| 1. | Among other massacres there was one
took place in a town of more than thirty thousand inhabitants
called Cholula; all the lords of the land, and its
surroundings, and above all the priests, with the high priest
came out in procession to meet the Christians, with great
submission and reverence, and conducted them in their midst
to lodge in the town in the dwelling houses of the prince, or
principal lords; the Spaniards determined on a massacre here
or, as they say, a chastisement to sow terror and the fame of
their valour throughout that country, because in all the
lands the Spaniards have invaded, their aim has always been
to make themselves feared of those meek lambs, by a cruel
and signal slaughter. |
|---|
| 2.2. | To accomplish this, they first sent
to summon all the lords and nobles of the town and of all its
dependencies, together with the principal lord; and when
they came, and began to speak to the captain of the
Spaniards, they were promptly captured, without any one who
could give the alarm, noticing it. |
| 3.3. | They had asked for five or six
thousand Indians to carry their baggage, all of whom
immediately came and were confined in the courtyards of the
houses. To see these Indians when they prepared themselves to
carry the loads of the Spaniards, was a thing to excite
[pg 344] great
compassion for they come naked, with only the private parts
covered, and with some little nets on their shoulders
containing their meagre food; they all sit down on their
heels, like so many meek lambs. |
| 4.4. | Being all collected and assembled in
the courtyard, with other people who were there, some armed
Spaniards were stationed at the gates of the courtyard to
guard them: thereupon all the others seized their swords and
lances, and butchered all those lambs, not even one
escaping. |
| 5.5. | Two or three days later, many
Indians who had hidden, and saved themselves under the dead
bodies (so many were they) came out alive covered with blood,
and they went before the Spaniards, weeping and asking for
mercy, that they should not kill them: no mercy nor any
compassion was shown them; on the contrary, as they came out,
the Spaniards cut them to pieces. |
| 6.6. | More than one hundred of the lords
whom they had bound, the captain commanded to be burned, and
impaled alive on stakes stuck in the ground. One lord
however, perhaps the chief and king of that country, managed
to free himself, and with twenty or thirty or forty other
men, he escaped to the great temple, which was like a
fortress and was called Quu, where they defended themselves
during a great part of the day. |
| 7.7. |
But the Spaniards, from whom nothing is safe, especially
among these people destitute of weapons, set fire to the
temple and burned them, they crying out: “wretched men! what have we done unto you? why
do you kill us? go then! in Mexico you will find our
universal lord Montezuma who will take vengeance upon you
for us.” It is said, that while those five, or six
thousand men were being put to the sword in the courtyard,
the captain of the Spaniards stood singing. [pg 345]
Mira Nero de
Tarpeya
A Roma como se
ardia.
Gritos dan niños y
viejos,
Y el de nada se
dolia.
[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 [pg 346] 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 [pg
347] 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 [pg
348] 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 [pg 349] 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 [pg
350] 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 [pg 351] 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]
[pg 352] 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. |
| 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. [pg 353] |
| 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, [pg 354] 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 [pg 355] 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 [pg 356] 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
[pg 357] 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] |
| 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 [pg 359] 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 [pg
360] 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
[pg 361] 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 [pg
362] 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. |
| 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
[pg 363] 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 [pg 364]
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
[pg 366]
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 [pg
367] 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; [pg
369] 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 tranquillity. 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. |
| 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
[pg 371] 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, [pg 372] 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 [pg 373]
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. |