Chapter XXIV: Prologue: Of the Bishop Don Fray Bartholomew De Las Casas or Casaus (2)

1. In the year 1522 or 1523 this same tyrant invaded the most
delightful province of Nicaragua to subjugate it; it was an unlucky
hour when he entered it. Who could adequately set forth the
happiness, healthfulness, agreeableness, prosperity, and the number
of dwellings and concourse of the people that were there? it was
truly a marvellous thing to see how full it was of towns, stretching
for a length of nearly three or four leagues, thickly planted with
the most marvellous fruit trees; which was the reason that there was
such an immense population.
2.2. So much injury and assassination, so much cruelty, wickedness and
injustice, was done to those people by that tyrant, together with
the others, his companions, that human language would not suffice to
relate it; for he was accompanied by all those who had helped to
destroy all the other kingdom. The land being flat and open, the
natives could not hide in the mountains, and their country was so
delightful, that it was with difficulty and great grief that they
brought themselves to abandon it; for this reason they suffered, and
will suffer great persecutions, and they tolerated the tyranny and
the slavery of the Christians to the extent of their endurance, and
because they are naturally a very humble and pacific people.
3.3. He sent fifty mounted soldiers, and had the inhabitants of a whole
province, larger than the country of Rusenon(87) killed with lances,
without leaving man nor woman, old nor young alive. He did this for
a very trifling reason; such as because they did not come as soon as
he called them, or because they did not bring him enough loads of
maize, (which is the grain of that country) or enough Indians to
serve him or some other of his company: the land being flat, no one
could escape from their horses and from their infernal wrath.
4.4. He sent some Spaniards to invade other provinces, which means to go
and murder the Indians; and he let the assassins bring away as many
Indians as they pleased from the peaceful settlements, to serve
them; they put these Indians in chains so that they should not set
down the loads weighing three arobas that they bound on their backs.
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 surpassed 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 principally 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 multitude 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 massacres have occurred in the space 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 God and the King, they have forgotten
themselves as well. So many and such are the massacres 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 massacres lasted. With bloody 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 God 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 circumstances 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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) 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.

The Province and Kingdom of Guatemala

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.
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, 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 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 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 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)

New Spain and Panuco and Xalisco

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 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 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 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 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.

The Kingdom of Yucatan