1 -> ) 



Tun RiiViEW OF Reviews. 



THE PUTUMAYO PROBLEM. 



In the American Review ol Revicies there is a paper 

 on Peruvian rubber and international poHtics in which 

 other motives than those of pure humanity are sug- 

 gested for the recent outcry. The writer says : — 



That tlie English Rubber Company was solely responsible for 

 the atrocities committed in the rubber forest in the Putinnayo 

 district of Peru, and that the English Consul at Iquitos has been 

 aiding the guilty parties in keeping from the Peruvian Govern- 

 ment an exact l^nowledge of what was taking place, is the con- 

 tention of Peru. 



Mr. David Cazes, English Consul in Iquitos since 1903, 

 would have been in a good position to find out about the 

 management of the rubber plantation. Iquitos, a port on the 

 .\mnzon, is the door to the rubber land. .\il the rubber gathered 

 in the Putumayo is shipped from Iquitos. Xo one can enter the 

 territory of the rubber company without the permission of the 

 company's representative in Iquitos. And 

 yet he always swore that he knew notliing. 



The twenty-one constables whom the 

 Peruvian Government kept in the Putumayo 

 in those days had been all l^ribed by the 

 English traders, and shut their eyes to 

 what was happening in the jungle. 



The Judge Paredes, who was 

 appointed by the Peruvian Govern- 

 ment to inquire, and who confirmed 

 the horrible reports of atrocities, 

 was asked to what he attriliuted 

 the recent exposures of wrongs 

 committed several years ago. He 

 replied : — 



It may be that certain Englishmen are a 

 little jealous of the cordial relations exist- 

 ing between Peru and the United States. 



If certain schemers could only prevail 

 upon the United States to intervene in 

 Peru, some other nation would derive a 

 positive benefit from the friction thus en- 

 gendered, and the purpose of the .Monroe 

 Doctriiie could be successfully defeated. 

 You can see, therefore, how eagerly certain 

 English merchants would welcome the 

 seizure of the Putumayo lands by, say, an 

 Anglo-.Vmcrican syndicate that would 

 " guarantee order and peace " in the 

 rubber region. 



ceptive — although not, I think, receptive — and their dispositions 

 cheerful and courteous . . . Nothing became more clear the 

 more these Indians were studied than that they were not 

 children of the forest, but chililren of elsewhere lost in the forest 

 — babes in the wood, grown up, it is true, and finding the forest 

 their only heritage and shelter, but remembering always that it 

 was not their home. They had accommodated themselves, as 

 far as they might, to their surroundings, and made a shift at 

 living there ; but had never really accepted this environment. 

 Thus while their bodies were stroyetl and lost in the trees, tiieir 

 minds, their memories, maybe, refused to accept these sur- 

 roundings. They never gave the impression of being at home. 

 They had refused to make the material best of circumstance. 

 While their knowdedge of the forest and everything it possessed 

 was profound, one felt that these age-long denizens of the 

 woods were not citizens of the forest, but strangers, come 

 by chance amid surroundings they did not love. Most of 

 the Indians I met had, I believe, a positive distaste for the 

 forest. 



Tro/'ical I^i/c.^ 



Wake up ! John Bull, and make Uncle Sam help you to stop these 

 atrocities before your investments become mere waste paper. 



THE PUTUMAYO INDIANS. 



I.\ the Conlemforary Revie7o Sir Roger Casement 

 gives a most interesting account of the Putumayo 

 Indians. He opines that the tribes interned in the vast 

 Amazon forests were of identical origin with the 

 Aymaras and Quichuas of the Inca Ivtnpirc. Tiie music, 

 songs, and dances of the forest Indians are not based 

 on their life of to-day, but drawn from some far-olT 

 ancient fund of inspiration : — 



They went, it might be said, almost quite naked — the men 

 only wearing a strip of the bark of a tree, wound round the 

 loins, while the women, entirely nude, stained their bodies with 

 vegel.iblc dyes, and, at dances, stuck fluff and feathers with an 

 adhesive mixture to the calves of their legs and sometimes dowji 

 the hips. The men, loo, stained their bodies with varied native 

 dyes that soon wash or wear off. Both sexes are chaste and 

 exceedingly modest. Tlieir minds are alert, quick, and per- 



This disposition partK- explains their submissiveness. 

 He says : — 



Their submission is not alone that of the submissive, gentle 

 Indian mind in front of its mental superior, but that of a mind 

 that has known better things than anything the forest can offer, 

 and has never ceased to hope for the means of re-contact with 

 them. In this, too, I believe lies the secret of the Indian's 

 ready acceptance of the guidance of religious instructors. 

 Wherever the Jesuit or Franciscan fathers were able to reach 

 the Inilians, these followed them with one accord out of the 

 forest, and built their houses around the "padre's" antl 

 delightedly submitted to his authority. 



TilK .'Vugust number of llic .In/iilcrtiiial Revir,v has 

 an interesting article, with specially taken photographs 

 by Mr. C. Lovelt Gill, on " .Some Houses in St. Albans 

 and its Environs." 



