The Casement Report 25
“Our village got cloth and a little salt, but not the people who did the
work. Our Chiefs eat up the cloth; the workers got nothing. The pay was
a fathom of cloth and a little salt for every big basket full, but it
was given to the Chief, never to the men. It used to take ten days to
get the twenty baskets of rubber--we were always in the forest and then
when we were late we were killed. We had to go further and further into
the forest to find the rubber vines, to go without food, and our women
had to give up cultivating the fields and gardens. Then we starved. Wild
beasts--the leopards--killed some of us when we were working away in the
forest, and others got lost or died from exposure and starvation, and we
begged the white man to leave us alone, saying we could get no more
rubber, but the white men and their soldiers said: ‘Go! You are only
beasts yourselves, you are nyama (meat).’ We tried, always going further
into the forest, and when we failed and our rubber was short, the
soldiers came to our towns and killed us. Many were shot, some had their
ears cut off; others were tied up with ropes around their necks and
bodies and taken away. The white men sometimes at the posts did not
know of the bad things the soldiers did to us, but it was the white men
who sent the soldiers to punish us for not bringing in enough rubber.”
Here P P took up the tale from N N:--
“We said to the white men, ‘We are not enough people now to do what you
want us. Our country has not many people in it and we are dying fast. We
are killed by the work you make us do, by the stoppage of our
plantations, and the breaking up of our homes.’ The white man looked at
us and said: ‘There are lots of people in Mputu’” (Europe, the white
man’s country). “‘If there are lots of people in the white man’s country
there must be many people in the black man’s country.’ The white man who
said this was the chief white man at F F*, his name was A B, he was a
very bad man. Other white men of Bula Matadi who had been bad and wicked
were B C, C D, and D E.” “These had killed us often, and killed us by
their own hands as well as by their soldiers. Some white men were good.
These were E F, F G, G H, H I, I K, K L.”
These ones told them to stay in their homes and did not hunt and chase
them as the others had done, but after what they had suffered they did
not trust more any one’s word, and they had fled from their country and
were now going to stay here, far from their homes, in this country where
there was no rubber.
_Q._ “How long is it since you left your homes, since the big trouble
you speak of?”
_A._ “It lasted for three full seasons, and it is now four seasons since
we fled and came into the K* country.”
_Q._ “How many days is it from N* to your own country?”
_A._ “Six days of quick marching. We fled because we could not endure
the things done to us. Our Chiefs were hanged, and we were killed and
starved and worked beyond endurance to get rubber.”
_Q._ “How do you know it was the white men themselves who ordered these
cruel things to be done to you? These things must have been done without
the white man’s knowledge by the black soldiers.”
_A._ (P P): “The white men told their soldiers: ‘You kill only women;
you cannot kill men. You must prove that you kill men.’ So then the
soldiers when they killed us” (here he stopped and hesitated, and then
pointing to the private parts of my bulldog--it was lying asleep at my
feet), he said: “then they cut off those things and took them to the
white men, who said: ‘It is true, you have killed men.’”
_Q._ “You mean to tell me that any white man ordered your bodies to be
mutilated like that, and those parts of you carried to him?”
P P, O O, and all (shouting): “Yes! many white men. D E did it.”
_Q._ “You say this is true? Were many of you so treated after being
shot?”
All (shouting out): “Nkoto! Nkoto!” (Very many! Very many!)
There was no doubt that these people were not inventing. Their
vehemence, their flashing eyes, their excitement, was not simulated.
Doubtless they exaggerated the numbers, but they were clearly telling
what they knew and loathed. I was told that they often became so furious
at the recollection of what had been done to them that they lost control
over themselves. One of the men before me was getting into this state
now.
I asked whether L* tribes were still running from their country, or
whether they now stayed at home and worked voluntarily.
N N answered: “They cannot run away now--not easily; there are sentries
in the country there between the Lake and this; besides, there are few
people left.”
P P said: “We heard that letters came to the white men to say that the
people were to be well treated. We heard that these letters had been
sent by the big white men in ‘Mputu’ (Europe); but our white men tore up
these letters, laughing, saying: ‘We are the “basango” and “banyanga”
(fathers and mothers, _i.e._, elders). Those who write to us are only
“bana” (children).’ Since we left our homes the white men have asked us
to go home again. We have heard that they want us to go back, but we
will not go. We are not warriors, and do not want to fight. We only want
to live in peace with our wives and children, and so we stay here among
the K*, who are kind to us, and will not return to our homes.”
_Q._ “Would you not like to go back to your homes? Would you not, in
your hearts, all wish to return?”
_A._ (By many.) “We loved our country, but we will not trust ourselves
to go back.”
P P: “Go, you white men, with the steamer to I*, and see what we have
told you is true. Perhaps if other white men, who do not hate us, go
there, Bula Matadi may stop from hating us, and we may be able to go
home again.”
I asked to be pointed out any refugees from other tribes, if there were
such, and they brought forward a lad who was a X**, and a man of the
Z**. These two, answering me, said there were many with them from their
tribes who had fled from their country.
* * * * *
Went on about fifteen minutes to another L* group of houses in the midst
of the K* town. Found here mostly W**, an old Chief sitting in the open
village Council-house with a Z** man and two lads. An old woman soon
came and joined, and another man. The woman began talking with much
earnestness. She said the Government had worked them so hard they had
had no time to tend their fields and gardens, and they had starved to
death. Her children had died; her sons had been killed. The two men, as
she spoke, muttered murmurs of assent.
The old Chief said: “We used to hunt elephants long ago, there were
plenty in our forests, and we got much meat; but Bula Matadi killed the
elephant hunters because they could not get rubber, and so we starved.
We were sent out to get rubber, and when we came back with little rubber
we were shot.”
_Q._ “Who shot you?”
_A._ “The white men ... sent their soldiers out to kill us.”
_Q._ “How do you know it was the white man who sent the soldiers? It
might be only these savage soldiers themselves.”
_A._ “No, no. Sometimes we brought rubber into the white man’s stations.
We took rubber to D E’s station, E E*, and to F F* and to ...’s station.
When it was not enough rubber the white man would put some of us in
lines, one behind the other, and would shoot through all our bodies.
Sometimes he would shoot us like that with his own hand; sometimes his
soldiers would do it.”
_Q._ “You mean to say you were killed in the Government posts themselves
by the Government white men themselves, or under their eyes?”
_A._ (Emphatically.) “We were killed in the stations of the white men
themselves. We were killed by the white man himself. We were shot before
his eyes.”
The names D E, B C, and L M, were names I heard repeatedly uttered.
The Z** man said he, too, had fled; now he lived at peace with the K*.
The abnormal refugee population in this one K* town must equal the
actual K* population itself. On every hand one finds these refugees.
They seem, too, to pass busier lives than their K* hosts, for during all
the hot hours of the afternoon, wherever I walked through the town--and
I went all through N* until the sun set--I found L* weavers, or iron and
brass workers, at work.
Slept at M M’s house. Many people coming to talk to us after dark.
Left N* about 8 to return to the Congo bank. On the way back left the
main path and struck into one of the side towns, a village called A A*.
This lies only some 4 or 5 miles from the river. Found here thirty-two
L* houses with forty-three K*, so that the influx of fugitives here is
almost equal to the original population. Saw many L*. All were
frightened, and they and the K* were evidently so ill at ease that I did
not care to pause. Spoke to one or two men only as we walked through the
town. The L* drew away from us, but on looking back saw many heads
popped out of doors of the houses we had passed.
Got back to steamer about noon.
* * * * *
Heard that L* came sometimes to M* from I*. I am now 100 miles (about)
up-river from N*. Went into one of the M* country farm towns called B
B*. Found on entering plantation two huts with five men and one woman,
who I at once recognized by their head-dress as L*, like those at N*.
The chief speaker, a young man named ... who lives at B B*. He seems
about 22 or 23, and speaks with an air of frankness. He says: “The L*
here and others who come to M*, come from a place C C*. It is connected
with the lake by a stream. His own town in the district of C C* is D D*.
C C* is a big district and had many people. They now bring the
Government india-rubber, kwanga, and fowls, and work on broad paths
connecting each village. His own village has to take 300 baskets of
india-rubber. They get one piece of cotton cloth, called locally sanza,
and no more.” (Note.--This cannot be true. He is doubtless
exaggerating.) Four other men with him were wearing the rough palm-fibre
cloth of the country looms, and they pointed to this as proof that they
got no cloth for their labours. K K continuing said: “We were then killed for not bringing in enough rubber.”
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