“The forced exodus of the last part of the Armenian population from a certain district took place on June 1st, 1915. All the villages as well as three-quarters of the town, had already been evacuated. An escort of fifteen gendarmes followed the third convoy, which included 4000 to 5000 persons. The prefect of the city had wished them a pleasant journey. But at a few hours’ distance from the town, the caravan was surrounded by bands of a brigand-tribe, and by a mob of Turkish peasants armed with guns, axes, and clubs. They first began plundering their victims, searching carefully even the very young children. The gendarmes sold to the Turkish peasants what they could not carry away with them. After they had taken even the food of these unhappy people, the massacre of the males began, including two priests, one of whom was ninety. In six or seven days all males above fifteen years of age had been murdered.
“It was the beginning of the end. People on horseback raised the veils of the women, and carried off the pretty ones.”
The following is a portion of a detailed description by an eye-witness, who was in the company on the march, and saw the third batch, above mentioned, of 5000 to melt out before they stopped in a halting place after thirty-two days:
“... The rest of the population was sent off in three batches; I was among the third batch.... Our party left on June 1st (old style), fifteen gendarmes going with us.... Very many women and girls were carried off to the mountains, among them my sister, whose one-year-old baby they threw away. A Turk picked it up and carried it off. I know not where. My mother walked till she could walk no further, and dropped by the roadside, on a mountain top. We found on the road many who had been in the previous batches; some women were among the killed, with their husbands and sons. We also came across some old people and infants still alive, but in a pitiful condition....
“We were not allowed to sleep at night in the villages, but lay down outside. Under cover of the night indescribable deeds were committed by the gendarmes, brigands and villagers. Many of us [the company] died from hunger and strokes of apoplexy. Others were left by the roadside too feeble to go on.
“The worst and most unimaginable horrors were reserved for us at the banks of the (Western) Euphrates and the Erzindjan plain. The mutilated bodies of women, girls and little children made everybody shudder. The brigands were doing all sorts of awful deeds to the women and girls who were with us, whose cries went up to heaven. At the Euphrates, the brigands and gendarmes threw into the river all the remaining children under fifteen years old. Those who could swim were shot down as they struggled in the water.”
Miss Mary Louise Graffam secured the permission of the governor of Sivas to accompany her school girls on their way to exile—supposedly—to Mesopotamia, but actually to their destruction. After about ten days’ journey she was not permitted to go any further. At Malatia, where she had to give up her charge, she remained a few days; from there she wrote a letter to a friend in Constantinople. We reproduce a few excerpts from her letter.
“When we were ready to leave Sivas, the government gave forty-five ox-carts for the Protestant townspeople and eighty horses, but had none at all for our pupils and teachers; so we bought ten oxcarts, two horses, arabas (wagons), and five or six donkeys, and started out. In the company (of 2000) were all our teachers in the college, about twenty boys from the college, and about thirty of the girls’ school. It was a special favor to the Sivas people, who had not done anything revolutionary (?) that the Vali allowed the men who were not yet in prison[172] to go with their families.
“... We were so near Sivas (the first night) that the gendarmes protected us and no special harm was done; but the second night we began to see what was before us. The gendarmes would go ahead and have long conversations with the villagers, and then stand back and let them rob and trouble the people until we began to scream and then they would come and drive them away. Yorgans (blankets) and rugs and all such things disappeared by the dozens and donkeys were sure to be lost. Many had brought cows, but from the first day those were carried off one by one until not a single one remained.
“We got accustomed to being robbed, but the third day a new fear took possession of us, and that was that the men were to be separated from us at Kangal.... At Kangal they said that a valley near there was full of corpses. Here also we began to see exiles from Tocat. The sight was one to strike horror to any heart. There were a company of old women who had been robbed of absolutely everything. At Tocat the government had first imprisoned the men, and from the prison had taken them on the road.[173] The preacher’s wife was in the company and told us the story. After the men were gone they arrested the old women and the older brides. There were very few young women or children. All the younger women and children were left in Tocat. Badvelli (Rev.) Avedis has seven children. One was with our schoolgirls and the other six remained in Tocat, without father or mother to look after them. For three days these Tocat people had been without food, and after that lived on the Sivas Company, who had not yet lost much.