The Putumayo : the devil's paradise, travels in the Peruvian Amazon Region and an account of the atrocities committed upon the Indians therein

Front matter

F. DEVIL'S PARADISE

W. E. IIARDENBURG

I i

Preface

The extracts from Sir Roger Casement's Report, which form part of this worl^, are made by permission of H.M. Stationery Office. Acknowledgement is also made for assistance rendered, both to the Rev. J. H. Harris, Organising Secretary of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, and to the Editor of Truth. Portions of Mr. Hardenburg's accounts have been omitted, and some revisions necessarily made, but the statements of adventures and the occurrences remain as in the original and stand upon their own responsibility. The unpleasing task of editing this book— which stands as perhaps the most terrible page in the whole history of commercialism— has been undertaken in the hope that permanent betterment in the condition of the unfortunate aborigines of South America will be brought about.

THE EDITOR.

Contents

CHAP, PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION . . . . . .11

II. hardenburg's narrative : source of the putumayo 54

Introduction

It is something of a terrible irony of fate that in a land whose people for unknown centuries, and up to only four hundred years ago, lived under social laws *' so beneficent as had never been known under any ancient kings of Asia, Africa, or Europe, or under any Christian monarch "—laws recorded by a reliable historian and partly capable of verification by the traveller and student to-day— should, in the twentieth century, have been the scene of the ruination and wholesale torture and murder of tribes of its defenceless and industrious inhabitants. Under the Incas of Peru, as recorded by the Inca -Spanish historian Garcilaso de la Vega * and other early writers, human blood was never shed purposely ; every inhabitant was provided for and had a place in a well-ordered social economic plan ; there was

* Garcilaso was born in 1540- 11 no such condition as beggary or destitution ; the people were instructed by statute to help each other co-operatively ; injustice and corruption were unknown ; and there was a belief in a Supreme Director of the Universe. Under the Peruvian republic and the regimen of absentee capitalism to-day, tribes of useful people of this same land have been defrauded, driven into slavery, ravished, tortured, and destroyed. This has been done, not in single instances at the command of some savage potentate, but in tens of thousands under a republican Government, in a Christianised country, at the behest of the agents of a great joint-stock company with headquarters in London : the " crime " of these unfortunates being that they did not always bring in rubber sufficiently fast— work for which they practically received no payment— to satisfy their taskmasters. In order to obtain rubber so that the luxurious -tyred motor-cars of civilisation might multiply in the cities of Christendom, the dismal forests of the Amazon have echoed with the cries of despairing and tortured Indian aborigines. These are not things of the imagination, but a bare statement of actual occurrence, as set forth by the various witnesses in this volume.

The occurrences in the Amazon Valley which, under the name of tlie Putumayo * Rubber Atrocities of Peru, have startled the public mind and aroused widespread horror and indignation— atrocities worse than those of the Congo— cannot be regarded merely as an isolated phenomenon. Such incidents are the extreme manifestation of a condition which expresses itself in different forms ail over the world— * Pronounced Put-oo-my-o, the condition of acute and selfish commercialism or industrialism whose exponents, in enriching themselves, deny a just proportion of the fruits of the earth and of their toil to the labourers who produce the wealth. The principle can be seen at work in almost any country, in almost every industry ; and although its methods elsewhere are lacking in savage lust and barbarity, they still work untold suffering upon mankind. It is easy to condemn offhand the nation of Peru, under whose nominal control the foul spot of the Putumayo exists, and to whose negligence and cupidity the blame for the occurrences is largely to be laid, but the conscience of world-wide commercialism ought also to be pricked.

Leaving, however, that broader aspect of the subject, it is necessary to understand the local conditions which could have brought about such occurrences. The region of the Amazon Valley — a region nearly as large as the whole of Europe without Russia— was early divided between Spain and Portugal. Brazil to-day occupies the eastern and most extensive portion of the valley ; and the various Andine republics, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela, cover the upper and western portion. The Amazon is the largest river in the world ; the entire fluvial system, with perhaps an aggregate of a hundred thousand miles of navigable^ rivers and streams, gives access to an enormous territory of forests and plains, which neither road nor railway has yet penetrated.

It is to be recollected that the interior of South America is the least known of any of the continents at the present time. Large areas of territory are practically unexplored. The backward state of the

Amazon Valley is largely due to the fact that during three hundred years of Portuguese dominion it was closed commercially to the outside world. Slaveraiding by the Portuguese and the Brazilians went on unchecked. The colonists even fought against and destroyed the Jesuit missions which the devout and humane of their priests had established. The whole valley has existed under a dark cloud ever since the time when, in 1540, the first white man, Orellana, Pizarro's lieutenant, descended the Napo, Maranon, and Amazon from Quito to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1638 Pedro de Texiera performed his great feat of ascending the Amazon from the Atlantic to Quito, and descending it again in 1639, one of the most noteworthy explorations in history. Exaggerations of Indian savagery and dangers of climate have deterred settlers in later times. As for the Putumayo region, it was practically unknown until the last decade of the nineteenth century. The name " Amazon " was probably a result of the experiences of Orellana and his followers, who were attacked by a tribe of Indians, the Nahumedes, on the river of the same name, whose long hair and dress of chemises or shirts caused the explorers to think their attackers were women -warriors, or " amazons." There is no proof of the existence of any empire of women in South America, although there is a legend bearing on the subject.

The Putumayo River rises near Pasto, in the Andes of Colombia, and traverses a vast region which forms one of the least-known areas of the earth's surface. This river is nearly a thousand miles long, flowing through territory which is claimed both by Peru and Colombia, and enters the main stream of the Amazon in Brazil. The river crosses the equator in its upper portion. The notorious rubber-bearing region upon the Putumayo and its affluents, the Igaraparana and the Caraparana, lies within a square forlned by the equator on the north, the 2nd parallel of latitude on the south, and the 72nd and 74th degrees of longitude west of Greenwich. Like most of the Amazon tributaries, the Putumayo and its two affluents are navigable throughout the greater part of their courses, giving access by water up to the base of the Andes ; and the rubber traffic is carried out by means of steam-launches and canoes.

The Caraparana and Igaraparana rivers, both flowing from the north-west, run parallel for about four hundred miles through dense, continuous forests, discharging into the Putumayo, the first some six hundred miles and the second some four hundred miles above the confluence of that river with the Amazon. The accompanying map renders clear these conditions, and it will be seen that the region is a considerable distance from Iquitos, nearly a thousand miles by water, the small, intermittent river steamers of the rubber traders occupying two weeks in the journey ; and a part of the course lies through Brazilian waterway. A much more direct route can be made by effecting a portage from the Putumayo to the Napo River, which enters the Amazon about fifty miles below Iquitos. The Putumayo region, therefore, must be regarded as an extremely outlying part of Peru, with corresponding difficulties of access and governance.

The native people inhabiting the region are mainly the Huitotos, with other tribes of more or less similar character, but with different names.

These people, although known as infieles and salvages— ihsii is, " un-faithed " and " savage "— cannot be described as savages in the ordinary sense of the term. They have nothing in common with the bloody savages of Africa and other parts of the world. Their weapons are not adapted for taking life so much as for hunting, and although the tribes of the Amazon Valley have always fought against each other and have reduced their numbers by inter-tribal strife, they are not generally a fortress -building people, and the noiseless blowpipe takes the place of the blood -shedding weapons of the indigenes of other lands. The Agarunas of the Maraiion, however, build war -towers for defence, as do some other tribes.* The tunday or manguare, the remarkable instrument for signalling or communicating by sound through the forest, is used by various tribes in the Amazon Valley. Most of the tribes live in great community -houses. The Indians of the Amazon Valley in general are docile and have good qualities ; they are naturally free from immorality and disease ; they have a strong affection for their women and children and a regard for the aged. They are well worthy of preservation, and might have been a valuable asset to the region. The particular people of the Putumayo region have decreased greatly since the advent of the rubber " industry," as has been the case all over the Amazon Valley : on the Putumayo they have been reduced, it is calculated, from forty or fifty thousand to less than ten thousand, partly by abuse and massacre, partly by having fled to more remote districts away from their persecutors. The local conditions which rendered possible the * See " Peru " by the present writer, London, 1909.

Putumayo atrocities are to be found, first, in the character of the Iberian and Iberian -descended' peoples of South America, and, second, in the topographical formation of the country. To take the last -mentioned first. The condition must be borne in mind that the region of the Amazon forests is in every way separate from the region of the mountains and that of the coast. The coast region of Peru, bordering upon the Pacific Ocean, is a rainless, treeless zone, upon which vegetation is only possible under irrigation, but upon which the modern Peruvian civilisation flourishes ; Lima, the capital of the country, being situated only a dozen miles from the sea. To the east of this Europeanised region arise the mountain ranges of the Andes, which cut off the forest lowlands so completely from the coast that the two may be regarded as separate countries. The mountain regions embody 'vast, treeless tablelands, broken by more or less fertile valleys, and overlooked by snow-clad peaks and ranges, and are subject in general to a^ cold, inclement climate, with heavy rainfall. The uplands lie at an elevation of 12,000 ft. and upwards above sea-level, and the dividing ranges are crossed at 14,000 to 17,000 ft., with only one or two passes between Western and Eastern Peru, at a lower elevation. The line of tree-life begins at an elevation of about 10,000 to 11,000 ft., this forest region being known as the Montana of Peru, merging by degrees into the great selvas or forests of Brazil. These topographical details serve to show how greatly Western and Eastern Peru are cut off from each other. The conditions similarly, affect Colombia and Ecuador, and, to a certain extent, Bolivia, but the last-named country does not extend to the Pacific coast. It is in the isolation of the cis-Andine from the trans-Andine regions that Peru may claim some palliation for the offences on the Putumayo, The river port of Iquitos is from thirty to forty days' journey from Lima under existing means of travel. The easiest method of reaching the one from the other is by way of Southampton, or New York, and Panama. A system of wireless telegraphy is now in operation across the six hundred miles of coast, mountain, and forest territory separating the two cities.

The topographical conditions described had influenced the human inhabitants of Peru before the time of the Spaniards. The aboriginal race inhabiting the highlands and the coast lived then, as they do to-day, in a manner distinct from each other. The highland and coast people were those who formed the population under the Inca government, and under whose control they had reached a high degree of aboriginal civilisation ; whilst the indigenes of the forests were more or less roving bands of savages, dwelling on the river banks, without other forms of government than that of the Caracas, or petty chiefs of families or tribe. The influence of the Incas did undoubtedly extend into the forest regions in a degree, as evidenced by remaining customs and nomenclature, but the Incas did not establish order and civilisation in the forests as upon the highlands. The Incas and their predecessors built a series of fortresses which comhianded the heads of the precipitous valleys leading to the forests, whose ruins remain to-day, and are marvels of ingenuity in megalithic construction. After the conquest the Inca population of the highlands and coast became Christianised, and at the present time the whole of the vast territory of the Pacific coast and Andine uplands, extending throughout Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia for two thousand miles, is under the regimen of the Romish Church, and every village contains its iglesia and village priest. In very different condition are, on the other hand, the aborigines of the forests, who live neither under civil nor religious authority. But there was probably no fundamental or racial difference between the upland and forestal Indians, and they resemble each other in many respects, with differences due to climate and environment. Remains of ancient civilisations, in the form of stone ruins and appliances, are found east of the Andes, in the Amazon forest regions, and the Chaco plains, arguing the existence of prehistoric conditions of a superior character. Legends and customs among the forest tribes seem to refer in a dim, vague way to ancient conditions and happenings of other environments ; and there can be little doubt that the archaeology and origin of the South American people are far from being fully understood. Further exploration of this little -known region may produce much of interest, and unravel mysteries which the dense forest at present conceals.

One of the principal tributaries of the Amazon is the River Maranon, which flows from the south for a thousand miles between two parallel chains of the Andes, and breaking through a remarkable canon, known as the Pongo de Manseriche, turns suddenly to the east and forms the main Amazon waterway. Above the Pongo, or rapids, the river is navigable only for very small craft, but below it forms the head of steam navigation. The upper Maranon flows down through a high, difficult territory, with many fertile valleys, and upon its headlands and the adjacent slopes of the mountains are freely scattered the ruins of the Inca and pre-Inca peoples, who inhabited the region in pre -Hispanic times and even contemporaneously with the Spaniards.* From this district, and from the valleys to the west of Cuzco and Titicaca, it was that the Inca influence mainly entered the forest regions of the Peruvian Montana.

It is interesting to note that the *' Mongolian " resemblance to the Huitotos Indians of the Putumayo is again observed in Sir Roger Casement's Report. f The resemblance between the aboriginals of the Andine and Amazon regions of South America and Asiatic peoples is striking, as indeed it is with the natives in some parts of Mexico. The present writer has dealt fully with the matter, as bearing upon the possible peopling of America by Tartars in remote times, in a book recently published. J The subject is one of great interest. One school of thought denies any imported origin for early American culture, and considers the Aztec and Inca civilisations to have been autochthonous, a natural

* The present writer travelled extensively in this region, which he described in an address to the Royal Geographical Society, and in his book, " The Andes and the Amazon." London, 1907 : T. Fisher Unwin (4th edition).

f Foreign Office Reports, Miscellaneous, No. 8, 1912.

I *' The Secret of the Pacific." London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1912.

INTRODUCTION Sil

reaction of man to his environment ^ whilst the other points to the great probability, as adduced in archjpological and other matters, of some prehistoric Asiatic influence.

The abuses connected with rubber -gathering in the Amazon Valley are not a new or sudden condition. The ill-treatment of the Indians in the rubber-bearing regions of Peru were^ brought to public notice in England and the United States in the book before mentioned, published in 1907, showing that the aborigines were being destroyed, sold into slavery, and murdered by the white rubber-gatherers or merchants several years before the matter culminated in the publication of the Putumayo atrocities. The present writer also wrote to various London periodicals in an endeavour to arouse interest in the subject, but none of the journals specially took the matter up.

The Peruvian Government and the Press of the Republic have long been aware that the Indians of the forest regions were brutally exploited by the rubber merchants and gatherers. Reports and articles have been made and published both by officials and travellers. That Indians were sold at Iquitos and elsewhere as slaves and that there was a constant traffic in Indian women has been known to the authorities ever since rubber-gathering began. In 1906, in Lima, the Director of Public Works, one of the most important of the Government departments, handed the present writer an official publication * dealing with Eastern Peru,

* Documentos oficiales del Departmento de Loreto, Lima, 1905, of which extracts were published in " The Andes and the Amazon."

which contained among other matters an account by a Government official of that region of the barbarities committed upon tlie Indians, a translation of a portion of which is given here. The present writer had undertaken to make a preliminary survey or reconnaisance on behalf of the Government of a route for a railway from the Pacific coast to the Maranon, which would give access to the interior and be of considerable strategic importance.

The following translation of part of a Report in the official publication, dated February, 1905, by a Peruvian engineer in the service of the Government * shows that the abuse of the Indians was a matter of current knowledge :—

*' Marked changes have been produced among the savage tribes of the Oriental regions of Peru by the industry of collecting the * black gold,' as the rubber is termed. Some of them have accepted the * civilisation ' offered by the rubber -merchants, others have been annihilated by them. On the other hand, alcohol, rifle bullets, and smallpox have worked havoc among them in a few years. I take this opportunity of protesting before the civilised world against the abuses and unnecessary destruction of these primitive beings, whom the rapacity of so-called civilised man has placed as mere mercantile products in the Amazon markets ; for it is a fact known to every one that the native slaves are quoted there like any other merchandise. Throughout the forest region under the control of the Governments of Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, and

* Jorge von Hassel.

Brazil the natives are exposed to attack without protection of the law by the whites, who hunt and persecute them like animals of the jungle, recognising as their only value the sum represented by their sale. If protection is not afforded these unhappy beings, the just Judge of the doings of all will condemn the generation which annihilates without cause the indigenous races, the real owners of the soil."

The principal newspaper of Lima, El Comercio, a journal of high standing, has repeatedly drawn attention to the ill-treatment and exploitation of the Indians, not only in the regions of the Putumayo and Iquitos but much farther to the south — as, for example, in the district round Port Maldonado. This river port is nearly two thousand miles from the Putumayo region, southward across Peru, reached by launch and canoe upon a different river system, that of the Beni River. The upper courses of this river are known as the Madre de Dios, upon which Port Maldonado is situated, and whose lower course is the enormous Madera River, which runs into the Amazon in Brazil in latitude 59°, more than one thousand miles below Iquitos. At Port Maldonado is the confluence of the Tambopata River with the Madre de Dios, and farther upstream is the Inambari River. The whole of this region is rich in rubber forests, and several companies are engaged in rubber-gathering, including British, American, Bolivian, and Peruvian. The following translation from El Comercio of Lima in an edition of February, 1906, shows that more or less similar methods were employed at points so far apart as Maldonado and the Putumayo :—

"In the basin of the Madre de Dios and its affluents, where it is easy to navigate with the help of the ' terrible ' Ghunchos,* who in reality are good and hospitable, exist immense quantities of rubber, rich and abundant rubber forests of easy exploitation. It would appear that the new Commissioner is resolved to put a stop to the barbarous custom of the correrrias f organised by the authorities themselves or by the rubber-merchants, who carry on the repugnant business of selling the poor Ghunchos. As labour and women are both scarce, and as there is a strong demand for the one and the other, bands of armed men are constantly organised for sudden descents upon groups or communities of the savages, no matter whether they arc friendly or hostile, making them prisoners in the midst of extermination and blood. Urged on by the profit resulting from the sale of boys, robust youths, and young women (frescas mujeres)^ they, tear children from mothers and wives from husbands without pity, and pass them from hand to hand as slaves. It were well to take the savages from their forests to use their labour and to cultivate their intelligence, but not for business purposes to make them victims of the knife and the lash."

Thus the Press of the country itself shows that these things are done, not only with the connivance of the authorities but are *' organised by the authorities themselves." The expected improvements mentioned above took place very slowly, and in some cases not at all. To replace one Commissioner by another is insufficient. All are equally * Name given to the Indians. f Slave raids.

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J2 venal or influenced, and King Log does but give place to King Stork. Barbarities committed by the rubber -merchants upon the Indians of the Ucayali and Marafion were brought to the knowledge of the Peruvian Government in 1903 and 1906 by Roman Catholic missionaries established there and published by the Minister of Justice.*

After extensive journeys in the interior of Peru, upon returning to the capital, the present writer wrote various articles, which were published in the Press of Lima and Arequipa, drawing attention to the miserable condition of life of the labouring Indian class. Among these evils is abuse by petty authorities and estate -owners, 'who employ the Indians and fail to pay them their agreed wages or pa}- them in goods of inadequately low value ; the extortions of the village priests under the cloak of religious customs ; and, most serious of all, the ravages resulting upon the consumption of aguardiente^ or fiery sugar-cane rum, which is responsible for the ruination and decrease of the working population. This cane spirit is manufactured largely by the sugar-estate owners, and is often a more profitable product than the sugar, whose output is sacrificed thereto ; but as the large estate -owners are often influential personages or politicians and members of the Legislature, the prohibition of the profitable sale of alcohol among the Indians is not likely to be brought about. The leading newspaper of Lima, El Comercio^ in a leading article, of which the following is a partial translation, said :—

" It is not rare, unfortunately, in the Republic "^ See Consul Casement's Reports.

that the authorities of all kinds raise up abuses as a supreme law against the villages of the interior. For the Indians of the mountains and the uplands there often exists neither the Constitution nor positive rights. It would be useless to seek in the indigenous race beings really free and masters of their acts and persons. It looks as though independence had only been saved for the dwellers of the coast. From the moment that the traveller's gaze ceases to observe the ocean and is directed over the interminable chain of the Andes it ceases also to observe free men, the citizens of an independent republic. To this condition, which is not abnormal because it has always existed, the ignorance of the Indian contributes, but also the abuses of the authorities, who, with rare exceptions, make of them objects of odious spoliation. Such depredations are aggravated when its victims are unfortunate and unhappy beings, towards whom there is every obligation to protect, and not to exploit."

The most remarkable fact about the maltreatment of the South American Indians is thatadmitted and specially alluded to in the Peruvian Press, as the foregoing extracts show— abuses are carried out often by the petty authorities themselves. It is painful for a foreigner, one, moreover, who has enjoyed hospitality both from the authorities and from the village priests in the interior of Peru, to record these matters, but it is manifestly a duty. Moreover, it is a service to the country itself to draw attention to the evil. The extinction of the indigenous labour of the Andine highlands and of the rubber forests will render impossible for a long period the internal development of the country. No foreign or imported race can perform the work of the Peruvian miner or rubber-gatherer. Due to the peculiar conditions of climate— the great altitude in the one case and the humidity in the other— no European or Asiatic people could taivC the place of these people, whose work can only be accomplished by those who have paid Nature the homage of being born upon the soil and inured to its conditions throughout many generations.* It might have been supposed that from economic reasons alone the exploiters of native labour would have endeavoured to foster and preserve it, even if it were simply on the principle of feeding and stabling a horse in order to use its powers to the utmost. But this is not the case. The economic principle of conserving the efficiency of human labour by its employer, remarkable as it may seem, has never been recognised even in the most enlightened communities, or only very recently and in a very few instances. It is not necessary to go to the tropics to seek instances ; they are evident no farther afield than among the ill -paid mining, dock, manufacturing, and other labour in Great Britain and the United States. The very abundance of labour has been its own undoing ; the supply has seemed exhaustless

'■' These abuses of the Upland Indians are constantly being carried out. Whilst this book was in press accounts were received of systematic ill-treatment, murder, and slavery of the natives in the Montana of Cuzco and elsewhere, published in El Comercio of Lima under date of June and July, 1912. These districts are by no means remote from centres of government.

and the tendency has been to squander it. The question is one of degree rather than of principle in any community or industry and at any time in history. But in the persecuted districts of Latin America native labour is practically being hounded off the face of the earth.

The Putumayo atrocities were first brought to public notice by an American engineer and his companion, Messrs. Hardenburg and Perkins, and the interesting narrative by the former of their travels upon the Putumayo River forms a large part of the subject of this book. Mr. Hardenburg and his companion suffered great hardships and imprisonment at the hands of the Peruvian agents of the rubber company on the Putumayo, and barely escaped with their lives. For these outrages some time afterwards they were awarded the sum of £500 damages by the Peruvian Government, due to the action of the United States. Mr. Hardenburg came to London from Iquitos in financial straits, but only with considerable difficulty was able to draw public attention to the occurrences on the Putumayo. Messrs. Hardenburg and Perkins's account and indictment of the methods employed by the company's agents on the Putumayo, under the name of " The Devil's Paradise," was a terrible one. It was averred that the peaceful Indians were put to work at rubber -gathering without payment, • without food, in nakedness ; that their women were stolen, ravished, and murdered ; that the Indians were flogged until their bones were laid bare when they failed to bring in a sufficient quota of rubber or attempted to escape, were left to die with their wounds festering with maggots, and their bodies were used as food for the agents' dogs ; that flogging of men, women, and children was the least of the tortures employed ; that the Indians were mutilated in the stocks, cut to pieces with machetes, crucified head downwards, their limbs lopped off, targetshooting for diversion was practised upon them, and that they were soused in petroleum and burned alive, both men and women. The details of these matters were almost too repugnant for production in print, and only their outline was published.