Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their coloniesHowitt, William
History
Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their colonies
Howitt, William
Indians, Treatment of; Indigenous peoples
Others were tied, two and two, by the feet, and thrown across a wooden
bar, upon which they hung with their feet uppermost. They were then
beat on the soles of the feet till the toe-nails dropped off! They were
afterwards beat about the head till the blood gushed out at the mouth,
nose, and ears. They were also flogged upon the naked body with bamboo
canes, and prickly bushes, and above all, with some poisonous weeds,
which were of a caustic nature, and burnt at every touch. The cruelty
of the monster who had ordered all this, had contrived how to tear the
mind as well as the body. He frequently had a father and son tied naked
to one another by the feet and arms, and then flogged till the skin
was torn from the flesh; and he had the devilish satisfaction to know,
that every blow must hurt; for if one escaped the son, his sensibility
was wounded by the knowledge he had, that the blow had fallen upon his
father. The same torture was felt by the father, when he knew that
every blow that missed him had fallen upon his son.
“The treatment of the females could not be described. Dragged from the
inmost recesses of their houses, which the religion of the country
had made so many sanctuaries, they were exposed naked to public view.
The Virgins were carried to the Court of Justice, where they might
naturally have looked for protection, but they now looked for it in
vain; for in the face of the ministers of justice, in the face of the
spectators, in the face of the sun, those tender and modest virgins
were brutally violated. The only difference between their treatment
and that of their mothers was, that the former were dishonoured in the
face of day, the latter in the gloomy recesses of their dungeon. Other
females had the nipples of their breasts put in a cleft bamboo, and
torn off.” What follows is too shocking and indecent to transcribe!
It is almost impossible, in reading of these frightful and savage
enormities, to believe that we are reading of a country under the
British government, and that these unmanly deeds were perpetrated by
British agents, and for the purpose of extorting the British revenue.
Thus were these innocent and unhappy people treated, because Warren
Hastings wanted money, and sold them to a wretch whom he knew to be a
wretch, for a bribe; thus were they treated, because Devi Sing had paid
his four lacs of rupees, and must wring them again out of the miserable
ryots, though it were with their very life’s blood, and with fire and
torture before unheard of even in the long and black catalogue of
human crimes. And it should never be forgotten, that though Mr. Burke
pledged himself, if permitted, under the most awful imprecations, to
prove every word of this barbarous recital, such permission was stoutly
refused; and that, moreover, the evidence of the Commissioner Patterson
stands in the Company’s own records.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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