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Page 41
Throughout all these countries the people who were at war immediately
made friends, that they might come to meet us, and bring what they
possest. In this way we left all the land at peace, and we taught all
the inhabitants by signs, which they understood, that in heaven was a
Man we called God, who had created the sky and earth; Him we worshiped
and had for our Master; that we did what He commanded, and from His
hand came all good; and would they do as we did, all would be well
with them. So ready of apprehension we found them that, could we have
have the use of language by which to make ourselves perfectly
understood, we should have left them all Christians. Thus much we gave
them to understand the best we could. And afterward, when the sun
rose, they opened their hands together with loud shouting toward the
heavens, and then drew them down all over their bodies. They did the
same again when the sun went down. They are a people of good condition
and substance, capable in any pursuit. In the town where the emeralds
were presented to us the people gave Dorantes over six hundred open
hearts of deer. They ever keep a good supply of them for food, and we
called the place Pueblo de los Corazones. It is the entrance into many
provinces on the South Sea. They who go to look for them, and do not
enter there, will be lost. On the coast is no maize: the inhabitants
eat the powder of rush and of straw, and fish that is caught in the
sea from rafts, not having canoes. With grass and straw the women
cover their nudity. They are a timid and dejected people.
We think that near the coast by way of those towns through which we
came are more than a thousand leagues of inhabited country, plentiful
of subsistence. Three times the year it is planted with maize and
beans. Deer are of three kinds; one the size of the young steer of
Spain. There are innumerable houses, such as are called bahios. They
have poison from a certain tree the size of the apple. For effect no
more is necessary than to pluck the fruit and moisten the arrow with
it, or, if there be no fruit, to break a twig and with the milk do the
like. The tree is abundant, and so deadly that, if the leaves be
bruised and steeped in some neighboring water, the deer and other
animals drinking it soon burst.
We were in this town three days. A day's journey farther was another
town, at which the rain fell heavily while we were there, and the
river became so swollen we could not cross it, which detained us
fifteen days. In this time Castillo saw the buckle of a sword-belt on
the neck of an Indian, and stitched to it the nail of a horseshoe. He
took them, and we asked the native what they were: he answered that
they came from heaven. We questioned him further, as to who had
brought them thence: they all responded that certain men who wore
beards like us had come from heaven and arrived at that river,
bringing horses, lances, and swords, and that they had lanced two
Indians. In a manner of the utmost indifference we could feign, we
asked them what had become of those men. They answered that they had
gone to sea, putting their lances beneath the water, and going
themselves also under the water: afterward that they were seen on the
surface going toward the sunset. For this we gave many thanks to God
our Lord. We had before despaired of ever hearing more of Christians.
Even yet we were left in great doubt and anxiety, thinking those
people were merely persons who had come by sea on discoveries.
However, as we had now such exact information, we made greater speed,
and, as we advanced on our way, the news of the Christians continually
grew. We told the natives that we were going in search of that people,
to order them not to kill nor make slaves of them, nor take them from
their lands, nor do other injustice. Of this the Indians were very
glad.
We passed through many territories and found them all vacant; their
inhabitants wandered fleeing among the mountains, without daring to
have houses or till the earth for fear of Christians. The sight was
one of infinite pain to us, a land very fertile and beautiful,
abounding in springs and streams, the hamlets deserted and burned, the
people thin and weak, all fleeing or in concealment. As they did not
plant, they appeased their keen hunger by eating roots and the bark of
trees. We bore a share in the famine along the whole way; for poorly
could these unfortunates provide for us, themselves being so reduced
they looked as tho they would willingly die. They brought shawls of
those they had concealed because of the Christians presenting them to
us; and they related how the Christians at other times had come
through the land, destroying and burning the towns, carrying away half
the men, and all the women and the boys, while those who had been able
to escape were wandering about fugitives. We found them so alarmed
they dared not remain anywhere. They would not nor could they till the
earth, but preferred to die rather than live in dread of such cruel
usage as they received. Altho these showed themselves greatly
delighted with us, we feared that on our arrival among those who held
the frontier, and fought against the Christians, they would treat us
badly, and revenge upon us the conduct of their enemies; but, when God
our Lord was pleased to bring us there, they began to dread and
respect us as the others had done, and even somewhat more, at which we
no little wondered. Thence it may at once be seen that, to bring all
these people to be Christians and to the obedience of the Imperial
Majesty, they must be won by kindness, which is a way certain, and no
other is.
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