“Chase states that Fonseca at Ultimo Retiro would shoot Indians with a long rifle which he had. He thinks it was a Mannlicher. Sometimes he shot at them whilst they were actually prisoners in the stocks, and others were taken out in the open ground round the house, and he shot at them from the veranda. The last case of this kind that Chase witnessed was that of a young girl. Fonseca bandaged her eyes and face so that even her mouth and nose were covered. She was then made to walk away, and whilst she was thus blindfolded Fonseca shot her ‘as a sport for his friends.’
“Chase further states that he has seen Aquiléo Torres cut the ears off living Indians for sport. Torres took deponent’s own knife from him. It was an open knife, and he used this knife for the purpose. He saw him do this several times. Once he cut off a man’s ears and then burned his wife alive before his eyes. This was done by Torres.
“In the summer of 1909 Chase accompanied Torico on a journey. Asked what they were doing, he states that Torico, he thinks, was going round on a sort of inspection for Macedo, or else to give warning to all the sections that things must be put straight, because an Englishman, Captain Whiffen, was then in the country and visiting the company’s territories. He remembers Torico taking the names of the Indians at each station, and talking to the agents about Captain Whiffen’s coming. Chase states that he was with Sealey in the expedition under Jiménez, later described.”
Stanley Sealey, another Barbados, described to the Consul a rubber raid and its results in the following terrible story:—
“A party of armed employees is sent out to collect the Indians of a certain division on the day when their puesta of rubber is due, and to march them into the station with their loads of rubber, after this has been weighed and found sufficient. The man in charge of the expedition will have a list of the Indians he is to collect, and the amount of rubber each is to bring in, and he proceeds to summon or find them. They call the chief, or capitán, of these Indians, and if all his people do not appear with him he may be put in the cepo, made out in the forest, and kept guarded there. Sometimes he, deponent, and others of the expedition would be sent to look for the missing Indians. If the Indians do not all come in, the capitán will be treated in a variety of ways. Sometimes they tie his hands behind his back, and then by a rope through his bound wrists he will be hauled up off the ground, the rope passing over a tree-branch. Sometimes his feet would be three or four feet off the ground. They kept him in this position for sometimes an hour or an hour and a half, he screaming out with pain. This is to make him confess where the missing Indians are. When he admits this, and says he will go for the truants, they let him down, and, keeping him tied, they go with him to where the people are hiding. If they find his people, they may still keep him tied up. They do not then flog the Indians. They collect all they can, those with the rubber, and those who have failed to get it, and march them all down to the station. The arms of the capitán will be loosed on reaching the station, but his legs put in the cepo. Then they weigh the rubber, and if any man has not brought the right weight he is flogged. The severity of the flogging depends on the amount of rubber the man is short. The deponent has not seen more than two dozen stripes thus given. With regard to the Indians who had not appeared in the first instance, and had to be collected, they would be flogged and put in the cepo; they would get ‘a good flogging.’ Sometimes the capitán himself would be flogged in the station. Whole families would be marched down in these gatherings, men with their wives and children who would help the men with their rubber. On all these marches the Indians would have to carry their own food too; they get no food except what they bring themselves. They would only get food from the white men during the time they are actually kept in the station. The station would have a big pot of rice and beans boiled. This would be the food. He has seen sometimes one hundred and fifty people thus marched in. Those who have brought the fixed amount of rubber are allowed to go back after this meal. The others are punished by being kept in cepo. Some are put in a hole in the cellars of the house. There is such a hole at Ultimo Retiro which the Consul can see when he gets there.
“The Indians are not paid at all on these occasions for such rubber as they bring in. They only get payment when the full fabrico—say, seventy-five days—is completed. These commissions take place sometimes every ten days, sometimes every fifteen days, according to the period fixed for each puesta, depending on the neighbourhood. Sealey gives this as a general indication of the manner in which he has been employed on ‘commissions’ and collecting the Indians from the forest. He next states he wishes to describe what took place on a certain occasion when he with other Barbados men went on a commission from Abisinia under Jiménez. They were stationed at Morelia at the time, and went under Jiménez to the Caquetá. It was a journey to catch fugitive Indians who had fled from the rubber-working, and was soon after Sealey had gone to Abisinia; he thinks it was in June, 1908. On the first day’s march from Morelia, about five o’clock in the afternoon, when they were some one and a half day’s distance from the Caquetá, they caught an old Indian woman in the path. Jiménez asked the old woman where the rest of the Indians were. Sealey states she was a bit frightened. She told him that the next day at eleven o’clock he would get to the house where some Indians were. She was an old woman, not able to run. They did not tie her up. They went on with her, keeping her all night in camp until about two o’clock of the next day, and then Jiménez asked her, ‘Where is the house; where are the Indians?’ The old woman stood up, and said nothing. She could not speak; she kept her eyes on the ground. Jiménez said to her: ‘You were telling me lies yesterday, but now you have got to speak the truth.’ With that he called his wife—he had an Indian woman, the woman who is still with him—and he said to his wife: ‘Bring me that rope off my hammock.’ She took the rope off and gave it to him, and with that he tied the old woman’s hands behind her back. There were two trees standing just like that—one there and one there. He made an Indian cut a post to stretch across between the two trees. Then he hauled the old woman up, her feet were not touching the ground at all. He said to one of the boys, a muchacho: ‘Bring me some leaves—some dry leaves,’ he said, and he put these under the feet of the old woman as she hung there, her feet about a foot or so above the ground; and he then take a box of matches out of his pocket and he light the dry leaves, and the old lady start to burn. Big bladders [blisters] I see on her skin up here’ (he pointed to his thighs). “All was burned; she was calling out. Well, sir, when I see that, sir, I said, ‘Lord, have mercy!’ and I run ahead that I could not see her no more.”
“You did not go back?”
“I stayed a little ways off to where she was. I could hear him speaking. He say to one of the boys, ‘Loose her down now,’ and they loose her but she was not dead. She lay on the ground—she was still calling out. He tell one of the Indians: ‘Now, if this old woman is not able to walk, cut her head off,’ and the Indian did so—he cut her head off.”
“You saw that?”
“Yes, sir, he leave her there in the same place. We left her there, going a little ways into the forest; it was about four hours’ walk; after we left the old woman we met two women. They had no house—they had run away. One had a child. Jiménez axed the one that had the child: ‘Where is these Indians that has run away?’ she tell him that she don’t know where they were. He tell her after she tell him that she don’t know that she was a liar.”