towards the wives and daughters of the Indians. Collecting all his
warriors, Cotabanama attacked the Spanish posts in his neighbourhood.
At every engagement his troops were defeated and dispersed, but only to
collect again, fight again with even greater fury, be defeated and
dispersed again, and rally again against the Spaniards. They literally
fought to the death. After every battle the Spaniards made a massacre of
all the natives they could find, old men, children, and pregnant women
being alike put to the sword or burned in their houses. When their
companions fell beside them, instead of being frightened they became more
furious; and when they were wounded they would pluck the arrows out of
their bodies and hurl them back at the Spaniards, falling dead in the
very act. After one such severe defeat and massacre the natives
scattered for many months, hiding among the mountains and trying to
collect and succour their decimated families; but the Spaniards, who with
their dogs grew skilful at tracking the Indians and found it pleasant
sport, came upon them in the places of refuge where little groups of them
were sheltering their women and children, and there slowly and cruelly
slaughtered them, often with the addition of tortures and torments in
order to induce them to reveal the whereabouts of other bands. When it
was possible the Spaniards sometimes hanged thirteen of them in a row in
commemoration of their Blessed Saviour and the Twelve Apostles; and while
they were hanging, and before they had quite died, they would hack at
them with their swords in order to test the edge of the steel. At the
last stand, when the fierceness and bitterness of the contest rose to a
height on both sides, Cotabanama was captured and a plan made to broil
him slowly to death; but for some reason this plan was not carried out,
and the brave chief was taken to San Domingo and publicly hanged like a
thief.

After that there was never any more resistance; it was simply a case of
extermination, which the Spaniards easily accomplished by cutting of the
heads of women as they passed by, and impaling infants and little
children on their lances as they rode through the villages. Thus, in the
twelve years since the discovery of Columbus, between half a million and
a million natives, perished; and as the Spanish colonisation spread
afterwards from island to island, and the banner of civilisation and
Christianity was borne farther abroad thro