Indians of the fate they too would incur if they did not obey the white man. "Perhaps the bravest and most resolute opponent the murderers had encountered had met his death only a few months, or even weeks, before my arrival in the district. This was a Boras cacique, or _capitán_--often referred to in the depositions of those I examined--named Katenere. This man, who was not an old man, but young and strong, lived on the upper waters of the Pamá, a small stream that empties into the Cahuinari not far from its mouth in the Japurá. My interpreter, Bishop, had seen this chief in 1907, when Normand had gone to find him in order to induce him to work rubber. He had, from necessity no doubt, consented to bring in rubber, and for some time had worked voluntarily for Normand, until, through bad treatment, he, like so many others, had fled. He had been captured later on, along with his wife and some of his people, and confined in the stocks of the Abisinia district, to undergo the taming process. While thus himself a prisoner, his wife, so I was informed by a Peruvian white man holding a well-paid post in the company's service, had been publicly violated before his eyes by one of the highest agents of the Syndicate, a Peruvian whose name and record was frequently brought forward in the course of my inquiry. This man had been obliged to fly from the Caraparaná agency on account of his crimes in that region in 1908. "As a rule, the criminals who controlled the Indian population of the Putumayo were chary of robbing an Indian husband of his wife. The harems were maintained mainly by orphans, generally girls whose parents were 'dead.' Asking once why it was that the wives of the Indians seemed usually to be spared this contamination, a reliable witness answered me: 'Because, sir, if they takes an Indian's wife, that Indian don't work rubber.' I urged that since these men stuck at no act of terrorisation to make Indians work rubber, a husband could be forced, even if robbed of his wife, to go and get rubber. 'No, sir,' my informant said, 'the Indians loves their wives, and if she is taken they won't work rubber. They can kill them, do anything they like to them, but the Indian won't work rubber.'