uch worse than can be said of any
tyrant in the world; and I affirm the same of what they have done
throughout the Indies.
19. When the wars were finished, and with them the murder, they divided
among them all the men, (youths, women, and children being usually
spared) giving to one, thirty, to another forty, and to another a
hundred and two hundred, according to the favour each enjoyed with
the chief tyrant, whom they called governor. Having thus
distributed them, they assigned them to each Christian, under the
pretence that the latter should train them in the catholic faith;
thus to men who are generally all idiots, and very cruel, avaricious
and vicious, they gave the care of souls.
20. The care and thought these Spaniards took, was to send the men to
the mines to dig gold, which is an intolerable labour; and they put
the women into dwellings, which are huts, to dig and cultivate the
land; a strong and robust man's work. They gave food neither to the
one, nor the other, except grass, and things that have no substance.
The milk dried up in the breasts of nursing women and thus, within a
short time, all the infants died.
21. And as the husbands were separated and never saw their wives,
generation diminished among them; the men died of fatigue and hunger
in the mines and others perished in dwellings or huts, for the same
reason. It was in this way that such multitudes of people were
destroyed in this island, as indeed all those in the world might be
destroyed by like means.
22. It is impossible to recount the burdens with which their owners
loaded them, more than three and four arobas(82) weight, making them
walk a hundred and two hundred leagues. The same Christians had
themselves carried by Indians in hamacas, which are like nets; for
they always used them as beasts of burden. They had wounds on their
shoulders and backs, like animals, all wither-wrung. To tell
likewise of the whip-lashings, the beatings, the cuffs, the blows,
the curses, and a thousand other kinds of torments to which their
masters treated them, while, in truth, they were working hard, would
take much time and much paper; and would be something to amaze
mankind.
23. It must be noted, that the destruction of this island and of these
lands was begu