In accordance with our promise to our readers, we give the following news, as complete as possible, of a barbarous deed, the theatre of which was a point close to one of our frontiers.
This narrative, detailed and horrible, we believe to be true, for it was related to us by one of the victims, who is at present in this city, the Colombian Roso España, a young man twenty-one years of age, of low stature and agreeable features.
In the last days of 1906 Aquileo Torres, Felipe Cabrera, Feliciano Muñoz, Pascual Rubiano, José de la Paz Gutiérrez, Bonifacio Cabrera, Jorge Carbajal, Carlos María de Silva, Heleodoro X — —, Crisanto Victoria, Roso España, and two women, all employees of the firm of Urbano Gutiérrez, set out from Florencia, Dept. of Tolima, Republic of Colombia.
They embarked in six canoes, with a large quality of merchandise, for the River Caquetá or Japurá, where they were going to extract rubber and begin traffic with the Indians, so that the latter would help them in this work. After a tedious journey of thirty-five days, they reached the Lower Caquetá, where a tribe of Indians called the Andoques live. Here they were well received by the indigenes of this Colombian territory. In order to gain the friendship of these natives, the Colombians presented them with various trifles and received from them in return manioca and bananas. Thus the first difficulty was conquered, for within a few days the Indians yielded themselves up completely to the new-comers.
As the construction of a house for the shelter of the personal[115] and the merchandise was of urgent necessity, the chief of the party, Felipe Cabrera, ordered some of the men to begin this operation, with the help of the Indians, while the rest proceeded to burn the brush, in order to make the necessary plantations.
A few days afterwards, when the clearing was finished and the construction of the house well advanced, a group of nearly 20 Peruvian caucheros,[116] all armed with rifles, appeared upon the scene. Two Barbados negroes formed part of this band. The Peruvians first encountered a group of eight persons—four men and one Colombian woman, two Indian men and one Indian woman, all of whom were apart from their companions, engaged in the fabrication of mandioca flour. Of this inoffensive group the two Indians fell, shot dead. Then the Peruvians sent a letter to one Señor Norman, an agent of the Arana Company, who arrived on the scene three days later, accompanied by another group of individuals. Norman, questioning the prisoners, learned that Felipe Cabrera, the chief, was among them, and forced him, with threats, to send an order to José de la Paz Gutiérrez, who was absent with the rest of the men, to deliver up all the arms they had.
The prisoner, in fear of his life, wrote the order, which Norman took to its destination.
The guide was the Colombian prisoner, Roso España.
Then, in possession of the arms, they began another butchery. The Peruvians discharged their weapons at the Indians who were constructing the roof of the house. These poor unfortunates, pierced by the bullets, some dead, others wounded, rolled off the roof and fell to the ground.
The bandits, for it is only by that name that they can be called, not content with these cowardly murders, for they had already killed twenty-five, took the Indian women of advanced age, threw them into the canoes of the Colombians and conducted them to the middle of the river and discharged their rifles at them, killing them all.