The Putumayo, the Devil's Paradise: Travels in the Peruvian Amazon Region and an Account of the Atrocities Committed upon the Indians ThereinHardenburg, W. E. (Walter Ernest)
History
The Putumayo, the Devil's Paradise: Travels in the Peruvian Amazon Region and an Account of the Atrocities Committed upon the Indians Therein
Hardenburg, W. E. (Walter Ernest)
Peru -- Description and travel; Peruvian Amazon Company; Putumayo River; Rubber industry and trade -- Peru
"The unrelieved barbarity of this Report does not rest alone on the
testimony of the Barbados men whose depositions accompany it. I had
other evidence to go by at the outset, and this was found to be in more
than one instance amply confirmed by the independent statements of the
British witnesses and again and again borne out by the evidence of our
own eyes and the general conditions of the Indians. Could these people
have been themselves fully interrogated, the weight of testimony would
have been far greater, but could not have been more convincing.
"A magistrate was said to be residing at one of the company's stations
on that river, but I never heard him once referred to, and when
peculiarly atrocious crimes were dragged to light, admitted, and
deplored, the criminal charged with them would be sitting at table with
us, and the members of the company's commission and myself were appealed
to to give no indication of our disgust lest this man 'might do worse
things' to the Indians or provoke an impossible situation with the armed
bandits under his orders. The apology for this extraordinary situation
was that there was 'no authority, no administration, no one near to whom
any appeal could be made,' and that Iquitos was 1,200 miles away. Every
chief of section was a law unto himself, and many of the principal
agents of this British company were branded by the representative of
that company, holding its power of attorney, in conversation with me as
'murderers, pirates, and bandits.'"
* * * * *
A considerable part of Consul Casement's Report is taken up with the
depositions, sworn before him, of the Barbados men; one of these, by
name Stanley Lewis, stated:--
"I have seen Indians killed for sport, tied up to trees and shot at by
Fonseca and the others. After they were drinking they would sometimes do
this. They would take a man out of the _cepo_ and tie him to a tree, and
shoot him for a target. I have often seen Indians killed thus, and also
shot after they had been flogged and their flesh was rotten through
maggots."
This man also described terrible barbarities committed on and murder of
two Indian girls by Fonseca. James Chase, another Barbados man, gave a
long account of Indians being flogged to death, starved, or shot, and
describes the terrible occurrence connected with the murdering of the
family of Katerene as follows:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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