after cruel slaughter, they sold at auction all whom they took
alive.
9. Before they captured that ruler, they had been received in many, nay
in all the provinces, wherever they went, with singing and dances
and many gifts of large quantities of gold; the payment they made
the Indians was to put them to the sword and cut them to pieces in
order to terrorise the whole country.
10. Once, when the inhabitants had come out to meet him in the aforesaid
way, the tyrant German captain put a great number of people into a
large straw louse and cut them to pieces. As the house had some
beams at the top and many climbed up to escape from the bloody hands
and swords of those men or pitiless beasts, this infernal man caused
fire to be set to the house; thus all who remained were burnt alive.
This action caused the depopulation of a great number of towns as
all the people fled to the mountains where they hoped to be safe.
11. They came to another large province on the borders of the province
and kingdom of Santa Marta, where they found the Indians in their
towns and houses, peaceably occupied with their affairs. They
stayed with them a long time, eating their substance while the
Indians served them as though it were their duty to give them life
and succour; they bore with their continual oppressions and usual
exactions, which are intolerable, for one parasite Spaniard eats as
much in one day as would be sufficient for an Indian household of
ten persons for a month.
12. During this time, the Indians spontaneously gave them great
quantities of gold, besides the best of treatment. At last when the
tyrants wished to depart, they determined to repay their hospitality
in this following manner.
13. The German governor, who was a tyrant and, for what we know also a
heretic--for he never attends mass neither does he let many others
go, besides which, other signs mark him as a Lutheran,--ordered his
men to capture all the Indians they could, with their wives and
children, and to confine them in a large yard or wooden enclosure
prepared for the purpose; he then announced that whoever wished to
go out and be free, must ransom himself according to the will of the
iniquitous governor, giving so much gold for himself, so much for
his wife and for eac