Chapter 13. Numbo, New Caledonia

Louise Michel was fortunate. Those persons sent to New Caledonia and sentenced to the most rigorous deportation lived under conditions that were tolerable, if not easy. Basically, the authorities restricted Louise Michel and her comrades to a small territory near Noumea at the tip of the Ducos Peninsula. The issue of rations was insufficient, but the deportees were allowed to supplement their diets through their own efforts.

After Henri Rochefort’s successful escape in 1874, the tyrannical Governor Aleyron replaced Governor de la Richerie, and the major problem of the deportees was an arbitrary administration which harassed them and cut off information about the world outside as much as possible. Medical care was minimal. Conditions, in fact, were more unpleasant than Michel suggests, but less severe than the government had intended.

Four months after the Virginie left France, we sailed into Noumea through one of the gaps in the double rampart of coral which surrounds the island. Here, as at Rome, there are seven hills, which appeared blue under an intensely blue sky. To the south was Mt. Dore, with red crevasses of gold-bearing earth, and other mountain peaks were visible in all directions. One mountain had split in two, forming a V, and where the two arms of the V met, uprooted rocks had fallen backwards into some internal cavity. Those arid summits, those gorges torn from a cataclysm and still gaping wide, those volcanic cones from which flames spurted long ago and may erupt again—all that wilderness pleased me.

As usual, the authorities tried to separate the men from the women. At first they tried to send us women up the coast to Bourail while the men stayed on the Ducos Peninsula just outside Noumea. The excuse they used was that conditions at Bourail were better, and for that very reason we protested bitterly. If our male comrades were going to suffer more on the Ducos Peninsula, we wanted to be there with them. The captain of the Virginie understood that we were right, and he made the authorities understand, too. Finally, on the captain’s orders, the Virginie’s launch ferried us ashore.

I can still see all the details of the site. On the Ducos Peninsula we lived on the edge of the sea near the Western Forest. Noumea was on the other side of the hills from Numbo, which was composed of earthen huts over which creepers formed arabesques. From a distance their random groupings among the trees were lovely. We heard the waves beating eternally on the reefs, and above us we saw the cracked mountain peaks from which torrents of water poured noisily down to the sea during the frequent great rains. At sunset we watched the sun disappear into the sea, and in the valley the twisted white trunks of the niaoulis glowed with a silver phosphorescence.

The men who had sailed with us had disembarked several days before we women did. When we were rowed ashore, they were waiting for us on the beach with other comrades who had come on earlier ships, and for more than a week we were honored guests, feted from hut to hut.

Our first meal was with Pere Malezieux, that old man of the June Days whose coat had been riddled by bullets on January 22. He had escaped from the slaughter without having any idea how he had survived, nor did we. I believe that the less you value your life, the more chance there is that you will keep it.

Lacour cooked a roast in a hole, the way the Kanakas do. Lacour was the comrade who had heard the Protestant organ playing one night at Neuilly near the Perronnet barricade. The organ had been answering the Versailles artillery, sometimes like a challenge, sometimes by imitating the diabolical thunder of the cannons. Lacour, along with five or six National Guardsmen, had pushed his way into the church oratory to threaten the person whose playing was attracting shells to the barricade. It was I, of course. Ordered to rest, I had gone into the oratory, which was close to the barricade; the organ was a good one—at that time only a few notes were broken—and I had never felt in greater form. Everyone rests in his own way. In my memory I could hear a few measures of that dance of the bombs, so Lacour was an old friend.

At another feast in our honor, one given by Henri Rochefort, I met a Kanaka for the first time. It was Daoumi, from Sifou. On Balzenq’s advice, Daoumi had come dressed like a European in a high hat, which marred the effect of his wild man’s head, and he was wearing kid gloves. With his hands thus imprisoned, Daoumi could not help Olivier Pain with the roast, nor could he help with the other preparations. That is how I was able to get him alone and have him sing a war chant to me while I fed leaves to a she-goat tethered to a caster oil plant.

Daoumi sang that war chant in the soft voice of the Kanakas. A threat howled through its tune in quarter tones, and the farewell at the end came out as a true cry; the Kanakas get those quarter tones from the cyclones, just as the Arabs draw theirs from the hot and violent wind of the desert.

Within the prison area on the Ducos Peninsula, the town of Numbo grew up little by little, each new arrival adding his own earthen hut covered with grass. Numbo, in the valley, was crescent-shaped, the eastern end being the top of the crescent and containing the prison, the post office, and the canteen. The other end, the western one, lay in a forest on low hills covered with salt-resistant plants. The middle of the crescent, running along the whole length of the bays from east to west, was where we built our huts.

Each person built his nest or dug his lair according to his own impulses. From a distance Bauer’s hut was a beautiful villa. He had hung a basket in front of it filled with euphorbia that was sometimes cared for. Pere Croiset had built a chimney for his hut, and with luck you could almost make coffee there to celebrate the anniversary of March 18 without making the roof go up in flames. G- had plowed up half the mountainside to plant crops; an onlooker would have thought he was watching the Swiss Family Robinson. In G-’s storehouse under a

rock he kept a whole menagerie, in the midst of which his cat reigned supreme. At the very top of the mountain Burlot dwelt like a lookout. You could hear the sonorous cackle of his hen, which sang out like a donkey warning him of anyone entering his place.

Champy’s hut on the western coast was so small that when several people sat down there it was like being in a basket. When the wind blew, as it did strongly enough to tear the horns off cattle in the forest and on Nou Island southwest of us in the bay, it made Champy’s little basket dance.

Provins had a stupendous voice and would yell across from one bay to another, trying to chat with us across four hundred meters of water. We could hear him, but our responses couldn’t reach him. He was the only one among us with such a powerful voice.

Pere Malezieux had built his hut with his smithy at the edge of a large forest, which we called Pere Malezieux’s Forest. Near him lived Balzenq, a former staff member of Blanqui’s newspaper, and in his hole full of crucibles, Balzenq distilled an essence of niaouli from the trees. At his hut you could almost believe you were visiting some alchemist. Bunant lived nearby and went into the woods with his hatchet in his belt; he and his wife both dressed like bandits.

All our operations were as primitive as the Stone Age. We had to make our own tools, improvising as best we could for the things we lacked or that weren’t allowed in the camp.

When I was living at Numbo in a hut below the infirmary, I partially demolished an uninhabited hut to make it into a greenhouse. The guards were appalled at my audacity in daring to touch a building owned by the state. Even the deportees found my action a little brash, and speculated on what the governor—at that time de la Richerie— would do when he inspected the area and found out about it.

As it turned out, I was able to get his sympathy for my experiment when he came. I took him inside the greenhouse and showed him some trees standing in the best-lit corner. They were papayas which I had vaccinated with the sap of other papayas afflicted with plant jaundice, and I wanted to keep them hidden until my experiment was completed. Governor de la Richerie understood my experiment and gave orders that I be allowed to continue using the greenhouse.

I wanted to succeed with twenty trees before I talked about my experiment. That was important to me because even among the deportees, where all of us were suffering for having loved liberty, prejudice still remained. What would my comrades have said if I had talked openly about using vaccines on vegetables? Even when only very few persons knew what I was doing I kept hearing things like, “If it were true that vaccines could be used against all illnesses, professors of medicine would already have done it. Are you some sort of scientist that you are so busy on projects like this?”

Since that time scientists have tried vaccines for rabies and cholera, just as I tried it for plant jaundice in New Caledonia. Sap is like blood, and the same principles that govern diseases of the blood apply to the illnesses of plants. If boldness is useful to experimenters, it is most useful when it is employed to reason about the analogies that exist among all living things.

My four vaccinated papayas contracted jaundice, but they recovered. Perhaps they were the only ones which did not die of plant jaundice that year, especially on the peninsula. Before my experiment was complete, however, a new governor, the brutal and grotesque Aleyron, sent us women to the Bay of the West, and I don’t know what became of my trees.

Governor Aleyron took over in 1874, following Henri Rochefort’s escape, and the situation of the deportees worsened greatly. Governor Aleyron’s time in office was a time of desperate madness. On one side of the area to which we were confined was the prison itself, and under Governor Aleyron the prison was always full. Many of our friends were locked up there for long periods. Odious things happened. The guards shot at any deportee who returned to his cabin after curfew, even if he was only a few minutes late. One unfortunate man who didn’t have all his wits about him was shot at, the way somebody would have taken aim at a rabbit, because he came back a little late to his plot. At roll calls there were similar insults, and as punishment the deportees were deprived of bread.

The comical thing—there is always something comical—was that Aleyron set sentries around Numbo at night, and their calls in the midst of silence created an operatic effect. The sentries cast black shadows as they stood under the full moonlight which came over the peaks. Down from the top of the mountains we heard the clear night echo to, “Sentinels, take care.” It was almost as if I were at a performance of the Tour deNesles on an immensely enlarged stage, and I admit I enjoyed the spectacle greatly. Some of the sentries had beautiful, deep voices, and chance picked them to begin. But then their voices grew hoarse and the effect palled.

Even under Aleyron and Admiral Ribourt, who was on the island investigating Rochefort’s escape, I was able to smuggle a few letters out. They described the illegal actions of Governor Aleyron, and they tell the story of our transfer from Numbo to the Bay of the West.

Numbo, New Caledonia 18 April 1875

Dear friends:

From the publicity given the revelations made by those who have escaped recently, you ought to know, more or less, the situation of the deportees. You ought to know about the abuses of authority which Messieurs Ribourt, Aleyron, and their consorts are guilty of.

Under Admiral Ribourt our letters were opened and read, as if the few persons who had survived the slaughter of 1871 still struck fear into the assassins across the ocean.

Under Colonel Aleyron, the hero of the Lobau barracks, a guard fired at a deportee sitting in his own hut. That deportee had unknowingly crossed the boundary to look for firewood. Earlier another guard had shot at Croiset’s dog, which was lying between the legs of his master, and I don’t know whether the guard was aiming at the man or the dog.

So many things have happened since then. It seems to me that I’m going to forget something, because there is so much to tell, but I’ll remember sooner or later.

You have already learned that the guards cut off the bread ration of the deportees who showed up for roll call but did not line up in two rows in a military fashion. The deportation laws do not require them to line up that way, and their protest was vigorous but peaceful. It showed that the deportees had not forgotten solidarity, in spite of the divisions brought about among us by people foreign to our cause, whom the administrators have deliberately mixed with us. Since then, the guards have cut off supplies to forty-five deportees, allowing them to receive only bread, salt, and dried vegetables. Their only crime was showing their hostility to a job that existed solely in the officials’ imagination.

Four women have also been deprived of supplies on the charge that their conduct and morality left something to be desired. That charge is false. The husband of one of those women, the deportee Langlois, re¬ sponded vehemently because his wife had given him no grounds for discontent. For defending his wife against those slanders, he was sen¬ tenced to eighteen months in prison and fined 3000 francs.

Verlet says that the deportee Henry Place also spoke up for the woman who is his companion, the conduct of whom merits the respect of all the deportees. Place nevertheless was sentenced to six months in prison and fined 500 francs. Even worse, nothing can bring his child back to life. The child was born while Place was imprisoned awaiting trial, and it died as a consequence of the torments suffered by its mother, who was nursing it. Place was never allowed to see his child alive.

The courageous and dignified Cipriani was sentenced to eighteen months in prison and fined 3000 francs. Nourny was treated the same way for writing insolent letters to the authorities, letters that they clearly deserved.

Recently, Citizen Malezieux, the dean of the deportees, was seated one evening in front of his hut chatting with several deportees who work with him. A drunken guard accused him of disturbing the peace at night and struck him, whereupon Malezieux was put in prison.

Our beloved conquerors mix the droll with the harsh. They have drawn up lists to give deportees rewards for hard work or to cut off provisions from persons being disciplined. It turns out that the people who have worked the hardest since their arrival have been put on the list to be cut off from provisions. One deportee is on both lists at the same time: the list of those being punished for refusing to work and the list of those to receive rewards for special diligence, both lists being printed in the official Journal de Noumea.

At the evening roll call a few days before Captain de Pritzbuer took over from Aleyron as governor, a guard with a bad reputation threatened the deportees with his revolver in his hand. That challenge and many others since merit the deepest scorn.

It is very probable that in the future there will be new lists of persons cut off from provisions. Work doesn’t really exist because communications have been cut off for too long for anyone to try anything. Moreover, for some of the deportees to continue their old professions would require some basic expenditures which it is impossible for them to make.

Telling all these things will serve to tear the veil completely away from the events in New Caledonia. It will show just where the hatred of the victors can descend, and that is useful to know. But not to imitate them, for we are neither butchers nor jailers. We need to know and publicize the exploits of the party of order so that its defeat will be complete.

Farewell. I’ll see you soon, perhaps, if the situation requires those of us who don’t value our lives highly to risk them to escape, so that we can tell people about the crimes our lords and masters are committing here in New Caledonia.

Louise Michel, number 1

At the end of this letter of 18 April 1875 I went on to talk about an escape plan Mme Rastoul and I had worked out. Mme Rastoul lived in Australia, and we developed our plan through letters we smuggled from the Ducos Peninsula to Sydney and back hidden in the bottom of a box of sewing materials.

The plan was that one night after roll call I was to climb over the mountain and get to the Northern Forest. There I would get on the road that ran through the Northern Forest, and if I observed three or four risky precautions as I followed it, I would finally enter Noumea through the cemetery. Meanwhile, Mme Rastoul would arrange for someone to smuggle me aboard the mail packet to Sydney. When I arrived in Sydney I would tell about the actions of Aleyron and Ribourt, inspiring the English, I hoped, to send a brig crewed by bold sailors. I would return on the brig to rescue the other deportees, or if I failed to move the English, I would return alone.

It was the sewing box containing the plan which failed to return. When I finally came through Sydney after I was legally repatriated, I learned from Mme Rastoul (now Mme Henry) that at the moment when I was supposed to receive the message to carry out our escape plan, someone handed our sewing box over to the authorities.

I have no idea why the New Caledonian administration never spoke to me about those plans for escape they had intercepted, but it may have been one motive behind sending us women from Numbo to the Bay of the West.

A month after I wrote the letter to my friends about the evil acts of Governor Aleyron and his guards, we women were ordered to move from Numbo to the Bay of the West, which is also on the Ducos Peninsula, and I wrote another letter describing those events.

Ducos Peninsula 9 June 1875

Dear friends,

Here are the official transfer papers I have spoken to you about. We consented to the transfer only after our protests had been satisfied. We protested two points: first, the way the transfer was ordered; and second, the manner in which we were to live in the new huts.

Whether we occupied this corner or that corner of the peninsula made no difference to us, but we couldn’t endure the insolence of the first order the administration posted, and we had the right to set our conditions and not consent to change residence until those conditions were met.

That is what we did.

Here is a copy of the first order, dated 19 May 1875 and posted at Numbo. That was the way we got the government’s orders—by proclamation.

19 May 1875

By order of the government the deported

WOMEN WHOSE NAMES FOLLOW WILL LEAVE THE

camp of Numbo on the twentieth of the current month

TO GO TO LIVE ON THE BAY OF THE WEST IN THE LODGINGS ASSIGNED TO THEM

Louise Michel, number 1 Marie Schmit, number 3 Marie Cailleux, number 4 Ad£:le Desfosses, number 5 Nathalie Lemel, number 2 Mme Dupre, number 6

We protested. Here are our two letters of protest, the first from Mme Lemel.

Numbo, 20 May 1875

The deportee Nathalie Duval (Mme Lemel) does not refuse to live in the hut to which the administration assigns her, but she wishes to call attention to the following points.

First, she cannot move herself;

Second, she cannot procure the wood necessary for cooking her food and saw it up herself;

Third, she has already built two hen houses and cultivated a garden;

Fourth, through the authority of the law on deportation which reads, “The deportees will be able to live in groups or in families,” the deportees have the right to choose the persons with whom they wish to establish relationships. The said deportee Nathalie Duval (Mme Lemel) refuses communal life except under those conditions.

(signed) Nathalie Duval (Mme Lemel), number 2

I sent the authorities my protest, too.

Numbo, 20 May 1875

The deportee Louise Michel, number 1, protests the measure which assigns a domicile far from the camp to the women deportees, as if their presence in the camp was a scandal. The same law governs both male and female deportees; no unmerited insult should be added.

I cannot go to this new domicile unless the administration publicly posts its motives for sending us there.

The deportee Louise Michel declares that if those motives are insulting, she will be obliged to protest to the end, no matter what happens to her.

Louise Michel, number 1

The day after our protests, we were warned to be ready to move during the day, an order we hastened not to obey. We were firmly resolved not to leave Numbo until the authorities acceded to our just protests. We declared we were ready to go to the prison if they wished, but we would certainly not bother to move as they had ordered. We affirmed, however, that once the insolent proclamation was corrected and our lodgings arranged in such a way that we wouldn’t disturb each other, we had no reason to prefer one place to another.

The head guard was very annoyed with us. Toward evening he came on horseback so he would appear more imposing, but his horse kept breaking wind, which spoiled the effect. And then, bored with the long pause his master made in front of our huts, the horse ran back to the military camp more swiftly than his rider wished.

Three or four days later, the governor and the territorial commanding officer came to our huts. They promised to accede to our demands by putting up a second proclamation, and they agreed to separate us in little huts where we would be able to live in twos and threes as we wished. Thus at the Bay of the West we would be allowed to group ourselves according to our trades.

They fulfilled a part of their commitments immediately, but so long as they weren’t met totally, it was impossible for them to make us leave Numbo. Their problem was that there were no places for us in the prison, so they decided to meet our demands completely. Now we are at the Bay of the West. It is sad for Mme Lemel, who is so sick she can scarcely walk. That’s why I’m not rejoicing in the nearness of the forest I love so much.

Without passion or anger, that is the story of our transfer.

Louise Michel, number 1 Bay of the West, 9 June 1875

The administration gave in to our rebellion because it would have had greater problems if it had not; there was no special prison in which to keep a half-dozen women. But in June 1875 I made a new beginning at the Bay of the West.