Evening Star Newspaper, February 9, 1930, Page 102

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, FEBRUARY 9, 1930. Captured by Savages In the Putumayo. An American Doctor’s Ordeal Among the Indians of South America—T1hrough the Jungles in a Canoe—Twenty-Four Hours of Torture—Working With a Rubber Company. Editor’s Note: Dr.” Dickey, noted South American explorer.' has told in a previous article how he went to the tropics as a young man just out of medical school, and served as a doctor in the fed- eral army of Colombia during the revolution of 1900. Not getting any pay for his work he signed up as doctor for a gold mining com- pany. Like many who work in the gold fields he became engrossed with the idea of digging his for- tune out of the earth. BY HERBERT SPENCER DICKEY, M. D.. and HAWTHORNE DANIEL. HE gold fever took possession of mnie when a man wandered into my office and paid me two pounds in gold for my treatment. He told me that he had come from the rubber regions of the Putumayo, and as he showed me two rolls of money each containing fifty pounds I asked him how to get to the Putumayo. I had two boys who attended to my flocks and they said that they would go to the Putumayo with me. One of these was Manuel, who was 18. The other was Miguel, who was 20. With these boys to assist me I made my arrangements. A trader of La Plata sold me a good canoe. The rest of my money went for provisions— native chocolate mixed with brown sugar and cinnamon, and shelled corn. I traded a suit of clothes for two enameled ware pots, packed up a trunk full of me‘icines and once more was starting a journey. I had no money, it is true, but that did not matter. Manuel, Miguel and I were heading deep into the Amazonian jungle, where money was useless. We had food, clothes, pots, med- icine and a canoe. Of course, there were only three of us, and the canoe was of solid ma- hogany and was 45 feet long. But what of that? The journey was all down stream and all three of us were young. headed for Puerto Pizarro on the Caqueta River, but after weeks of paddling when we got there we found a de- arted village, the houses burned to the ground. It was impossible to go back. Even had we been experienced canoe men it would have taken us 45 days to make that journey up- stream. And as it was we were merely three adventurous young men there among the ruins of that desolated jungle trading post. Our food was all gone. Where we could find more was something we did not know. It was decidedly tragic, I can assure you. For once my youthful optimism did not measure up to the situation. I thought very tenderly of Highland Falls, New York. I visualized every detail of that pleasant town, and wished most fervently that I could be there. But we were on the bank of the Caqueta, with no one to help us, and with nothing but a tropical jungle that we did not know stretching for endless thousands of miles in every direction. When we went on we saw a group of natives who stood with rifles in their hands on the river bank, threatingly awaiting . our arrival. We stopped paddling, of course, for somehow five rifles—and these were immediately aimed at us—have a quieting effect on one’s activities, “4» The only thing I could think to say- was “good morning,” so I did it, in the most friendly manner of which I was capable. At that one of the men detached himself from the group and came along the bank toward us, though the others still kept their” rifles trained on us. Then the one who had ad- vanced addressed us in Spanish—good Spanish —and I saw that he was not a native at all, but was, instead, a white man gotten up to look like an Indian, After a little conversation I learned that he was Apolinar Cuellar, and after telling me that he asked who I was and what I wanted. In exchange for my canoe he offered to supply us with porters and a guide who would lead us and carry our small cargo to the Caraparana trail. Beyond that point, he said, his men would not go for, he explained, they were fearful of the Peruvians. At La Union, thz Peruvian military station on the Caraparana River, we were welcomed by Capt. Rajos and Lieut. Marill, who fed us and gave us a place to sleep. It was a pleasure to find ourselves once more in a settlement wher> food was plentiful, and Swe made the most of our opportunities. We took some time to recover from the effects of our journey, we washed our clothes, which after a month of neglect were sadly in need of such treatment, and when I found that many of the troops were down with malaria I treated them to the best of my ability and supplied the necessary medicines, glad of an opportunity to repay them for their kindness to us. A DIFFICULTY did soon arise, however, due to the fact that both Manuel and Miguel were Colombians. Capt. Rojas wanted me to send them both back, but I prevailed upon him to let them continue with me for a little way. Then Manuel saved me—saved every one—the trouble of looking after him. He decided to g0 back alone, and as the Peruvian steam launch from El Encanto—the principal Peru- vian station on the Caraparana—was not ex- pected upstream for another week, he decided to go alone. The trail was wide, was well marked, and there was no danger of his getting lost. About 10 days after Manuel had set off into the wilderness alone the launch from El Encanto arrived, and with Capt. Rojas to speed Miguel and me we started down stream. It was now my purpose to settle for a time at least at Encanto, there to begin the practice of my profession. Furthermore, this portion of the journey was excessively simple, for now my gratuitous services on behalf of the malaria- stricken soldiers met with a reward that I had not had in mind. Capt. Rojas, with whom I by now had grown quite friendly, gave us free passage, although Miguel was not allowed to stop at El Encanto. He was, however, given passage on to Iquitos, which lies on the upper Amazon where, I learned later, he established himself as a fisherman and made quite a suc- cess—or at least so he later assured me. As for myself, my luck—or so I thought— proved good for a change, and I arrived at El Encanto at what might be considered the psychological moment. The Peruvian Amazon Rubber Co.—later the Peruvian Amazon Co., Ltd.—had an important post there, and their doctor (may peace be with him) had died only about a month before my advent in that thriving rubber center. I was offered a two-year contract at more money per month than I imagined any one would ever pay a doctor—just four times what I had received at Frias—and I promptly signed up. As a matter of fact, I was eager to sign up, just as I have so often been eager indirectly to get myself into trouble. But this time I more than put my head into the lion’s mouth, I was delighted with my new job, and with all the enthusiasm of youth I looked over the jungle station at which I had so providentially arrived. The main structure was an excellent two-story building, roofed, it is true, with cor- rugated iron, but otherwise beyond criticism. The lower floor was principally a warehouse for rubber, although the bookkeeper, a Spaniard by the name of Ponce, occupied a room there. The second floor, however, was handsomely constructed of native woods waxed and rubbed to a dull sheen. One entire end of the building on this level was the dining room, a great ob- long apartment open %0 the air on three sides. A long and very broad hall led from the dining room to the other end of the structure, and on one side of this was the office and the room of the manager, Miguel Loayza. The room assigned to me was across the hall from that of the manager, between rooms oc- cupied by Harriaran, the assistant manager, and Solar, whose task had to do with the keeping and disbursing of the stores. There were only flve white men at the post—including myself— and we all lived in this major structure, ITH gradually growing horror I realized that the Putumayo was the center of cruel- ties toward the Indians that rivaled the Kongo atrocities. There was evidence that the natives were lashed, mutilated and murdered, but I wit- nessed nothing except sickening lashings, and when I protested against these, I found myself a virtual prisoner. My mail was censored and every effort was made to keep news of thes: frightful conditions from the world. So there was I, between the devil and the deep sea. The men about me were becoming more and more disgusting to me. I found it more and more difficult to be sufficiently diplo- matic to get on with them, and that, of course, was essential. I attended to my few duties in as little time as possible, and went out more and more into the jungle to collect birds for my mounting, which was one way of getting away from the horrors that depressed me. Crimes cannot exist about one without per- meating the very atmosphere, and I felt all but choked, scmetimes, in the bright sunlight and the comfort of El Encanto. Under these conditions I remained at El En- canio nearly a year.when something happened » A group of natives stood on the river bank threateningly awaiting our arrival. that even the men about me could not ignore, In my growing distaste for these men I had long been wandering off in the bush alone, armed only with a 20-gauge shotgun with which to collect birds. On one of these ex- cursions I had been away from the station for three days, stopping at Indian huts for the night. The Indians, despite their reasons for fearing and hating white men, seemed friendly enough with me. Perhaps I had made a good impression among them as a result of the numerous times I had treated sick and wounded Indlans. But whatever the reason, they in- variably welcomed me, and made me as com- fortable as they could. The Indians in the Putumayo were, for the most part, Weetotos, and these were the ones who were being so widely and terribly exploited by the rubber company. There were, however, other bands, from time to time, who were to be found in the country, although, knowing what they did of the brutality of the white men, none of them could properly be considered as friendly. A few of these were forced to collect rubber, too, but their numbers were not great, However, the Weetotos were absolutely sub- jugated, and a white man alone was not in any great danger from them, especially when, as in my case, he had not been guilty of any of the numerous crimes from which these unfortunates suffered. Consequently, I was not even thinking of dan- ger when, the third day after leaving El En- canto I came to a little stream that flowed be- tween steep banks 8 or 10 feet high. To get across the miniature ocean, I saw that it was necessary for me to run down my side, leap the stream, and run as fast as I could up the other bank, letting my momentum assist me to reach the bushes on the farther side. Having decided on that method of crossing, I proceeded to fol- low it, and 10 seconds later was standing at the top of the farther bank among the bushes, staring, in surprise, at an Indian camp fire that was now only a bed of coals. I had seen nothing of it before I had crossed the stream. Nor had I seen a sign of the six naked Indians who squatted about the fire and seemed intent on watching an earthenware pot in which some fish were being boiled. They had built their fire back from the edge of the stream bank, and the screen of bushes had utterly hidden all this from me until I had burst through the leaves and stopped within six feet of them. I’r is unnecessary to remark that that is no way to come upon a group of savages. There is no doubt that they were even more surprised to see an armed white man standing in their midst than I was to be there. The fact that my little bird gun was not a dangerous weapon could not, of course, be expected to register on their minds. I had plunged into their midst exactly as if I had done so intentionally, and everything pointed to the fact that I had not come as a friend. I saw all that in an instant, but so, un- fortunately, did they. Before I had time to say a word, one of the savages leaped upon me and tore my gun from my hands. Then I spoke in Weetoto, but they did not reply. Two others seized me, and then they began to talk rapidly among themselves in a native tongue that I did not understand. That they were Andoke Indians gradually became obvious, but I knew no word of their language, and they spoke nothing else. Had I plunged so unceremoniously into the midst of a similar group of Weetotos, it is not unlikely that some one of them would have recognized me as the medico at El Encanto, and they probably would have treated me well enough. But these Andokes knew nothing of medicos. They merely knew that I was a white man—that white men had been guilty of countless horrible crimes all through the fourteen thousand square miles of the Putu- mayo district—and that f=. vuce, a white man was at their mercy. I do not blame them for what they did.. From all they knew of white men, it was well deserved, and they knew that they could get away. It took them almost no time at all to decide on their course of action. First they pulled my hands as far up my back as they could, and then they tied them together with lengths of lianas that they tore from the trees. Then they stood me in front of a tree and tied my hands to it so that I was stooped forward and most of the strain came on my arms which were so tightly trussed up bzhind my back. Then, having put me in a position from + which there was no escape, for every move I made merely served to pull my arms more painfully up my back, they broke the earthern- ware pot that had been sitting in the redhot coals, and placed a piece of the heated ware between my hands. My hands burned terribly for a minute, but then came a sort of anae esthesia and I suffered very little. Now, however, one of my captors put the finishing touch on my situation, although I did not understand until after they had left me just what he had done. With his machete he cut a deep gash in the trunk of the tree just over my head. When he came toward me with his machete poised I thought, naturally enough, that my end had come, but he merely cut the tree. I remember thinking that the maneuver was a silly one, and I wondered if he had done it merely in order to frighten me. But they said nothing, and having finished their task, they left, disappearing silently into the jungle while I still hung there in a painfully uncom- fortable position, with my hands still smoking a little from the burning of the fesh. AND now that the Indians had gone, I began to understand the almost fiendish cleverness ‘of that gash in the tree. The sap had now had time to flow down the trunk, and the huge black ants that, until then. had been going about their business on the ground, became conscious of that tremendous supply of food. At first only a few of them used me as a bridge by which to reach the gash in the tree, but before long thousands of ants began ot stream up my legs, along my tortured arms, even into my face and neck, and down inside my shirt which was open at the throat, Myriads of the powerful black fellows came. I shook my head in an effort to free myself of the constant streams of insects. I hlew at them from the corners of my mouth. I shouted and stamped, but all to no effect. Still they came, while every move I made left me hanging that much more limply with my hands far up my back, with the body pitched forward away from the tree, with almost my entire weight hanging from my twisted and painful arms that were tied so tightly and so flendishly well to the trunk of that ant-cov- ered tree. All the rest of the afternoon I hung there, shrieking now and then, and falling into a sort of semi-coma from time to time, only to reawaken and to spit and blow and shout at the ants as they continued to traverse my face—to climb down my neck—to pause and bite occasionally, at the corners of my eyes or at my parched and swollen lips. Evening came, and the jungle turned from green to black. The night was terrible, for still the ants continued to crawl over me. I seemed to be alive with ants. My mind revolted and I screamed. That is about all that I remem- ber of that night. Ants and darkness! Dark- ness and ants! And these two realities were constantly punctuated by the fearful pain from almost dislocated arms. D Morning came, finally, but I was hardly con- scious of it. I hung there. helplessly, certain that my end was coming. I was in the jungle, mind you, away from any trail, and away from any Indian village. Help was very unlikely to come, and I had long since given up hope. But, providentiaily, two little Indian girls de-