' of the Indians.

"Westerman Leavine, whom Normand sought to bribe to withhold testimony

from me, finally declared that he had again and again been an

eye-witness of these deeds--that he had seen Indians burned alive more

than once, and often their limbs eaten by the dogs kept by Normand at

Matanzas. It was alleged, and I am convinced with truth, that during the

period of close on six years Normand had controlled the Andokes Indians

he had directly killed 'many hundreds' of those Indians--men, women, and

children. The indirect deaths due to starvation, floggings, exposure,

and hardship of various kinds in collecting rubber or transferring it

from Andokes down to Chorrera must have accounted for a still larger

number. Señor Tizon told me that 'hundreds' of Indians perished in the

compulsory carriage of the rubber from the more distant sections down to

La Chorrera. No food is given by the company to these unfortunate people

on these forced marches, which, on an average, take place three times a

year. I witnessed one such march, on a small scale, when I accompanied a

caravan of some two hundred Andokes and Boras Indians (men, women, and

children) that left Matanzas station on the 19th of October to carry

their rubber that had been collected by them during the four or five

preceding months down to a place on the banks of the Igaraparaná, named

Puerto Peruano (Peruvian Port), whence it was to be conveyed in lighters

towed by a steam launch down to La Chorrera. The distance from Matanzas

to Puerto Peruano is one of some forty miles, or possibly more. The

rubber had already been carried into Matanzas from different parts of

the forest lying often ten or twelve hours' march away, so that the

total journey forced upon each carrier was not less than sixty miles,

and in some cases probably a longer one. The path to be followed was one

of the worst imaginable--a fatiguing route for a good walker quite

unburdened.

"For two days--that is to say, from Matanzas to Entre Rios--I marched

along with this caravan of very unhappy individuals, men with huge loads

of rubber weighing, I believe, sometimes up to 70 kilos each,

accompanied by their wives, also loaded with rubber, and their sons and

daughters, down to quite tiny things that could do no more than carry a

little cassava-bread (prepared by the mothers before leaving their

forest home), to serve as food for parents and children on this trying

march. Armed _muchachos_, with Winchesters, were scattered through the

long column, and at the rear one of the _racionales_ of Matanzas, a man

named Adan Negrete, beat up the stragglers. Behind all, following a day

later, came Señor Normand himself, with more armed _racionales_, to see

that none fell out or slipped home, having shed their burdens of rubber

on the way. On the second day I reached Entre Rios in the early

afternoon, the bulk of the Indians having that morning started at 5.15

from the place where we had slept together in the forest. At 5.15 that

evening they arrived with Negrete and the armed _muchachos_ at Entre

Rios, where I had determined to stay for some days. Instead of allowing

these half-starved and weary people, after twelve hours' march,

staggering under crushing loads, to rest in this comparatively

comfortable station of the company, where a large rest-house and even

food were available, Negrete drove them on into the forest beyond, where

they were ordered to spend the night under guard of the _muchachos_.

This was done in order that a member of the company's commission (Mr.

Walter Fox), who was at Entre Rios at the time along with myself, should

not have an opportunity of seeing too closely the condition of these

people--particularly, I believe, that we should not be able to weigh the

loads of rubber they were carrying. I had, however, seen enough on the

road during the two days I accompanied the party alone to convince me of

the cruelty they were subjected to, and I had even taken several

photographs of those among them who were more deeply scarred with the

lash.

"Several of the women had fallen out sick on the way, and five of them I

had left provided for with food in a deserted Indian house in the

forest, and had left an armed Barbados man to guard them until Señor

Tizon, to whom I wrote, could reach the spot, following me from Matanzas

a day later. An opportunity arose the next day to weigh one of these

loads of rubber. A straggler, who had either fallen out or left Matanzas

after the main party, came into Entre Rios, staggering under a load of

rubber, about mid-day on the 21st October, when Mr. Fox and I were about

to sit down to lunch. The man came through the hot sun across the

station compound, and fell before our eyes at the foot of the ladder

leading up to the veranda, where, with the chief of the section (Señor

O'Donnell), we were sitting. He had collapsed, and we got him carried

into the shade and revived with whisky, and later on some soup and food

from our own table. He was a young man, of slight build, with very thin

arms and legs, and his load of rubber by no means one of the largest I

had seen actually being carried. I had it weighed there and then, and

its weight was just 50 kilos.[126]

"This man had not a scrap of food with him. Owing to our intervention he

was not forced to carry on his load, but was permitted the next day to

go on to Puerto Peruano empty-handed in company with Señor Normand. I

saw many of these people on their way back to their homes some days

later after their loads had been put into the lighters at Puerto

Peruano. They were returning, footsore and utterly worn out, through the

station of Entre Rios on their way back to their scattered houses in the

Andokes or Boras country. They had no food with them, and none was given

to them at Entre Rios. I stopped many of them, and inspected the little

woven string or skin bags they carry, and neither man nor woman had any

food left. All that they had started with a week before had been already

eaten, and for the last day or two they had been subsisting on roots and

leaves and the berries of wild trees they had pulled down on the way. We

found, on our subsequent journey down to Puerto Peruano, a few days

later, many traces of where they had pulled down branches and even trees

themselves in their search for something to stay the craving of hunger.

In some places the path was blocked with the branches and creepers they

had torn down in their search for food, and it was only when Señors

Tizon and O'Donnell assured me that this was done by 'Señor Normand's

Indians' in their hungry desperation that I could believe it was not the

work of wild animals.

"Indians were frequently flogged to death. Cases were reported to me

where men or women had died actually under the lash, but this seems to

have been infrequent. Deaths due to flogging generally ensued some days

afterwards, and not always in the station itself where the lash had been

applied, but on the way home to the unfortunate's dwelling-place. In

many cases where men or women had been so cruelly flogged that the

wounds putrefied the victims were shot by one of the _racionales_ acting

under the orders of the chief of the section, or even by this individual

himself. Salt and water would be sometimes applied to these wounds, but

in many cases a fatal flogging was not attended even by this poor effort

at healing, and the victim, 'with maggots in the flesh,' was turned

adrift to die in the forest or was shot and the corpse burned or

buried--or often enough thrown into the 'bush' near the station-houses.

At one station--that of Abisinia (which I did not visit)--I was informed

by a British subject who had himself often flogged the Indians that he

had seen mothers flogged, on account of shortage of rubber by their

little sons. These boys were held to be too small to chastise, and so,

while the little boy stood terrified and crying at the sight, his mother

would be beaten 'just a few strokes' to make him into a better worker.

"Men and women would be suspended by the arms, often twisted behind

their backs and tied together at the wrists, and in this agonising

posture, their feet hanging high above the ground, they were scourged on

the nether limbs and lower back. The implement used for flogging was

invariably a twisted strip, or several strips plaited together, of dried

tapir-hide, a skin not so thick as the hippopotamus-hide I have seen

used in Africa for flagellation, but still sufficiently stout to cut a

human body to pieces. One flogger told me the weapon he used was 'as

thick as your thumb.'

"After the prohibition of flogging by circular I have referred to, at

some of the less brutal or more cautious centres of rubber-collection

defaulting Indians were no longer, during the months of 1910, flogged

with tapir-hide, but were merely chastised with strokes of a _machete_.

These _machetes_ are almost swords, and shaped something like a cutlass.

They are used for gashing the trees in tapping them for rubber milk, and

they also serve as weapons in the hands of the Indians. Blows with these

laid across the shoulder-blades or back might be excessively painful,

but would be unlikely to leave any permanent scar or traces of the

beating. At the station of Occidente this form of beating had in June,

1910, been varied with a very cowardly torture instituted by the chief

of that section, a Peruvian named Fidel Velarde. This man, who was found

in charge of that section when I visited it in October, 1910, in order

to still inspire terror and yet leave no trace on the bodies of his

victims, since Occidente lay close to La Chorrera and might be visited

unexpectedly by Señor Tizon, had devised a new method of punishment for

those who did not bring in enough rubber to satisfy him. Their arms were

tied behind their backs, and thus pinioned they were taken down to the

river (the Igaraparaná), and forcibly held under water until they became

insensible and half-drowned. One of the Barbados men related

circumstantially how on the 20th of June, 1910, only a few hours after

Señor Tizon had quitted Occidente on a visit of inspection proceeding

upriver to Ultimo Retiro, four Indian youths had been ordered by Velarde

to be taken down to the river, their arms tied together, and to be then

held under water until they filled--or, as James Mapp, the Barbados man

put it, until 'their bowels filled with water.' Mapp had been ordered to

perform this task, and had point-blank refused to obey, declaring he

would not lay a finger on the Indians, whereupon a _racional_ employee,

by name Eugenio Acosta (whom I had met at Occidente), had carried out

Señor Velarde's orders. The four Indians, with their arms tied, had been

thrust into the river by Acosta and an Indian he forced to help him and

held forcibly under water. The whole station and the kinsmen of the four

Indians were gathered on the high bank to witness this degrading

spectacle, the Indian women weeping and crying out. One of the young men

in his struggles had kicked free from the grasp of the man holding him

down, and as his arms were fastened he had been unable to save himself

by swimming, and had sunk in the deep, strong current at the spot

described.

"Indians were often flogged while confined in the _cepo_, this notably

in the special flogging _cepo_, with movable extremities, made by order

of Aurelio Rodríguez at Santa Catalina, and referred to by its maker,

Edward Crichlow, in his testimony to me. Sometimes the most abominable

offences were committed upon Indians while held by the legs or leg in

this defenceless position (see particularly the statement of James

Chase, borne out by Stanley Lewis, as to the crime committed by José

Inocente Fonseca at Ultimo Retiro upon a young Indian man). Some of the

British subjects I questioned declared to me that they had known Indian

women to be publicly violated by the _racionales_ while in this state of

detention. As an added punishment, the legs of a man or woman would be

distended and confined several holes apart in the stocks--some of the

Barbados men asserted that they themselves had been confined with their

legs 'five holes apart,' a distance, I should say, intolerable to be

borne for any length of time. The Ultimo Retiro stocks were the worst I

saw, for the leg-holes were smaller, and the beams to have locked on any

ordinary sized leg must have forced down into the flesh.

"An individual confined with his legs 'five holes apart' would have had

them extended almost a yard at the extremities, and if confined for a

few hours in this posture, he must have been in acute pain. Indians who

spent long periods in the stocks were sometimes confined by only one

leg. Whole families were so imprisoned--fathers, mothers, and children,

and many cases were reported of parents dying thus, either from

starvation or from wounds caused by flogging, while their offspring were

attached alongside of them to watch in misery themselves the dying

agonies of their parents. One man at Ultimo Retiro, himself a living

witness to the enforced starvation he denounced, in the presence of

Señor Jiménez and his subordinates, related before me and the members of

the commission on the 8th of October how, in Señor Montt's time, a year

previously, many of his countrymen and women had been so starved to

death or flogged to death in the station _cepo_ that we were then

inspecting and experimenting with.

"Some of these agents drew fully £1,000 a year from the rubber they

forced by this means and by other lawless methods from the surrounding

native population.

"Flogging was varied with other tortures designed, like the

semi-drownings of Velarde, to just stop short of taking life while

inspiring the acute mental fear and inflicting much of the physical

agony of death. Thus, men and lads, rubber defaulters or fugitives from

its collection, were suspended by a chain fastened round the neck to one

of the beams of the house or store. Sometimes with the feet scarcely

touching the ground and the chain hauled taut they were left in this

half-strangled position until life was almost extinct. More than one

eye-witness assured me that he had seen Indians actually suspended by

the neck until when let down they fell a senseless mass upon the floor

of the house with their tongues protruding.

"Several informants declared they had witnessed Indians, chained round

the arms, hauled up to the ceilings of the houses or to trees, and the

chain then suddenly loosed so that the victim fell violently to the

ground. One case of this kind was circumstantially related to me where

the Indian, a young man, dropped suddenly like this from a height of

several feet, fell backwards, and his head hit the ground so violently

that his tongue was bitten through and his mouth full of blood.

"Deliberate starvation was again and again resorted to, but this not

where it was desired merely to frighten, but where the intention was to

kill. Men and women were kept prisoners in the station stocks until they

died of hunger.

"These starvations, as specifically related to me by men who witnessed

them and were aware of the gravity of the charge they brought, had not

been due to chance neglect, but to design. No food was given to the

Indians, and none could be given save by the chief of the section. One

man related how he had seen Indians thus being starved to death in the

stocks 'scraping up the dirt with their fingers and eating it'; another

declared he had actually seen Indians who had been flogged and were in

extremity of hunger in the stocks 'eating the maggots from their

wounds.'

"Wholesale murder and torture endured up to the end of Aurelio

Rodríguez' service, and the wonder is that any Indians were left in the

district at all to continue the tale of rubber-working on to 1910. This

aspect of such continuous criminality is pointed to by those who, not

having encountered the demoralisation that attends the methods

described, happily infrequent, assert that no man will deliberately kill

the goose that lays the golden eggs. This argument would have force if

applied to a settled country or an estate it was designed to profitably

develop. None of the freebooters on the Putumayo had any such

limitations in his view, or care for the hereafter to restrain him. His

first object was to get rubber, and the Indians would always last his

time. He hunted, killed, and tortured to-day in order to terrify fresh

victims for to-morrow. Just as the appetite comes in eating so each

crime led on to fresh crimes, and many of the worst men on the Putumayo

fell to comparing their battues and boasting of the numbers they had

killed.

"Every one of these criminals kept a large staff of unfortunate Indian

women for immoral purposes--termed by a euphemism their 'wives.' Even

_péons_ had sometimes more than one Indian wife. The gratification of

this appetite to excess went hand in hand with the murderous instinct

which led these men to torture and kill the very parents and kinsmen of

those they cohabited with.

"The Indian communities had been everywhere deprived of their native

weapons. Perhaps a greater defence than their spears and blow-pipes even

had been more ruthlessly destroyed. Their old people, both women and

men, respected for character and ability to wisely advise, had been

marked from the first as dangerous, and in the early stages of the

occupation were done to death. Their crime had been the giving of 'bad

advice.' To warn the more credulous or less experienced against the

white enslaver and to exhort the Indian to flee or to resist rather than

consent to work rubber for the new-comers had brought about their doom.

I met no old Indian man or woman, and few had got beyond middle age. The

Barbados men assured me that when they first came to the region in the

beginning of 1905 old people were still to be found, vigorous and highly

respected, but these had all disappeared, so far as I could gather,

before my coming. At Entre Rios I learned of an Indian chief named

Chingamui, who at Señor O'Donnell's arrival in 1903 had exercised a

widespread influence over all the Huitotos in that district. This man

had fallen at the hands of a Colombian named Calderon, who then directed

the neighbouring district of Atenas, but not before he had shot at and

wounded his murderer. So, too, I learned of an 'old woman' who was

beheaded in the station of Sur by order of its chief, and whose crime

had been the giving of 'bad advice.' Her head had been held up by the

hair in the presence of my informant as a warning to the assembled

Indians of the fate they too would incur if they did not obey the white

man.

"Perhaps the bravest and most resolute opponent the murderers had

encountered had met his death only a few months, or even weeks, before

my arrival in the district. This was a Boras cacique, or

_capitán_--often referred to in the depositions of those I

examined--named Katenere. This man, who was not an old man, but young

and strong, lived on the upper waters of the Pamá, a small stream that

empties into the Cahuinari not far from its mouth in the Japurá. My

interpreter, Bishop, had seen this chief in 1907, when Normand had gone

to find him in order to induce him to work rubber. He had, from

necessity no doubt, consented to bring in rubber, and for some time had

worked voluntarily for Normand, until, through bad treatment, he, like

so many others, had fled. He had been captured later on, along with his

wife and some of his people, and confined in the stocks of the Abisinia

district, to undergo the taming process. While thus himself a prisoner,

his wife, so I was informed by a Peruvian white man holding a well-paid

post in the company's service, had been publicly violated before his

eyes by one of the highest agents of the Syndicate, a Peruvian whose

name and record was frequently brought forward in the course of my

inquiry. This man had been obliged to fly from the Caraparaná agency on

account of his crimes in that region in 1908.

"As a rule, the criminals who controlled the Indian population of the

Putumayo were chary of robbing an Indian husband of his wife. The harems

were maintained mainly by orphans, generally girls whose parents were

'dead.' Asking once why it was that the wives of the Indians seemed

usually to be spared this contamination, a reliable witness answered me:

'Because, sir, if they takes an Indian's wife, that Indian don't work

rubber.' I urged that since these men stuck at no act of terrorisation

to make Indians work rubber, a husband could be forced, even if robbed

of his wife, to go and get rubber. 'No, sir,' my informant said, 'the

Indians loves their wives, and if she is taken they won't work rubber.

They can kill them, do anything they like to them, but the Indian won't

work rubber.'

"This assertion was made more than once by men who, like this man, had

taken an active part in making Indians work rubber, and I believe that

this obstinate prejudice of the Indian preserved a native marriage from

invasion more surely than any respect the _cauchero_ has for its

sanctity. An Indian marriage is not a ceremony, but a choice sanctioned

by the parents of the bride, and once a child or children result from

the union there is rarely infidelity or separation. The very conditions

of Indian life, open and above board, and every act of every day known

to wellnigh every neighbour, precluded, I should say, very widespread

sexual immorality before the coming of the white man. Certain it is that

immoral intercourse among Indians, leading their natural lives, is rare,

and as polygamy scarcely existed, only a few of the bigger men having

more than one wife, the affection that grew up between an Indian man and

his wife was very often sincere and deep-rooted, just as the love of

parents for their children was.

"The Indians often displayed a fortitude in the face of impending

torture and death that speaks for itself of the excellence of some of

their qualities. Thus, it will be seen in the depositions accompanying

this Report how, on more than one occasion, men had refused to betray

the hiding-place of fugitives under terrible threats of torture if they

did not point out the retreat of the runaways. Normand is charged with

having cut the arms and legs off a chief he captured and questioned, who

preferred to suffer such a death to betraying the refuge of those who

had fled. I learned of more than one case of the kind, and have no doubt

of the truth of the accusation against the white man as of the fortitude

of the Indian. The tribes of the Putumayo in the hands of good men could

be made into good men and women, useful and intelligent workers under an

honest administration. Trained to be murderers, with the worst example

men ever gave to men daily held up for imitation, with lust and greed

and cruelty so often appealed to, I daily wondered that so much goodness

still survived among the remnant we encountered. That that remnant

itself would soon be gone I became convinced. A Peruvian who spoke good

English, having spent some years in England, confessed as much to me two

days before I left Chorrera. I said to this man that under the actual

régime I feared the entire Indian population would be gone in ten years,

and he answered, 'I give it six years--not ten.'

"The unrelieved barbarity of this Report does not rest alone on the

testimony of the Barbados men whose depositions accompany it. I had

other evidence to go by at the outset, and this was found to be in more

than one instance amply confirmed by the independent statements of the

British witnesses and again and again borne out by the evidence of our

own eyes and the general conditions of the Indians. Could these people

have been themselves fully interrogated, the weight of testimony would

have been far greater, but could not have been more convincing.

"A magistrate was said to be residing at one of the company's stations

on that river, but I never heard him once referred to, and when

peculiarly atrocious crimes were dragged to light, admitted, and

deplored, the criminal charged with them would be sitting at table with

us, and the members of the company's commission and myself were appealed

to to give no indication of our disgust lest this man 'might do worse

things' to the Indians or provoke an impossible situation with the armed

bandits under his orders. The apology for this extraordinary situation

was that there was 'no authority, no administration, no one near to whom

any appeal could be made,' and that Iquitos was 1,200 miles away. Every

chief of section was a law unto himself, and many of the principal

agents of this British company were branded by the representative of

that company, holding its power of attorney, in conversation with me as

'murderers, pirates, and bandits.'"

* * * * *

A considerable part of Consul Casement's Report is taken up with the

depositions, sworn before him, of the Barbados men; one of these, by

name Stanley Lewis, stated:--

"I have seen Indians killed for sport, tied up to trees and shot at by

Fonseca and the others. After they were drinking they would sometimes do

this. They would take a man out of the _cepo_ and tie him to a tree, and

shoot him for a target. I have often seen Indians killed thus, and also

shot after they had been flogged and their flesh was rotten through

maggots."

This man also described terrible barbarities committed on and murder of

two Indian girls by Fonseca. James Chase, another Barbados man, gave a

long account of Indians being flogged to death, starved, or shot, and

describes the terrible occurrence connected with the murdering of the

family of Katerene as follows:--

"They were also to hunt for a Boras Indian named Katenere, a former

rubber-worker of the district of Abisinia, who had escaped, and, having

captured some rifles, had raised a band of his fellow-Indians, and had

successfully resisted all attempts at his recapture. Katenere had shot

Bartolemé Zupaeta, the brother-in-law of Julio C. Arana, and was counted

a brave man and a terror to the Peruvian rubber-workers. The expedition

set out from Morelia, and at the first Indian 'house' they reached in

the forest they caught eight Indians, five men and three women. They

were all tied up with ropes, their hands tied behind their backs, and

marched on farther. At the next house they reached they caught four

Indians, one woman and three men. Vasquez, who was in charge, ordered

one of the _muchachos_ to cut this woman's head off. He ordered this for

no apparent reason that James Chase knows of, simply because 'he was in

command, and could do what he liked.' The _muchacho_ cut the woman's

head off; he held her by the hair of her head, and, flinging her down,

hacked her head off with a machete. It took more than one blow to sever

the head--three or four blows. The remains were left there on the path,

and the expedition went on with the three fresh male prisoners tied up

with the others. The date would be about May, 1910.

"They were then approaching the house where they believed Katenere to be

living. He was the chief of the Indians in whose direction they were

going--the fugitives from the rubber-work. At a point about half an

hour's walk from this Indian house Vasquez ordered him, Ocampo, and two

of the _muchachos_ to remain there to guard the prisoners, while he

himself (Vasquez) went on with the rest of the expedition. This party,

so Vasquez told them when he had returned, reached the house of Katenere

about six in the evening. Katenere and his wife, or one of his wives,

were in the house--only these two persons. Vasquez caught the woman, but

Katenere got away. Vasquez stayed there and sent four of the _muchachos_

into the forest to find and capture the rifles that Katenere had got.

When the _muchachos_ got to this other house in the forest they found

several Indians in it, whom they captured, and four rifles. The Indians

were tied up with their hands behind them, but after a time the head

_muchacho_, a Boras Indian, nicknamed Henrique, ordered them to be

released. He then sent on his three _muchachos_ to another house to

bring in some Indians whilst he stayed with the men whom he had just

released. These Indians, it should be noted, were all Boras Indians,

Henrique as well as the rest of the _muchachos_. Whilst Henrique was

with these men he found amongst them an Indian girl of whom he was very

fond and who had probably joined them in their flight. He endeavoured to

seize this girl, and in a quarrel that followed he was killed. The three

_muchachos_, on their return with two prisoners, found their leader

killed and his rifle in the hands of the released Indians, with the four

guns they already had belonging to Katenere. Each party fired at the

other, the forest Indians without effect. The three _muchachos_ killed

two of the Boras Indians and then returned to the house where Vasquez

was spending the night and where he held the wife of Katenere prisoner.

In the morning Vasquez returned to Ocampo and Chase, bringing only this

woman with them. It was then that Chase learned from Vasquez' own lips

what had happened. They had then, Chase states, twelve Indians as

prisoners, who included Katenere's wife, and also of the original party

that left Abisinia two Indians, who were in chains, who had been brought

as guides to point out where Katenere and his fugitive people were

living. These were some of Katenere's men who had not succeeded in

escaping when he got away. The whole party set out to return to Morelia

through the forest, having lost Henrique and his rifle. Soon after they

began their march in the morning they met in the path a child--a little

girl--who was said to be a daughter of Katenere by another wife he had

once had, not the woman they now held as prisoner. This child, Chase

states, was quite a young girl, some six or eight years of age. She was

frightened at the sight of the armed men, the Indians in chains and tied

up, and began to cry as they approached. Vasquez at once ordered her

head to be cut off. He knew it was Katenere's child because Katenere's

wife, in their hands, told them so. There was no reason that Chase knew

for their crime, save that the child was crying. Her head was cut off by

a _muchacho_ named Cherey, a Recigiro Indian boy. He was quite a young

boy. They came on about half an hour's march past that, leaving the

decapitated body in the path, and as one of the women prisoners they

had was not walking as fast as the rest Vasquez ordered a _muchacho_ to

cut her head off. This was done by the same boy Cherey in the same way,

he flinging the woman on the ground and chopping her head off with

several blows of his _machete_. They left this body and severed head

right in the path and went on again towards Morelia. They were walking

very fast because they were a bit frightened, thinking the Indians were

pursuing them. One of the male Indian prisoners, a boy, about fifteen or

sixteen [Chase indicated the boy's height with his hand], a lad who

could work rubber, was lagging behind and could not keep up with them as

they were going very fast. The Indian was hungry and probably weak.

Vasquez ordered his head to be cut off. This execution took place there

and then in the same way and was performed by the same boy Cherey. The

Indian's hands were tied behind him. Cherey took hold of the lad's long

hair, threw him on the ground, and cut his head off. They came on after

this towards Morelia, walking as fast as they could, and when they were

getting near it in the evening-time and perhaps three-quarters of an

hour's distance Vasquez was in a great hurry to reach the station. Three

of the Indian men who were weak through hunger and not able to walk fast

could not keep up with them, so Vasquez himself shot one and he ordered

Cherey, the _muchacho_, to shoot the other two. These were all grown-up

men, Boras Indians, and belonging to Gavilanes, and were part of

Katenere's people. The three bodies were left lying there on the path,

and the place where they were killed was so near Morelia that when they

reached it they learned that the station hands had heard the shots of

the rifles that had killed the men.

"They reached Morelia in the evening, and of their five prisoners three

were put with their feet in the _cepo_, while the fourth was hung up by

his neck with a chain round it. The chain was pulled taut over a beam in

the roof of the house, so that the man's toes rested on the ground, but

he could not budge or even move his head. He had to stand like this with

his head and neck stretched up all night. Those in the _cepo_, two men

and a woman, also had chains round their necks. They got no food."

Evidence confirmatory of James Chase's statement with regard to this

expedition of Vasquez was subsequently obtained by the Consul-General

from other quarters. The Report continues:--

"Allan Davis, a Barbados man who was in Abisinia when Vasquez arrived

there, stated in his examination that Vasquez declared on arrival 'he

had left the road pretty.' Davis saw him arrive with the emaciated

prisoners, who were put in stocks, and all of whom subsequently met

their deaths in Abisinia, as averred by Davis and Evelyn Baston, another

Barbados man, whose testimony was subsequently taken. One of them was

murdered by being shot, and the others were deliberately starved to

death while confined in the stocks.

"Asked if he had seen women thus killed, he replied, 'Yes. They were

shot and died from blows' (from floggings). They were cut to pieces

sometimes and smelt dreadfully. Once he himself was put in _cepo_

alongside some of these rotting human beings who had been inhumanly

flogged, and the smell was so bad he begged and implored to be taken

out--he could not stand it--but Fonseca kept him in all night. He saw

these people die from these floggings; their bodies would sometimes be

dragged away and thrown in the bush around the station or burned. He has

seen the _muchachos_ shoot Indians under the order of Fonseca. Continual

floggings went on at that time among women and children.

"Further statements were from time to time received from James Chase in

the course of the journey made by Mr. Casement in the company of the

commission, and finally on the 5th of November at La Chorrera he gave

still further testimony in the presence of several of his countrymen. He

states that amongst other things he saw Fonseca do was to kill an Indian

man who was at the time confined in the stocks, or _cepo_, at Ultimo

Retiro. The Indian in question had run away from working rubber, but had

been caught and brought in a prisoner. Fonseca said to him, 'I am going

to kill you.' The man protested, and said he had done no harm. He had

not killed a white man, he had not injured any one or killed any one,

and could not be killed for running away. Fonseca laughed at him, and

had him hung up by the neck first with a chain drawn tight, and then

when let down from this torture he had him put in the _cepo_ with one

foot only, the other leg being free. Fonseca came up to the _cepo_ with

a stick with a club head much bigger than the handle of the stick. He

put one of his legs against the Indian's free leg and stretched it apart

from the confined leg. He then pulled off the man's _fono_, or

loin-cloth made of beaten bark, so that he was quite naked, and then

struck the man many times with the club-end of the stick on his exposed

parts. These were 'smashed,' and the man died in a short time. Deponent

described the occurrence fully, declaring that he was an eye-witness.

"This statement was confirmed by the Barbados man, Stanley S. Lewis, who

stated he also saw Fonseca commit this deed.

"Chase states that Fonseca at Ultimo Retiro would shoot Indians with a

long rifle which he had. He thinks it was a Mannlicher. Sometimes he

shot at them whilst they were actually prisoners in the stocks, and

others were taken out in the open ground round the house, and he shot at

them from the veranda. The last case of this kind that Chase witnessed

was that of a young girl. Fonseca bandaged her eyes and face so that

even her mouth and nose were covered. She was then made to walk away,

and whilst she was thus blindfolded Fonseca shot her 'as a sport for his

friends.'

"Chase further states that he has seen Aquiléo Torres cut the ears off

living Indians for sport. Torres took deponent's own knife from him. It

was an open knife, and he used this knife for the purpose. He saw him do

this several times. Once he cut off a man's ears and then burned his

wife alive before his eyes. This was done by Torres.

"In the summer of 1909 Chase accompanied Torico on a journey. Asked what

they were doing, he states that Torico, he thinks, was going round on a

sort of inspection for Macedo, or else to give warning to all the

sections that things must be put straight, because an Englishman,

Captain Whiffen, was then in the country and visiting the company's

territories. He remembers Torico taking the names of the Indians at each

station, and talking to the agents about Captain Whiffen's coming. Chase

states that he was with Sealey in the expedition under Jiménez, later

described."

Stanley Sealey, another Barbados, described to the Consul a rubber raid

and its results in the following terrible story:--

"A party of armed employees is sent out to collect the Indians of a

certain division on the day when their _puesta_ of rubber is due, and to

march them into the station with their loads of rubber, after this has

been weighed and found sufficient. The man in charge of the expedition

will have a list of the Indians he is to collect, and the amount of

rubber each is to bring in, and he proceeds to summon or find them. They

call the chief, or _capitán_, of these Indians, and if all his people do

not appear with him he may be put in the _cepo_, made out in the forest,

and kept guarded there. Sometimes he, deponent, and others of the

expedition would be sent to look for the missing Indians. If the Indians

do not all come in, the _capitán_ will be treated in a variety of ways.

Sometimes they tie his hands behind his back, and then by a rope through

his bound wrists he will be hauled up off the ground, the rope passing

over a tree-branch. Sometimes his feet would be three or four feet off

the ground. They kept him in this position for sometimes an hour or an

hour and a half, he screaming out with pain. This is to make him

confess where the missing Indians are. When he admits this, and says he

will go for the truants, they let him down, and, keeping him tied, they

go with him to where the people are hiding. If they find his people,

they may still keep him tied up. They do not then flog the Indians. They

collect all they can, those with the rubber, and those who have failed

to get it, and march them all down to the station. The arms of the

_capitán_ will be loosed on reaching the station, but his legs put in

the _cepo_. Then they weigh the rubber, and if any man has not brought

the right weight he is flogged. The severity of the flogging depends on

the amount of rubber the man is short. The deponent has not seen more

than two dozen stripes thus given. With regard to the Indians who had

not appeared in the first instance, and had to be collected, they would

be flogged and put in the _cepo_; they would get 'a good flogging.'

Sometimes the _capitán_ himself would be flogged in the station. Whole

families would be marched down in these gatherings, men with their wives

and children who would help the men with their rubber. On all these

marches the Indians would have to carry their own food too; they get no

food except what they bring themselves. They would only get food from

the white men during the time they are actually kept in the station. The

station would have a big pot of rice and beans boiled. This would be the

food. He has seen sometimes one hundred and fifty people thus marched

in. Those who have brought the fixed amount of rubber are allowed to go

back after this meal. The others are punished by being kept in _cepo_.

Some are put in a hole in the cellars of the house. There is such a

hole at Ultimo Retiro which the Consul can see when he gets there.