Sr. W. E. Hardenburg,—In reply to your letter of the 16th inst., I give you the following exact and reliable information of what I have witnessed during my stay on the River Putumayo, to be used for any purpose that you deem proper:—
On the 15th of June, 1907, I arrived at the section Matanzas, which is under the orders of the sanguinary and criminal Armando Norman, the chief of this section. As soon as I arrived he ordered a commission, composed of twenty-five men, to go out on a correría and to bring in chained up, all the Indians they might find, together with their women and children. The bandit Norman furnished to this commission, as food for the twenty days they would be absent, fifteen tins of sardines, at the same time ordering that nobody should carry any more clothes than he wore on his back, in order to avoid the extra weight, for in this way they would be better able to carry out the orders he imparted to them.
At the end of about twenty days the commission returned, bringing in, among men, women, and children, about thirty Indians, all in chains, who, as soon as they arrived at the house, were delivered to Norman. Then Norman stepped up and asked three old Indians and two young women, their daughters, where the rest of the Indians were. They replied that they did not know, as several days before they had all dispersed in the forest, owing to the fear they had of him. Norman then grasped his machete and murdered these five unfortunate victims in cold blood. Their bodies were left stretched out near the house and Norman’s dogs took charge of them, for he has them well trained; so well trained are these animals that the morning is rare that they do not appear with an arm or a leg of a victim at the bedside of this monster.
The rest of the Indians brought by this commission were, by the orders of Norman, secured in the cepo, which, as a rule, exists in all the sections. As Norman had given the order not to give the poor wretches any food, it was not long before they began to fall ill and utter cries of pain and desperation; whenever this occurred, Norman grasped his machete and cut them to pieces, leaving the remains of these victims, for the space of from four to six days, at the side of their companions, who were doomed to a similar fate. Whenever these remains—already in a state of putrefaction—became offensive to this bandit, he compelled the Indian prisoners to put them in heaps and set fire to them.
About twenty days after this event Norman ordered another commission of ten criminals to go out and bring in a capitán, with all his family. This order was strictly carried out, the criminals returning in five days, bringing the capitán, his wife, and two children, all in chains. As soon as they arrived Norman submitted them to a cross-examination, asking them why they did not bring in the amount of rubber that he required from them and that his superiors had ordered him to get, to which the capitán replied that as the quantity he demanded was very large, sometimes it was impossible to collect it all. This answer was sufficient to cause Norman to tie up his hands and feet with a chain and to order three armfuls of wood to be placed about the unfortunate victim, he himself bringing half a tin of kerosene and, with his own hands, setting fire thereto. When the poor wretch’s wife saw this horrible act of cruelty, she implored Norman not to murder her husband in such a barbarous manner; this sufficed for Norman to cut off her head and throw her on the funeral pile of her husband. After this he took the two children and, after dismembering them with his machete, threw their remains on the same fire.
To terminate with this repugnant criminal, whom I have seen commit crimes so horrible that perhaps they are unequalled in the history of the entire world, it is sufficient to say that I have seen him repeatedly snatch tender children from their mothers’ arms, and, grasping them by the feet, smash their heads to pieces against the trunks of trees.