Part 18 (2/2)
37.37. Many times the Indians throw themselves into the sea while fis.h.i.+ng or hunting pearls and never come up again, because dolphins and sharks, which are two kinds of very cruel sea animals that swallow a man whole, kill and eat them.
38.38. From this it may be seen, whether the Spaniards who thus seek profit from the pearls, observe the divine precepts of love to G.o.d and one's neighbour; out of avarice, they put their fellow creatures in danger of death to the body and also to the soul; because they die without faith and without sacraments.
39.39. They lead the Indians such a wretched life that they ruin and waste them in a few days; for it is impossible for men to live much under water without respiration, especially because the cold of the water penetrates their bodies and so they generally all die from haemorrhages, oppression of the chest caused by staying such long stretches of time without breathing; and from dysentery caused by the frigidity.
40.40. Their hair, which is by nature black, changes to an ashen colour like the skin of seals, and nitre comes out from their shoulders so that they resemble human monsters of some species.
41.41. With this insupportable toil, or rather, infernal trade, the Spaniards completed the destruction of all the Indians of the Lucayan Islands who were there when they set themselves to making these gains; each one was worth fifty and a hundred crowns, and they were sold publicly, although it had been prohibited by the magistrates themselves; it was even more unjust elsewhere for the Lucayans were great swimmers. They have caused the death of numberless others here, from other provinces, and other regions.
The Yuyapari River
On a river called the Yuyapari, which flows for more than two hundred leagues through the province of Paria, a wretched tyrant(98) sailed a great distance in the year 1539, accompanied by four hundred or more men; and he did very great slaughter, burning alive and putting to the sword numberless innocent and inoffensive people who were in their towns or houses, unsuspicious of danger; and he left immense tracts of country burnt, terrorized, and the inhabitants scattered. He finally died a bad death and his fleet was dispersed. Other tyrants succeeded him and continued this wickedness and tyranny: and to-day they go through those regions destroying, killing, and sending to h.e.l.l those souls that were redeemed by the son of G.o.d with His own blood.
The Kingdom of Venezuela
1. The Spaniards have always exercised diligent care to hide the truth from our lord the King about injuries and losses to G.o.d, to human souls, and to his State; and in the year 1526, he was deceived and perniciously persuaded into giving and conceding to some German merchants, the great kingdom of Venezuela which is much larger than all Spain; the entire management of the government and all jurisdiction were conceded under a certain agreement and compact, or condition that was made with them. (99) 2.2. These men invaded these countries with a force of three hundred or more and found the people the same gentle lambs, (and much more so), as they usually find them everywhere in the Indies before the Spaniards injure them.
3.3. More cruel beyond comparison than any of the other tyrants we have told of, was their invasion; and more irrational and furious were they than the cruellest tigers, or raging wolves and lions. Their liberty of action was the greater because they held all the jurisdiction of the country; with greater eagerness and blind greediness of avarice, and with ways and arts for stealing and acc.u.mulating gold and silver more exquisite than their predecessors, they abandoned all fear of G.o.d and the King and all shame of men, forgetting that they were mortal beings.
4.4. These devils incarnate have devastated, destroyed, and depopulated more than four hundred leagues of most delightful country containing large and marvellous provinces, valleys extending for forty leagues, pleasant regions, very large towns, most rich in gold.
5.5. They have killed and entirely cut to pieces divers large nations and destroyed many languages, so that not a person who speaks them remains, except a few, who have hidden in caverns and in the bowels of the earth to escape from the pestilential sword of the foreigners.
66. They have killed, destroyed, and sent to h.e.l.l, (according to my belief), more than four or five millions of those innocent races by means of various strange and new kinds of cruel iniquity and impiety; nor do they, at the present day, cease sending them there.
7.7. I will relate no more than three or four instances of the endless injustice, outrages, and slaughter they have done, and are doing to-day; it may be imagined from these what they must have done to accomplish the great destruction and depopulation we have described.
8.8. They took the supreme lord of all the province, putting him to torture, for no other reason than to obtain his gold. He escaped and fled to the mountains, where he remained in hiding amongst the rocks, with his enraged and terrified people. The Spaniards attacked them in their search for him; they recaptured him and, after cruel slaughter, they sold at auction all whom they took alive.
9.9. Before they captured that ruler, they had been received in many, nay in all the provinces, wherever they went, with singing and dances and many gifts of large quant.i.ties of gold; the payment they made the Indians was to put them to the sword and cut them to pieces in order to terrorise the whole country.
10.10. Once, when the inhabitants had come out to meet him in the aforesaid way, the tyrant German captain put a great number of people into a large straw louse and cut them to pieces. As the house had some beams at the top and many climbed up to escape from the b.l.o.o.d.y hands and swords of those men or pitiless beasts, this infernal man caused fire to be set to the house; thus all who remained were burnt alive. This action caused the depopulation of a great number of towns as all the people fled to the mountains where they hoped to be safe.
11.11. They came to another large province on the borders of the province and kingdom of Santa Marta, where they found the Indians in their towns and houses, peaceably occupied with their affairs. They stayed with them a long time, eating their substance while the Indians served them as though it were their duty to give them life and succour; they bore with their continual oppressions and usual exactions, which are intolerable, for one parasite Spaniard eats as much in one day as would be sufficient for an Indian household of ten persons for a month.
12.12. During this time, the Indians spontaneously gave them great quant.i.ties of gold, besides the best of treatment. At last when the tyrants wished to depart, they determined to repay their hospitality in this following manner.
13.13. The German governor, who was a tyrant and, for what we know also a heretic-for he never attends ma.s.s neither does he let many others go, besides which, other signs mark him as a Lutheran,-ordered his men to capture all the Indians they could, with their wives and children, and to confine them in a large yard or wooden enclosure prepared for the purpose; he then announced that whoever wished to go out and be free, must ransom himself according to the will of the iniquitous governor, giving so much gold for himself, so much for his wife and for each of his children; and to force them the more, he commanded that nothing whatever should be given them to eat, until they brought him the gold he demanded as ransom.
14.14. Many who were able, sent to their houses for gold and redeemed themselves. They were set free, and returned to their occupations and to their houses to provide themselves with the necessaries of life. The tyrant sent certain villainous Spanish thieves to recapture these miserable Indians, who had once ransomed themselves; they brought them back to the enclosure and tortured them with hunger and thirst to make them ransom themselves again.
15.15. Many who were captured were ransomed two and three times. Others who could not, because they had given all the gold they possessed and had not enough left, he left languis.h.i.+ng in the enclosure till they died of hunger.
16.16. By this deed, he left ruined, desolate, and depopulated, a most populous province most rich in gold, which has a valley of forty leagues, where he burnt a town that had a thousand houses.
17.17. This infernal tyrant determined to go inland, as he eagerly desired to discover the h.e.l.l of Peru in those parts. To make this unhappy journey, he, and the others brought numberless Indians, chained to one another, carrying loads of sixty, and seventy pounds each.
18.18. If one tired, or fainted from hunger, fatigue, and weakness, they at once cut off his head at the collar of the chain so as not to stop to loosen the others in the line; and the head fell to one side and the body to the other, and they distributed his load among the other bearers.
1919. To tell of the provinces he destroyed, the towns, and places he burnt (for all the houses are built of straw)-the people he killed, the cruelty he displayed in the several ma.s.sacres during this journey, would make an incredible and terrifying story, but it would be true, nevertheless.
20.20. These journeys were afterwards undertaken by other tyrants who followed in the same Venezuela, and others from the province of Santa Marta, animated by the same holy intention of discovering this holy house of gold in Peru; and they found all the country for more than two hundred leagues, so much burnt, depopulated, and deserted, from formerly being most populous and prosperous, as has been said, that though they themselves were cruel tyrants, they marvelled and were horrified to behold the traces of such lamentable devastation.
21.21. Many witnesses have proved these things before the chancellor of the exchequer of the India Council and the proofs are in the possession of the same Council but they have never burnt alive any of these nefarious tyrants.
22.22. But what has been proven is as nothing compared to the ma.s.sacres and great wickedness that have been committed, because all the officers of justice in the Indies are so mortally blind that they do not investigate the crimes, destruction, and slaughter that have been, and are to-day wrought by all the tyrants of the Indies, beyond declaring that as such and such a one has used cruelty towards the Indians, the King's revenue has lost so many thousand crowns; they are satisfied with little proof, and that of a very general and confused character.
23.23. And even this they do not verify, nor make it as clear as they should; for if they did their duty to G.o.d and the king, they would discover that the said German tyrants have robbed the king of more than three million crowns' worth of gold, because that province of Venezuela, with the others they have ruined, devastated, and depopulated for an extent of more than four hundred leagues, (as I have said) was the most prosperous, the richest in gold, and the most populous of the universe.
24.24. During the sixteen years those tyrants, enemies of G.o.d, devastated it, they have wasted and caused the loss of more than two millions of revenue that the king of Spain would have drawn from that kingdom. Nor is there hope of repairing this damage between now and the end of the world, unless G.o.d, through a miracle, should resuscitate so many million persons.
25.25. These are the temporal injuries to the king. It would be well to consider what, and how many are the injuries, the dishonour, blasphemies, and insults to G.o.d and His law, and with what will be requited so many numberless souls, burning in h.e.l.l, because of the avarice and cruelty of these tyrant animals or Germans. (100) 26.26. To sum up this wickedness and ferocity, I will only say that from the day the Germans entered the country till the present time, that is in these sixteen years, the Indians they have transported in their s.h.i.+ps amount to more than a million who were sold as slaves in Santa Marta, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and the island of San Juan.
27.27. And even now, in the year 1542, the traffic continues, for the royal Audiencia of Hispaniola dissembled-nay favoured this and all the other numberless acts of tyranny and destruction done along all that coast of the continent, which is more than four hundred leagues from Venezuela to Santa Marta, and is under their jurisdiction, though they could have prevented and corrected them.
28.28. There has been no other reason to make slaves of all these Indians except the perverse, blind, obstinate will of these most avaricious tyrants, and to satisfy their insatiable avarice for money; just as all the others have always done everywhere in the Indies, taking those lambs and sheep away from their houses, their wives, and their children in the said cruel and wicked ways, marking them with the king's brand to sell them as slaves.
The Provinces of that Part of the Continent which is Called Florida
1. These provinces(101) have been visited at divers times since the year 1510 or 1511 by three tyrants who imitated the deeds done by the others, and also by two of them in other parts of the Indies seeking to advance to a degree disproportioned to their merit, at the cost of the blood and destruction of their fellow creatures.
2.2. And all three died a bad death, and their families and properties established in human blood, perished, for I am witness of all three, whose very memory is already as extinct in the world as though they had never lived.
3.3. The infamy and horror of their names scandalised all the land because of some ma.s.sacres they perpetrated: these were not many, however, for G.o.d killed them before they did more, for He had reserved till that hour the punishment for the wickedness that I know and saw they committed in other parts of the Indies.
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