Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings Part 16

And it happened sometimes out of the many times he did it, that out of four thousand Indians, not six individuals returned alive to their homes, because they were left dead by the way.

5.5. And when some became tired, or lame on account of the great weights, or fell ill through hunger, fatigue and weakness, they cut off their heads at the neck so as not to loosen them from their chains, and the head fell to one side, and the body to the other. It may be imagined how their companions would feel. When orders were given for similar expeditions, the Indians, knowing from experience that none who started ever returned, went weeping, and sighing, and saying: "Those are the roads, we trod to serve the Christians; and although we laboured hard, we finally returned after some time to our own homes and to our wives and children; but now we go without hope of ever returning, nor of seeing them again, or of having life any more."

6.6. Once, because it suited his inclination to make a new distribution of Indians, and also, they say, to take them from his enemies and give them to his friends, the Indians were unable to plant their crops; and as bread ran short, the Christians took from the Indians all the maize they had to maintain themselves and their children; in consequence more than twenty or thirty thousand souls died of hunger; and it happened, that a certain woman was driven by hunger to kill her own son for food.

7.7. As each of the towns was a very pleasing garden, as has been said, the Christians settled in them; each one in the place that fell to his share or, (as they say,) was committed to his charge; each one carried on his own cultivation, supporting himself with the meagre provisions of the Indians, thus robbing them of their private lands and inheritances, by which they maintained themselves.

8.8. In this wise the Spaniards kept within their own houses all the Indian lords, the aged, the women, and the lads, all of whom they compelled to serve them day and night, without rest. They employed even the children, as soon as they could stand, in excess of their powers. And in this way they have wasted, and to-day still waste those few that are left, not allowing them to have either a home or anything of their own. In this they even surpa.s.sed the similar injustice they perpetrated in Hispaniola.

9.9. They have exhausted and oppressed, and caused the premature death of many people in this Province, making them carry planks and timber to build vessels in the port, thirty leagues distant; also by sending them to seek for honey and wax in the mountains, where they are devoured by tigers; and they have loaded and do still load pregnant and confined women, like animals.

10.10. The most horrible pestilence that has princ.i.p.ally destroyed this Province, was the license which that governor gave to the Spaniards, to ask slaves from the princes and lords of the towns. Every four or five months, or whenever one obtained the favour or license from the said governor, he asked the lord for fifty slaves threatening, if he did not give them, to burn him alive or to deliver him to fierce dogs.

11.11. As the Indians usually do not keep slaves and, at most a lord has two or three or four, the lords went through their towns and took, first all the orphans; next, of those who had two children they asked one, and of those who had three, two: and in this way the lord completed the number demanded by the tyrant, amidst great wailing and weeping in the town, for they seem, more than any other people, to love their children.

12.12. By such conduct from the year 1523 to 1533, they ruined all this kingdom. During six or seven years, five or six vessels carried on this traffic, taking all this mult.i.tude of Indians to sell them as slaves in Panama and Peru, where they all died. It has been verified and experienced a thousand times that, by taking the Indians away from their native country, they at once die more easily: because the Spaniards habitually give them little to eat and never relieve them from labour, for they are only sold by some and bought by others, to make them work. In this way they have carried off more than five hundred thousand souls from this province making slaves of people who were as free as I am.

13.13. In their infernal wars and the horrible captivity into which they put the Indians up to the present time, the Spaniards have killed more than another five or six hundred thousand persons, and they still continue. All these ma.s.sacres have occurred in the s.p.a.ce of fourteen years. At present they kill daily in the said province of Nicaragua, from four to five thousand persons, with servitude and continual oppression; it being, as was said, one of the most populous in the world.

New Spain

1. New Spain was discovered in the year 1517. (88) And the discoverers gave serious offence to the Indians in that discovery, and committed several homicides. In the year 1518 men calling themselves Christians went there to ravage and to kill; although they say that they go to populate. And from the said year 1518, till the present day (and we are in 1542) all the iniquity, all the injustice, all the violence and tyranny that the Christians have practised in the Indies have reached the limit and overflowed: because they have entirely lost all fear of G.o.d and the King, they have forgotten themselves as well. So many and such are the ma.s.sacres and cruelty, the murder and destruction, the pillage and theft, the violence and tyranny throughout the numerous kingdoms of the great continent, that everything told by me till now is nothing compared to what was practised here.

2.2. Yet, even had we related everything, including what we have omitted, it would not be comparable, either in number or magnitude, to the acts which, from the said year 1518 till the present day of this year 1542 have been committed. In this day of the month of September the gravest and most abominable acts are done and committed; because the rule we have mentioned above verifies itself, that from the commencement onwards they have ever been increasing in greater wickedness and infernal works.

3.3. Consequently, from the invasion of New Spain which was on April 18th of the said year 1518 till the year 1530, which was twelve entire years, the murders and the ma.s.sacres lasted. With b.l.o.o.d.y hands and cruel swords the Spaniards continually wrought in nearly four hundred and fifty leagues of country belonging to the City of Mexico and its surroundings, which numbers four or five great kingdoms, as large and much more delightful than Spain.

4.4. All these countries were more populous than Toledo, Seville, Valladolid, and Zaragoza, together with Barcelona; because these cities have not, nor did they ever have so many inhabitants when they were at their fullest, as G.o.d placed, and as are to be found in all the said leagues; to go around which, one must walk more than a thousand and eight hundred leagues.

5.5. In the said twelve years more than four million souls have been killed by the Spaniards with swords and lances, and by burning alive women and children, young and old in the said extent of 450 leagues, during the time what they call "conquests" lasted. In fact, they were violent invasions by cruel tyrants, condemned not only by the divine law, but by all human laws; they were much worse than those of the Turks to destroy the Christian Church. Besides all this, there are the deaths they have caused, and cause every day by the tyrannical servitude, the daily afflictions and oppressions above described.

6.6. Neither language, nor knowledge, nor human industry could suffice to relate in detail the dreadful operations of those public and mortal enemies of the human race, acting in concert in some places and singly in others, within the aforesaid circuit. In truth, respecting the circ.u.mstances and conditions that rendered certain deeds more grievous, no exercise of diligence and time and writing could hardly explain them sufficiently. However I will recount something of some of the countries, protesting on my oath, that I believe I am not telling the thousandth part.

1. Among other ma.s.sacres 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 princ.i.p.al lords; the Spaniards determined on a ma.s.sacre here or, as they say, a chastis.e.m.e.nt 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 n.o.bles of the town and of all its dependencies, together with the princ.i.p.al 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 great compa.s.sion 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 a.s.sembled 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 compa.s.sion 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 dest.i.tute 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.

Mira Nero de Tarpeya A Roma como se ardia.

Gritos dan ninos 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 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 n.o.bles 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 princ.i.p.al enjoyment and festivity, all take part in it. The greatest n.o.bles 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 a.s.sembled in the place nearest to the said palaces who were the flower and the best n.o.bility 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 n.o.bility, 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 a.s.sembled, 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 pa.s.sed onwards, spreading into, infecting and ruining the province of Panuco, where there was a marvellous mult.i.tude of people: equally marvellous were the ma.s.sacres 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 ma.s.sacres, 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 G.o.d, 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 t.i.tle, did this tyrant captain send two other tyrant captains, much more cruel and ferocious and more dest.i.tute of compa.s.sion and mercy than himself, to the vast, most flouris.h.i.+ng, 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 s.h.i.+ps by sea, each provided with many hors.e.m.e.n 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 ma.s.sacres, 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 surpa.s.sed all the past and the present in the kind and mult.i.tude 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 princ.i.p.al 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 s.h.i.+ps 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, surpa.s.sed 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 ma.s.sacre.

Nevertheless the princ.i.p.al 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 princ.i.p.al 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 compa.s.sionate 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 gra.s.s, 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 compa.s.sion 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 mult.i.tude 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 quant.i.ty 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 ma.s.sacre 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 s.h.i.+ps and sent to be sold in Peru. By other ma.s.sacres 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 s.h.i.+ps. They crowded Indians into the s.h.i.+ps, 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 s.h.i.+ps, 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 d.a.m.nation 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 G.o.d, that he may have had compa.s.sion on him and be appeased with the bad death to which he at last brought him. (93)

New Spain and Panuco and Xalisco