In the preliminary Report received in January, 1911, by Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, Consul Casement said:—
“My conclusions are chiefly based on the direct testimony of Barbados men in the company’s service, who brought their accusations on the spot, who were prepared to submit them to investigation, and to make them in the presence of those they accused, and whose testimony, thus given to me, was accepted without further investigation by Señor Juan Tizon, the Peruvian Amazon company’s representative at La Chorrera, on the ground that it was sufficient or could not be controverted. It was equally potent with the members of the Peruvian Amazon Company’s commission, who expressed themselves as fully convinced of the truth of the charges preferred, they themselves being often present when I interrogated the British witnesses. There was, moreover, the evidence of our own eyes and senses, for the Indians almost everywhere bore evidence of being flogged, in many cases of being brutally flogged, and the marks of the lash were not confined to men nor adults. Women, and even little children, were more than once found, their limbs scarred with weals left by the thong of twisted tapir-hide, which is the chief implement used for coercing and terrorising the native population of the region traversed. The crimes charged against many men now in the employ of the Peruvian Amazon Company are of the most atrocious kind, including murder, violation, and constant flogging. The condition of things revealed is entirely disgraceful, and fully warrants the worst charges brought against the agents of the Peruvian Amazon Company and its methods of administration on the Putumayo. I append to my Report a list of those agents of the company against whom the worst charges were preferred and against whom the evidence in my possession is overwhelmingly strong. The prefect of Loreto again and again assured me that his Government was determined to deal with the criminals and protect the Indians. The charges brought by the Barbados men were of the most atrocious kind, and, added to the accumulating weight of evidence that we had gathered from station to station, and the condition of the Indian population as we had opportunity to observe it in passing, they left no doubt in our minds that the worst charges against the company’s agents were true. Many of the acts charged against agents whom we met were of the most revolting description, and the Barbados men bringing these charges did not omit, in several cases, to also accuse themselves of shocking crimes, committed, they averred, under compulsion.”
“Names of some of the worst Criminals on the Putumayo, all of them charged with atrocious Offences against the Indians.
“Fidel Velarde: a Peruvian, chief of Occidente. Alfredo Montt: a Peruvian, chief of Atenas. Charged with atrocious crimes. Augusto Jiménez: a Peruvian. Is a half-caste. Age about 26. Has been for years the lieutenant of Agüero, under whom he has committed appalling crimes upon the Boras Indians in the section Abisinia. He was sub-chief of Morelia, and is often mentioned in the Truth charges. He begged me to listen to his statement, and said he could prove that one of the charges against him in Truth was not true. On the other hand, the evidence against him is overwhelming. Armando Normand: a Bolivian, I believe of foreign parentage. Largely educated in England. A man of whom nothing good can be said. The crimes committed by this man are innumerable, and even Peruvian white men said to me that Normand had done things none of the others had done. If any one on the Putumayo deserves punishment this man should be made an example of. He was under sentence of dismissal, and would have left Chorrera by the Liberal with me only I objected to travel with him, and begged Señor Tizon to send him by another vessel. José Inocente Fonseca: a Peruvian, about 28 years old. Has committed innumerable crimes upon the Indians. Abelardo Agüero: about 35 or 36 years of age. Chief of Abisinia, of which section he has had charge for years. Has committed innumerable crimes. Elias Martinengui: The charges against him are many. Aurelio Rodríguez: a Peruvian, whose crimes were vouched for by many and are widely known. A. Vasquez Torres, or Alejandro Vasquez. Rodolfo Rodríguez: a Colombian, charged with many murders. Miguel Flores: a Peruvian. Armando Blondel. Aquiléo Torres: a Colombian. Innumerable crimes against this man. He was made prisoner by Normand in January, 1907, and kept chained up for a year by Velarde and others, and then released on condition he joined them, and was first employed in flogging Indians. He improved on his masters, and has killed scores, and cut ears off, and done things that even some of the worst Peruvians say they could not tolerate. He was once a Colombian magistrate, and was captured by Macedo’s orders along with a lot of other Colombians because they were ‘poaching’ on the company’s territory, and trying to get Indians to work for them. Jermin, or Filomene, Vasquez. This man is charged with many crimes. The latest of them only in August, 1910, when he had thirteen Indians—men, women, and children—murdered on the road between the Caquetá and Morelia. He boasted on his return to Abisinia ‘he had left the road pretty.’ Simon Angúlo: a Colombian black man. Is the flogger or executioner of Abisinia under Agüero. Has flogged many to death. There is also a Barbados man named King, calls himself Armando King, who is at Encanto under Loayza. I believe King to be as bad as any of the others almost. There are a great many others charged with crimes whose names will be submitted.”
In his detailed Report, submitted in January, 1911, Consul Casement says:—
“The true attraction from the first to Colombian or Peruvian caucheros was not so much the presence of the scattered Hevea braziliensis trees throughout this remote forest as the existence of fairly numerous tribes of docile, or at any rate of easily subdued, Indians. The largest gathering of these people was a tribe termed the Huitotos, a mild and inoffensive people subdivided into many sub-tribes or families, each dwelling apart from its neighbour, and ruled by its own hereditary cacique or capitán.
“The Huitotos chiefly dwelt along the courses of the Caraparaná and Upper and Middle Igaraparaná, and occupied all the country between these two rivers. On the north of the Igaraparaná they extended some distance, in various settlements, into the thick forest towards the great Japurá (or Caquetá) River until they merged in the Andokes, Ricigaros, and Boras, tribes doubtless of a kindred far-off origin, but wholly differing to-day in speech from the Huitotos, as also from each other. While these tribes were in each case of one family, speaking the same language, little or no cohesion existed among the scattered sub-tribes into which they were split. On the contrary, enmity more often than friendship ruled the relations between neighbours.
“Thus the 30,000 Huitotos, instead of uniting as one people, were split up into an infinity of ‘families’ or clans and inter-clan fighting and raids perpetuated for generations disputes of obscure and often trivial origin. So with the Boras, the Andokes, or other agglomerations inhabiting the neighbouring regions. While, collectively, each of these tribes might have put large numbers of men into the field, they were so divided by family quarrels that no one cacique probably could ever count on more than 200 men, and in the majority of cases on very many less.
“They were therefore an easy enough prey to the ‘civilised’ intruders, who brought to their conquest arms of precision against which the Indian blow-pipes or throwing-spears could offer but a paltry resistance.
“The object of the ‘civilised’ intruders, in the first instance, was not to annihilate the Indians, but to conquistar—i.e., to subjugate them, and put them to what was termed civilised, or at any rate profitable, occupation to their subduers.