“We said to the white men, ‘We are not enough people now to do what you
want us. Our country has not many people in it and we are dying fast. We
are killed by the work you make us do, by the stoppage of our
plantations, and the breaking up of our homes.’ The white man looked at
us and said: ‘There are lots of people in Mputu’” (Europe, the white
man’s country). “‘If there are lots of people in the white man’s country
there must be many people in the black man’s country.’ The white man who
said this was the chief white man at F F*, his name was A B, he was a
very bad man. Other white men of Bula Matadi who had been bad and wicked
were B C, C D, and D E.” “These had killed us often, and killed us by
their own hands as well as by their soldiers. Some white men were good.
These were E F, F G, G H, H I, I K, K L.”
These ones told them to stay in their homes and did not hunt and chase
them as the others had done, but after what they had suffered they did
not trust more any one’s word, and they had fled from their country and
were now going to stay here, far from their homes, in this country where
there was no rubber.
_Q._ “How long is it since you left your homes, since the big trouble
you speak of?”
_A._ “It lasted for three full seasons, and it is now four seasons since
we fled and came into the K* country.”
_Q._ “How many days is it from N* to your own country?”
_A._ “Six days of quick marching. We fled because we could not endure
the things done to us. Our Chiefs were hanged, and we were killed and
starved and worked beyond endurance to get rubber.”
_Q._ “How do you know it was the white men themselves who ordered these
cruel things to be done to you? These things must have been done without
the white man’s knowledge by the black soldiers.”
_A._ (P P): “The white men told their soldiers: ‘You kill only women;
you cannot kill men. You must prove that you kill men.’ So then the
soldiers when they killed us” (here he stopped and hesitated, and then
pointing to the private parts of my bulldog--it was lying asleep at my
feet), he said: “then they cut off those things and took them to the
white men, who said: ‘It is true, you have killed men.’”
_Q._ “You mean to tell me that any white man ordered your bodies to be
mutilated like that, and those parts of you carried to him?”
P P, O O, and all (shouting): “Yes! many white men. D E did it.”
_Q._ “You say this is true? Were many of you so treated after being
shot?”