re formerly
there were a thousand or two thousand families, are reduced to
hardly fifty, while others are entirely burned and abandoned.
34. In other places, from one to three hundred leagues of country are
found completely deserted; large towns having been burnt and
destroyed.
35. Great and cruel tyrants penetrated into New Granada from the
direction of the province of Quito in the kingdom of Peru, and into
Popayan and Cali from the direction of Cartagena and Uraba, while
from Cartagena, other ill-starred tyrants marched through to Quito;
afterwards others, came from the direction of Rio de San Juan, which
is on the South coast. All of these men united together and they
have devastated and depopulated more than six hundred leagues of
country, sending innumerable souls to hell. They are doing the same
at the present day to the miserable survivors, although they are
innocent.
36. And to prove the axiom I laid down in the beginning, namely that the
tyranny, violence, and injustice of the Spaniards towards these
gentle lambs, accompanied by cruelty, inhumanity, and wickedness,
most worthy of all fire and torture, which continue in the said
provinces, go on increasing, I cite the following.
37. After the massacres and slaughter of the war, the people are
condemned, as was said, to the horrible slavery described above. To
one of the devils, two hundred Indians were given, to another,
three. The devil commandant ordered a hundred Indians to be called
before him and when they promptly came like so many lambs, he had
the heads of thirty or forty cut off; and said to the others: "I
will do the same to you, if you do not serve me well, and if you
leave without my permission."
38. Now in God's name consider, you, who read this, what sort of deeds
are these, and whether they do not surpass every imaginable cruelty
and injustice, and whether it squares well with such Christians as
these to call them devils; and whether it could be worse to give the
Indians into the charge of the devils of hell than to the Christians
of the Indies.
39. I will also tell of another such operation; I do not know which is
the more cruel, the more infernal, and nearer the ferocity of wild
beasts, this one or that one just told.
40. It has already been sai