(89)

8.8. They perpetrated another great slaughter in the town of Tepeaca,

which was much larger and more populous than Cholula; they put

numberless people to the sword with great and particular kinds of

cruelty.

9.9. From Cholula they took their way towards Mexico; and the great king

Montezuma sent them thousands of presents; and lords and people came

to meet them with festivities while on their arrival at the paved

road to Mexico, which is two leagues long, his own brother appeared,

accompanied by many great lords bearing many presents of gold,

silver and clothing. At the entrance of the city he himself

descended from a golden litter, with all his great court to receive

them and to accompany them to the palaces, where he had given orders

they should be lodged; on that same day, according to what was told

me by some of those present, they managed by some feint, while he

suspected nothing, to take the great king Montezuma prisoner; and

then they put him in fetters and placed a guard of eighty men over

him.

10.10. But leaving all this, of which there would be many, and great

things to say, I only wish to relate a notable thing that those

tyrants did here. When the captain of the Spaniards went to capture

a certain other captain, (90) who came to attack him, he left one of

his captains with, I think, a hundred men or more, to keep guard

over the king Montezuma; these Spaniards decided to do another

extraordinary thing to increase the fear of them throughout the

land, a practice, as I have said, to which they often resorted.

11.11. All the Indians, plebeians as well as nobles of Montezuma’s capital

and court, thought of nothing else but to give pleasure to their

captive monarch. Among other festivals they celebrated for him, one

was the performance in all the quarters and squares of the city of

those customary dances, called by them mitotes, and in the islands,

areytos. In these dances they wear all their richest ornaments,

and as this is their principal enjoyment and festivity, all take

part in it. The greatest nobles and knights and those of royal

blood, according to their rank, performed their dances and

ceremonies nearest the buildings where their sovereign was a

prisoner.

12.12. More than 2000 sons of lords were assembled in the place nearest to

the said palaces who were the flower and the best nobility of all

Montezuma’s empire. The captain [Alvarado] of the Spaniards went

thither with a squadron of his men and he sent other squadrons to

all the other parts of the city, where they were performing the said

dances, pretending that they went to witness them; and he commanded

that at a certain hour all should fall upon them.

13.13. And while the Indians were intent on their dances in all security

he cried, Santiago! and fell upon them; with their drawn swords the

Spaniards pierced those naked and delicate bodies, and shed that

generous blood, so that not even one was left alive. The same was

done by the others in the other squares.

14.14. This was a thing that filled all those kingdoms and people with

amazement, anguish, lamentation bitterness and grief. And until the

end of the world, or till they are entirely destroyed, they will not

cease in their dances, to lament and sing—as we say here in

romances,—that calamity and the destruction of all their hereditary

nobility, in whom they had gloried for so many years back.

15.15. Upon witnessing such injustice and unheard of cruelty, inflicted

upon so many innocent and inoffensive people, the Indians, who had

tolerated with patience the equally unjust imprisonment of their

supreme monarch, because he himself had commanded them to refrain

from attacking or making war on the Christians, now took up arms

throughout the city and attacked the Spaniards, many of whom were

wounded and with difficulty found safety in flight.

16.16. Threatening the captive Montezuma with a dagger at his breast, they

forced him to show himself on the battlements, and to command the

Indians to cease besieging the house and calm themselves. His

subjects had no mind to obey him any further, but on the contrary,

they conferred about electing another sovereign and commander who

would lead them in their battles.

17.17. As the captain [Cortes] who had gone to the port, was already

returning victorious, and had announced his approach and was

bringing with him many more Christians, the fighting ceased for

three or four days, until he entered the city. When he had entered

and numberless people were assembled, from all the country, the

fighting became so general and lasted for so many days that the

Spaniards, fearing they would all perish, decided to leave the city

by night.

18.18. Learning their intention, the Indians killed a great number of

Christians on the bridges of the lagoon, in what was a most just and

holy war; for their cause was most just, as has been said, and will

be approved by any reasonable and fair man. After the fighting in

the city, the Christians were re-inforced and executed strange and

marvellous slaughter among the Indians, killing numberless people

and burning many alive including great lords. (91)

19.19. After the greatest and abominable tyranny practised by these men in

the City of Mexico, and in the towns throughout the country for ten,

fifteen and twenty leagues in those parts, during which numberless

people were killed, this, their tyrannical pestilence passed

onwards, spreading into, infecting and ruining the province of

Panuco, where there was a marvellous multitude of people: equally

marvellous were the massacres and slaughter that they performed

there.

20.20. Afterwards they destroyed the province of Tututepeche in the same

way; then the province of Spilcingo; then that of Colima; each of

which is larger than the kingdoms of Leon and of Castile. To

describe the massacres, slaughter, and cruelty which they practised

in each, would doubtless be a most difficult thing, impossible to

confirm and disagreeable to listen to.

21.21. Here it must be noted, that the pretext with which they invaded and

began to destroy all those innocent beings and to depopulate those

lands which, on account of their numberless populations should have

caused such joy and contentment to true Christians, was, that they

came to subject them to the King of Spain; otherwise, they must kill

them and make slaves of them. And those, who did not promptly yield

obedience to such an unreasonable and stupid commission, and refused

to place themselves in the hands of such iniquitous, cruel and

brutal men, they declared were rebels, who had risen against the

service of His Majesty; and thus they wrote from here to our lord

the King.

22.22. And the blindness of those who govern the Indians, did not

understand nor attend to what is expressed in their laws, and is

clearer than any of their first principles whatsoever, namely; that

no one can be called rebel, if he be not first a subject.

23.23. Let Christians and those that have some knowledge of God, and of

reason, and also of human laws, consider to what state can be

reduced the hearts of whatsoever people who live in security in

their own country ignorant of having obligations towards any one,

and who have their own rightful rulers, upon being thus unexpectedly

ordered to yield obedience to a foreign King whom they have never

seen, nor heard of, otherwise be it known to you, that we must at

once cut you to pieces; especially when they actually see the threat

put into execution.

24.24. More dreadful is it that those who obey voluntarily, are put into

onerous servitude; in which, under incredible labour and tortures

that last longer than those of death by the sword, they and their

wives and children and all their race perish.

25.25. And although these people, or any other in the world are moved by

fear or the said threats to yield obedience and to recognise the

dominion of a foreign King, our blinded people, unbalanced by

ambitious and diabolical avarice, do not perceive that they thereby

acquire not a single atom of right, these fears being truly such as

discourage the firmest men.

26.26. To say that natural, human and divine right permits their acts

because the intention justifies them is all wind: but their crime

condemns them to infernal fire, as do also the offences and injuries

done to the Kings of Castile, by destroying these their kingdoms and

annihilating (as far as they possibly can) their rights over all the

Indies. These, and none other, are the services the Spaniards have

rendered, and do render to-day to the said sovereign kings in these

countries.

27.27. By this just and approved title, did this tyrant captain send two

other tyrant captains, much more cruel and ferocious and more

destitute of compassion and mercy than himself, to the vast, most

flourishing, most happy and densely populated kingdoms, namely to

that of Guatemala, on the South Sea; and to that of Naco and

Honduras or Guaymura, on the North Sea. They lie opposite one

another, bordering, but separate, and each three hundred leagues

distant from Mexico. He sent one expedition by land and the other

with ships by sea, each provided with many horsemen and

foot-soldiers.

28.28. I state the truth: Out of the evil done by both, and especially by

him who went to the kingdom of Guatemala,—because the other soon

died a bad death—I could collect and recount so much wickedness, so

many massacres, so many deaths, so much extermination, so much and

such frightful injustice, that they would strike terror to present

and future ages: and I could fill a big book with them, for this man

surpassed all the past and the present in the kind and multitude of

abominations he committed; in the people he destroyed and in the

countries he devastated, for they were infinite.

29.29. The one who commanded the expedition by sea, committed great

robberies and scandal; destroying many people in the towns along the

coast. Some natives came out to receive him with presents in the

kingdom of Yucatan, which is on the road to the above mentioned

kingdom of Naco and Guaymura, where he was going; when he arrived

there, he sent captains and many people throughout that country, who

robbed, killed and destroyed everything and everybody they found.

30.30. One especially of these captains who had mutinied with three

hundred men, and had entered the country towards Guatemala, advanced

destroying and burning every place he found, robbing and killing the

people; he did this diligently for more than a hundred and twenty

leagues, so that if others were sent in pursuit of him, they would

find the country depopulated and in rebellion, and would be killed

by the Indians in revenge for the damage and destruction he had

done.

31.31. A few days later they [the Spaniards] killed the principal captain

who had sent him and against whom he had mutinied. Afterwards there

succeeded other most cruel tyrants who, with slaughter and dreadful

cruelty, and with the capture of slaves and the selling them to the

ships that brought their wine, clothing and other things, and with

the usual tyrannical servitude from the year 1524 till 1535, ruined

those provinces and that kingdom of Naco and Honduras, which truly

seemed a paradise of delight, and was better peopled than the most

populous land in the world. We have now gone through these

countries on foot and have beheld such desolation and destruction as

would wring the vitals of the hardest-hearted of men.

In these eleven years they have killed more than two million souls,

and in more than a hundred leagues square, they have not left two

thousand persons, whom they are now daily exterminating by the said

servitude.

32.32. Let us again speak of the great tyrant captain, (92) who went to

the kingdom of Guatemala, who, as has been said, surpassed all past

and equalled all present tyrants. The provinces surrounding Mexico

are, by the route he took (according to what he himself writes in a

letter to his chief who sent him), four hundred leagues distant from

the kingdom of Guatemala: he advanced killing, ravaging, burning,

robbing and destroying all the country wherever he came, under the

above mentioned pretext, namely, that the Indians should subject

themselves to such inhuman, unjust, and cruel men, in the name of

the unknown King of Spain, of whom they had never heard and whom

they considered to be much more unjust and cruel than his

representatives. He also gave them no time to deliberate but would

fall upon them, killing and burning almost at the same instant that

his envoy arrived.

The Province and Kingdom of Guatemala

When he reached this kingdom, he began with a great massacre.

Nevertheless the principal lord, accompanied by many other lords of

Ultatlan, the chief town of all the kingdom went forth with

trumpets, tambourines and great festivity to receive him with

litters; they served him with all that they possessed, and

especially by giving him ample food and everything else they could.

2. The Spaniards lodged outside the town that night because it seemed

to them to be strong, and that they might run some risk inside it.

The following day, the captain called the principal lord and many

others, and when they came like tame lambs, he seized them and

demanded so many loads of gold. They replied that they had none,

because that country does not produce it. Guiltless of other fault

and without trial or sentence, he immediately ordered them to be

burned alive.

3. When the rulers throughout all those provinces saw that the

Spaniards had burnt that one and all those chief lords, only because

they gave them no gold, they all fled from their towns and hid in

the mountains; they commanded all their people to go to the

Spaniards and serve them as their lords, but that they should not,

however, reveal to them their hiding place.

4. All the inhabitants came to offer themselves to his men and to serve

them as their lords. This compassionate captain replied that he

would not receive them; on the contrary, he would kill them all, if

they did not disclose the whereabouts of their chiefs. The Indians

answered that they knew nothing about them but that the Spaniards

should make use of them, of their wives and children whom they would

find in their houses, where they could kill them or do with them

what they wished. And this the Indians declared and offered many

times.

5. Stupefying to relate, the Spaniards went to the houses where they

found the poor people working in safety at their occupations with

their wives and children, and there they wounded them with their

lances and cut them to pieces. They also went to a quiet, large and

important town, where the people were ignorant of what had happened

to the others and were safe in their innocence; within barely two

hours they destroyed it, putting women, children, and the aged to

the sword, and killing all who did not save themselves by flight.

6. Seeing that with such humility, submission, patience and suffering

they could not break nor soften hearts so inhuman and brutal, and

that they were thus cut to pieces contrary to every show or shadow

of right, and that they must inevitably perish, the Indians

determined to summon all their people together and to die fighting,

avenging themselves as best they could on such cruel and infernal

enemies; they well knew, however, that being not only unarmed but

also naked and on foot, they could not prevail against such fierce

people, mounted and so well armed, but must in the end be destroyed.

7. They constructed some pits in the middle of the streets, covered

over with broken boughs of trees and grass, completely concealing

them: they were filled with sharp stakes hardened by fire which

would be driven into the horses’s bellies if they fell into the

pits. Once, or twice, did some horses fall in but not often,

because the Spaniards knew how to avoid them. In revenge, the

Spaniards made a law, that all Indians of whatsoever rank and age

whom they captured alive, they would throw into the pits. And so

they threw in pregnant and confined women, children, old men and as

many as they could capture who were left stuck on the stakes, until

the pits were filled: It excited great compassion to see them,

particularly the women with their children.

8. They killed all the others with lances and knives; they threw them

to savage dogs, that tore them to pieces and ate them; and when they

came across some lord, they accorded him the honour of burning in

live flames. This butchery lasted about seven years from 1524 to

1531. From this may be judged what numbers of people they destroyed.

9. Among the numberless horrible operations that this unhappy and

accursed tyrant performed in this kingdom, together with his

brothers, (for his captains and the others who helped him, were not

less unhappy and senseless than he) was one very notorious one. He

went to the province of Cuzcatan, in which, or not far distant,

there is the town of San Salvador, which is a most delightful place

extending all along the coast of the South Sea from forty to fifty

leagues: and the town of Cuzcatan, which was the capital of the

province, gave him the kindest of welcomes, sending him more than

twenty or thirty Indians loaded with fowls and other provisions.

10. When he arrived, and had received the gift, he commanded that each

Spaniard should take from that multitude of people, as many Indians

as he pleased for his service during their stay there, whose duty

should be to bring them everything they needed. Each Spaniard took

a hundred, or fifty or as many as he reckoned would be sufficient

for his service, and those innocent lambs bore with the

distribution, and served with all their strength, and almost adored

them.

11. In the meantime this captain asked the lords to bring him much gold,

because it was principally to that end that they came. The Indians

replied that they were happy to give all the gold they had, and they

collected a very great quantity of the hatchets they use, which are

made of gilded copper and look like gold, though there is little on

them. The captain ordered that they should be tested and because he

saw they were of copper, he said to the Spaniards: “to the devil

with such a country! let us leave it since there is no gold and let

each one put the Indians who serve him, in chains, and I will order

that they be branded as his slaves.” This was done, and they marked

as slaves with the King’s brand, all they could bind. And I saw the

son of the prince of that town thus branded.

12. When those Indians who escaped and the others throughout the land

beheld such great iniquity, they began to collect and to arm

themselves. The Spaniards did the greatest slaughter and massacre

among them, after which they returned to Guatemala where they built

a town; and it is that one which has now been by righteous decree of

divine justice, destroyed by three deluges together: the one of

water, the other of earth and the third of stones much bigger than

ten, and twenty oxen.

13. Having thus killed all the lords and the men who could have made

war, they put all the others into the aforesaid infernal slavery;

they demanded slaves as tribute, so the Indians gave their sons and

daughters as they have no other slaves, all of whom they loaded into

ships and sent to be sold in Peru. By other massacres and murders,

besides the above, they have destroyed and devastated a kingdom more

than a hundred leagues square, one of the happiest in the way of

fertility and population in the world. This same tyrant wrote that

it was more populous than the kingdom of Mexico; and he told the

truth.

14. He and his brothers, together with the others, have killed more than

four or five million people in fifteen or sixteen years, from the

year 1524 till 1540, and they continue to kill and destroy those who

are still left; and so they will kill the remainder.

15. It was his custom when he went to make war on some town or province,

to take with him as many of the Indians as he could, to fight

against the others; and as he led ten or twenty thousand and gave

them nothing to eat, he allowed them to eat the Indians they

captured. And so a solemn butchery of human flesh took place in his

army where, in his presence, children were killed and roasted; and

they would kill a man only to eat his hands and feet, which were

esteemed the best bits. And all the people of the other countries,

hearing of these villainies, were so terror stricken they knew not

where to hide themselves.

16. They killed numberless people with the labour of building boats.

From the South Sea to the North, a distance of a hundred and thirty

leagues, they led the Indians loaded with anchors weighing seventy

and eighty pounds each—some of which wore into their shoulders and

loins. They also carried much artillery in this way on the

shoulders of those poor naked creatures; and I saw many of them

loaded with artillery, suffering along the roads.

17. They deprived the husbands of their wives and daughters, and gave

them to the sailors and soldiers, to keep them contented and bring

them on board the ships. They crowded Indians into the ships, where

they all perished of hunger and thirst. And in truth, were I to

recount his cruelties one by one, I could make a big book that would

astonish the world.

18. He built two fleets, each composed of many ships, with which he

burnt, as though with fire from heaven, all those countries. Of how

many did he make orphans! Of how many did he take away the children!

How many did he deprive of their wives! how many wives did he leave

without husbands! Of what adulteries, rapes and violence was he the

cause! how many did he deprive of liberty! what anguish and calamity

were suffered by many people because of him! what tears did he cause

to be shed! what sighs! what groans! what solitude in this life and

of how many has he caused the eternal damnation in the next! not

only of the Indians—who were numberless—but of the unhappy

Christians, of whose company he made himself worthy, with such

outrages, most grave sins and execrable abominations. And I pray

God, that he may have had compassion on him and be appeased with the

bad death to which he at last brought him. (93)

New Spain and Panuco and Xalisco

1. After the great cruelties and massacres, that have been described

(besides those not mentioned) had been committed in the provinces of

New Spain and that of Panuco another senseless and cruel tyrant(94)

arrived in Panuco in the year 1525. By committing great cruelty and

putting many in irons, and enslaving great numbers of freemen in the

ways above told, and sending shiploads of them to the islands of

Cuba and Hispaniola, where they could best he sold, he finished

devastating all that province. Eighty Indians, reasonable beings,

were given in exchange for a horse.

2.2. From Panuco, he was sent to govern the city of Mexico and all New

Spain as President, with other great tyrants as Auditors: and the

great evils, many sins and the amount of cruelty, robbery, and

abomination he and they together committed, are beyond belief. They

thus reduced all that country to such extreme ruin, that in two

years they would have brought New Spain to the condition of the

island of Hispaniola, had God not prevented them by the resistance

of the Franciscan friars and afterwards, by the appointment of a

Royal Audiencia composed of good men, friendly to all virtue.

3.3. One of this man’s companions forced eight thousand Indians to work,

without any payment or food, at building a wall around his great

garden; they dropped dead from hunger but he showed no concern

whatever.

4.4. When this president, of whom I said he finished devastating Panuco,

learned that the said good royal Audiencia was coming, he found an

excuse to go inland to discover some place where he might tyrannise;

he forced fifteen, or twenty thousand men of the province of Mexico

to carry the baggage of his expedition, of whom not two hundred

returned, all the rest having perished under his tyranny.

5.5. He arrived in the province of Mechuacan, which is forty leagues

distant from Mexico and similar to it, both in prosperity, and in

the number of its people. The king and ruler came out to receive

him with a procession of numberless people, rendering a thousand

services and making him presents; he at once took the said king

prisoner because he was reputed to have great riches of gold and

silver: to force him to surrender his many treasures, the tyrant

began to put him to the following tortures.

6.6. Having put his feet in stocks, with his body stretched and his hands

tied to pieces of wood, they placed a pan of fire near his feet, and

a boy with a sprinkler soaked in oil, sprinkled them every now and

then to burn the skin well. On the one side there stood a cruel man

with a loaded arbalist aimed at his heart: on the other stood

another holding a terrible and fierce dog which, had he let it,

would have torn the king to pieces in a moment; and thus they

tortured him to make him disclose the treasures; until a Franciscan

monk, being informed of it, delivered him from their hands, though

he died at last of his tortures. They tortured and killed many

lords and princes of the provinces in like fashion, to make them

give up their gold and silver.

7.7. At this time a certain tyrant, going as inspector rather of the

purses and the property of the Indians than of their souls and

bodies, found that some Indians had hidden their idols, as the

Spaniards had never taught them about another better God. He took

the lords prisoner till they gave him the idols, thinking they would

be of gold or silver, and because they were not, he punished them

cruelly and unjustly.

8.8. And not to be defrauded of this purpose, which was to rob, he

compelled the said lords to buy back the idols from him: they bought

them with such gold and silver as they could find, to adore them as

their God like they were accustomed. These are the works these

wretched Spaniards perform, and the example that they give, and the

honour they procure for God in the Indies.

9.9. This great tyrant passed from the province of Mechuacan into that of

Xalisco, which was as full of people as a hive is of bees, most

populous and most prosperous, because it is one of the most fertile

and marvellous in the Indies. There was a certain town whose houses

extended nearly seven leagues. On his arrival there, the lords and

people came joyfully forth, bearing gifts, as all the Indians are in

the habit of doing when they go to receive any one.

10.10. He began to commit the usual cruelties and wickedness as all there

are in the habit of doing, and much more besides, to obtain the

object they hold as God, which is gold.

11.11. He burnt the towns, captured the lords, tortured them—made slaves

of everybody he captured and led numbers away in chains. Women just

confined were loaded down with the baggage they carried for the

wicked Christians and, not being able to carry their infants for

fatigue and the weakness of hunger, they threw them by the roadside

where numbers perished.

12.12. One wicked Christian having seized a maid by force, to sin with

her, the mother sprang to tear her away from him, but he seized a

dagger, or sword, and cut off the mother’s hand; and because the

maid would not consent, he stabbed her and killed her.

13.13. Among many other free people he unjustly caused to be marked as

slaves, were four thousand five hundred men, women, and nursing

children of a year old; others also of two, three, four and five

years old, although they went forth peacefully to meet him; there

were numberless others that were not counted.

14.14. When the countless iniquitous and infernal wars and massacres were

terminated, he laid all that country under the usual, pestilential

and tyrannical servitude to which all the tyrant Christians of the

Indies are in the habit of reducing these peoples. In which he

consented that his own majordomos and all the others, should use

cruelty and unheard of tortures to extract gold and tribute from the

Indians.

15.15. One majordomo of his killed many peaceable Indians, by hanging,

burning them alive, throwing them to fierce dogs, and cutting off

their feet and hands and tearing out their tongues and hearts, for

no other reason than to frighten them into submission and into

giving him gold and tribute, as soon as they recognised him as the

same celebrated tyrant. He also gave them many cruel beatings,

cudgellings, blows and other kinds of cruelty every day and every

hour.

16.16. It is told of him that he destroyed and burnt eight hundred towns

in that kingdom of Xalisco: he goaded the Indians to rebellion out

of sheer desperation, and after they saw such numbers perish so

cruelly, they killed some Spaniards, in which they were perfectly

justified, and then retreated to the mountains.

17.17. Afterwards, the injustice and oppression of other recent tyrants

who passed that way to destroy other provinces—which they called

_discovering_ them,—drove many Indians to unite and to fortify

themselves among certain cliffs: against them the Spaniards have

again perpetrated such cruelty, killing numberless people, that they

have almost finished depopulating and destroying all that large

country.

18.18. These wretched, blind men whom God has permitted to yield to

reprobate appetite, do not perceive the Indians’ cause, or rather

the many causes sanctioned by every justice, and by the laws of

nature, of God and of man, to cut them to pieces, whenever they have

the strength and weapons, and to drive them from their countries:

nor do they perceive the iniquity and great injustice of their own

pretensions, which are condemned by all laws, not to mention the

many outrages, tyrannies and grave and inexpiable sins they have

committed against the Indians, by repeatedly making war on them:

seeing nothing of this, they think and say and write, that the

victories they obtain over the innocent Indians by destroying them,

are all conceded to them by their God, because their iniquitous wars

are just. Almost as though they rejoiced, and glorified, and

rendered thanks to God for their tyranny: like those tyrant bandits

did of whom the prophet Zacharias says in chapter eleven Pasce

pecora occisionis, quæ qui occidebant non dolebant, sed dicebant:

Benedictus Deus, quia divites facti sumus.

The Kingdom of Yucatan

1. In the year 1526, by lying and deceiving and by making offers to the

King, as all the other tyrants have done till now to obtain offices

and positions, so as to rob, another unhappy man(95) was elected

governor of the kingdom of Yucatan.

2.2. This kingdom possessed a dense population, because the country is

very healthy and abounding much more than Mexico in provisions and

fruit: and honey was particularly abundant, more so than in any

other part of the Indies thus far discovered.

2.3. The said kingdom has a circumference of about three hundred leagues.

Its people were famous among all those of the Indies for prudence

and cleanliness, and for having fewer vices and sins than any other;

and they were very willing and worthy of being brought to the

knowledge of God. A great town might have been built there by the

Spaniards where they might have lived as in a terrestrial paradise

had they been worthy; but, on account of their great avarice,

stupidity and grave sins they were not; just as they have not been

worthy to possess the many other countries that God has disclosed to

them, in the Indies.

4.4. This tyrant, with three hundred men whom he brought with him, began

by making cruel war on those good and innocent people, who kept

within their houses without offending any one; and they killed and

destroyed countless people.

5.5. The country produces no gold, and if it had he would have used up

the people by working them in the mines; to coin gold therefore out

of the bodies and souls of those for whom Jesus Christ died, he made

slaves indifferently of all whom he did not kill; many ships were

attracted thither by the news that slaves were to be had, all of

which he sent back loaded with human beings whom he sold for wine,

oil, vinegar, pork, clothing, horses and whatever else he and his

men thought they needed.

6.6. He selected the most beautiful maid from fifty or a hundred, and

gave her to him who chose her, in exchange for an aroba of wine, or

oil, or for a pig: and similarly a handsome boy, chosen from among

two hundred or three hundred, for the same amount. One boy, who

seemed to be the son of a prince was given in exchange for a cheese;

and a hundred people for a horse.

7.7. He continued with these operations from the year 1526 to 1533 which

were seven years, ruining and depopulating those countries, and

killing those people without pity, till news of the riches of Peru

reached the place and the Spaniards left him, and that hell ceased

for some days.

8.8. Afterwards, however, his ministers returned to commit more great

evils, robbery, wickedness, and great offence against God: and

neither have they ceased at the present time. Thus have they almost

entirely depopulated all those three hundred leagues that were, as

has been said, so densely peopled.

9.9. No one could believe, neither could the particular cases of cruelty

that were done here, be related. I will only tell of two or three,

that I remember.

10.10. On one occasion these wretched Spaniards set out with fierce dogs

to hunt Indians, both women and men, and an Indian woman who was too

ill to escape, took a cord and, so that the dogs should not tear her

to pieces as they tore the others, she tied her little son of one

year to one foot, and then hanged herself on a beam; she was not

quick enough before the dogs came up and tore the child limb from

limb, although a friar baptised it before it expired.

11.11. When the Spaniards were leaving the kingdom, one of them asked the

son of a lord of a certain town or province to go with him; the

child answered, that he did not wish to leave his country: the

Spaniard replied, “come along with me, or I will cut off your ears”;

as the boy said that he would not, the man seized a dagger and cut

off one of his ears, and then the other; and on the boy still saying

that he would not leave his country, he slit his nostrils, laughing

as though he were only giving him a pinch.

12.12. This lost soul lauded himself, and shamelessly boasted before a

venerable monk that he tried his best to get many Indian women with

child, because when they were pregnant he got a better price on

selling them for slaves.

13.13. In this kingdom, or possibly in a province of New Spain, a Spaniard

went hunting game, or rabbits, with his dogs; one day, not finding

anything to hunt, it seemed to him that the dogs were hungry, so he

seized a little child from its mother and cut off its arms and legs

with a dagger, giving each dog its portion and when they had eaten

these pieces he threw that little body on the ground for all of them

together.

14.14. Consider only the inhumanity of the Spaniards in these parts and

how God has let them fall into reprobate appetite; consider of what

account they hold these people who are created in God’s image and

redeemed by His blood. But we shall see worse things below.

15.15. Leaving the infinite and unheard of cruelties perpetrated by those

who call themselves Christians, in this kingdom where there is no

justice worth speaking of, I will conclude with this only: that when

all the infernal tyrants had left, eager for and blinded by the

riches of Peru, Fray Jacomo proceeded, with four monks of his Order

of St. Francis, to that kingdom, to pacify it, and to preach and

bring to Jesus Christ the remnant of people left from the infernal

harvesting and the tyrannical massacres committed by the Spaniards

during seven years; and I think that these monks went there in the

year thirty-four.

16.16. They sent ahead certain Indians from the province of Mexico as

messengers, to inquire whether the natives were satisfied that the

said monks should enter their country, to bring them news of the one

only God, who is God and true Lord of all the world.

17.17. They [the Indians] assembled many times and consulted about the

thing, having first made many inquiries as to what sort of men these

were, who called themselves _fathers_ and _brothers_, and as to what

they laid claim; and in what they were different from the Christians

from whom they had suffered so many offences and such injustice.

18.18. They resolved at last to receive them, on the condition that they

came alone with no Spaniards. The monks promised this because the

Viceroy of New Spain had granted them this privilege and had given

orders that no more Spaniards except the monks were to be allowed to

enter the country, nor should the Indians suffer any harm from the

Christians.

19.19. The friars, as is their custom, preached to those people the gospel

of Christ, and the holy intentions of the king of Spain towards

them. With such love and pleasure did they receive the doctrine and

example of the monks, and so greatly did they rejoice over the news

of the kings of Castile, of whom in all the past seven years the

Spaniards had never given them information nor that there was any

king other than he, who tyrannised and destroyed here, that after

the monks had preached there forty days, the lords of the country

brought and consigned to them all their idols that they might burn

them.

20.20. And afterwards they gave them their own children, whom they love

more than the light of their eyes, that they might train them. And

they built them churches, monasteries and houses: and friars, were

invited to other provinces, to preach and bring the natives to the

knowledge of God and of him whom they called the great king of

Castile.

21.21. And, persuaded by the monks, the Indians did a thing never done

again up to the present day; and all that some of those Tyrants

pretend about those kingdoms being destroyed by the friars, is

falsehood and lies.

22.22. Twelve or fifteen lords, each ruling many vassals and large

territories, assembled their people and, after taking their votes

and consent, subjected themselves of their own will to the dominion

of the kings of Castile, receiving the Emperor, as King of Spain,

for their supreme and universal sovereign; and they made some sinas,

like signatures, which I have in my possession, together with the

attestations of the said friars.

23.23. Just when this growth of faith inspired the friars with great joy

and hope of drawing to Jesus Christ the still numerous people of

that kingdom who survived the murders and unjust wars, eighteen

Spanish tyrants on horse entered a certain part of the country with

twelve others on foot, which makes thirty, and they brought with

them many loads of idols taken from the Indians in other provinces.

24.24. And the captain of the said thirty summoned a lord of the country

where he had entered, and told him that he must take those loads of

idols and distribute them throughout his country, trading each idol

for an Indian man or woman, to make them slaves; he threatened to

make war on the chief if he refused.

25.25. Forced by fear, the said lord distributed the idols throughout all

this territory and commanded all his vassals that they should accept

and adore them, and give him Indian men and women as slaves for the

Spaniards. In alarm, the Indians who had two children gave one of

them, and those who had three gave two; and in this way they

concluded that sacrilegious commerce and the lord, or prince

satisfied the Spaniards.

26.26. One of these impious and infernal bandits, called Juan Garcia, when

ill and near death, had under his bed two loads of idols and he

commanded an Indian woman who served him, to be very careful not to

exchange those idols for fowls, but each one for a slave because

they were very valuable. And finally with this testament and

occupied with this thought the unhappy man died. And who doubts

that he is buried in hell?

27.27. Consider therefore of what profit are the religion and the examples

of Christianity of the Spaniards who go to the Indies; what honour

they procure for God; how they work that he may be known and adored

by those people; what care they take that His holy faith be sown,

grow and expand in those souls. And judge whether this be a less

sin than Jeroboam’s qui peccare fecit Israel by making two golden

calves, for the people to adore. Or whether it equals that of Judas

or causes more scandal.

28.28. These then are the deeds of the Spaniards who go to the Indies; in

their desire for gold they have numberless times sold, and do sell,

and have forsworn Jesus Christ.

29.29. When the Indians saw that the promise the monks made them that the

Spaniards should not enter those provinces did not come true, and

that the same Spaniards brought their idols from other countries to

sell, after they had given all their own gods to the monks to be

burned, so that they might adore the one true God, they became

tumultuous and the whole country was enraged with the friars, to

whom they said:

30.30. Why have you lied and deceived us saying that Christians could not

enter this country? And why have you burnt our gods when your

Christians bring gods from other provinces to sell to us? Were

perhaps our gods not better than those of other nations?

31.31. The friars having nothing to reply, calmed them as best they could.

They sought out the thirty Spaniards, telling them the harm they had

done and beseeching them to depart, but they would not go; on the

contrary they gave the Indians to understand, that it was the friars

themselves who had made them come there,—which was the height of all

malice.

32.32. At last the Indians determined to kill the friars; being warned by

some Indian, the latter escaped one night. And when the friars had

left, and the Indians perceived their innocence and virtue and the

malice of the Spaniards, they sent messengers a distance of fifty

leagues after them, praying them to return, and asking their pardon

for the anxiety they had caused them.

33.33. The friars, being servants of God and zealous for those souls, gave

them credence, and returned to the country where they were received

like angels, the Indians rendering them a thousand services; and

they stayed there four or five months longer.

34.34. As that country was so distant from New Spain, the Viceroy’s

efforts to expel those Christians from it were fruitless, and they

persisted in remaining there although he had them proclaimed

traitors; and because they never ceased their outrages and habitual

oppression of the Indians, it seemed to the monks that, sooner or

later the natives would become disgusted with such perverse works,

and that perhaps the evil consequences would fall on them,

especially as the evil deeds of the Spaniards constantly disturbed

the Indians and prevented them from preaching to them in tran‐

quillity. They therefore determined to abandon the kingdom.

35.35. Thus the country was left without the light and help of doctrine;

and those souls were abandoned to the obscurity of ignorance and

misery, in which they formerly were. The Indians were deprived,

till better times should come, of assistance and the diffusion of

the knowledge of God, which they had been already receiving with

eagerness; it was just as though we were to deprive plants of water

a few days after planting them: and this was brought about by the

inexpiable fault and consummate malice of those Spaniards.

The Province of Santa Maria

1. The province of Santa Marta was a country where the Indians had a

great deal of gold because both it and the places round about have

rich mines which were diligently worked. And for this reason, from

the year 1498 till the present 1542, numberless Spanish tyrants have

continually gone there with ships to ravage and kill those people

and to steal their gold. They afterwards returned in the ships with

which they made numerous expeditions, murdering and massacring, with

notorious cruelty; this commonly occurred along the seacoast and a

few leagues inland, till the year 1523.

2.2. In the year 1523 some Spanish tyrants went to take up their abode

here. And because the country, as has been said, was rich, divers

captains succeeded one another, each crueller than the other, so

that it seemed as though each had made a vow to practise more

exorbitant evils and cruelty than the other, in verification of the

rule we have given above.

3.3. In the year 1529 there arrived a great tyrant accompanied by many

men, devoid of any fear of God or any mercy on mankind; so great

were the massacres, slaughter and impiety he perpetrated, that he

surpassed all his predecessors. During the space of six, or seven

years that he lived, he and his men stole much treasure. (96)

4.4. He died without sacraments after also avoiding the commission of

investigation met on his account; and afterwards, other murderous

and thieving tyrants succeeded, who continued to destroy those

people who had survived the treatment and cruel swords of their

predecessors.

5.5. They marched far inland, ruining and exterminating large and

numerous provinces; killing, and making slaves of their people in

the ways above told of the others, putting lords and their vassals

to grievous tortures to force them to disclose the gold and the town

where it was to be had: as has been said they surpassed, both in

number and quality, the operations of all their predecessors so that

from the said year 1529, till to-day, they have devastated in those

parts more than four hundred leagues of country, which was as

densely peopled as the other.

6.6. I truthfully declare that if I had to relate singly the evil, the

massacres, the destruction, injustice, violence, slaughter, and the

great sins the Spaniards have committed in this Kingdom of Santa

Marta, against God, against the King, and against those innocent

nations, I would compose a very long history; I shall relate all

this however in due time, if God gives me life.

7.7. Here I wish only to quote some few of the words that the lord bishop

of that province now writes to the King: and the date of his letter

is the 20th of May, 1541, in which among other words he says thus:

8.8. “I assert, oh Sacred Cæsar, that the way to remedy the ills of this

country is for Your Majesty to now take it out of the hands of

step-fathers and to give it a husband, who will treat it justly, and

as it deserves; and this as soon as possible because otherwise I am

certain that the way these tyrants who now have the government,

crush and harass it, will very soon destroy it,” etc.

9.9. And further on he says: “therefore Your Majesty will clearly discern

that those who govern in these parts, deserve to be destroyed, to

relieve the republics. And if this is not done, their infirmities

are, in my opinion, without remedy. And Your Majesty will know in

like manner that in these parts there are no Christians but demons;

neither are there servants of God nor of the King, but traitors to

His law, and to the King.”

10.10. “Because in truth, the greatest obstacle I find to winning the

Indians from war to peace, and from peace to the knowledge of our

Holy Faith, is the harsh and cruel treatment that the peaceable ones

receive from the Christians.”

11.11. “They have on this account become so fierce and enraged, that

nothing is more hated or abhorred by them, than the name of

Christians, whom in all this country they call in their language

Yares, which means demons; and without doubt they are right, because

the deeds they do here are not those of Christians nor of reasonable

men, but of devils.”

12.12. “From which it arises, that the Indians, seeing these perverse

operations are general, and that both the commanders and the

subordinates are so devoid of mercy, think that such is the law of

the Christians, of which their God and their King are the authors.

And to try to persuade them to the contrary is like trying to dry up

the sea, and only makes them laugh and jeer at Jesus Christ and His

law.”

13.13. “And the Indian warriors, seeing the treatment shown the peaceable

people, count it better to die once, than many times in the power of

the Spaniards; I know this most invincible Caesar from experience”

etc.

14.14. And in a chapter further on he says: “Your Majesty has more

servants in these parts than is supposed; because there is not a

soldier among those here who, while he is assassinating, or robbing,

or destroying, or killing, or burning Your Majesty’s vassals to

force their gold from them, does not make bold to claim that he is

serving Your Majesty. It would therefore be well, Most Christian

Cæsar, that Your Majesty should make known by rigorously punishing

some of them, that such services as are contrary to the service of

God, are not accepted.”

15.15. All the above are formal words of the said Bishop of Santa Marta,

and from them it will be clearly seen what is done to-day in these

unfortunate countries, and to these innocent people.

16.16. By "Indian warriors" he means those who live in the mountains and

have been able to escape from massacres perpetrated by the unhappy

Spaniards. And he terms “peaceable” those Indians whom the

Spaniards, after having killed numberless people, condemn to the

aforesaid tyrannical and horrible slavery, in which they then finish

destroying and killing them, as appears from the quoted words of the

bishop: and in truth very little indeed does he express, of what

they suffer.

17.17. When the Spaniards make them labour, carrying loads over the

mountains, they kick and beat them, and knock out their teeth with

the handles of their swords, to force them to get up when they fall,

fainting from weakness, and to go on without taking breath; and the

Indians commonly exclaim; “go to, how wicked you are: I am worn out

so kill me here, for I would rather die now and here.” And they say

this with many sighs and gasps, showing great anguish and grief.

18.18. Oh! who could express the hundredth part of the affliction and

calamity that these innocent people suffer from the unhappy

Spaniards! May God make it known to those who can, and ought to

remedy it.

The Province of Cartagena

1. This province of Cartagena lies westward and fifty leagues below

that of Santa Marta, and bordering on that of Cenù as far as the

Gulf of Urabà: it comprises about a hundred leagues of seacoast and

a large territory inland towards the south.

2.2. These provinces have been as badly treated as those of Santa Marta,

distressed, killed, depopulated and devastated, from the year 1498

or 99 until to-day, and in them many notorious cruelties, murders,

and robberies have been committed by the Spaniards; but in order to

finish this brief compendium quickly and to recount the wickedness

done by them elsewhere, I will not describe the details.

The Pearl Coast

Paria, and the Island of Trinidad

1. Great and notorious have been the destruction that the Spaniards

have worked along the Coast of Paria, (97) extending for two hundred

leagues as far as the Gulf of Venezuela, assassinating the

inhabitants and capturing as many as they could alive, to sell them

as slaves.

2.2. They frequently took them by violating their pledged word and

friendship, the Spaniards failing to keep faith, while the Indians

received them in their houses, like fathers receive their children,

giving them all they possessed and serving them to the best of their

ability.

3.3. Certainly it would not be easy to relate, or describe minutely the

variety and number of the injustices, wrongs, oppressions, and

injury practised upon the people of this coast by the Spaniards from

the year 1510 up to the present day. I will relate but two or three

instances from which the villany and number of the others, worthy of

punishment by every torment and fire may be judged.

4.4. In the island of Trinidad which joins the continent at Paria, and is

much larger and more prosperous than Sicily, there are as good and

virtuous people as in all the Indies; an assassin going there in the

year 1516, with sixty or seventy other habitual robbers, gave the

Indians to understand that they had come to dwell and live in that

island along with them.

5.5. The Indians received them as though they were children of their own

flesh and blood, the lords and their subjects serving them with the

greatest affection and joy, bringing them every day double the

amount of food required; for it is the usual disposition and

liberality of all the Indians of this new world to give the

Spaniards in excess of all they need and as much as they themselves

possess.

6.6. In accordance with the Spaniards’ wish, they built one great house

of timber, where all might live: they needed no more than one in

order to carry out what they had in mind and afterwards

accomplished.

7.7. When they were putting the straw over the timbers and had covered

about the height of two paces so that those inside no longer saw

those without, the Spaniards, under pretence of hurrying on the

completion of the house, induced many people to go inside; meanwhile

they divided, some surrounding the house outside, with their weapons

ready for the Indians who should come out, and the others stationing

themselves inside the house. The latter drew their swords and

threatening the naked Indians with death if they moved, they began

to bind them, while some who ran out seeking to escape were cut to

pieces with swords.

8.8. Some who got out, wounded, and others sound, joined with one or two

hundred natives who had not entered the house, and arming themselves

with bows and arrows they retired to another house of the

community’s to defend themselves; while they defended the door

however, the Spaniards set fire to the house, and burnt them alive;

they then took the prey they had captured, amounting to perhaps a

hundred and eighty or two hundred men, and carried them bound to

their ship. Hoisting sail they departed for the island of San Juan,

where they sold one half as slaves, and afterwards to Hispaniola,

where they sold the remainder.

9.9. When I at the time reproved the captain in the same island of San

Juan for such infamous treachery and malice, he replied “Go to,

Senor, thus was I commanded, and instructions were given me by those

who sent me, that if I could not capture them in war, I should take

them under pretext of peace.”

10.10. And in truth he told me that in all his life he had found neither

father nor mother, if not in the island of Trinidad; such were the

good services the Indians had rendered him. This he said to his

greater shame and the aggravation of his sins.

11.11. Numberless times have they done these things on this continent,

capturing people and making them slaves under promise of safe

conduct. Let it be seen what sort of acts these are: and whether

those Indians taken in such a way, are justly made slaves.

12.12. Another time the friars of our Order of St. Dominic determined to

go and preach to those people and convert them, for they were

without the hope or the light of doctrine by which to save their

souls, as they still are to-day in the Indies; they sent a monk, who

was a theological scholar of great virtue and sanctity, accompanied

by a serving friar as his companion; his object was to see the

country, become intimate with the people, and seek convenient sites

to build monasteries.

13.13. When the monks arrived, the Indians received them as angels from

heaven, and listened with great affection, attention, and joy to

those words which they could make them understand more by signs than

speech, as they did not know the language.

14.14. It happened that after the departure of the vessel that had brought

the monks, another ship arrived there; the Spaniards on board of it

practising their infernal custom, deceitfully enticed the lord of

that land, named Don Alonso, on board without the monks perceiving

it; either the friars or some other Spaniards, had given him this

name, for the Indians like and desire Christian names and at once

ask to have them, even before they know enough to be baptised. So

they deceived the said Don Alonso, to make him come aboard their

ship, with his wife and certain other persons, by telling him they

would prepare a feast there for him.

15.15. At last seventeen persons went on board with the lord and his wife,

confident that as the monks were in the country, out of respect for

them, the Spaniards would not do anything wicked; because otherwise

they would not have trusted them. Once the Indians were on the

ship, the traitors set sail and were off to Hispaniola, where they

sold them for slaves.

16.16. On seeing their lord and his wife carried off, all the Indians came

to the friars intending to kill them. The friars were like to die

for sorrow on beholding such great villany, and it may be believed

they would have rather given their lives than that such injustice

should have been done; especially as it impeded those souls from

ever hearing or believing the word of God.

17.17. They called the Indians as best they could and told them that by

the first ship that passed there, they would write to Hispaniola and

bring about the restoration of their lord and of the others who were

with him. For the greater confirmation of the damnation of those who

were governing, God caused a ship to come at once to hand. The

monks wrote to their brethren in Hispaniola lamenting and protesting

repeatedly. The auditors never would do justice, because they

themselves had divided a share of the Indians so barbarously and

unjustly carried off by the tyrants.

18.18. The two monks who had promised the Indians that their lord, Don

Alonso, together with the others, should return in four months’

time, seeing that they did not come, neither in four, nor in eight

months prepared for death, and to give their lives to those to whom

they had consecrated them before they left. And so the Indians took

vengeance upon them, killing them justly, although they were

innocent: because it was believed that the monks had been the cause

of that treachery, and because they saw that what had been

faithfully promised them within four months was not fulfilled; and

also because up to that time and up to the present day they neither

knew, nor know, that there is a difference between the friars and

the Spanish tyrants, bandits, and assassins of all that country.

19.19. The blessed friars suffered unjustly, and by that injustice there

is no doubt that, according to our holy faith, they are true

martyrs, and reign blissfully to-day with God in the heavens; for

they were sent to that land under obedience, and their intention was

to preach and spread the holy faith, to save all those souls and to

suffer every kind of affliction and death that might be offered them

for Jesus Christ crucified.

20.20. Another time, through the great tyranny and execrable works of the

wicked Spaniards, the Indians killed two monks of St. Dominic and

one of St. Francis, of which I myself am a witness, for I escaped

the same death by divine miracle; so serious and horrible was the

case I might have much to say that would amaze mankind, but on

account of the length of the narration I will not relate it here nor

until the time comes. The last day will disclose all more clearly,

for God will then avenge such horrible and abominable outrages as

are done in the Indies by those who bear the name of Christians.

21.21. Another time there was a town in the provinces called Capo della

Codera, the lord of which was called Nigoroto; this is either a

personal name or else one common to all the lords of that country.

22.22. He was so kind and his people so virtuous, that when the Spanish

ships passed there the Spaniards found comforts, provisions, rest,

and every consolation and refreshment, and many did he deliver from

death, who, wasted with hunger, took refuge there from other

provinces where they had assassinated, and practised evil and

tyranny. He gave them food and sent them safe to the Pearl Island

[Cubagua], where some Christians dwelt, whom he could have slain,

without any one knowing it, and did not: all the Christians finally

called Nigoroto’s town the mansion and home of everybody.

23.23. An ill-starred tyrant deliberated within himself to attack this

place, as the people felt so safe: so he went there with a ship and

invited many people to come on board, as they were used to, trusting

the Spaniards. When many men, women, and children were gathered in

the ship, he set sail and came to the island of San Juan, where he

sold them all as slaves. And I arrived just then at the said island

and saw that tyrant and heard what he had done.

24.24. He left all that country ruined; and all those Spanish tyrants, who

robbed and assassinated along those coasts took it ill, and detested

so dreadful a deed because they lost the asylum and dwelling place

they had had there as though in their own houses.

25.25. To abbreviate, I omit the narration of the tremendous wickedness

and fearful deeds that have been committed, and are committed to-day

in these countries.

26.26. They have taken more than two million ruined souls from that

populous seacoast to the island of Hispaniola, and to that of San

Juan, where they have likewise caused their death in the mines and

other works, of which there were many, as has been said above. And

it excites great compassion and sorrow to see all that most

delightful coast deserted and depopulated.

27.27. It is certainly true, that never does a ship sail loaded with

kidnapped and ruined Indians (as I have told) without the third part

of those that embarked, being thrown dead into the sea, besides

those that they kill in effecting their capture.

28.28. The reason of this is, that as they need many men to accomplish

their aim of making more money from a greater number of slaves, they

carry but little food and water, so as to save expense to the

tyrants, who call themselves privateers; they have enough for only a

few more people than the Spaniards who man the ships to make the

raids; as these miserable Indians are in want and die of hunger and

thirst, the remedy is to throw them in the sea.

29.29. And in truth, one of them told me, that from the Lucayan Islands,

where very great havoc of this sort was made, to the Island of

Hispaniola, which is more than sixty or seventy leagues, a ship is

supposed to have gone without compass or nautical chart, finding its

course by the trail of dead Indians who had been thrown out of ships

and left in the sea.

30.30. When they are afterwards disembarked at the island where they are

taken to be sold, it is enough to break the heart of whomsoever has

some spark of compassion to see naked, starving children, old

people, men, and women falling, faint from hunger.

31.31. They then divide them like so many lambs, the fathers separated

from the children, and the wives from the husbands, making droves of

ten or twenty persons and casting lots for them, so that each of the

unhappy privateers who contributed to fit out a fleet of two or

three vessels, and the tyrant villains who go to capture and prey

upon the natives in their homes, receives his share.

32.32. And when the lot falls on a drove in which there is some old or ill

person, the tyrant who gets it, says: “Why in the devil do you give

this old man to me? That I shall bury him? Why should I take this

ill one? To nurse him?” It may be seen how the Spaniards despise

the Indians and whether they carry out the precept of divine love to

one’s neighbour, upon which rest the law and the prophets.

33.33. The tyranny exercised by the Spaniards upon the Indians in fishing

pearls, is as cruel, and reprehensible a thing as there can be in

the world. Upon the land there is no life so infernal and hopeless

as to be compared to it, although that of digging gold in the mines

is the hardest and worst.

34.34. They let them down into the sea three and four and five fathoms

deep, from the morning till sunset. They are always swimming under

water without respite, gathering the oysters, in which the pearls

grow.

35.35. They come up to breathe bringing little nets full of them; there is

a hangman Spaniard in a boat and if they linger resting, he beats

them with his fists, and, taking them by the hair, throws them in

the water to go on fishing.

36.36. Their food is fish and the fish that contain the pearls, and a

little cazabi or maize bread, which are the kinds of native bread:

the one gives very little sustenance and the other is very difficult

to make, so with such food they are never sufficiently nourished.

Instead of giving them beds at night, they put them in stocks on the

ground, to prevent them from escaping.

37.37. Many times the Indians throw themselves into the sea while fishing

or hunting pearls and never come up again, because dolphins and

sharks, which are two kinds of very cruel sea animals that swallow a

man whole, kill and eat them.

38.38. From this it may be seen, whether the Spaniards who thus seek

profit from the pearls, observe the divine precepts of love to God

and one’s neighbour; out of avarice, they put their fellow creatures

in danger of death to the body and also to the soul; because they

die without faith and without sacraments.

39.39. They lead the Indians such a wretched life that they ruin and waste

them in a few days; for it is impossible for men to live much under

water without respiration, especially because the cold of the water

penetrates their bodies and so they generally all die from

hæmorrhages, oppression of the chest caused by staying such long

stretches of time without breathing; and from dysentery caused by

the frigidity.

40.40. Their hair, which is by nature black, changes to an ashen colour

like the skin of seals, and nitre comes out from their shoulders so

that they resemble human monsters of some species.

41.41. With this insupportable toil, or rather, infernal trade, the

Spaniards completed the destruction of all the Indians of the

Lucayan Islands who were there when they set themselves to making

these gains; each one was worth fifty and a hundred crowns, and they

were sold publicly, although it had been prohibited by the

magistrates themselves; it was even more unjust elsewhere for the

Lucayans were great swimmers. They have caused the death of

numberless others here, from other provinces, and other regions.

The Yuyapari River

On a river called the Yuyapari, which flows for more than two hundred

leagues through the province of Paria, a wretched tyrant(98) sailed a

great distance in the year 1539, accompanied by four hundred or more men;

and he did very great slaughter, burning alive and putting to the sword

numberless innocent and inoffensive people who were in their towns or

houses, unsuspicious of danger; and he left immense tracts of country

burnt, terrorized, and the inhabitants scattered. He finally died a bad

death and his fleet was dispersed. Other tyrants succeeded him and

continued this wickedness and tyranny: and to-day they go through those

regions destroying, killing, and sending to hell those souls that were

redeemed by the son of God with His own blood.

The Kingdom of Venezuela

1. The Spaniards have always exercised diligent care to hide the truth

from our lord the King about injuries and losses to God, to human

souls, and to his State; and in the year 1526, he was deceived and

perniciously persuaded into giving and conceding to some German

merchants, the great kingdom of Venezuela which is much larger than

all Spain; the entire management of the government and all

jurisdiction were conceded under a certain agreement and compact, or

condition that was made with them. (99)

2.2. These men invaded these countries with a force of three hundred or

more and found the people the same gentle lambs, (and much more so),

as they usually find them everywhere in the Indies before the

Spaniards injure them.

3.3. More cruel beyond comparison than any of the other tyrants we have

told of, was their invasion; and more irrational and furious were

they than the cruellest tigers, or raging wolves and lions. Their

liberty of action was the greater because they held all the

jurisdiction of the country; with greater eagerness and blind

greediness of avarice, and with ways and arts for stealing and

accumulating gold and silver more exquisite than their predecessors,

they abandoned all fear of God and the King and all shame of men,

forgetting that they were mortal beings.

4.4. These devils incarnate have devastated, destroyed, and depopulated

more than four hundred leagues of most delightful country containing

large and marvellous provinces, valleys extending for forty leagues,

pleasant regions, very large towns, most rich in gold.

5.5. They have killed and entirely cut to pieces divers large nations and

destroyed many languages, so that not a person who speaks them

remains, except a few, who have hidden in caverns and in the bowels

of the earth to escape from the pestilential sword of the

foreigners.

66. They have killed, destroyed, and sent to hell, (according to my

belief), more than four or five millions of those innocent races by

means of various strange and new kinds of cruel iniquity and

impiety; nor do they, at the present day, cease sending them there.

7.7. I will relate no more than three or four instances of the endless

injustice, outrages, and slaughter they have done, and are doing

to-day; it may be imagined from these what they must have done to

accomplish the great destruction and depopulation we have described.

8.8. They took the supreme lord of all the province, putting him to

torture, for no other reason than to obtain his gold. He escaped

and fled to the mountains, where he remained in hiding amongst the

rocks, with his enraged and terrified people. The Spaniards

attacked them in their search for him; they recaptured him and,

after cruel slaughter, they sold at auction all whom they took

alive.

9.9. Before they captured that ruler, they had been received in many, nay

in all the provinces, wherever they went, with singing and dances

and many gifts of large quantities of gold; the payment they made

the Indians was to put them to the sword and cut them to pieces in

order to terrorise the whole country.

10.10. Once, when the inhabitants had come out to meet him in the

aforesaid way, the tyrant German captain put a great number of

people into a large straw louse and cut them to pieces. As the

house had some beams at the top and many climbed up to escape from

the bloody hands and swords of those men or pitiless beasts, this

infernal man caused fire to be set to the house; thus all who

remained were burnt alive. This action caused the depopulation of a

great number of towns as all the people fled to the mountains where

they hoped to be safe.

11.11. They came to another large province on the borders of the province

and kingdom of Santa Marta, where they found the Indians in their

towns and houses, peaceably occupied with their affairs. They

stayed with them a long time, eating their substance while the

Indians served them as though it were their duty to give them life

and succour; they bore with their continual oppressions and usual

exactions, which are intolerable, for one parasite Spaniard eats as

much in one day as would be sufficient for an Indian household of

ten persons for a month.

12.12. During this time, the Indians spontaneously gave them great

quantities of gold, besides the best of treatment. At last when the

tyrants wished to depart, they determined to repay their hospitality

in this following manner.

13.13. The German governor, who was a tyrant and, for what we know also a

heretic—for he never attends mass neither does he let many others

go, besides which, other signs mark him as a Lutheran,—ordered his

men to capture all the Indians they could, with their wives and

children, and to confine them in a large yard or wooden enclosure

prepared for the purpose; he then announced that whoever wished to

go out and be free, must ransom himself according to the will of the

iniquitous governor, giving so much gold for himself, so much for

his wife and for each of his children; and to force them the more,

he commanded that nothing whatever should be given them to eat,

until they brought him the gold he demanded as ransom.

14.14. Many who were able, sent to their houses for gold and redeemed

themselves. They were set free, and returned to their occupations

and to their houses to provide themselves with the necessaries of

life. The tyrant sent certain villainous Spanish thieves to

recapture these miserable Indians, who had once ransomed themselves;

they brought them back to the enclosure and tortured them with

hunger and thirst to make them ransom themselves again.

15.15. Many who were captured were ransomed two and three times. Others

who could not, because they had given all the gold they possessed

and had not enough left, he left languishing in the enclosure till

they died of hunger.

16.16. By this deed, he left ruined, desolate, and depopulated, a most

populous province most rich in gold, which has a valley of forty

leagues, where he burnt a town that had a thousand houses.

17.17. This infernal tyrant determined to go inland, as he eagerly desired

to discover the hell of Peru in those parts. To make this unhappy

journey, he, and the others brought numberless Indians, chained to

one another, carrying loads of sixty, and seventy pounds each.

18.18. If one tired, or fainted from hunger, fatigue, and weakness, they

at once cut off his head at the collar of the chain so as not to

stop to loosen the others in the line; and the head fell to one side

and the body to the other, and they distributed his load among the

other bearers.

1919. To tell of the provinces he destroyed, the towns, and places he

burnt (for all the houses are built of straw)—the people he killed,

the cruelty he displayed in the several massacres during this

journey, would make an incredible and terrifying story, but it would

be true, nevertheless.

20.20. These journeys were afterwards undertaken by other tyrants who

followed in the same Venezuela, and others from the province of

Santa Marta, animated by the same holy intention of discovering this

holy house of gold in Peru; and they found all the country for more

than two hundred leagues, so much burnt, depopulated, and deserted,

from formerly being most populous and prosperous, as has been said,

that though they themselves were cruel tyrants, they marvelled and

were horrified to behold the traces of such lamentable devastation.

21.21. Many witnesses have proved these things before the chancellor of

the exchequer of the India Council and the proofs are in the

possession of the same Council but they have never burnt alive any

of these nefarious tyrants.

22.22. But what has been proven is as nothing compared to the massacres

and great wickedness that have been committed, because all the

officers of justice in the Indies are so mortally blind that they do

not investigate the crimes, destruction, and slaughter that have

been, and are to-day wrought by all the tyrants of the Indies,

beyond declaring that as such and such a one has used cruelty

towards the Indians, the King’s revenue has lost so many thousand

crowns; they are satisfied with little proof, and that of a very

general and confused character.

23.23. And even this they do not verify, nor make it as clear as they

should; for if they did their duty to God and the king, they would

discover that the said German tyrants have robbed the king of more

than three million crowns’ worth of gold, because that province of

Venezuela, with the others they have ruined, devastated, and

depopulated for an extent of more than four hundred leagues, (as I

have said) was the most prosperous, the richest in gold, and the

most populous of the universe.

24.24. During the sixteen years those tyrants, enemies of God, devastated

it, they have wasted and caused the loss of more than two millions

of revenue that the king of Spain would have drawn from that

kingdom. Nor is there hope of repairing this damage between now and

the end of the world, unless God, through a miracle, should

resuscitate so many million persons.

25.25. These are the temporal injuries to the king. It would be well to

consider what, and how many are the injuries, the dishonour,

blasphemies, and insults to God and His law, and with what will be

requited so many numberless souls, burning in hell, because of the

avarice and cruelty of these tyrant animals or Germans. (100)

26.26. To sum up this wickedness and ferocity, I will only say that from

the day the Germans entered the country till the present time, that

is in these sixteen years, the Indians they have transported in

their ships amount to more than a million who were sold as slaves in

Santa Marta, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and the island of San Juan.

27.27. And even now, in the year 1542, the traffic continues, for the

royal Audiencia of Hispaniola dissembled—nay favoured this and all

the other numberless acts of tyranny and destruction done along all

that coast of the continent, which is more than four hundred leagues

from Venezuela to Santa Marta, and is under their jurisdiction,

though they could have prevented and corrected them.

28.28. There has been no other reason to make slaves of all these Indians

except the perverse, blind, obstinate will of these most avaricious

tyrants, and to satisfy their insatiable avarice for money; just as

all the others have always done everywhere in the Indies, taking

those lambs and sheep away from their houses, their wives, and their

children in the said cruel and wicked ways, marking them with the

king’s brand to sell them as slaves.

The Provinces of that Part of the Continent which is Called Florida

1. These provinces(101) have been visited at divers times since the

year 1510 or 1511 by three tyrants who imitated the deeds done by

the others, and also by two of them in other parts of the Indies

seeking to advance to a degree disproportioned to their merit, at

the cost of the blood and destruction of their fellow creatures.

2.2. And all three died a bad death, and their families and properties

established in human blood, perished, for I am witness of all three,

whose very memory is already as extinct in the world as though they

had never lived.

3.3. The infamy and horror of their names scandalised all the land

because of some massacres they perpetrated: these were not many,

however, for God killed them before they did more, for He had

reserved till that hour the punishment for the wickedness that I

know and saw they committed in other parts of the Indies.

4.4. The fourth tyrant went there recently, in the year 1538, with his

plans made and with great preparations. Since three years nothing

has been seen or heard of him.

5.5. We are sure, that as soon as he landed he committed cruel deeds and

at once disappeared: and that, if he be alive, he and his men have

destroyed numbers of people in these three years, if he encountered

any on his march, for he is one of the notorious, and experienced

ones who, together with his other companions, has done the most harm

and wickedness, and has destroyed many provinces, and kingdoms. But

we rather believe that God has given him the same end as the others.

6.6. Three or four years after the above things were written, three of

the other tyrants returned from the land called Florida; they had

accompanied the chief tyrant whom they left dead, and we learned

from them what cruelty and unheard of wickedness, these inhuman men

committed there against those innocent and harmless Indians,

principally during the life of their commander and also after his

unhappy death: therefore what I foretold above has not turned out

wrong.

7.7. And so many things confirm the rule I laid down at the beginning:

that the more they continue to discover, ruin, and destroy both

peoples and countries, the more notorious are the cruelties and

iniquities they commit against God and their fellow creatures.

8.8. It is already wearisome to us to relate so many, and such execrable,

horrible, blood-thirsty operations, not by men, but by ferocious

beasts, hence I will not stop to relate any but the following.

9.9. They found large towns full of people who were friendly,

intelligent, politic, and orderly. They did great slaughter among

them, according to their custom, in order to impregnate the hearts

of those people with fear of them.

10.10. They tormented and killed them, loading them like animals. When

one became tired, or fainted, they cut off his head at the neck, in

order not to free those in front from the chain that bound them, and

the body fell to one side and the head to the other, as we have told

elsewhere above.

11.11. In one town where they went they were received with joy, and

over-abundant food was given them, while more than six hundred

Indians carried their loads, like beasts of burden, and cared for

their horses; when the tyrants had left there, a captain who was a

relative of the chief tyrant, turned back to rob the entire town

whose people felt themselves safe; and with a lance, he killed the

lord and king of the town, and did other cruel deeds.

12.12. Because the inhabitants of another large town seemed to them to be

a little more on their guard, on account of the infamous and

horrible deeds of which they had heard, they put to the sword large

and small children and old people, subjects and lords, without

sparing any one.

13.13. It is said that the chief tyrant had the faces of many Indians cut,

so that they were shorn of nostrils and lips, down to the beard; and

in particular of a group of two hundred whom he either summoned or

who came voluntarily from a certain town. Thus he despatched these

mutilated, suffering creatures dripping with blood to carry the news

of the deeds and miracles done by those baptised Christians,

preachers of the Holy Catholic faith.

14.14. It may be judged in what state those people must be, how they must

love the Christians, and how they will believe that their God is

good and just, and that the law and religion they profess and

praise, is immaculate.

15.15. Most great and outlandish are the evils done here by those unhappy

men, sons of perdition. And thus the wickedest of captains died

miserably and without confession; and we doubt not that he is buried

in hell, unless by chance, God out of His divine mercy has

mysteriously succoured him despite his guiltiness for such execrable

wickedness.

Rio della Plata

1. Three or four times since the year 1522 some captains have visited

Rio della Plata, (102) where there are large kingdoms and provinces,

and very friendly and intelligent people.

2.2. We know, in general, that they have committed many homicides and

much injury. In particular, as it is so distant from the Indies, we

have nothing signal to tell.

3.3. We have no doubt at all, however, but that they have and do carry on

the same practices as in other places; because they are the same

Spaniards, and some among them have visited other regions, and

because they go to get wealth and power just like the others; it is

impossible for this to come about, except by destruction, massacres,

robbery, and the extermination of the Indians by the adoption of the

perverse rule and system they have all alike followed.

4.4. After writing the above, we have learned, with ample proof, that

they have destroyed and depopulated great provinces and kingdoms of

that country, murdering, and cruelly treating those unfortunate

people; they have thereby made themselves even more notorious than

the others, because, being at a greater distance from Spain, they

could do more as they pleased and consequently lived in greater

disorder and with less justice. As for justice, however, there has

never been any in all the Indies, as is seen from what has been

related above.

5.5. Among infinite other cases, the three following have been read

before the Council of the Indies. A tyrant governor commanded

certain of his people, to go to some Indian town and, if food was

not given them, to kill all the inhabitants. Thus authorised, they

started and, because the Indians considered them their enemies and

more out of fear and the desire to escape from them, than from a

want of generosity, refused to supply them, the Spaniards put more

than five thousand persons to the sword.

6.6. Another time a certain number of people presented themselves

peaceably for their service, or perhaps they had been summoned by

the Spaniards; and because they did not come quickly enough, or

because, as is their habit and common usage, they wished to inspire

them with fear and horrible fright, the Governor commanded that they

should all be consigned into the hands of their Indian enemies.

7.7. They wept and cried, praying that the Spaniards would kill them,

rather than deliver them to their enemies. (103) And as they would

not leave the house where they were, they were cut to pieces there,

weeping, and crying out: “We came peaceably to serve you and you

kill us? May our blood, remain on these walls as testimony of our

unjust death and of your cruelty!” This was, in truth, a notorious

action, and worthy of consideration, but much more of being

lamented.

The Vast Kingdoms and Great Provinces of Peru