220 



IQUITOS. 



The inhabitants of the Missions of Mainas are exempted, by special 

 legislation, from the payment of the contribution of seven dollars per 

 head, paid towards the support of the government by all the other In- 

 dians of Peru. This exception was made on the ground that these 

 people had the forest to subdue, and were only able' to wring a hard- 

 earned support from the cultivation of the land. Many persons belong- 

 ing to the province think that this was an unwise law, and that the 

 character of the Indian has deteriorated since its passage. They think 

 that some law compelling them to work would be beneficial to both 

 country and inhabitants. 



Fearful of going to the right of Iquitos island, and thus passing the 

 town, I passed to the left of some islands, which Smyth lays down on 

 his chart as small, but which are at this season large ; and in running 

 between the one just above Iquitos island and the left bank of the river, 

 the boat grounded near the middle of the passage, which was one hun- 

 dred and fifty yards broad, and came near rolling over from the velocity 

 of the current. We hauled over to the left bank and passed close along 

 it in forty-two feet water. At half-past 9 p. m. we arrived at Iquitos. 



November 7. — Iquitos is a fishing village of two hundred and twenty- 

 seven inhabitants ; a considerable part of them, to the number of ninety- 

 eight, being whites and Mestizos of San Borja, and other settlements of 

 the upper Mission, who were driven from their homes a few years ago 

 by the Iiuambisas of the Fastaza and Santiago. This occurred in 1841. 

 In 1843, these same Indians murdered all the inhabitants of a village 

 called Sta. Teresa, situated on the upper Maranon, between the mouths 

 of the rivers Santiago and Morona. My companion Ijurra was there 

 soon after the occurrence. He gave the dead bodies burial, and pub- 

 lished in his Travels in Mainas a detailed account of the affair. 



In October, 1843, Ijurra, with seventeen other young men of Moyo- 

 bamba, formed a company for the purpose of washing for gold the sands 

 of the Santiago ; they were furnished with arms by the prefecture, and 

 recruited sixty-six Cocamillas of Laguna, armed with bows and arrows, 

 as a light protecting force. They also engaged eighty-five of the In- 

 dians of Jeveros as laborers at the washings ; and, after they started, 

 were joined by four hundred and fifty of the people who had been ex- 

 pelled in 1841 from Santiago and Borja, desirous of recovering their 

 homes and taking vengeance of the savages. 



The party went by land from Moyobamba to Balza Puerto; thence 

 north to Jeveros; and thence to the port of Barranca, at the mouth of the 

 river Cahuapanas, when they embarked to ascend the Amazon to the 

 mouth of the Santiago. At Barranca they received intelligence of the 

 massacre at Sta. Teresa, with the details. 



