The Guano War

On the west coast of South Ameria, conflict would soon envelope Bolivia, Chile and Peru into the War of the Pacific, or the Guano War. Along the coastline of Peru and Chile are offshore islands where seabirds congregate: the Chincha Islands in the south, and the smaller islands, Guanajos and Lobos. The enormous fish reserves draw a large population of birds and sea lions to these islands. Millions of white-breasted cormorants, gray pelicans and white-headed gannet roost on just one of these islands. Guano is a combination of droppings, unhatched eggs, and decomposed bodies. The birds produce at least 11,000 tons of guano a year.

Due to the lack of rain, the droppings accumulate and are baked in the dry atmosphere, preserving the nitrates in the deposits. Over the centuries, guano grew into large deposits, often 100 to 140 feet deep. It became an important export commodity from 1840 to 1880, and was highly valued as fertilizer for improving crop yields.

Foreign traders, especially the British, set up trading houses to ship the guano back to England and Europe. At one point, the House of Gibbs had a monopoly on the guano trade, with much of the guano shipped to Great Britain. Guano comprised more than two/thirds of the total shipments to Britain in the late 1860s. The Americans also found guano valuable and passed the U.S. Guano Island Act of 1856 to assist American traders to acquire similar islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean. Since the British had monopoly over the Peruvian guano, American business interests in Peru stemmed not from the direct mining of the guano but from the transport of supplies.

Bolivia granted concessions to Chilean companies to explore and exploit other resources of Bolivia's coastal regions. Chilean companies found vast deposits of nitrate of soda and borax in 1866 and 1868, and a rich vein of silver ore in 1879. As a result, the Chileans developed a lucrative mining enterprise with the assistance of Great Britain. (Dobyns, 1976, p. 195) Not having direct access to guano, the Grace Company supplied American companies with nitrate of soda and continued to develop its interest in this area.

Manual Fuentes, Peruvian journalist and historian, compiled a statistical viewpoint of Lima produced in 1858. At that time Lima's population reached 55,000, with 5,000 inhabitants, one-fifth of the adult males, unemployed. Workers and artesans comprised about one/fifth of the population. Yet, foreign companies received contracts for city services, such as the paving of streets, importing both workers and the stones from Europe. More than half of the top merchants were European. Domestic production through factories was almost nonexistent, making it necessary to import almost everything. (Gootenberg, 1993, pp. 66-69)

A contemporary assessment contends that the Peruvian upper class of those days was more often a lawyer or a politician than a merchant. The merchants of Lima were often foreigners and the banks were also under foreign ownership. Foreigners controlled the development of agriculture and natural resources, the cultivation of sugarcane, the export of wool and hides, the mines, guano and the nitrate resources. They even participated in the funding of the troops, to some extent as a matter of self-protection.

Peru borrowed heavily from foreign investors on the strength of the guano exports. By the 1850s, Peru's emphasis on foreign loans moved it from last to first place as a borrower in the London markets. By the 1860s proceeds from guano exports provided more than 75 % of government revenue (Gootenberg, 1989, pg. 133). The government used some of these large sums of money to undertake large public projects. Guano exports also built personal fortunes, drawing all partners in this short-lived prosperity into the growing conflict over the control of the guano trade.

By 1875, sodium nitrate began to surpass the guano beds as an important resource. The guano beds were exhausted. (Clayton, 1999) The drop in the guano trade was largely due to the recession in Europe, over-supply and the growing demand for nitrate of soda. The 1870s showed a mass move of capital from guano to nitrate production.

W. M. Mathew (1981) offers another parallel explanation. As of 1858, British farmers began to switch the fertilizer for their turnip crops to superphosphates, as the price for guano escalated and the price for superphosphates remained stable. More easily obtained, superphosphates offered a better combination of nutrients for turnips and other root crops.

Faced with falling markets and in a difficult financial position, Peru attempted to establish more control over the exports. Bolivia also assessed additional fees on the Chilean concessionaires to compensate for the falling revenues. The Chileans protested that the new export duties were in violation of a previous treaty.

On the 15th of January of 1876, the Peruvian government declared the nitrate beds a government monopoly with a duty on private exportation so high it would force all lands into government ownership. Thus, three South American countries were drawn into a serious conflict over the right to mine in the Atacama desert region, an area never carefully delineated by national boundaries. English, American and other foreign interests were also at stake, with English interests aligned with those of Chile, and the United States with interests in both countries, and an antipathy towards England for their involvement in affairs in the western Hemisphere.

January of 1878 ushered in a period of peace and tranquility, which might have provided a hopeful future for Peru if it had not been hopelessly bankrupt. Bolivia in 1878 placed a tax of ten centavos on each hundredweight of nitrates. (Williams, 1938, p. 574-575.) Chile was outraged, calling this a violation of the treaty of 1874. Bolivia responded that failure to pay this tax by Chile would end in the confiscation of the Chilean factories and her exclusion from the industry.

Resources:
Clayton, Lawrence A. 1999. Peru and the United States: the Condor and the Eagle. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Dobyns, Henry F. And Paul L. Doughty. 1976. Peru: a cultural history. New York, Oxford University Press. 336 pp.

Gootenberg, Paul. 1989. Between silver and guano: commercial policy and the state in postindependence Peru. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University. 234 pp.

Mathew, W.M. 1981. The House of Gibbs and the Peruvian guano monopoly. London: Royal Historical Society. 281 pp.

Williams, Mary Wilhelmine. 1938. The people and politics of Latin America. Boston: Ginn. 889 pp.

Captain Paul Boyton

Fortunately we know quite a bit more about Paul Boyton than we do about George Kiefer. Unlike George, who appears to have been a quiet and studious man, Paul enjoyed the limelight and sought out publicity. In the 1880s, his adventures were followed throughout the country, and he wrote a book about some of his adventures in The Story of Paul Boyton.

We have an interest in his early life, because we don't know when George Kiefer met Paul. Paul was born June 29, 1849, probably in Ireland, although he later claimed to be born in the U.S. Even as a child, he loved the water and swimming. His father, Terence, was notably absent. A trader of curiosities, Terence imported sea-shells, corals, and oriental goods that he sold in major American cities.

Paul had two brothers and three sisters. In 1858, they moved to Allegheny, Pennsylvania, on Lacock St. near the railroad bridge.

On April 15th 1864, at the age of 15, Paul joined the U.S. Navy. He was assigned to the U.S. steamer, Hydrangea, Captain W. Rogers in command. They were ordered to Fort Monroe, and spent that part of Civil War running up the James River past Malvern Hill where a confederate battery was stationed. His last engagement was the assault on Fort Fisher. He wrote that he was on board the ship-of-war St. Louis. He left the navy with the position of yeoman, possibly in 1865.

At some point he began submarine diving for the New York Wrecking Company and then went treasure hunting in the West Indies on the schooner Foam, for the purpose of collecting and shipping marine curiosities. He was wrecked in the Bay of Campeche near Tampico.

In 1867 he joined the Mexican revolutionaries under Pedro Martinez and Colonel Sawyer to fight Maximillian. After several skirmishes he deserted and returned to the United States.

In 1868, the family left Allegheny and his father helped him set up a store in Philadelphia for the sale of curiosities and Oriental goods and another at Cape May, New Jersey. In 1869 he lost everything to a fire. On October 5, 1870 his father died. We can conjecture that the absences and the early death of his father left some vacant hole in his being. Soon after his father died he left for France. When he returned from France to New York, his mother and elder brother had a store on Broadway near Thirteenth Street.

In Atlantic City, he helped organize the U.S. Lifesaving Service, where he claims to have saved 71 people.

From 1870 to 1871, Paul joined the free-shooters (Franc-tireurs) of the French Army and then sailed south to seek his fortune in the South African diamond fields.

In 1873 Paul Boyton started with his new dress-out, devised by C.S. Merriman of Iowa. It was a two-part suit made of vulcanized rubber, a tunic with a steel belt around the waist with pantaloons and boots. On each thigh and, breast, on the back of the head were inflatable pockets that could be blown up with a tube. He had a double paddle that could also be used as a sail. W.O. Carpenter was associated with Boyton in the original introduction of the suit (New York Times Obituary).

In a celebrated stunt in 1874, he leaped off a ship 40 miles off the coast of Ireland, and spent seven hours in the water before reaching the shore. He was thus enthralled by both the attention and notoriety that he achieved. Demonstrating the suit around the world now became a personal passion for him.

He leaped into the headlines on May 28th 1875 when he crossed the English Channel in 24 hours in his Merriman suit. The Annual Register in 1875 (A New Life Dress, pg. 17) mentions that Captain Boyton appeared with Lt. Morgan and Mr. Willis, all three in a “life dress”. Boyton took in tow with him an India-rubber canoe and a tin canister. The former contained rockets and signal lights; the latter had working tools, provisions, and cigars. They were two hours in the water.

In October of 1875, Paul Boyton floated the Rhine from Switzerland to Germany. In 1876, he floated the Mississippi River. In 1878 March 29 to 31st Boyton sailed down the Guadalquivir from San Geronimo (Morocco). In November, he paddled down the L’Orne.

George Kiefer said that he travelled for thousands of miles with Paul.. I would assume in a similar role to the aforementioned Lt. Morgan and Mr. Willis...but as yet it is a mystery as to when they met or started working together. We know definitely that they were in business together by the fall of 1880. Paul mentions him in his autobiography but it is hard to find evidence that they met before that date, since the newspaper articles often fail to mention who accompanied Paul during his exploits in various parts of the world.

George may have travelled with Captain Boyton when Paul travelled through Europe. We know that George visited the Louvre of Paris and the British Museum of London where he first saw examples of Peruvian antiquities, and we must assume that these visits were before 1880.

Resources:

Boyton, Paul. The Story of Paul Boyton, Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World
http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/9/2/3/19230/19230.htm

George Kiefer

This research began with a letter that I found in family papers. The letter was from George Kiefer to a cousin or another relative. It was written in Peru around 1881. The letter led me to search further, to find out where he came from and what he did with his life. I have been able to discover only a little about who he was as a person, but at least a little more about what he did and the times in which he lived. I have been able to do this only through the help of friends and complete strangers. And I hope that I will continue to hear from people who can help me with this work.

When I first began this research, all I knew about George, mostly from the letter, is that he travelled with Captain Paul Boyton and they floated down rivers in strange rubber suits. I also knew that he dug up relics in Peru in a place called the Necropolis of Ancon. The Necropolis was within the sphere of the Huari culture around 1000 AD, that produced pottery such as the one here photographed by User:Haylli in December of 2004. (http://www.wikimedia.org/).


I still know very little about George's family or how he came to meet Paul Boyton. In my research, I have built a shell around a man who still remains an extreme mystery. It is possible that George arrived in America around 1857. He probably came from Germany or Bavaria. I expect to know more as this story unfolds.

For the past five years, I have been vicariously living in the Peru of the 1880s. I've met, through books, letters and documents, the people who walked the streets of Lima at that time. I've seen the beautiful public squares of Lima, the ruined towns of Chorrillos and Miraflores, and the remains of those who gave their lives in battle. I've imagined the fear and emotions of the citizens of Lima when rioting broke out within the streets and the Chilean army approached the city.

BUT I have never been to modern Lima, have not walked the desert coast at Arica, nor seen the port of Callao. I've not ridden the railroad from Lima to see the dunes of the Necropolis at Ancon nor visited the mountain town of Matucana. So my view is unfortunately flawed. If I visited Peru, I would only have a vague idea of where I was. To some extent, I think it would be like visitng my birthplace after an absence of 60 years.

This story is a rough draft, with parts missing and no doubt rife with misinterpretations unintended. The events are seen through the lense, as much as possible, of contemporary observers. I can only imagine that each perspective was colored or distorted by the observer's experience or agenda. As you read, I want you to be aware of this.

I am still grappling with documenting each event accurately and identifying timeframes that will help fit everything into an approximate timeline. I am skipping over significant events in the War, only because I have not discovered any relationship of these events to the protagonists in this story. Some of my dates are real and some of them are relative, and some of them may be good guesses. My scholarship is deficient in that regard, so please bear with me as I "give you not my best".