River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1890-05-15
THE IVORY RAIDERS.
Compared with These Stanley Says thu
Slave-Traders Are Humanitariaus.

Compared with These stanley Says the
slave-Traders Are Humanitarians.
Mr.. Stanley, in his long letter to Col.
onel Evan-Smith, recently published in
England as Parliament paper, gives a
narrowing account of the doing of the
ivory-raiders in Africa. He says:
''Twenty-eight days march from Fort
Bodo brought US once more to Ugarrow-
was station. But it was nov aban-
doned; the slave-trader and his hum
dreds of desperadoes had commenced
the return home with six hundred tusks
of ivory, which had been collected after
immense waste of life and native prop
erty.
People in England have not the
slightest !des what the present fashion
of ivory-collecting, as adopted by the
Arabs and Zanzibar half-castes west of
the lake regions, means. Slave-trading
becomes innocence when compared with
iyory-raiding. The later has become
literally most bloody business. Bands
consisting Of from three hundred to six
hundred Manyema. armed with Enfield
carbines and Differed by Zanzibar
Arabs and Swahili. range over that
immense forest land east of the
Upper Congo, destroying every
district they discover and driving such
natives as escape the sudden fusilades
into the deepest recesses of the forest.
In the midst of vast circle described
by several days march in every direc-
ton the ivory-raiders select the locality
wherein plantains are abundant, pre-
pare few acres for rice. and while the
crop is growing sally out by twenties or
forties TO destroy every village within
the circle and to hunt up the miserable
natives who have escaped their first
secret and sudden onslaughts.
They are aware that the forest,
though IL furnishes recesseS of bush i'm
pervious to discovery, is a hungry will
derness outside the plantain grove of
the clearing, and that to sustain life
the women must forage far and near for
berries, Wild fruit and fungi. These
scattered bands of ivory-hunters find
these women and children an easy prey.
The startling explosion of heavily
loaded guns in the deep woods paralyzes
the timid creatures, and before they re-
cover from their deadly fright are
rushed upon and secured. BY the pos
session of these captives they impose
upon the tribal communities the neces-
sity of surrendering every article of
value, ivory or goats, to gain the liber-
ty of their relatives Thus the land be-
comes thoroughly denuded of ivory, but
unfortunately also, it becomes wild
waste.
THE six hundred ivory tusks that
Ugarrowwa was bearing now to the
coast had been acquired by just such
bloody work, relentless destruction of
human life, and condemnation of the
happy survivors of the tribal eommuni-
ties to Undesirable miseries. What
Ugarrowwa had done within his elected
circle, Kilonga has performed
with no less skill, but certainly with
far greater disregard to the interests
of hume nifty within his reserve, and the
same cruel, murderous policy was being
pursued within dozens of other circles
into which the region as far south as
Uregga, north to the Welle, east to
longitude 90 dogs. and 80 Minis, and
west the Congo was parceled out In
the early part of the month of August
the column overlook the immense cara
van of Ugarrowwa, his fiotilla of fifty
seven canoes laden with helpless chill
dren, girls and young women, and his
hoard of ivory, equal to about fifteen
tons, was at the landing place of viii
lage near Wasp rapids. on the Ituri
river"