But those who worship mammon allow no feelings of friendship or gratitude to interfere with their selfish propensities. Under the pretext that the Ulmen had usurped the government which belonged to his nephew, Almagro arrested the chief of Copiapo, and kept him a prisoner.
About the same time two Spanish soldiers, having separated from the rest of the army, proceeded to Guasco, where they were at first well received, but were afterwards put to death by the inhabitants, in consequence, no doubt, of some acts of violence, which soldiers, freed from the control of their officers, are very apt to commit.
This was the first European blood spilt in Chili,—a country afterwards so copiously sprinkled with it.
Had Almagro wished to preserve peace, and impartially examined the whole transaction, he would, undoubtedly, have found the Chilians justified by the laws of nations and of nature, in the act they had committed. True, it was rash, and it afforded him a pretext, which was all he wanted, to begin his cruel oppressions.
Almagro seized the Ulmen of the district in which his soldiers were put to death, his brother and twenty of the principal inhabitants, and without even accusing them of being concerned in the murder, indeed without assigning any reason at all for his conduct, he ordered them to be burnt. At the same time he also consigned the Ulmen of Copiapo to the flames.
Who will say that the savage crime, even allowing the two soldiers were murdered without provocation, was to be compared in iniquity to that retaliation in which the civilized Christian indulged? But the savage never made gold his god.
The cruelty of the Spanish general, and the intentions he now manifested of enslaving the Chilians, instead of terrifying, at once roused that brave people to resistance.
It is a melancholy task to record the murders and cruelties of war, but we cannot blame a people for resisting the progress of an invading army, especially when they come, as the Spaniards did, to plunder the country, and make the inhabitants slaves.
Almagro, however, was so elated with his success, and felt so secure of conquering all Chili as easily as he had obtained the command of Copiapo, that he would not hearken at all to his Peruvian allies, who represented to him that the Chilians in the other provinces were numerous and warlike. He advanced into the province of the Promancians.
At the first sight of the Spaniards, their horses, and the thundering arms of Europe, these valiant people were almost petrified with astonishment. But they soon recovered from their surprise, and prepared to defend themselves. They met the Spaniards on the shore of the Rio Claro. Almagro despised their force; he knew that the red men had never been a match for Spanish valor, and so he placed his Peruvian auxiliaries in front, intending, with his Spaniards, to appear merely as spectators of the fight.