The Putumayo, the Devil's Paradise; Travels in the Peruvian Amazon

rilE T^UTUMAYO niE DEVIL'S PARADISE W. B. HARDENBURG IMPORTERS '58°<'ICS6i,tERS 385 Wash'n St. Boston ' THE PUTUMAYO I THE PUTUMAYO THE DEVIL'S PARADISE TRAVELS IN THE PERUVIAN AMAZON REGION AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE ATROCITIES COMMITTED UPON THE INDIANS THEREIN y 7 V .. BY w!" E." HARDENBURG, :-«^- 5^< : .: EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION By C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S. fAutkor of^^ The tAndes and the tAma-zon" &c. TOGETHER WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE REPORT OF SIR ROGER CASEMENT CONFIRMING THE OCCURRENCES WITH l6 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP T. FISHER UNWIN LONDON : ADELPHI TERRACE LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 2C First Fuhlished, Deceviber, 1912 Second Impression, January, 1913 {All rights reserved.) Bancroft Library Unlvcrsify of Ca'JfoniJf. WiTHDKAWN 51 557 PREFACE \r* The extracts from Sir Roger Casement's Report, which form part of this work, are made by per- \ mission of H.M. Stationery Office. Acknowledge- rs, nient is also made for assistance rendered, both to 'v 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 un- pleasing 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. hardenbueg's narrative : source op the putumayo 54 III. THE upper putumayo . .87 IV THE central PUTUMAYO .... Ill V. THE HUITOTOS ..... 141 " VI. THE " devil's PARADISE ... 164 VII. HARDENBURG'S investigations : THE CRIMES OF THE PUTUMAYO ..... 215 VIII. CONSUL casement's REPORT . 264 CONCLUSION ...... 339 INDEX ...... 341 ILLUSTRATIONS CHAINED INDIAN RUBBER GATHERERS IN THE STOCKS : ON THE PUTUMAYO RIVER . Frontispiece FACING PAGE MAP ........ 11 THE PERUVIAN AMAZON : FREE INDIANS OF THE UCAYALI RIVER ....... 24 AN AFFLUENT OF THE PERUVIAN AMAZON . ^ INDIAN WOMAN CONDEMNED TO DEATH BY HUNGER: ON THE UPPER PUTUMAYO . .53 VEGETATION ON THE PERUVIAN AMAZON . .74 TROPICAL VEGETATION ON THE AFFLUENTS OP THE PERUVIAN AMAZON . .76 CANOB VOYAGING ON THE AMAZON : A NOONDAY REST . 96 A TYPICAL RIVER BANK CLEARING .... 108 A HUITOTO INDIAN RUBBER GATHERER . 152 9 10 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE GUAMARES INDIANS, OF THE HUITOTO TRIBE, IN DANCE COSTUME ...... 162 RUBBER-COLLECTING RIVER LAUNCH .... 176 NATIVE WOMEN AND HUT AT IQUITOS . 196 FREE INDIANS OF THE UCAYALI RIVER . 208 A SIDE STREET AT IQUITOS ..... 232 RIVER ITAYA, NEAR IQUITOS ..... 250 HUITOTOS AT ENTRE RIOS AND BARBADOS NEGRO OVERSEER 286 'Sfej^Ki' 'uT'^TJT^- C S fnnci Reproduced by kind permission of the proprietors of The Tiu THE PUTUMAYO CHAPTER I 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 bj^ the traveller and student to-day—should, in the twentieth century, have been the scene of the ruina- tion 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. u ' fc im^^ ^:m!' THE PUTUMAYO CHAPTER I 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 ruina- tion 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- u 12 THE PUTUMAYO 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 head- " " quarters in London : the crime of these unfor- tunates being that they did not always bring in rubber sufficiently fast—work for which they practically^ received no payment—to satisfy their task- masters. 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—ati'ocities worse than those of the Congo—cannot be regarded merely as an isolated phenomenon. Such incidents are the extreme manifestation of a condition which ex- presses itself in different forms all over the world— * Pronounced Put-oo-my-o. a INTRODUCTION 13 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 pro- duce 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 con- science 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— 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 ; aiid 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 14 THE PUTUMAYO Amazon Valley is largely due to the fact that during three hundred years of Portuguese dominion it was closed commercially to the outside world. Slave- raiding 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, Marafion, 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 fol- lowers, 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.

Load more