Draft:Inca Mining Company

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The Inca Mining Company was founded in 1896 by Wallace Hardison and Chester W. Brown with a capital of $1,000,000.[1][2] The two were in the country of Peru on business, looking to invest in an oil prospect.[3]The government of Peru granted the company important land concessions in exchange for building a transportation route. The Inca Rubber Company was founded as a subsidiary company, which would extract rubber from the concession using an indentured or arguably enslaved Native work force.

Inca Mining Company[edit]

Wallace Hardison and his nephew visited a successful goldmine at a Carabaya, Peru, when they were in the area around 1896.[3] After examining the ore and concluding the mountain to be rich Hardison purchased the Santo Domingo mine.[3] At the time, the operation only consisted of a four-stamp mill that was crushing ore daily.[3] Hardison was almost swindled out of his deal when the property was resurveyed.[4] The original owners ordered the new survey, which conveniently excluded the property bought by Hardison.[4]Wallace's solution was the physically occupy and claim the mine for himself, and he was given the keys to the mine upon his arrival.[4] The previous manager, who handed the keys to Wallace gave a speech to his miners that they would now be working for Hardison: effectively taking possession of the mine and property.[4]

The newly founded company started gold mining operations in the upper Inambari river by the mid 1890s. By 1899 a railroad was constructed reaching from the Santo Domingo mine to Tirapata in highland Puno.

In 1902 the company applied for a land concession in exchange for constructing a route from Tirapata to Astillero (Puerto Markham). The road reached as far as the Tavara river in 1905 and by 1906 it reached a navigable point at the Tambopata river, Astillero.[5] For the mule road, the company built a 2 meter wide path to Astillero that ran 127 kilometers long.[5]

In 1914, the Company later became the Inca Mining and Development Company.

http://bruce.graham.free.fr/family/santo_domingo/Articles/woods_story.htm


The Inca Mining Company aided William Curtis Farabee and the Peabody Museum carry out their first ethnological expedition, and also helped to established their headquarters at the Harvard Boyden Station, close to Arequipa.[6]

Santo Domingo trail[edit]

In exchange for developing the mule road from Tirapata to Astillero: the company was granted a two million acre commission along the Tambopata river.[7] The Tambopata itself is a shallow tributary of the Madre de Dios river[8]. The road made access into the Fitzcarrald isthmus easier and essentially connected the Madre de Dios basin to the rest of Peru.[8]

Before hand, if rubber collectors in the Madre de Dios wanted to export their product, they would typically have to send it through the Atlantic. The Santo Domingo trail opened up a route to the west coast and the pacific, which was a shorter distance for exporters in the Madre de Dios. A toll booth was in place at Agualani, collecting a tax from any would be passer.[9] The natives in the local valley are exempt from the toll, in exchange for maintaining the road.

The Santo Domingo trail in the Limbani valley
Map of the Santo Domingo trail

There was a risk of landslides occurring from the rain as well.https://www.google.com/books/edition/Exploration_Fawcett/HVcgDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1

Inca Rubber Company[edit]

The Inca Rubber Company was registered by 1902 with a concession of one million acres.[10]

The “Inca” steamship was operating along the Tambopata river by 1903. The Inca Company had its "workers" ship the one hundred and ten feet long steamship across the Santo Domingo trail onto the Tambopata River.[11]

The Inca steamship on the Tambopata River

The company tried to raise Llamas at fifteen hundred feet above sea level however all of these animals perished.[12]

The Inca Rubber Company headquarters at Comiseria Maldonada had a Peruvian customs post with a military garrison. Comiseria Maldonada was located on at the confluence of the Tambopata and Madre de Dios Rivers. [13]

"The Inca Company had one hundred and fifty Japanese at work in 1907 and wanted five hundred more. A peon had a selling value at the time at Maldonada of twenty-five hundred soles, or about $1250... Common labor wages run through a wide scale, depending on whether the laborer is a peon, who gets just enough to keep him in debt to his employer at all the time, or what contract has been made, which applies mostly to the Japanese."[14]

Astillero served as the boundary between the Madre de Dios and Puno regions. Improvements on the isthmus of Fitzcarrald incentivized rubber tappers on the Manuripe, Las Piedras and other rivers to ship their product to Puerto Maldonado.

The rubber Company had its headquarters located at the confluence of the Tambopata and Madre de Dios River. There was a Peruvian customs post guarding the settlement as well.

In regards to the first contact among his expedition and natives local to the Tambopata, professor Solon I. Bailey stated that “a condition little better than slavery awaits them.”[8]

By 1911 the Inca Mining Company owned 841,600 hectares of concessionary land while the rubber company had 255,000.[15] The Tambopata Rubber Syndicate, The Inca Mining Company and the Inca Rubber Company controlled %74 of the land ceded out by the Peruvian government around the Inambari and Tambopata Rivers during the rubber boom.[16]


In 1907 there were five hundred thousand pounds of caucho rubber extracted by the Company waiting to be transported.[13] Most of the rubber producing trees in the Inca Rubber Company concession were caucho trees.[13] One caucho tree in this region may yield seventy-five pounds of latex after it is cut down.[11]

In order to extract caucho rubber, it was necessary to cut a castilloa tree down. Deep incisions were then made into the bark in order to bleed the latex from the tree, which would then be collected by leaves that were placed on the ground.[14]

A portion of the caucho latex is wasted during the extraction process.[13]

It could take mule team employed by the company sixteen days to travel between their port at Maldonada and the railroad.[17][a]


^Inca steamship mentioned next page + outlet to Atlantic


http://bruce.graham.free.fr/family/santo_domingo/ivory_hardison.html#fred_brown Fred Brown "all the provisions to feed some two hundred employes had to be brought to the mine over the highest points of the Andes, on the backs of In­dians."

Refer to notebook. As well as the “Andean Land” , Farabees information, Fawcetts information, Irving’s information, funding the observatory, Anti-slavery report and lack of investigation, sale of the Santo Domingo mine in 1914, then figure out what happened to rubber company concession + sources.

-Chuncho and Guaraya natives were given "special attention" by the Harvard Uni. expedition to Maldonada, led by W. Curtis Farabee

This expedition went to "Maldonada"!![18] Check that account and see if the port is named Astillero.

  • Home offices in Bradford, Pennsylvania.[10]


https://www.google.com/books/edition/In_the_Footsteps_of_Pizarro/XfRlAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=inca ^200,000 $ purchase of mine, page 287

Ten stamps, four crushers and "two huntingtons" mentioned page 308

Page 309 porters mentioned

Page 343 mention of money paid to natives and the degradation of previous work relations.

"Our concession is equal to a tract of country sixty-four miles square and we are putting the natives to work as fast as thery come from the acre river or Iquitos. We have at present several hundred at work and expect before another year to have a thousand." Page 350


https://kar.kent.ac.uk/37176/1/Peluso%202-13%20Shajao%20-%20Histories%20of%20an%20invented%20savage.pdf



The Inca Rubber Trading Company was formed in 1906 and was supposed to assume assets from the Inca Rubber Company, Inca Mining Company and Carabaya Rubber and Navigation Company.[19] However, the latter company had been sold to George Newnes and formed into the Inambari Para Rubber Estates, Limited.

In 1909 Chase Salmon Osborn claimed that the Inca Rubber Company paid their workers thirty cents for every pound of rubber they brought in.[13]


Station belonging to the Inca Rubber Company
Photograph taken in the Inca Rubber Company concession

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Maldonda may be the same port as Astillero, also known as Puerto Markham.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Fuchs, F.C. (1900). "The Santo Domingo Gold Mine In Peru" (PDF). The Engineering and Mining Journal. 70: 9–10.
  2. ^ Graham, Bruce. "The Hardison Family from Caribou, Maine". The electronic notebook of BRUCE GRAHAM.
  3. ^ a b c d Grant, Rena. Three Men from Aroostook, The Story of the Hardison Family. Brazelton-Hanscom. pp. 113–115. Retrieved 23 August 2023.
  4. ^ a b c d Grant, Rena. Three Men from Aroostook, The Story of the Hardison Family. Brazelton-Hanscom. pp. 120–122. Retrieved 23 August 2023.
  5. ^ a b Perz, Stephen; Castillo Hurtado ·, Jorge (2023). The Road to the Land of the Mother of God A History of the Interoceanic Highway in Peru. University of Nebraska. pp. 97–98. ISBN 9781496225870. Retrieved 23 August 2023.
  6. ^ "PEABODY MUSEUM SOUTH AMERICA EXPEDITION, 1906–1909". Harvard.Edu.
  7. ^ Knox, Hannah; Harvey, Penny (2015). An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise. Cornell University Press. p. 26. ISBN 9780801456459. Retrieved 23 August 2023.
  8. ^ a b c Bailey, Solon (1906). "A New Peruvian Route to the Plain of the Amazon". National Geographic Magazine. Retrieved 23 August 2023.
  9. ^ Olivera, Jose (1903). Nuevas exploraciones en la hoya del Madre de Dios. Junta de Vías Fluviales. p. 50. Retrieved 23 August 2023.
  10. ^ a b Commercial Relations 1906, p. 321.
  11. ^ a b Osborn 1909, p. 104.
  12. ^ Osborn 1909, p. 109.
  13. ^ a b c d e Osborn 1909, p. 103.
  14. ^ a b Osborn 1909, p. 105.
  15. ^ Rummenhöller, Klaus; Clotilde Chavarría Mendoza, María; Moore, Thomas (2020). Madre de Dios refugio de pueblos originarios (in Spanish). USAID. p. 140. ISBN 9789972975318.
  16. ^ Gray 1996, p. 224.
  17. ^ Osborn 1909, pp. 103–104.
  18. ^ Osborn 1909, pp. 104, 106.
  19. ^ "Rubber resources of Peru". Shoe and Leather Journal. 19: 69. 1906.

Bibliography[edit]

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