people in these three years, if he encountered
any on his march, for he is one of the notorious, and experienced
ones who, together with his other companions, has done the most harm
and wickedness, and has destroyed many provinces, and kingdoms. But
we rather believe that God has given him the same end as the others.
6. Three or four years after the above things were written, three of
the other tyrants returned from the land called Florida; they had
accompanied the chief tyrant whom they left dead, and we learned
from them what cruelty and unheard of wickedness, these inhuman men
committed there against those innocent and harmless Indians,
principally during the life of their commander and also after his
unhappy death: therefore what I foretold above has not turned out
wrong.
7. And so many things confirm the rule I laid down at the beginning:
that the more they continue to discover, ruin, and destroy both
peoples and countries, the more notorious are the cruelties and
iniquities they commit against God and their fellow creatures.
8. It is already wearisome to us to relate so many, and such execrable,
horrible, blood-thirsty operations, not by men, but by ferocious
beasts, hence I will not stop to relate any but the following.
9. They found large towns full of people who were friendly,
intelligent, politic, and orderly. They did great slaughter among
them, according to their custom, in order to impregnate the hearts
of those people with fear of them.
10. They tormented and killed them, loading them like animals. When one
became tired, or fainted, they cut off his head at the neck, in
order not to free those in front from the chain that bound them, and
the body fell to one side and the head to the other, as we have told
elsewhere above.
11. In one town where they went they were received with joy, and
over-abundant food was given them, while more than six hundred
Indians carried their loads, like beasts of burden, and cared for
their horses; when the tyrants had left there, a captain who was a
relative of the chief tyrant, turned back to rob the entire town
whose people felt themselves safe; and with a lance, he killed the
lord and king of the town, and did other cruel deeds.
12. Because the inhabitants of another large town seemed