These plates they bind on the forehead as ornaments, as we have told before. They also presented our commander with three beautiful young women. However, whilst we remained in that place, after supper we stationed sentries, in order that the people might be on the alert for the enemy, and afterwards we went to rest.
About midnight our commander lost his young wenches. In short, there was great excitement in the camp for that reason, and as soon as the morning dawned, our commander ordered that each of us should stand to his quarters with his arms ready.
So the aforesaid Maijeaijs,[226] numbering twenty thousand, came to attack us unawares, but they did not do us much harm. On the contrary, in this conflict, more than one thousand of their men were left dead; and they fled and we pursued them to their town, but we did not find anything therein, not so much as their wives and children. Then our commander, taking with him one hundred and fifty gunners and two thousand five hundred Indian Carios, ordered us to follow the Maijeaijs, which we did for three days and two nights together, taking no more rest than the time necessary for our dinner and four or five hours for sleep at night.
[226] Mbaiás.
The third day we suddenly came upon the Maijaijs,[227] with their women and children gathered together in a forest with them; these were not the people we sought, but their friends. They did not fear at all our coming to them. Nevertheless, the innocent had to pay for the guilty, for when we lighted upon them we killed many, and took over three thousand prisoners, men, women, and children; and, if it had been day-time instead of night, none of them would have escaped, for there was a goodly number of people gathered together on the hill, at the summit of which was a great wood.
[227] Mbaiás.
I, for my part, in this skirmish, captured over nineteen persons, men and women, who were not at all old—I have always had more esteem for young than for old people—also I took Indian mantles and other things besides as my share of the booty. Then we returned to our camp and remained there for eight days, because there was now plenty of victual. The distance from these Maijaijs to Mount S. Fernando, where we left our two ships, is seventy miles. Afterwards we went further, to a people called Zchemui,[228] who are subject to the aforesaid Maijaijs, as here at home the peasants are subject to their landlords.
[228] Perhaps Chanés. To the tribe which Schmidt calls Zchemui, and to all the other tribes mentioned in his voyage north in search of El Dorado, he gives such queer and extraordinary names, that it is impossible to interpret them. De Barcia, the Spanish translator from the Latin version, who consulted other documents, declares that they are unintelligible, and generally puts down the equivalents as given by the Latin translator. The last named of those tribes is the one that Schmidt calls Machkokios, on arriving at the Salinas del Jaurú in lat. 16° S. Not far from there he finds another river, to which he gives the same name. This was the river Guapay. He goes across it and meets Spaniards, who tell him they belong to the Gobernacion (Government) of Pero Anzures. Irala stops there and sends messengers to the Governor of Peru, La Gasca, to whom he offers his services. La Gasca refuses them, and orders him back to the Gobernacion of the River Plate.
The translators, who in other languages have tried to interpret these names, have done it in an arbitrary manner. The unintelligible names are the following: Peihoni, Tohanna, Symani, Barchkoni, Zeyhanni, Karchkoni, Siberi, Peijesseni, Jeronimus, Maigeni, Karchkockies, Marchkockios and rio Machkasies. None of them are Indian names.
On the way we found many fields sown with Turkish corn and other roots, of which one can eat all the year round, for before one crop is stored another is already ripe for harvest, and when this too is gathered it is time to sow a third, so that there is always abundance of food.