Exploration The indigenous peoples of the Putumayo Basin include the
Huitoto,
Bora,
Andoque,
Ocaina,
Nonuya,
Muinanes, and
Resígaros. In the late 19th century, the Içá was navigated by the French explorer
Jules Crevaux (1847–1882). He ascended it in a
steamship drawing of water, and running day and night. He reached
Cuembí, above its mouth, without finding a single
rapid. Cuembí is only from the
Pacific Ocean, in a straight line, passing through the town of
Pasto in southern Colombia. Creveaux discovered the river sediments to be free of rock to the base of the
Andes; the
river banks were of
argillaceous earth and the bottom of fine
sand.
Rubber boom era stand in front of their enslaved indigenous workers (circa 1912). During the
Amazon rubber boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the land around the Putumayo became a major
rubber-producing region, where
Julio César Arana's Peruvian Amazon Company maintained a production network centered on the nearby city of
Iquitos. His enterprise on the Putumayo was divided into two agencies,
El Encanto on the Cara Paraná and
La Chorrera on the Igara Paraná. The latter's territory extended from the Igara Paraná tributary of the Putumayo River to the Japurá River. Arana's production network mainly relied on the labor of enslaved indigenous people, who suffered from widespread human rights abuses (now commonly referred to as the
Putumayo genocide). These abuses were first publicized in 1909 within the British press by the American engineer
Walter Hardenburg, who had been briefly imprisoned by Arana's private police force in 1907 while visiting the region; Hardenburg later published his book ''The Putumayo: The Devil's Paradise'' in 1913. In response to Hardenburg's exposé, the British government sent the consul
Roger Casement (who had previously publicized
Belgian atrocities in the rubber business of the
Congo Free State) to investigate the matter; between 1910 and 1911, Casement subsequently wrote a series of condemnatory reports criticizing the atrocities of the PAC, for which he received a
knighthood. Casement's reports later formed much of the basis for the 1987 book
Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man by the anthropologist
Michael Taussig, which analyzed how the acts of terror committed by British capitalists along the Putumayo River in Colombia had created a distinct "space of death."
Modern-day Today, the river is a major
transport route. Almost the entire length of the river is navigated by
boats. The goal of these fast surveys of remote areas is to bring together local stakeholders to collaboratively protect wilderness. , the
British government warns against "all but essential travel" to some areas within to the south of the river. ==References==