CHAPTER XIX
THE INDIAN UPRISING
It was in the cold dusk of the high altitude and tingling with the chill winds that blew from Mount Sorata when we clattered through the streets of Achicachi. Little crystals of ice were already forming in the stagnant pools and little flurries of snow stung as it whistled through the dull streets of this ancient town. On the edge of Lake Titicaca, this ancient town of Achicachi is the home of petty smugglers who can run their contraband in the native straw boats across from the Peruvian shores. The remains of the old mud wall that surrounded it in the days of the Incas are still fairly preserved in places and its population is still practically Aymará, with only a sprinkling of half-breed Cholos.
On fiesta days the little police are held in their barracks on the big open plaza and sally forth only in parties. The Aymarás gather in great numbers from a score of tribal divisions and unite in the typical drunken dances and festivities. Factions forget and renew old differences and toward evening little battles break out in the streets or the plaza. The streets are unsafe and the few white Bolivians and better Cholos stay within. Always there is the danger of an Indian uprising and that occasionally takes form. Between times in the fiestas the Aymarás are handled without regard, at the first word—or less—they are clubbed and for but little more shot.
The dusk of fiesta is filled with drunken, sullen Indians among whom wander here and there dishevelled creatures with clotted wounds. Occasionally the sullen buzz rises, a little restless movement begins from some section of the big plaza, and in a moment a knot of Bolivian police are plunging in to come back with bloody carbine butts. Always there is the dull hatred of the Bolivian by the Aymará which comes easily to the surface at these times. And there is not a Bolivian statute governing the sale of liquor to an Aymará; if he gets dangerous when drunk, beat him; if too dangerous, kill him.
In the “hotel” in Achicachi the rooms are windowless and range around the four sides of the patio. You furnish your own bed and bedding and each holds a heavy log with which to bar the door. In the patio and in and out of the open rooms some native razor-back hogs wandered at their will and off on one side, more exclusive, was a friendly peccary who would sidle up and grunt sociably in return for a little back scratching. Over by one of the rooms and tied outside was the queerest animal; from across the patio it looked like a very small bear with heavy, long fur yet with queer indefinable difference that explained itself when a closer approach developed a monkey! He was a capucin, the most friendly and delightful of the monkey tribe, and here he was, miles from his warm, tropical home, cheerfully chattering by the side of a tin can that was already filmed with ice and sticking out his pink tongue to lick off the flakes of snow that gathered on his fur—a fur that had grown to enormous length and thickness and left him peering with a brown, quizzical face out from it like a shrivelled winter-clad chauffeur of some stock broker’s quean.
The next evening we arrived in Sorata—and from there on the difficulties began to pile themselves, one on the other. A big, abrupt and surly egotist had been carefully chosen by some Board of Directors back in the States to manage a rubber proposition—in a frontier country like that every one depends for countless things on neighbors, though neighbors may mean separations that measure hundreds of miles—yet this gentleman had left a trail of hostility from the coast, besides a record for both Scotch and rye whiskey that could hardly be surpassed. He wore khaki clothes and a Colt with a nine inch barrel on his strolls in Sorata and he published conspicuously in bad Spanish and English, which he ordered translated, his opinion of all, Bolivian, Cholo, Aymará, or American.
His company had committed unutterable follies from a leather director’s chair seven thousand miles away and he proposed to see those follies carried out to the letter. Sometimes we have wondered why our efforts in South American trade and development have met with such scanty success. He was one of the reasons. Rumors came that he had become hostile to our camp down the river, that they encroached on his privileges or were using men whom he had contracted, though we were miles from his properties or influence. As a matter of fact the leather chair directors had made a contract for callapos at a figure below cost to the balseros—and for an advance payment—and had been swindled. The leather chair directors had merely swindled themselves in what was at best an oversharp Yankee bargain—and in a country where the law does not run east of the Andes and only primitive justice prevails! In default of either of the latter, he proposed to dictate to any one who went into the montaña and down the river when and how they might or might not use callapos offered by balseros. But I had at that time other things to think of.
A pack train of some fifty mules with supplies had come in from La Paz for our camp. Also some fifteen Cholo laborers, and a mechanic for the camp and among them a Jap, a queer, silent, pink-cheeked Jap. He was immaculate in appearance and always dapper; how or why he ever drifted into that part of the world was a mystery. He had a little baggage in a nice little lacquered box which, as was revealed later in the rainswept stone hut of Tolopampa, contained the secret of his pink cheeks. In that dull dawn he had out a little mirror and a bit of carmine and charcoal with which he was adding beautifying touches. On down the river in camp he always appeared the same; but he was a fine workman and could go teetering along on the ridgepole of a house as easily as a Lecco could run along the river bank. And this outfit arrived with no money to pay for itself, money that the company should have, and had promised to send in.
The agent left by the engineer in La Paz had sent no money and the outfit promptly began eating its head off. The single wire that irregularly kept La Paz in touch with Sorata was down—very likely one of the times when an Aymará had needed some wire in wrapping his iron ploughshare fast to the crooked tree trunk or for tying on his roof tree—and I could not reach the agent. Another day and no wire fixed. On the third came the news from the village of Illabaya, some fifteen miles away that the Aymarás had broken loose and there was an Indian uprising. From the valley of Sorata we could see the mountains with tiny fires flickering at night, apparently as signals, and occasionally an Indian driving a string of cattle into hiding along some far off Andean trail. The householders in Sorata began storing water in ollas in their patios and rifles and cartridges tripled in price. And still there was no wire to La Paz by which either I or the intendente—who wanted soldiers—could get a message through from Sorata.
The men were boarded out and money was absolutely essential to keep their rations going and to pay any more bills that might come in with more pack trains. Once let the slightest suspicion get the air that there was no money at hand and the workmen would have fled like quail and it would have been a matter of the utmost difficulty to secure them, or any others, again. It meant a very serious emergency for the camp. What had happened in La Paz I did not know, but it became imperative to find out, Aymará outbreak or not. The only man available to go with me, Skeffington, was a great tall man, proportionately built, and a splendid fellow, whose weight would be a handicap to a horse in any emergency. So I decided to go alone.