is account; and afterwards, other murderous
and thieving tyrants succeeded, who continued to destroy those
people who had survived the treatment and cruel swords of their
predecessors.
5. They marched far inland, ruining and exterminating large and
numerous provinces; killing, and making slaves of their people in
the ways above told of the others, putting lords and their vassals
to grievous tortures to force them to disclose the gold and the town
where it was to be had: as has been said they surpassed, both in
number and quality, the operations of all their predecessors so that
from the said year 1529, till to-day, they have devastated in those
parts more than four hundred leagues of country, which was as
densely peopled as the other.
6. I truthfully declare that if I had to relate singly the evil, the
massacres, the destruction, injustice, violence, slaughter, and the
great sins the Spaniards have committed in this Kingdom of Santa
Marta, against God, against the King, and against those innocent
nations, I would compose a very long history; I shall relate all
this however in due time, if God gives me life.
7. Here I wish only to quote some few of the words that the lord bishop
of that province now writes to the King: and the date of his letter
is the 20th of May, 1541, in which among other words he says thus:
8. "I assert, oh Sacred Caesar, that the way to remedy the ills of this
country is for Your Majesty to now take it out of the hands of
step-fathers and to give it a husband, who will treat it justly, and
as it deserves; and this as soon as possible because otherwise I am
certain that the way these tyrants who now have the government,
crush and harass it, will very soon destroy it," etc.
9. And further on he says: "therefore Your Majesty will clearly discern
that those who govern in these parts, deserve to be destroyed, to
relieve the republics. And if this is not done, their infirmities
are, in my opinion, without remedy. And Your Majesty will know in
like manner that in these parts there are no Christians but demons;
neither are there servants of God nor of the King, but traitors to
His law, and to the King."
10. "Because in truth, the greatest obstacle I find to winning the
Indians from war to peace, and from peace to