Of the customs of these Indians, of their arms, and of the ceremonies
they perform; and who the founder of the city of Antioquia was.
The inhabitants of these valleys are brave amongst themselves, and much
feared by their neighbours. The men go naked and barefooted, and merely
wear a narrow band fastened to a girdle round the waist. Their hair is
worn very long. Their arms are darts, long lances of black palm, slings,
and two-handed clubs, called _Macanas_.[205] The women wear a mantle
from the waist downwards of bright coloured cotton cloth. The lords,
when they marry, make a sort of sacrifice to their gods. They assemble
in a house to the number of about twelve, where the prettiest girls have
already been assembled, and choose those they desire most. The son of
the chosen woman inherits the lordship, and if there is no son, the son
of the lord’s sister inherits. These people border on a province called
Tatabe, which is thickly inhabited by rich and warlike Indians, whose
customs are the same as those of their neighbours. Their houses are
built over very large trees, and are made of many stout poles, each
house having more than two hundred of them, and the coverings of these
great houses consist of palm leaves. Many Indians live in one house,
with their wives and children. These nations extend to the westward as
far as the South Sea, and to the east they border on the great river of
Darien. All their country is mountainous, very rugged, and fearful to
pass through. Near this country they say there is that grandeur and
wealth of the Dabaybe which is so celebrated in Terra Firme.[206] In
another part of the country, over which Nutibara is lord, there are some
Indians living in a certain valley called Nore, which is very fertile.
Near this valley is now built the city of Antioquia. In ancient times
there was a large population in these valleys, as we judged from the
edifices and burial places, of which there are many well worth seeing,
being so large as to appear like small hills.
These Indians, though they speak the same language as those of Guaca,
were always engaged in wars with them, so that the number of both
nations has greatly diminished, for they eat all those that are
captured, and place their heads before the doors of their houses. They
go naked like the others, except that the chiefs sometimes cover
themselves with a long mantle of coloured cotton. The women are covered
with small mantles of the same material. Before passing on, I wish to
relate a truly strange and wondrous thing. The second time that we
returned through these valleys, when the city of Antioquia was founded
near the hills which overhang them, I heard it said that the lords or
caciques of the valley of Nore collected all the women they could find
from the land of their enemies, took them home, and used them as if they
had been their own. If any children were born, they were reared with
much care until they reached the age of twelve or thirteen, and, being
then plump and healthy, these caciques ate them with much appetite, not
considering that they were of their own flesh and blood. In this way
they had many women solely to bring forth children, which were
afterwards to be eaten: and this is the greatest of all the sins that
these people commit. I saw myself what occurred between one of these
chiefs and the licentiate Juan de Vadillo, who is now in Spain, and if
he is asked respecting what I now write, he will say that it is true. It
is that, when I and my comrades entered these valleys, a chief named
Nabonuco came to us peaceably, and brought with him three women. When
night came on, two of them laid down on a mat, and the other across it
to serve as a pillow. The Indian then made his bed on the bodies of
these women, and took another pretty woman by the hand. When the
licentiate Juan de Vadillo saw this proceeding, he asked the Indian
chief why he had brought that other woman whom he held by the hand. The
chief replied, in a gentle voice, looking him in the face, that he was
going to eat her. On hearing this, Vadillo was astonished, and said,
“What! are you going to eat your own wife?” The chief, raising his
voice, replied, “Yes, truly; and I will also eat the child she bears
me.” This happened in the valley of Nore. I have heard this licentiate
Juan de Vadillo sometimes say, that he had heard from some old Indians,
that when the natives of Nore go to war, they make slaves of their
prisoners, and marry them to their own relations and neighbours, and
that the children thus born are eaten; and that afterwards, when these
slaves are too old to have any more children, they eat them also. In
truth, as these Indians have no faith, I am not astonished at this.
Owing to these wars, when we discovered the valleys, we found so many
human heads at the doors of the chiefs’ houses, that it seemed as if
each one had been a butcher’s shop. When one of the chiefs dies, the
people mourn for many days, cut off the hair of his wives, kill those
who were most beloved, and raise a tomb the size of a small hill, with
an opening towards the rising sun. Within this great tomb they make a
large vault, and here they put the body, wrapped in cloths, and the gold
and arms the dead man had used when alive. They then take the most
beautiful of his wives and some servant lads, make them drunk with wine
made with maize, and bury them alive in that vault, in order that the
chief may go down to hell with companions.
This city of Antioquia is situated in a valley between the famous,
notable, and rich rivers of Darien and of Santa Martha, for these
valleys are between the two Cordilleras.[207] The position of the city
is very good, with wide plains, near a small river. Many other rivers
flow near it, which rise in the Cordilleras, and many springs of sweet
and limpid water. All the rivers are full of very fine gold, and their
banks are shaded by many kinds of fruit-trees. Antioquia is surrounded
by extensive provinces, inhabited by Indians, very rich in gold, who use
small scales to weigh it; but they are all great eaters of human flesh,
and when they take each other prisoners, they show no mercy. One day I
saw in Antioquia, when we founded it in some hills where Captain Jorge
Robledo first fixed the site (which was afterwards changed by Captain
Juan Cabrera to the site where the city now stands), while walking in a
field of maize, four Indians close to me, who met another, and killed
him with their clubs. They then drank his blood and eat his entrails by
mouthfuls. They have no arrows, nor do they use any other arms than the
above. I have never seen any temple or house of worship, except that
which was burnt in the valley of Guaca. They all talk with the devil;
and in each village there are two or three old men who are adepts in the
evil art of conversing with him, and they announce what he desires to be
done. They do not entirely attain to a belief in the immortality of the
soul. The water and all that the earth produces is referred to nature,
although they well know there is a Creator, but their belief is false,
as I shall relate presently.
The city of Antioquia was founded and settled by the Captain Jorge
Robledo, in the name of his Majesty the Emperor Charles, King of Spain
and of the Indies, our lord, and by order of the Adelantado Don
Sebastian de Belalcazar, his governor and captain-general of the
province of Popayan, in the year of the nativity of our Lord 1541. This
city is in 7° of the equinoctial,[208] on the north side.[209]