Chapter VIII: Consul Casement's Report (1)

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.

[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:--