Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of Islam

by Augustus Warner Williams; M. Smbat Gabrielean

Much earnest and faithful missionary work had been done in the cities and towns of the various Armenian provinces, before the storm of desolation swept over them. Evangelistic, educational and medical lines had been followed and now the missionaries, who had been laboring in a land where crops had failed and where the inhabitants were leaving their homes to escape starvation, were to face massacre, pillage and horrors, such as the world had not beheld for centuries. No words of praise are adequate to tell the story of the devotion which kept them at their posts, or of the succor they extended to the victims of the Sultan’s hate.

A vivid picture of the desolation that everywhere prevailed, was given by one who was engaged in the work of distributing relief money in July, 1895.

Arresting the Murderers of Armenians.

“Semal and Shenig are situated in a continuous, moderately wide valley, with a little reach of rolling land between the encircling mountains where about half the hill fields are growing green with a sort of millet that matures in a few weeks and which the sufferers were persuaded to come and sow, with oxen loaned by the poor, but generous villagers of the Moush plain. These few fields and few people at work upon them, were all there was to relieve the sad desolation which reigned over all. Buildings, once the homes of happy and prosperous countrymen, now presented only ruined walls with not a chip to show they had ever roofs to cover them, save a few, of which a little corner was rudely covered last fall, so that the wretched owners could find imperfect shelter during last winter. The torch of the incendiary soldiers had consumed every vestige of wood from all these scattered homes. The church at the central hamlet, where Der Hohannes (whose eyes were bored out and his throat pierced, while yet alive, by the cruel soldiers), used to officiate, being of stone, was not consumed, being the only roofed building in all the valley, after that flood of carnage had swept past. Near this church we pitched our tent, and began to study the situation.

“Beneath our eye, in these two villages, had already gathered over one thousand people, whom it was our work to try and set upon their feet again, so that they could start once more on the uphill road towards prosperity. Could a community be conceived of more completely prostrated? The sheep and cattle, which composed their wealth, in the hands of Kurds, as also their few simple household belongings, cooking vessels, clothing, bedding, etc., and whatever money they may have managed to hoard. Those who fled with their lives found themselves nearly as destitute of all that makes life comfortable as the day they were born.

English liberality has already spent five thousand dollars, and the authorities gave reluctant consent to our coming up to distribute it. We located here at Semal, while the Turkish committee has its headquarters at Shenig, half an hour distant. It was evident that the thing to be first accomplished was the erection of houses, and only a few weeks remained in which it would be accomplished, so we set about persuading the people to begin preparing their walls for the timbers the government had promised them.

“Of the survivors of the massacre (of 1894), five thousand have already gathered to try and reëstablish their old homes, while possibly another eleven hundred may still be scattered over the world. It is impossible as yet to give the exact number of the slaughtered, but it will probably be not far from 4,000. We feel that unless a different status from the present can be secured to distribute anything to these people beyond daily food, is simply to run the risk of its falling into the hands of the Kurds. We have distributed a good many tools, with which the people are gathering hay, in hope of having some animal to eat it during the winter. We should be glad to furnish them with tools for laying up the walls of their houses, and even pay the wages of masons to come and help them. It is all we can do now to prevent the people from fleeing again to the plain, when all their crops would go for naught.”

Near Harpoot eleven villages were compelled to accept Mohammedanism, and also near Van the entire population of two villages were forced to change their religion. Eight villages near Van were entirely depopulated. Most of the inhabitants were killed, and those who survived escaped to the snow-covered mountains, where they wandered with their children, naked and starving. The men who were forced to accept Mohammedanism were compelled to take their own sisters-in-law, whose husbands have been killed, to wife—a practice most horrible to the Christians, who hated polygamy. They were also compelled to plunder and kill their Armenian brethren to show that their conversion to Mohammedanism was genuine. The young maidens of these villages were carried into the Pasha’s harem. The Kurds attacked the same villages over and over to make their work of destruction complete, and yet the Sultan ordered his ambassador in Washington to deny that there were any forcible conversions to Islam.

All accounts received of the hardships endured by the Armenians were distressing in the extreme. Many of the refugees, weakened by want and exposure, were dying. Fully one thousand Armenian families in the province of Van alone were in want of food. A majority of these families lived on roots and herbs, the few fortunate ones had bread made of clover seed, linseed or flax, mixed with grass and roots. In the district of Moks, three-fourths of the villagers left their homes and were in danger of starving. In Shadakh, two-thirds of the population were homeless wanderers. Beggars swarmed in the streets of Van, but so general was the poverty that little help could be afforded. So widespread was the want that many declared, in bitterness of heart, “there is no food in all the length and breadth of Armenia”—which was long ago the Garden of Eden. Many poor were fed daily at the American mission in Van.