THE Spanish Colony, OR Brief Chronicle of the Acts and gests of the Spaniards in the West Indies, called the new World, for the space of xl. years: written in the Castilian tongue by the reverend Bishop Bartholomew de las Casas or Casaus, a Friar of the order of S. Dominicke.  
And now first translated into english, by M. M. S.  
¶ Imprinted at London for William Brome. 1583.   

To the Reader.  
Spanish cruelties and tyrannies, perpetrated in the West Indies, commonly termed The new found world.  
Briefly described in the Castilian language, by the Bishop trier Bartholomew de las Casas or Casaus, a spaniard of the order of Saint Dominick, faithfully translated by james Aliggrodo, to serve as a Precedent and warning, to the xii. Provinces of the low Countries.  Happy is he whom other men's harms do make to beware. 
GOds judgements are so profound as man's wisdom, no not the power of Angels is able to enter into their depth. Thou shalt (friendly Reader) in this discourse behold so many millions of men put to death, as hardly there have been so many spaniardes procreated into this world since their first fathers the Goths inhabited their Countries, either since their second progenitors the Saracens expelled and murdered the most part of the Goths, as it seemeth that the Spaniards have murdered and put to death in the Western Indies by all such means as barbarousness itself could imagine or forge upon the anueld of cruelty. They have destroyed thrice so much land as christendom doth comprehend: such torments have they invented, yea so great and excessive have their treachery been, that the posterity shall hardly think that ever so barbarous or cruel a nation have been in the world, if as you would say we had not with our eyes seen it, and with our hands felt it. I confess that I never loved that nation generally, by reason of their intolerable pride, notwithstanding I can not but commend & love sundry excellent persons that are among them. Howbeit, God is my witness, hatred procureth me not to write those things, as also the author of the book is by nation a Spaniard, and beside writeth far more bitterly than myself.  
But two reasons have moved me to publish this preface, which I do dedicated to all the provinces of the Low countries: The one, to the end, awaking themselves out of their sleep, may begin to think upon God's judgements: and refrain from their wickedness and vice. The other, that they may also consider with what enemy they are to deal, and so to behold as it were in a picture or table, what stay they are like to be at, when through their recklessness, quarrels, controversies, and partialities themselves have opened the way to such an enemy: and what they may look for. Most men do ground their opinion upon the goodness of their cause, concluding, that in as much as God is just, he will grant victory to the right, and will overthrow the wicked. This was jobes' friends disputation, where they concluded that for that job was afflicted, undoubtedly he was wicked. Which reason is drawn out of a certain rule, which it seemeth that nature hath printed in our hearts, that is, that God punisheth the evil, and in mercy rewardeth the good deeds. There upon did the inhabitants of Malta report that God's vengeance would not permit S. Paul to live, when after he had escaped so dangerous shipwreck, the Viper leapt upon his hand. Howbeit notwithstanding this rule be certain and true, yet do many therein diversely deceive themselves, concluding thereby that GOD sendeth no affliction but to the wicked, as if he laid not his cross also upon the good: As job, the Prophets, and Martyrs: yea, his own son jesus Christ, and that for the mortifying of the flesh, and more and more to quicken man in good living: and for his son, to the end in him to punish our sin which he took upon him. Others do believe that God will never suffer sin to be long unpunished, notwithstanding that having long waited patiently for our repentance, his clemency is at length converted into justice. Some again, that it is unpossible for the wicked to get the upper hand in an evil cause, notwithstanding we daily see it fall out contrary: undoubtedly the Turks victories & conquests in Christendom have no foundation, but consist upon mere tyranny and usurpation. For although Christian's sins, especially the great abuse in God's service, have been the causes of our punishment, yet must we confess that the christians, what errors soever some of them do in their doctrine maintain, are not nevertheless so far devoid of the truth, as are the Turks, and yet do we see how mightily in few years they have conquered & encroached upon christendom. Also before the coming of the Turks, namely soon after the time of Mahamet, there came such a flock of Saracens, that they devoured first Egypt, than all Africa, & rooting out Christianity out of the said countries seized upon all Spain: yea proceeding forward, they camped in Aquitain upon the river of Toyre: insomuch that it was to be doubted that they might soon have caught hold upon France, & so upon the rest of christendom, had not God raised up that mighty Duke of Brubant, Charles Martel, who defeating them, drive them beyond the Pirenean mountains. But if we list to consider the examples contained in the holy Bible, whose reasons are more exactly expounded by the prophets, we do find that in the time of K. Hezechias, although the head city, namely Jerusalem, was not forced, yet the lesser towns being taken by the enemy, the flat country spoiled, the K. and the princes of juda had no more left them but the bare walls of Jerusalem. Also, albeit God did marvelously strike the army of Senacherib, and that his own children flew him in his gods temples: yet were not gods people free from suffering much, and from seeing the enemy enjoy the most part of their law: their commons did bear that which now we know, & more than we would, that is what an enemy entering by force of arms into a land is able to do. But Nabuchadnezers' victories were far others, when he took, burned, & sacked even the head city, together with the very temple of Jerusalem, & took their K. P. & hie P. prisoners, & ●lu pulled out the eyes, & fettered some of them forcing the commons during the siege to eat their own dung & Who is he therefore that dare accuse God of wrong, sith such tyrants be called the Axe in the lords hands, as the executioners of his justice? Further we see, that those that have the most right are by the wicked rob, slain, & murdered, which is nevertheless Gods doing. For it is said: Cursed be he that doth the Lords work negligently, in which place the holy scriptures do speak of such ministers and instruments of God. In this discourse of Don Bartholomew de las Casas, we do find a manifest example. For I pray you what right had the Spaniards over the Indians: saving that the Pope had given them the said land, and I leave to your judgement what right he had therein: for it is doubtful whether his power do stretch to the distributing of worldly kingdoms. But admit he had that authority, was there therefore any reason that he should for crying in the night, There is a God, a Pope, & a King of Castille who is Lord of these Countries, murder 12. 15. or 20. millions of poor reasonable creatures, created (as ourselves) after the image of the living God: Hear do I, as in the beginning I said, see a bottomless depth of God's judgements. For it is a small matter to say that the wicked do molest better men than themselves, for the causes aforesaid: but to see a whole nation, yea, infinite nations perish so miserably, and as it seemeth, without any cause, is it that maketh most men to wander, yea even astonisheth such as do examine these effects by the rule of their own reasons. Howbeit we have two examples in the Bible, though not altogether like, yet very near. It is said in the overthrow of Sehon: In those days we took all his towns, and destroyed men women and childen in the same, neither left we any thing remaining. The like sentence is there also of Og king of Basan, yea, Moses soon after alloweth all that was done, commandeth josua to do as much to all the other kings in his journey as was done to those two. If we seek the cause of such executions, man will be as it were at his wit's end and stand mute. Again, if men should consider the example of king Saul whom God rejected, because he did not wholly discomfit Amelec, but saved their king, and reserved the fattest of their cattle for the sacrifices, their understanding would give sentence clean contrary to gods. What will they say, was it not a comenndable, yea, a noble mind, for a king to spare his brother, either for an Israelite to spare the cattle to the end to sacrifice them to the God of Israel: yet was God's sentence pronounced by Samuel clean repugnant thereto, God loveth obedience better than sacrifice. And not long before God had commanded both, namely, that the Canaanites and Amalekites should be rooted out: and therefore he was to be obeyed, and for their disobedience the Canaanites remained thorns in the eyes of Israel, and the king of Amalec whom Samuel nevertheless hewed in pieces, was the subversion of Saul and his royal family, But here may express reasons be alleged for such judgements of God, which seeming severe to man are nevertheless, in that they proceeded from God, mere justice. Moses saith, when the Lord thy God hath rejected them before thy face, think not in thine heart, saying: The Lord for my righteousness hath caused me to enter possession of this land, seeing he hath for their wickedness rooted out these nations before thy face. For thou art not through thy righteousness and uprightness of heart come to inherit their land, but it is for the abominations of these people, whom the Lord thy god hath expelled before thy face.  
True it is, that as in a cleeare sunny light we may more easily discern all that is object to our sight, even so of things contained in the holy Scriptures commonly the causes are to be found: but for other matters, as the destruction of divers nations among the Heathen: and finally for this so cruel and horrible example, contained in this book, there can be alleged no particular reason, other than that gods judgements are bottomless pits: also that sith he hath done it, it is justly done. And yet are not the Spaniards being the executors of this vengeance, more excusable than Pilate for condemning our saviour, or Annas or Caiphas for procuring his death notwithstanding god's counsel and hand wrought those things. For behold gods sentence pronounced against the wicked, whom he useth in chastening the good, whom by those means he doth try, and punisheth the wicked according to their deserts:  
Oh ashur, the rod of my wrath: and the staff in their hands is my indignation. I will send him to a dissembling nation, & I will give him a charge against the people of my wrath, to take the spoil, and to take the pray, & to tread them under foot like the mire in the street. But he thinketh not so, neither doth his heart esteem it so, but he imagineth to destroy and to cut off not a few nations. For he saith, Are not my princes altogether kings? Is not Calno as Charchemish? Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria as Damascus▪ Like as my hand hath found the kingdoms of Idols, seeing their idols were above jerusalem & above Samaria: Shall not I, as I have done to Samaria and to the Idols thereof, so do to Jerusalem & to the idols thereof? But when the Lord hath accomplished all his work upon mount Sion & jerusalem, I will visit the fruit of the proud heart of the K. of Ashur, & his glorious & proud looks, because he said, by the power of my own hand have I done it, & by my wisdom, because I am wise. Therefore I have removed the borders of the people, & have spoiled their treasures, and have pulled down the inbabitants like a valiant man. And my hand hath found as a nest, etc. So that although the wicked for a time do triumph, yet doth not God leave their abominable cruelties unpunished. But God's judgements being in the mean time such, that by the wicked he punisheth those that be wicked: notwithstanding their wickedness be somewhat less, as also the good be chastised by the cruel and bloodthirsty: it is certain that we are not thereby to judge that ourselves shall have the victory over our enemies, because our cause is the better, for we are replenished with vice enough, whereby to leave unto god sufficient matter to punish us. And therefore as I said two things me thought, and yet me seemeth in these Country's worthy admiration: One is, that we trusting that the defence of our liberty is unto us a just occasion do not in the mean time consider that we commit no less faults, than those which Ezech, cast in the Sodomites teeth, Behold the iniquity of thy sister Sodom was pride, fullness of bread, and the ease of Idleness: these were in her & in her daughters▪ and 〈…〉 as if we had made atonement with death, we fear not gods judgements. If we look upon the 〈…〉 may see a great abuse in gods service: but so far are we from endeavouring to correct it, that contrariwise some would that the remembrance of God, at the least for this time, might be buried in oblivion: therein resembling on, or the children which would that during their infancy there might grow no twigge● in the wood●. Others 〈…〉 reformed, being never the less reform but in mou●● 〈◊〉. For the wine and the harp as the prophet saith, are as common in their banquets as afore time, neither are they sorry for the contrition of joseph. The other is, that in manner every man generally hath an eye to his own private affairs, no 〈…〉 the common, unless it be to reprove, but not to help▪ ●atr●● possesseth many of their hearts, and which is more strange, although there be many in these Countries that have heretofore felt the manifest injuries of the spaniards: yet as if their memory wholly failed them, they be ready to compound with the 〈◊〉 they suppose, to the destruction of their confederates, 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 to the general subversion of the whole country. To the end therefore they may at the least 〈◊〉 in a ●able behold the nature of their enemy, his purpose & intent: here ●asueth a true history written by one of their own nation, wherein they may learn not that which is yet fully executed in these low countries, but which (had not god stopped their course) they had long since put in execution: and hereby I hope all good men will 〈◊〉 to be resolute, and ●mending their lives 〈◊〉 ioy●● 〈◊〉, not in words only, but in deeds also, to repel so arrogant and 〈◊〉 an enemy. But there needeth no other admonition than the same which the author hath set down, and therefore I pray you read him as diligently as he 〈…〉 grave and worthy 〈…〉 himself to his own so cruel and barbarous nation: and let us render thanks to god for sending us so good masters to instruct us in our duties in this so miserable and wretched time, in hope ●hat we not quailing in our office, he will also finally grant us happy deliverance.   

The Argument of this present summary.  
THe state of things happened in the Indies, even from the time they were most wonderfully discovered also since the Spaniards for a while began to inhabit those places, and afterward successively unto these days, have in all degrees been so marvelous & incredible unto such as have not seen them, that they may seem sufficient to darken and bury in oblivion and silence whatsoever else have passed in all former ages throughout the world, how great so ever is hath been, amongst which the slaughters and murders of these innocent people, together with the spoils of towns, provinces, & kingdoms, which in those parts have been perpretated, as also divers others no less terrible matters are not the least. These things when doen Bart●●●w de las Casa●s, being made of a monk a bishop at his coming to the court, there to inform our ●. & M. the Emperor, as having 〈◊〉 an eiewitnes of the same, had rehearsed to sundry persons, who as yet were ignorant thereof, & thereby having driven the hearers into a kind of ecstasy & maze, he was importunately requested briefly to set down in writing some of them 〈◊〉 of the last, which he did. But afterward seeing sundry persons who devoid of remorse and compassion, being through avarice & ambition, degenerate from all humanity, and who by their execrable deeds were grown into a reprobate sense, not being satisfied with such felonies & mischiefs as they had committed in destroying such a part of the world by all strange kinds of cruelties, were now again importunate upon the King, to the end under his authority and consent, they might once more return to commit the like, or worse, if worse might be, he determined to exhibit the said summary which he had in writing and record unto our Lord the prince, to the end his highness might find means that they should be denied, which he thought best to put in print, to the end, his highness might with more ease read the same. This therefore was the cause of this present summary, or brief information.   

The Prologue of the Bishop Friar Bartholomewe de las Casas or Casaus, to the most high and mighty prince, Our Lord Don Philip Prince of Spain.  
MOst high and mighty Lord, as god by his provident hath for the guiding and commodity of mankind in this world, in Realms and Provinces, appointed kings to be as fathers, and as Homer nameth them shepherds, and so consequently the most noble & principal members of common weals▪ so can we not justly doubt by reason of the good wills that kings and princes have to minister justice, but that if there be any things amiss, either any violences or injuries committed, the only cause that they are not redressed, is, for that princes have no notice of the same. For certainly if they knew of them, they would employ all diligence and endeavour in the remedy thereof. Whereof it seemeth that mention is made in the holy Scripture in the proverbs of Solomon, where it is said, Rex qui sedet in solio judicii dissipat omne malum intuitu suo. For it is sufficiently to be presupposed even of the kindly and natural virtue of a king, that the only notice that he taketh of any mischief tormenting his kingdom, is sufficient to procure him, if it be possible, to root out the same as being a thing that he cannot tolerate even one only moment of time.  
Considering therefore with myself most mighty Lord the great mischiefs, damages and losses, (the like whereof it is not to be thought, were ever committed by mankind) of so large and great kingdoms, or to speak more truly, of this so large new world of the Indies, which God and holy Church have committed & commended unto the K. of castile, to the end they might govern, convert, & procure their prosperity as well temporally as spiritually. I therefore (I say) being a man of experience, and filthy years of age or more, considering these evils, as having seen them committed, at my being in those countries: Also that your highness having information of some notable particularities, might be moved most earnestly to desire his Majesty, not to grant or permit to those tyrants such conquests as they have found out, and which they do so name, (whereinto if they might be suffered they would return) seeing that of themselves, & being made against this Indian, peaceable, lowly & mild nation which offendeth none, they be wicked, tyrannous, and by all laws either natural, humane or divine, utterly condemned, detested and accursed: I thought it best, lest myself might become also guilty, by concealing the loss of an infinite number both of souls & bodies which are so committed, to cause a few of their dealings which of late I had selected, from among infinite others, and that might truly be reported to be printed, to the end your highness might with more ease peruse and read them over. Also whereas your highness master the Archbishop of Toleto, when he was bishop of Carthagena required them at my hands, and then presented them to your highness: peradventure by reason of such great voyages as your highness took upon you, both by sea and by land for matters of estate wherein you have been busied, it may be you have not perused, either have forgotten them, and in the mean time the rash and disordinate desire of those which think it nothing to do wrong, to shed such abundance of man's blood, to make desolate these so large countries of their natural inhabitants and owners, by slaying infinite persons, either to purloin such incredible treasures, do daily augment, these tyrants proceeding under all counterfeit titles and colours in their instant and importunate suit, namely, to have the said conquests permitted and granted unto them: Which in truth cannot be granted without transgressing the law both of nature and of God, and so consequently not without in curring mortal sin, worthy most terrible and everlasting torments: I thought it expedient to do your highness service in this brief summary of a most large history, that might and ought to be written of such slaughters and spoils as they have made and perpetrated. Which I beseech your highness to receive and read over, with that royal clemency and courtesy, wherewith you use to accept and peruse the works of such your servants, as no other desire, but faithfully to employ themselves to the common commodity, and to procure the prosperity of the royal estate.  
This summary being perused, and the vildenes of the iniquity committed against these poor innocent people, in that they are slain and hewed in pieces without desert, only through the avarice and ambition of those that pretend to the doing of such execrable deeds, being considered, It may please your highness to desire, and effectually to persuade his Majesty to deny any whosoever shall demand or require so hurtful and detestable enterprises: yea, even to bury any such suit or petition in the infernal pit of perpetual silence, thereby showing such terror & dislike as hereafter no man may be so bold, as once to name or speak thereof. And this (most mighty Lord) is very expedient & necessary, to the end God may prosper, preserve and make the estate of the royal crown of Castille for ever to flourish both spiritually and temporally.   

A brief Narration of the destruction of the Indes, by the spaniards.  
THe Indes were discovered the year one thousand, four hundred, ninety two, and inhabited by the Spanish the year next after ensuing: so as it is about forty nine years sithence that the Spaniards some of them went into those parts. And the first land that they entered to inhabit, was the great and most fertile Isle of Hispaniola, which containeth six hundredth leagues in compass. There are other great and infinite Isles round about and in the confines on all sides: which we have seen the most peopled, and the fullest of their own native people, as any other country in the world may be. The firm land lying off from this Island two hundredth and fifty leagues, and some what over at the most, containeth in length on the seacoast more than ten thousand leagues: which are already discovered, and daily be discovered more and more, all full of people, as an Emmote hill of Emmots. Insomuch, as by that which since, unto the year the fortieth and one hath been discovered: It seemeth that God hath bestowed in that same country, the gulf or the greatest portion of mankind.  
GOD created all these innumerable multitudes in every sort, very simple, without subtlety, or craft, without malice, very obedient, and very faithful to their natural liege Lords, and to the Spaniards, whom they serve, very humble, very patiented, very desirous of peace making, and peaceful, without brawls and strugglings, without quarrels, without strife, without rancour or hatred, by no means desirous of revengement.  
They are also people very gentle, and very tender, and of an complexion, and which can sustain no travel, and 〈◊〉 die very soon of any disease whatsoever, in such sort as the very children of Princes and Noble men brought up amongst us, in all commodities, ease, and delicateness, are not more soft than those of that country: yea, although they be the children of labourers. They are also very poor folk, which possess little, neither yet do so much as desire to have much worldly goods, & therefore neither are they proud, ambitious, nor covetous. Their diet is such (as it seemeth) that of the holy fathers in the desert hath not been more scarce, nor more straight, nor less dainty, nor less sumptuous. Their appareling is commonly to go naked: all save their shamefast parts alone covered. And when they be clothed, at the most, it is but of a mantel of bombacie of an elle and a half, or a two else of linen square. Their lodging is upon a mat, and those which have the best: sleep as it were upon a net fastened at the four corners, which they call in the language of the isle of Hispaniola, Hamasas. They have their understanding very pure and quick, being teachable and capable of all good learning, very apt to receive our holy Catholic faith, and to be instructed in good and virtuous manners, having less encumbrances and disturbances to the attaining there unto, than all the folk of the world besides, and are so inflamed, ardent, and importune to know and understand the matters of the faith after they have but begun once to taste them, as likewise the exercise of the Sacraments of the Church, & the divine service: that in truth, the religious men have need of a singular patience to support them. And to make an end, I have heard many Spaniards many times hold this as assured, and that which they could not deny, concerning the good nature which they saw in them. Undoubtedly these folks should be the happiest in the world, if only they knew God.  
Upon these lambs so meek, so qualified & endued of their maker and creator, as hath been said, entered the Spanish incontinent as they knew them, as wolves, as lions, & as tigers most cruel of long time famished: and have not done in those quarters these 40. years be past, neither yet do at this present, ought else save tear them in pieces, kill them, martyr them, afflict them, torment them, & destroy them by strange sorts of cruelties never neither seen, nor read, nor heard of the like (of the which some shall be set down hereafter) so far forth that of above three Millions of souls that were in the isle of Hispaniola, and that we have seen, there are not now two hundredth natives of the country. The Isle of Cuba, the which is in length as far as from Vallodolyd until Rome, is at this day as it were all waist. S. john's isle, and that of jamaica both of them very great, very fertile, and very fair: are desolate. Likewise the isles of Lucayos, near to the isle of Hispaniola, and of the north side unto that of Cuba, in number being above threescore Islands, together with those which they call the isles of Geante, one with another, great and little, whereof the very worst is fertiler than the king's garden at Seville, and the country the healthsomest in the world: there were in these same isles more than five hundredth thousand souls, and at this day there is not one only creature. For they have been all of them slain, after that they had drawn them out from thence to labour in their minerals in the isle of Hispaniola, where there were no more left of the inbornes natives of that island. A ship riding for the space of three years betwixt all these islands, to the end, after the inning of this kind of vintage, to glean and cull the remainder of these folk (for there was a good Christian moved with pity and compassion, to convert & win unto Christ such as might be found) there were not found but eleven persons which I saw: other isles more than thirty near to the isle of S. john have likewise been dispeopled and marred. All these isles contain above two thousand leagues of land, and are all dispeopled and laid waste.  
As touching the main firm land, we are certain that our Spaniards, by their cruelties & cursed doings have dispeopled & made desolate more than ten realms greater than all Spain, comprising also therewith Arragon and Portugal, and twice as much or more land than there is from Seville to jerusalem which are above a thousand leagues: which realms as yet unto this present day remain in a wilderness and utter desolation, having been before time as well peopled as was possible.  
We are able to yield a good and certain account, that there is within the space of the said 40. years, by those said tyrannies & devilish doings of the Spaniards ●●●n to death unjustly and tyrannously more than twelve Millions of souls, men, women, and children▪ And I verily do believe, and think not to mistake therein, that there are dead more than fifteen Millions of souls.  
Those which have go them out of Spain into that country, bearing themselves as Christians, have kept two general and principal ways to eradicate and abolish from off the face of the earth those miserable nations: The one is their unjust, cruel, bloody and tyrannical war. That other manner is, that they have slain all those which could any kind of ways so much as gasp, breath, or think to set themselves at liberty, or but to withdraw themselves from the torments which they endure, as are all the natural Lords, and the men of valour and courage. For commonly they suffer not in the wars to live any, save children and women: oppressing also afterwards those very same with the most cruel, dreadful, and heinous thraldom that ever hath been laid upon men or beasts. Unto these two kinds of tyranny diabolical, may be reduced and sorted as it were the issues one under another to their head, all other their diverse and infinite manners of doing which they kept to lay desolate, and root out those folk without number.  
The cause why the Spanish have destroyed such an instnite of souls, hath been only, that they have held it for their last scope and mark to get gold, and to enrich themselves in a short time, and to mount at one leap to very high estates, in no wise agreeable to their persons: or, for to say in a word, the cause hereof hath been their avarice and ambition, which hath seized them the exceedingest in the world in consideration of those lands so happy and rich, and the people so humble, so patiented, and so easy to be subdued. Whom they have never had any respect, or made any more account of (I speak the truth of that which I have seen all the time that I was there conversant) I say not then of beasts (for would to GOD that they had entreated and esteemed them but as beasts:) but less than of the mire of the streets, and even as much care is it that they have had of their lives and of their souls. And by this means have died so many Millions without faith and without sacraments.  
It is a certain verity, and that which also the tyrants themselves know right well and confess, that the Indiens throughout all the Indes never wrought any displeasure unto the Spaniards: but rather that they reputed them as come from heaven, until such time as they, or their neighbours had received the first, sundry wrongs, being rob, killed, forced, and tormented by them.  

Of the isle of hispaniola.  
IN the isle Hispaniola, which was the first (as we have said) where the Spaniards arrived, began the great slaughters and spoils of people: the Spaniards having begun to take their wives and children of the Indies, for to serve their turn and to use them ill, and having begun to eat their victuals, gotten by their sweat and eravell: not contenting themselves with that which the Indians gave them of their own good will, every one after their ability, the which is algates very small, forasmuch as they are accustomed to have no more store, than they have ordinarily need of, and that such as they get with little travel: And that which might suffice for three households, reckoning ten persons for each household for a months space, one spaniard would eat and destroy in a day.  
Now after sundry other forces, violences, and torments, which they wrought against them: the Indians began to perceive, that those were not men descended from heaven. Some of them therefore hid their victuals: others hid their wives and children: some others fled into the mountains, to separate themselves a far off from a nation of so hard natured and ghastly conversation. The Spaniards buffeted them with their fists and bastovades: pressing also to lay hands upon the Lords of the Towns. And these cases ended in so great an hazard and desperatenes, that a Spanish Captain durst adventure to ravish forcibly the wife of the greatest king and Lord of this isle. Since which time the Indians began to search means to cast the Spaniards out of their lands, and set them selves in arms: but what kind of arms? very feeble and weak to withstand or resist, and of less defence (wherefore all their wars are no more wars then the playings of children, when as they play at jogo di Can or Reeds.) The Spaniards with their Horses, their spears and lances, began to commit murders, and strange cruelties: they entered into Towns, borrows, and Villages, sparing neither children, nor old men, neither women with child, neither them that lay In, but that they ripped their bellies, and cut them in pieces, as if they had been opening of Lambs shut up in their fold. They laid wagers with such as with one thrust of a sword would paunch or bowel a man in the midst, or with one blow of a sword would most readily and most deliverly cut off his head, or that would best pierce his entrails at one stroke. They took the little souls by the heels, ramping them from the mother's dugs, and crushed their heads against the clifces. Others they cast into the rivers laughing and mocking, and when they tumbled into the water, they said, now shift for thyself such a ones corpses. They put others, together with their mothers and all that they met, to the edge of the sword. They made certain Gibbets long and low, in such sort, that the feet of the hanged on, touched in a manner the ground, every one enough for thirteen, in the honour and worship of our Saviour and his twelve Apostles (as they used to speak) and setting to fire, burned them all quick that were fastened. Unto all others, whom they used to take and reserve alive, cutting off their two hands as near as might be, and so letting them hang, they said: Get you with these letters, to carry tidings to those which are fled by the mountains. They murdered commonly the Lords and nobility on this fashion: They made certain gra●es of perches laid on pickforkes, and made a little fire underneath, to the intent, that by little and little yelling and despeiring in these torments, they might give up the ghost.  
One time I saw four or five of the principal Lords roasted and broiled upon these gradeirons. Also I think that there were two or three of these gredirons, garmshed with the like furniture, and for that they cried out pitioussy, which thing troubled the Captain that he could not then sleep: he commanded to strangle them. The Sergeant, which was worse than the hangman that burned them (I know his name and friends in Seville) would not have them strangled, but him self putting boulets in their mouths, to the end that they should not cry, put to the fire, until they were softly roasted after his desire. I have seen all the aforesaid things and others infinite. And forasmuch, as all the people which could flee, hide themselves in the mountains, and mounted on the tops of them, fled from the men so without all manhood, empty of all pity, behaving them as savage beasts, the slaughterer's and deadly enemies of mankind: they taught their hounds, fierce dogs, to tear them in pieces at the first view, and in the space that one might say a Credo, assailed and devoured an Indian as if it had been a swine. These dogs wrought great destructions and slaughters. And forasmuch as sometimes, although seldom, when the indian's put to death some Spaniards upon good right and law of due justice: they made a Law between them, that for one spaniard, they had to stay an hundredth Indians.   

The realms which were in this isle of Hispaniola.  
THere were in this Isle Hispaniola, five great principal realms, and five very mighty Kings, unto whom almost all the other Lords obeyed, which were without number. There were also certain Lords of other several Provinces, which did not acknowledge for sovereign any of these Kings: One realm was named Magua, which is as much to say, as the kingdom of the plain. This plain is one of the most famous and most admirable things of all that is in the world. For it containeth fourscore leagues of ground, from the South sea unto the North sea: having in breadth five leagues, and eight unto ten.  
It hath in one side and other exceeding high mountains. There entereth into it above thirty thousand rivers and lakes, of the which twelve are as great as Ebro, and Duero, and Guadalquevir. And all the rivers which issue out of a Mountain which is towards the West, in number about five and twenty thousand, are very rich of gold. In the which mountain or mountains, is contained the province of Cibao, from whence the mines of Cibao take their names, and from whence cometh the same exquisite gold and five of 24. karrets, which is so renowned in these parts. The King and Lord of this realm was called Guarionex, which had under him his Vassals and Liege's so great and mighty, that every one of them was able to set forth threescore thousand men of arms for the service of the king Guarionex. Of the which Lords I have known some certain. This Guarionex was very obedient and virtuous, naturally desirous of peace, and well affectioned to the devotion of the kings of Castille, and his people gave by his commandment, every housekeeper a certain kind of Drum full of gold: but afterwards being not able to fill the Drum cut it off by the midst, and gave the half thereof full. For the Indians of that I'll had little or none industry or practice to gather or draw gold out of the mines. This Caceque presented unto the king of Castille his service, in causing to be manured all the lands from the Isavella, where the Spanish first sited, unto the Town of Saint Domingo, which are fittie leagues large, on condition that he should exact of them no gold: for he said, (and he said the truth) that his subjects had not the skill to draw it out. As for the manuring which he said he would procure to be done: I know that he could have done it very easily, and with great readiness, and that it would have been worth unto the king every year more than three Millions of Castillans, besides that it would have caused, that, at this hour there had been above fifty Cities greater than sevil.  
The payment that they made to this good king and Lord, so gracious and so redowbted, was to dishonour him in the person of his wife, an evil Christian, a Captain ravishing her. This king could have attended the tune and opportunity to avenge himself in levying 〈…〉 draw himself rather, and only 〈…〉 thus being banished from his real●e 〈…〉 of the Cignaios, where there was a great Lord his 〈◊〉. After that the Spaniards were 〈◊〉 of his 〈◊〉▪ and ●ee could 〈…〉 himself 〈…〉 against the Lord which had 〈…〉 and make great ●l●●ghters through the country 〈◊〉 they go, 〈…〉 they found and took 〈…〉 a Ship, to carry him to C●stile: which ship was lost upon the sea, and there were wi●h him drowned many Spaniards, and a great quantity of Gold, amongst the which also 〈◊〉 the great 〈◊〉 of Gold, 〈…〉 weighing three thousand▪ 〈…〉 GOD to wreak 〈…〉.  
The other reality was called of Mar●●●, where 〈◊〉 at this day the port at one of the ●oundes of the play●●, 〈◊〉 the North: and it is far greater than the rea●●e of Portugal, 〈◊〉 of gold, and copper 〈…〉. The king was called 〈◊〉, which had 〈…〉 many great Lords▪ of the which I have known and seen sundry▪ 〈…〉 first the 〈◊〉 admiral, when he ●●co●ered the Indieses, whom at that time that he discovered the Isle, the said 〈…〉 so graciously, bountifully, & 〈◊〉 withal the Spaniards who were with him, in 〈◊〉 him 〈…〉 (which the Admiral was carried in) that he ●●ulde not have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 made off in his own country of his own father. This did I ●nderstand of the admirals own mouth. This king died, in 〈◊〉 the slaughters and cruelties of the Spaniards through 〈…〉, ●●●yng destroyed and ●epri●ed of his 〈◊〉▪ And in the 〈◊〉 Lords his subjects died in the tyranny, and 〈◊〉 that shall be declared hereafter.  
The third Realm and dominion was M●gu●●●, a country also admirable, very healthsome, and very fertile, where the best 〈…〉  
The 〈…〉 was named 〈…〉 m●●●es of his serui●●●▪ The Spaniards ●ooke this king with great subtlety▪ and malice, e●en as he was in his own house▪ ●ou●●●ng him of nothing▪ They 〈…〉 ●a ship to 〈…〉 other ship in the port 〈…〉 upsayle: Behold how God by his i●st ●u●g●ment, would declare that i● with other thinger, was an exceeding 〈◊〉 iniquity and ●●iust, by sending the same night a 〈◊〉, which sunk, and drenched that 〈◊〉 with the Spaniards that were within. There died also with them the 〈…〉 with ●oltes and irons. This Prince 〈◊〉 three or four brother's 〈…〉, and courageous Lord and brother so against all equity, together with the w●●●s and slaughters which the Spaniards made in other realms, and specially after that they had heard that the king their brother was dead▪ they put themselves in arms to ●●●ounter the Spaniards and to avenge the 〈…〉 who 〈◊〉 the other side ●eeting with them ●n horseback (〈…〉 above all that may be to 〈◊〉 the India●● with) so they rage in discomfitures and massacres▪ that the one 〈◊〉 of this Realm hath been thereby desolate and dispeopled.  
The fourth Realm i● the s●me which is 〈◊〉 of X●●agua. This Realm 〈…〉 or to speak of, 〈…〉 the other Realms i● language and polished speech, in 〈◊〉 and good manners, the be●● composed and ordered▪ For as much as there were many noble Lords and Gentlemen, the people also being the best made and 〈◊〉 be●●ifull. The King 〈◊〉 to name 〈◊〉 which had 〈◊〉 called An●●●ona. 〈◊〉 two, the brother and sister▪ had 〈◊〉 great services to the kings of Castille, and great 〈◊〉 to the Spaniards, delivering them from sundry dangers of death.  
After the 〈◊〉 of Beh●●mo, An●●●●na 〈…〉 So●●raigne of the Realm. 〈…〉 the G●●●●nour of this isle with threescore Horses, and more than three hundre●● footmen (the horsemen alone had been enough to spoil and overrun not this isle alone, but all the firm land withal.) And so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being called, more than three hundre●● Lords 〈…〉, of whom the chiefest, 〈…〉 caused to be● conveyed into a house of thatch, and 〈…〉. ●owe on this wise were these Lords 〈…〉: all the rest of the Lords, with other folk infinite, were smitten to ●each with their spears and sword.  
But the Sovereign L●die Anac●ona, to do her honour they hanged▪ It happened that certain Spaniards, either of 〈◊〉 or of co●●●ousnesse, 〈…〉 detained certain young 〈…〉: because they would not 〈◊〉 them slain, and 〈◊〉 them behind them on their horse backs: another spaniard came behind, which stabbed them through with a spear. If so be any child● 〈◊〉 boy tumbled down to the ground▪ 〈◊〉 spaniard 〈◊〉 and ●utte off his legs.  
Some certain of these 〈◊〉 which could escape this 〈…〉, passed 〈…〉 I'll near unto the 〈◊〉, within 〈◊〉 eight leagues. The governor condemned all those which had passed the 〈…〉 because they had 〈…〉.  
〈…〉 was called ●igney, over the which raigne● 〈…〉, whom the Spaniards hanged up. The people were in●●nite whom I sa●● 〈◊〉 alive, 〈◊〉 rent ●● p●●●es, and tormented 〈◊〉 and strangely, and whom I saw made slaves, even so many as they 〈…〉.  
And 〈◊〉 for as much as there are so many 〈…〉 those people's, that they can not conveniently be 〈◊〉 in writing (yea I do verily believe that of a 〈◊〉 of things to be spoken of there can not be deciphered of 〈◊〉 thousand ●●●tes one:) I will only in that which 〈◊〉 the wars 〈◊〉 mentioned conclude, aver, and justify in conscience, and as before God, that of all others, which I overpass to speak of, or shall be able to speak of, the Indians never gave no more occasion, or cause, than might a convent of good religious persons well ordered, why they should be rob and slain, and why those that escaped the death, should be retained in a perpetual captivity and bondage.  
I affirm yet moreover, for aught that I can believe or conjecture, that, during all the time that all this huge number of these Islanders have been murdered and made away utterly, they never committed against the Spaniards any one mortal offence, punishable by the l●● of m●n▪ And concerning offences, of the which the punishment is reserved unto God, as are desire of revengement, 〈◊〉, and rancour, which these people might bear against enemies so capital as were the Spaniards, that very few persons have been attached with the blemish, and less violent and forcible did I find them, by the good experience I had of them, then 〈…〉 twelve years of age. And I know for certain and infallible, that the Indians had evermore most ●ust cause of war against the Spaniards: but the Spaniards ne●er had any just cause of war against the Indians, but they were all 〈◊〉 and most ●nrighteous, more than can be spoken of any tyrant that is on the whole earth. And I affirm the 〈…〉 other acts and gests by them 〈…〉.  
The wars 〈◊〉, and all the men 〈◊〉 to death thereby reserved 〈◊〉 the young 〈◊〉, women, and children▪ (the which they departed among them, in giving 〈…〉, to another forty, and to another an hundredth, or tow hundredth, according as ●uery one had the 〈◊〉 of the 〈◊〉 Tyrant, whom they called the 〈◊〉) they 〈…〉 Spaniards upon that condition and colour, that they would teach them the Catholic faith, they themselves who took upon them this charge of souls, commonly all idiots, or utterly ignorant persons, barbarous men, extremely covetous and vicious.  
Now the cark and care that these had of them, was to send the men unto the mines, to make them drain them out gold, which is an intolerable travel: and the women they bestowed into the country to their farms, to manure and till the ground, which is asore travel, even for the very men, the ablest and mightiest. They gave to eat neither to one nor other, nought save grasses and such like things of no substance: in such sort as the milk of the breasts of the wives new delivered of their childbirth dried up: and thus died in a small season, all the little creatures their young children. Further, by reason of the separation and not cohabiting of the men with their wives, the generation ceased between them. The men died with toil and famine in the minerals: these the women died of the same in the fields. By these means were consumed and brought to their ends so huge a number of the folk of this Island. By the like might be abolished and exterpate, all the inhabitants of the world.  
As touching loading, they laid upon them fourscore or an hundredth pounds weight, which they should carry an hundredth or two hundredth leagues: The Spanish also causing themselves to be carried in lytres upon men arms, or beds made by the Indians, in fashion of nets. For they served their turns with them to transport their carriages and baggage as beasts, whereby they had upon their backs & shoulders, w●i●es and galls as poor galled beasts. Also as touching whippings, bastonading, buffeting, blows with the fist, cursing, and a thousand other kinds of torments, which they practised upon them during the tune that they travailed, of a truth, they can not be recounted in a long season, nor written in a great deal of paper, and they should be even to affright men withal.  
It is to be noted, that the destruction of these isles and lands, began after the decease of the most gracious Queen, da●e Isabella, which was the year, a thousand, five hundredth, and four. For before there were laid waste in this isle, but certain Provinces by unjust war, and that not wholly altogether▪ & these for the more part, or in a manner all were concealed from the knowledge of the Q. (unto whom it may please god to give his holy glory) forasmuch as she had a great desire, & a zeal admirable, that those people might be saved & prosper, as we do know good examples, the which we have seen with our eyes, & felt with our hands.  
Further note here, that in what part of the Indies the Spanish have come, they have evermore exercised against the Indians, these innocent peoples, the cruelties aforesaid, & oppressions abominable, & invented day by day new torments, huger & monstrouser, becoming every day more cruel. wherefore god also gave than over to fall headlong down with a more extreme downfall into a reprobate sense.   

Of the two Isles S. john. and jamaica.  
THe Spanish passed over to the isle of S. john, & to that of jamaica (which were like gardens for bees) 1509. setting before-then the same end which they had in the isle Hispaniola, & committing the robberies & crimes aforesaid, adjoining thereunto many great & notable cruelties, killing, burning, roasting & casting them to the dogs: furthermore, afterwards oppressing, & vexing them in their minerals & other travel, unto the rotting out of those poor innocents which were in these two Isles, by supputation 6. C. M. souls: yea I believe, that they were more than a milion, although there be not at this day in either Ile. 200. persons, and all perished without faith and without Sacraments.   

Of the isle of Cuba.  
IN the year 1511 they passed to the isle of Cuba, which is (as I have said) as long as there is distance from Vall●d●l●● to Rome▪ (where were great provinces, & great multitudes of people) they both begun 〈…〉 in them after the 〈…〉 far more cruelly. There came to pass in this Island matters worth the noting: A Cacique named Hathuey, which had conveyed himself from the isle Hispaniola to Cuba with many of his people, to avoid the calamities & 〈…〉 so unnatural of the spanish: when 〈◊〉 certain Indians had told him 〈…〉 the Spaniards were coming towards Cuba, he 〈…〉: Now you know that the Spaniards 〈…〉 this 〈…〉 ye know also by experience how they 〈…〉 such & the people of 〈◊〉 (meaning 〈…〉) 〈◊〉 they come to do the like here. Wots ye why they do it? they answered no, unless 〈…〉 they are by nature void of humanity. He replied: They do it not only for that▪ but because they have a god whom they honour & do demand very much & to that end to have from us as well as others to honour him withal they do their uttermost to subdue us. He had them by him a little chestful of gold & jewels, & said, Behold here the God of the Spaniards, let us do to him▪ if it so seem you good, A●●●os (which are windlesse● & dances) thus doing, we shall please him & he will command the Spaniards that they shall do us no harm: They answered all with a loud voice: Well said sir, well said. Thus than they danced before it, until they were weary, them quoth the L. Hathuey, Take we heed however the world go, if we keep him, to the end that he be taken away from us in the end they will kill us: wherefore let us cast him into the river: whereunto they all agreed, and so they cast it into a great river there.  
This L. & 〈◊〉 went always fleeing the spanish, incontinent as they were arrived at the isle of Cuba, as he which known them but too well▪ & defended himself, when as he met them. In the end he was taken & only for because that he fled from a nation so unjust & e●uel, & that▪ he defended himself from such as would kill him, & oppress him even unto the death, which all his folk, he was burned alive. Now as he was fastened to the stake, a religious man of S. Francis order, a devout person, spoke to him somewhat of God & of our faith which thin●● this said L. had never heard of, yet might be sufficient for the time which the hutchers gave him, that if he would believe those things which were spoken to him he should go to heaven, where is glory & rest everlasting, that if he did not believe, he should go to hell, there to be tormented perpetually. The L. after having a little paused to think of the matter, demanded of the religious man, whether that the spaniards went to heaven? who answered, yea: such of them that were good. The Cacik answered again immediately without any further deliberation, that he would not go to heaven, but that he would go to hell, to the end, not to come in the place where such people should be, and to the end not so see a nation so cruel. L●● here the praises and honour, which God and our faith have received of the Spaniards, which have gone to the judes.  
One time the Indians came to meet us, and to receive us with victuals, and delicate cheer, and with all entertaynmene ten leagues of a great city, and being come at the place, they presented us with a great quantity of 〈◊〉, and of bread, and other meat, together with all that they could do for us to the uttermost.  
See incontinent the devil, which put himself into the Spaniards, to put them all to the edge of the sword in my presence, without any cause whatsoever, more than three thousand souls, which were set before us, men, women, and children. I saw there so great cruelties, that never my man living either have or shall see the like.  
Another time, but a few days after the premises, I sent messengers unto all the Lords of the province of Havana, assuring them, that they should not need to see are (for they had heard of my credit) and that without withdrawing themselves, they should come to receive us, and that there should be done unto them no displeasure: for all the country was afraid, by reason of the mischiefs and murderings passed, and this did I by the advice of the Captain himself. After that we were come into the Province, one and twenty Lords and Cacikes came to receive us, whom the Captain apprehended incontinent, breaking the safe conduit which I had made them, and intended the day next following to burn them alive, saying that it was expedient so to do, for that otherwise those Lords one day, would do us a shrewd turn. I found me● self in a great deal of trouble to save them from the fire: howbeit in the end they escaped.  
After that the Indians of this Island were thus brought into bondage and calamity, like unto those of the isle of Hispaniola, and that they saw that they died and perished all without remedy: some of them began to fly into the mountains, others quite desperate hanged themselves, and there hung together hu●sbandes with their wives, hanging with them their little children. And through the cruelty of one only spaniard, which was a great tyrant, and one whom I know, there hung themselves more than two hundred Indians: and of this fashion died an infinity of people.  
There was in this isle an officer of the kings, 〈◊〉 whom they gave for his share three hundred Indians, of whom at the end of three months there died by him in the travail of the mines, two hundred and sixty: in such sort, that there remained now but thirty, which was the tenth part. Afterwards they gave him as many more, and more, and those also be made havoc of in like manner, and still as many as they gave him, so many he flew until he died himself, and that the devil carried him away.  
In three or four months (me self being present) there died more than six thousand children, by reason that they had plucked away from them their fathers and mothers which they sent into the mines. I beheld also other things frightful.  
Shortly after they resolved to climb after those which were in the mountains, where they wrought also ghastly slaughters, and thus laid waste all this isle: which we beheld not long after, and it is great pity to see it so dispeopled and desolate as it is.   

Of the firm land.  
IN the year one thousand five hundred, and fourteen, there landed in the main a mischievous governor, a most cruel tyrant, which had neither pity nor prudency in him, being as an instrument of the wrath of God, fully resolved to set into this land agreat number of Spaniards. And howbeit that aforetime certain other tyrants had entered the land, and had spoiled, murdered, and cruelly entreated very many folk: yet was it not but on the sea coast that they spoiled, and rob, and did the worst that they could. But this surpassed all the others which came before him, and all those of all the Islands, how cursed and abominable soever they were in all their doings. He not only wasted or dispeopled the sea coast, but sacked also great realms and countries, making havocs by slaying and murdering of peoples, infinite to be numbered, and sending them to hell. He over ran and harried most of the places in the land, from Darien upward, unto the Realm and Provinces of Nicaragua within being, which are more than five hundred leagues of the best and most fertile ground in the whole world, where there were a good number of great Lords, with a number of towns, borrows, and villages, and store of gold in more abundance than was to be found on the earth until that present. For albeit that Spain was as it were replenished with gold, of the finest that came from the isle Hispaniola: the same had been only drawn out of the entrails of the earth by the Indians, of the mines, aforesaid, where they died as hath been said.  
This governor with his men, found out new sorts of cruelties and torments, to cause them to discover and give him gold. There was a captain of his, which slew in one walk and course which was made by his commandment, to rob and root out more than forty thousand souls, putting them to the edge of the sword, burning them, & giving them to the dogs, & tormenting them diversly: which also a religious man of the order of S. Francis, who went with him, beheld with his eyes, and had to name friar Francis of S. Roman.  
The most pernicious blindness, which hath always possessed those who have governed the Indians in stead of the care which they should have for the conversion & salvation of those people, (which they have always neglected, their mouth with painted fables speaking one thing, but their heart thinking another) came to the pass, as to command orders to be set down unto the Indians to receive the faith, & render themselves unto the obedience of the K. of Castille, or otherwise to bid them battle with fire & sword, & to slay them or make them slaves: As if the son of God which died for every one of them had commanded in his law, where he saith, Go teach all nations, that there should be ordinances set down unto infidels, being peaceful & quiet, & in possession of their proper land, if so be they received it not forth with, without any preaching or teaching first had: & if that they submitted not themselves to the dominion of a king, whom they never saw & whom they never heard speak of, & namely such a one as whose messengers & men were so cruel, & so debarred from all pity, & such horrible tyrants, that they should for the lose their goods & lands, their liberty, their wives & children, which their lives. Which is a thing too absurd & fond, worthy of all reproach & mockery, yea worthy of hell fire, in such sort as when this wicked and wretched governor had accepted the charge, to put in execution the said ordinances, to the end to make them seem the more just in appearance. For they were of themselves impertinent, against all reason & law, he commanded (or peradventure the thieves, whom he dispatched to do the execution, did it of their own heads) when they were purposed to go a roving & robbing of any place, where they knew that there was any gold, the Indians being in their towns & dwelling houses, without mistrusting any thing, the wicked Spaniards would go after the guise of thieves, unto within half a league near some town, borrow, or village, and there by themselves alone, & by night make a reading, publication, or proclamation of the said ordinances, saying thus, Oyes Caciques & Indians of this firm land of such a place: Be it known unto you, that there is one God, one Pope, one king of Castille, which is L. of these lands: make your appearance, all delay set aside, here to do him homage, etc. Which if you shall not accomplish: Be it known unto you, that we will make war upon you, and we will kill you, & make you slaves. Hereupon at the fourth watch in the morning, the poor innocents, sleeping yet with their wives and children: these tyrants set upon the place, casting fire on the houses which commonly were thatched, & so burn up all quick men, women & children, more suddenly than that they could of a great many be perceived. They massacred at the instant those that seemed them good, & those whom they took prisoners, they caused them cruelly to die upon the rack, to make them to tell in what places there were any more gold than they found with them: and others which remained alive, they made them slaves, marking them with a hot iron, so after the fire being out & quenched, they go seek the gold in their houses. This is then the deportement in these affairs of this mischievous person, with all the bond of his ungodly Christians, which he trained from the fourteenth year, unto the one and twenty, or two and twentieth year, sending in these exploits six or more of his servants or soldiers, by whom he received as many shares, over and besides his Captains generals part, which he levied of all the gold, of all the pearls, and of all the jewels which they took of those whom they made their slaves. The selfsame did the kings officers, every one sending forth as many servants as he could.  
The bishop also, which was the chief in the Realm, he sent his servants to have his share in the booty: They spoiled more gold within the time, and in this realm, as far forth as I am able to reckon, than would amount to a million of Ducats, yea, I believe, that I make my reckoning with the least. Yet will it be found, that of all this great thieving, they never sent to the king ought save three thousand Castillans, having there about killed and destroyed above eight hundred thousand souls.  
The other tyrant governors which succeeded after, unto the year thirty and three, slew, or at least wise consented, for all those which remained to slay them in that tyrannical slavery.  
Amongst an infinite sort of mischiefs, which this governor did, or consented unto the doing during the time of his government, this was one: To wit, that a Cacike or Lord giving him, either of his good will, or which is rather to be thought for fear, the weight of niene thousand Ducats: the Spaniards not content withal, took the said Lord, and tied him to a stake, setting him on the earth, his feet stretched up, against the which they set fire to cause him to give them some more gold, The Lord sent to his house, whence there were brought yet moreover three thousand Castillans. They go a fresh to give him new torments. And when the Lord gave them no more, either because he had it not, or because he would give them no more, they bent his feet against the fire, until that the very marrow sprang out and trylled down the souls of his feet: so as he therewith died. They have oftentimes exercised these kind of torments towards the Lords, to make them give them gold, wherewith they have also slain them.  
another time, a certain company of Spaniards, using their thefts and robberies, came to a mountain, where were assembled and hid a number of people, having shunned those men so pernicious and horrible: whom incontinent entering upon, they took a three or fourscore, as well women as maids, having killed as many as they could kill.  
The morrow after, there assembled a great company of Indians, to pursue the Spaniards, warring against them for the great desire they had to recover their wives and daughters.  
The Spaniards perceiving the Indians to approach so near upon them, would not so forego their prey, but stabbed their swords thorough the bellies of the wives and wenches, leaving but one alone alive of all the fourscore. The Indians felt their hearts to burst for sorrow and grief which they suffered, yelling out in cries and speaking such words: O wicked men, O ye the cruel Spaniards: do ye kill Las Iras? They term Iras in that country the women: as if they would say, To kill women, those be acts of abominable men, and cruel as beasts.  
There was a ten or fifteen leagues from joanama, a great Lord named Paris, which was very rich of gold: The Spaniards went thither, whom this Lord received as if they had been his own brethren, and made a present unto the Captain of fifty thousand Castillans of his own voluntary accord. It seemed unto the Captain and the other Spaniards, that he which gave such a great sum of his own will, should have a great treasure, which should be the end and easing of their travails. They make wise, and pretend in words to departed: but they return at the fourth watch of the morning, setting upon the town which mistrusted nothing, set it on fire, whereby was burnt and slain a great number of people, & by this means they brought away in the spoil fifty, or threescore thousand Castillans more.  
The Cacik or Lord escaped without being slain or taken, and levied incontinent as many of his as he could. And at the end of three or four days, overtaketh the Spaniards which had taken from him an hundredth and thirty, or forty thousand Castillans, and set upon them valiantly, killing fifty Spaniards, and recovering all the gold which they had taken from him. The others saved themselves by running away, being well charged with blows and wounded.  
Not long after, divers of the Spanish return against the said Cacik, and discomfit him with an infinite number of his people. Those which were not slain, they put them to the ordivarie bondage: in such sort, as that there is not at this day, neither tract nor token, that there hath been living there either people, or so much as one man alone borne of woman within thirty leagues of the land, which was before notably peopled and governed by divers Lords. There is no reckoning able to be made of the murders which this caitiff with his company committed in these realms which he so dispeopled.   

Of the province of Nicaragua.  
THe year a thousand, five hundred, twenty and two, or twenty three, this tyrant went farther into the land: to bring under his yoke the most fertile province of Nicaragua, & so in thither he entered in an evil hour. There is no man which is able worthily and sufficiently to speak of the fertility, healthsomenesse, prosperity, and frequency, of those nations that there were.  
It was a thing wonderful to behold, how well it was peopled, having towns of three or four leagues in length, full of marvelous fruits, which fruits were also the cause of the frequency of the people. These people, for as much as the country was flat and level, having no hills where any might hide them, and for that it was so pleasant and delectable, that the native inhabitants could not abandon it but with great heart grief and difficulty, for which cause they the rather endured and suffered grievous persecutions, supporting as much as they could, the tyrannies and servitudes, inflicted by the Spanish. Also for that by their nature they were very soft natured and peaceable people, these (I say) this tyrant with his mates made to endure (that which he had used also to do to destroy likewise other realms) so many damages, so many murders, so many cruelties, so many slaveries and iniquities, that there is no human tongue is able to decipher them. He sent fifty horsemen, and caused to slay all the people of this province, (which is greater than the county of Rossillon) with the sword: in such sort, as that he left alive, nor man, nor woman, nor old, nor young for the least cause in the world: as if they came not incontinent at his command: or if they did not bring him so many load of Mahis, which signifieth in that country bread corn: or if they did not bring him so many Indians to serve him and others of his company: for the country lay level, as was said, and no creature could escape his horses and devilish rage.  
He sent Spaniards to make out roads, that is to say, to go a thieving into other provinces: and gave leave to those rovers, to carry with them as many Indians of this peaceable people as they listed, and that they should serve them, whom they put to the chain, to the end they should not give over the burdens of three or fourscore pounds weight, wherewith they loaded them, whereof it came to pass oftentimes that of four thousand Indians, there returned not home to their housen six on live: but even fell down stark dead in the high way: and when any were so weary that they could march no farther for the lieaft of their burdens, or that some of them fell sick, or fainted for hunger or thirst, because it should not need to stand so long as to unlock the chain, and to make the speedier dispatch, he cut off the head from the shoulders, and so the head tumbled down one way, and the body another. Now consider with yourselves, what the other poor souls might think the while, Certainly when as he used to speed out such voyages, the Indians knowing that none in a manner ever returned home again, at parting one from another they would weep and sigh, saying: such ways are the same where as we were wont to serve the christians, & howbeit we travailed sore there: yet that notwithstanding we came home again to our housen, our wives and our children: but now we go without hope ever to return again to see them, & to live together with them.  
At a time when he would make a new sharing forth of the Indians, because his pleasure was such, yea men say that it was in deed to rid the Indians, as those to whom he meant no good at all, but to give them away to whom he saw good: he was the cause that the Indians sowed not their grounds one whole years continuance.  
So as now, when they wanted bread, the Spaniards took away from the Indians their Mahis, which they had in store for provision, to nourish them and their children: whereby there died of famine, more than twenty or thirty thousand souls. And it came to pass, that a woman fallen mad with the famine, slew her son to eat him.  
Forasmuch as every towneshippe, and all other places inhabited that the Spaniards had in their subjection, was none other than a very garden of pleasure (as hath been said) they kept themselves every one forsooth in the place escheated to him in partition (or as they use to speak) given him in command, and did their affairs, nourishing themselves with the goods and provisions of the poor Indians. In this wise did they take the lands and inheritances particular wherewith they sustained themselves, so as the Spaniards kept in their own houses, all the Indians, Lords, old men, women, and children, causing them to serve them day and night without rest, even to the infants as soon as they could but go, to put them to the greatest thing they were able to do: yea and to greater things than they were able to do. And thus have they cousumed and abolished, and do yet every day unto this present, consume and abolish the few remaining behind, not permitting them to retain house nor aught else that is their own. Wherein they may vaunt to have surmounted themselves, in their own iniquities and unrighteousnesses by them wrought in Hispaniola.  
They have discomfited and oppressed in this province a great number of people, and hastened their death in cawsing them to bear boards and timber unto the haven thirty leagues distance, to make ships with: and sent them to go seek honey and wax amidst the mountains, where the Tigers devoured them: Yea they have laden women with child, and women new delivered or lying in, with burdens enough for beasts.  
The greatest plague which hath most dispeopled this province, hath been the licence which the governor gave to the Spaniards, to demand or exact of the Cacikes and Lords of the country slaves. They did give them every four or five months, or as often times as every one could obtain licence of the governor fifty slaves: with threatenings, that if they gave them not, they would burn them alive, or cause them to be eaten with dogs.  
Now ordinarily the Indians do not keep slaves, and it is much if one Cacike do keep two, three, or four: Wherefore to serve this turn, they went to their subjects, and took first all the Orphelius, and after wards they exacted of him that had two children one, and of him that had three, two: and in this manner was the Carike, fain to furnish still to the number that the tyrane imposed, with the great weeping and crying of the people: for they are people that do love (as it seemeth) tenderly their children. And for because that this was done continually, they dispeopled from the year 23. unto the year 33. all this realm. For there went for six or seven years space, five or six ships at a time, carrying forth great numbers of those Indians, for to sell them for slaves at joanama and Peru: where they all died not long after. For it is a thing proved and experimented a thousand times, that when the Indians are transported from their natural country, they soon end their lives: besides that these give them not their sustenance, neither yet dimmish they of their toil, as neither do they buy them, for aught else but to toil. They have by this manner of doing drawn out of this province of the Indies, whom they have made slaves, being as free borne as I am, more than siue hundredth thousand souls. And by the devilish wars which the Spanish have made on them, and the hideous thraledome that they have laid upon them, they have brought to their deaths, other fifty or threescore thousand persons, and do yet daily make havoc of them at this present. All these slaughters have been accomplished within the space of fourteen years. There may be left at this day in all this provinces of Nicaragua, the number of a four or five thousand persons, which they also cause to die as yet every day, through bondages and oppressions ordinarily and personal, having been the country the most peopled in the world, as I have already said.   

Of new Spain.  
IN the year one thousand, five hundred and seventeen, was new Spain discovered: at the discovery whereof were committed great disorders and slaughters of the Indians, by those which had the doing of that exployit. The year a thousand, five hundred, and eighteen, there went Spanish Christians (as they term themselves,) to rob and slay, notwithstanding that they said they went to people the country. Sithence that year, a thousand, five hundred, & eighteen, unto this present the year a thousand, five hundredth, forty two, the unjust dealings, the violency, and the tyrannies which the Spaniards have wrought against the Indians, are mounted to the highest degree of extremity: those self same Spaniards, having thoroughly lost the fear of God, and of the king, and forgotten themselves. For the discomfitures, cruelties, slaughters, spoils, the destructions of Cities, pillages, violences, and tyrannies which they have made in so many realms, and so great, hath been such & so horrible, that all the things which we have spoken of are nothing in comparison of those which have been done and executed from the year 1518. unto the year 1542. & as yet at this time, this month current of September, are in doing & committing the most grievousest, & the most abominablest of all: in such sort that the rule which we set down before is verified: That is, that from the beginning they have always proceeded from evil to worse, & have gone beyond themselves in the most greatest disorders & devilish doings.  
In such wise, as that since the first entering into new Spain, which was on the eight day of April, in the 18. year, unto the 13. year, which make 12. years complete: the slaughters & the destructions have never ceased, which the bloody and cruel hands of the Spaniards have continually executed in 400. and 50. leagues of land or there about in compass, round about Mexico, & the neighbour regions round about, such as the which might contaynt 4. or 5. great realms, as great & a great deal far fertiler than is Spain. All this country was more peopled with inhabitants, than Toledo, and Seville, and Valadolyd, and Savagoce, with Barcelona. For that there hath not been commonly in those cities, nor never were such a world of people, when they have been peopled with the most, as there was then in the said country, which containeth in the whole compass more than one thousand eight hundred leagues: during the time of the above mentioned twelve years, the Spaniards have slain & done to death in the said hundred & fifty leagues of land what men, what women, what young and little children, more than four millions of souls, with the dint of the sword and spear, & by fire, during (I say) the conquests (as they call them) but rather in deed during the routs of barbarous tyrants, such as are condemned not only by the law of God, but also by alllaws of man, and are worser than those which are done by the Turk to destroy the church of Christ. Neither yet do I here comprise those, whom they have slain, and do slay as yet every day, in the aforesaid slavery and oppression ordinary.  
There is no tongue, skill, knowledge, nor industry of man, which is able to recount the particularities of the dreadful doings, which these errand enemies, yea deadly enemies of mankind have put in ure generally throughout and in divers parts, and at divers times within the said compass of ground, specially some of the deeds done, because of their circumstances which make them become the more heinous, can not be well as it ought to be deciphered by any diligence, leisure, or quoting what soever that may be thereto employed. Howbeit I will rehearse some things of certain parties, but under protestation, & as if I were sworn solemnly to tell the truth, that is, that I do believe that I shall not when I have all done, touch one only point of a thousand.   

Of new Spain in particular.  
Amongst other murderers & massacres they committed this one which I am now to speak of, in a great city more than of a thirty thousand households, which is called Cholula: that is, that, coming before them the Lords of the country and places near adjoining, and first and foremost the Priests with their chief high priest in procession, to receive the Spaniards with great solemnity and reverence, so conducting them in the midst of them, towards their lodgings in the city, in the housen and place of the Lord, or other principal Lords of the City: the Spaniards advised with themselves to make a massarre, or a chastise (as they speak) to the end, to raise and plant a dread of their cruelties in every corner of all that country.  
Now this hath been always their customary manner of doing, in every the regions which they have entered into, to execute incontinent upon their first arrival, some notable cruel butchery, to the end, that those poor and innocent lambs should tremble for fear which they should have of them: in this wise they sent first to summon all the Lords and Noble men of the city, and of all the places subject unto the same city: who so soon as they came to speak with the captyne of the Spaniards, were incontinent apprehended before that any body might perceive the matter, to be able thereupon to bear tidings thereof unto others. Then were demanded of them five or six thousand Indians, to carry the loadings and carriages of the Spaniards: which Indians came forth with, and were bestowed into the base courts of the Housen. It was a pitiful case to see these poor folk, what time they made them ready to bear the carriages of the spaniard. They come all naked, only their secret parts covered, having every one upon their shoulder a net with a small deal of victual: they how themselves every one, and hold their backs cowred down like a sort of silly lambs, presenting themselves to the swords, and thus being all assembled in the base court together with others, one part of the Spanish all armed, bestow themselves at the gates to hem them in, whiles the rest put these poor sheep to the edge of the sword and the spears, in such sort, that there could not scape away one only person, but that he was cruelly put to death: saving that after a two or three days, you might have seen come forth sundry all coverred with blood which had 〈◊〉 and saved themselves under the dead bodies of their fellows, and now presenting themselves before the Spaniards, ask them mercy and the faiung of their lives; they found in them no part, nor compassion any whit at all but were all hewed in pieces.  
All the Lords which were above and underneath were all bound, the Captain commanding there to he brent quick being bound unto stakes pitched into the ground. How be it one Lord, which might be peradventure the principal and king of the country saved himself, and cast himself with thirty or forty other men into a temple thereby, which was as good unto them as a fort, which they call in their language, qewe: and there be defended himself a good part of the day. But the Spaniards, whose hands nothing can escape specially armed for the war, cast fire on the temple, and burned all those which were within. Who cast out these voices and cries, O ye evil men! O ye evil men! What displeasure have we done you? why do ye slay us? Go. Go you shall come at Mexico: where our Sovereign Lord Mortensuma shall take vengeance of you. It is reported that as the Spaniards played this gay play in the base court, putting to the edge of the sword a five or six thousand men, their captain having his heart all in a jollity sang.  
Mira Nero de Tarpeya à Roma como seardias  
Gritos, dan ninos, y vie●os: y el de nada se dolia:  
That is to say,  
Fro Tarpey top, dan Nero 'gan see Room all flaming burn,  
Both young and old cry out, the whiles his heart did never yearn.  
THey made also another great butchery in the City of Tapeaca; which was greater and of more number of households, and more people inhabiting then in the city afore sor●e. They siue here with the sharp of the sword, an infinite number of people, with great circumstances & particularties of cruelties.  
From Cholula they went to Mexico. The king Motensuma sent to meet them a thousand of presents, and Lords, and people, making joy and mirth by the way.  
And at the entry of the causey of Mexico, which reacheth two leagues in length, he sent also his brother; accompanied with a great number of honourable Lords, bearing with them rich presents, gold, silver, & apparel: & at the bars of the city, the king in person with all his great court, came to receive them, being carried in a lighter of gold, and them accompanied unto the palace which he had caused to be made ready for them.  
The self same very day, as some have told me the which were then and there present, they took by a certain dissimulation the great king Moteusuma, as he mistrusted nothing, and ordained fourscore men to keep him. Afterwards, they put gives on his feet. But letting all this pass, in the which there were notable points to speak of, I will only rehearse one which was singular wrought by th●se tyrants. The Captain general of the Spanish was gone to them sea port to take another Spanish Captain, which came against in war: and having left another under captain in his room, with a few more than an hundredth men to keep the said king Motensuma: these same advised with themselves to do another thing worthy the note, to the end, to increase and augment more and more in all those regions, the awe which they had of them: a practice and stratagem which (as I said before) they have often used. All this mean while the Indians, the common people, and the Lords of the whole City sought none other thing, save only to show pleasure and pastime to their Lord which was detained prisoner. And amongst other sports which they made him: were their frisks and dances which they made in the evening thorough out all the high streets and market places, which dances, they call Mitotes, as in the isles they call them Areytos.  
The do wear in these frisks all their rich furniture, their best gorgeous attire, and their jewels, despising themselves to liking in all things, for these are the greatest signs of joy and festivity that they do use. Now at this time, the nobilitises also, and princes of the blood royal, each one after his degree kept their revels and feasts at the nearest unto the house where was deceived prisoner their sovereign. joining unto the walls of the said palace, were there more than two thousand youths, Lords children, which were the flower of the nobility of all the state of Morensuma. Against those made out the captain of the Spaniards with a troop of soldiers, sending the others unto other places of the city where the frisks and dances were kept, and all making wise only to go see them. The captain had given in charge, that at a certain appointed hour, they should all cast them upon those dancers, and he himself for his own part, casting himself into the throng, the Indians mistrusting nothing, but only intending their disport, he saith: Saynttiago, let us amongst, them, & upon them sirs. And thus their arming swords in their fists, they began to rip these bodies naked and delicate, and to shed that blood gentle and noble, in such sort, as that they left not a man alive. The others performed the like in other places, a thing which set all those realms and nations in a fright & extreme desperation, and whereof as long as the world shall last, they will never lin (if themselves do not decay) to lament, and record in their Areytoes & solemn meetings, as in rhyme these calamities, and the spoil of the spring of their ancient nobility, of the which they are wont to vaunt themselves & glory very much.  
The Indians seeing so great an iniquity, and a cruelty never heard of the like, made against so many innocentes without any cause: specially having put up quietly the imprisonment & that no less wrongful of their sovereign Lord, who also had commanded them not to make war upon the Spaniards: all the city put themselves in arms, whereupon the Spaniards being assaulted and many of them hurt, with much a do might they escape, but set a dagger on the chest of the breast of the prisoner Motensuma to kill him, if he laid not himself out at a gallery or winddowe, to command the Indians that they should not beset the house, & they should keep them quiet. The Indians taking no care as then of obeying, advised them to choose a L. & captain from amongst themselves to conduct their battals. And for as much as the Captain which was gone to the haven, was returned victorious, leading with him more Spaniards than he had carried forth, and for that he was now near at hand, the combat ceased about a three or four days, until such time as he was entered the town.  
Then the Indians assembled an infinite number of people out of all the country, and skirmished in such wise, and so long a season, that the Spanish thought they should all die on the place, wherefore they deliberated to abandon the city for one night. That which their disseighu being known to the Indians, they slew of them a great number upon the bridges of the Marshes in a war most rightful, and most lawful for the causes most righteous which they had as hath been said: the which every reasonable and true dealing man will maintain for good. Soon after, the Spanish having realied themselves, the combat with the City renewed, where the Spaniards made an horrible and ghastly butchery of the Indians, and slew an infinite of people, and brent alive the great Lords.  
After these great and abominable tyrannies committed in the City of Mexico, and in other cities, and the country run, fifteen, and twenty leagues compass of Mexico: this tyranny and pestilence advanced itself forward, to waste also, infect, and lay desolate the province of Panuco. It was a thing to be wondered at of the world, of people that there were, and the spoils and slaughters there done. afterward they wasted also after the self manner, all the province of Tuttepeke, and the province of Ipelingo, and the province of Columa: each province containing more ground than the realm of Leon & of Castille. It should be a thing very difficult, yea, impossible to speak or recount the discomfitures, the slaughters, and the cruelties, which they there committed: and would cause a great remorse unto the hearers.  
Here is to be noted, that the title wherewith they entered, and began to make havoc of all these harmless and silly Indians, and have dispeopled that country, which should have caused a great rejoicing to all those which should be in truth Christians, being so peopled as they were: was to say that they should come and put themselves in subjection, to serve the king of Spain, otherwise that they would kill them, or make them slaves. And those which came not incontinent to satisfy their demands so unjust, and did not put themselves into the hands of men so unjust, cruel, and beastly, they called them rebels, as those which had lift up themselves against the kings Majesty, and for such they accused them to the king our sovereign Lord: the blind understandings of those which governed the Indians, being not able to comprehend nor perceive this much, which in their laws is more clearly taught then any other principle of Law, that is, that none can be reputed a rebel, if first he be not a subject. Now let Christians, and those which have any perceiverance consider with themselves, if such cases can prepare and inform the minds of any nations whatsoever living in their country in assurance, and not thinking to owe any thing to any person, having their own natural liege Lords whom they serve and obey, suddenly to come and tell them tidings:  
Put you under the obeisance of a king a stranger, whom ye never saw, nor never heard of before: otherwise know ye that we will rend ye incontinent all to pieces, specially when it is known by experience that they do it in deed as soon as it is but said. And that which is far more frightful, they take those, which do yield themselves to obey, to put them into a most grievous bondage, in the which there are toils incredible, and torments greater and of longer continuance than those same of them which are excuted by the sword, for in the end they perish, they, their wives, their children, and their whole generation.  
And put the case, that through the threats and frights aforesaid, those people's, or any others whosoever do come to obey and acknowledge the dominion of a stranger king: do not these blunderers see, being altogether benumbed with ambition and devilish covetousness, that they win not a mite of right, forasmuch as so it is, that it is caused upon fright's and terrors which might be able to slake men the constantest and the best advised: and that by the laws of nature, man, and God, it hath no more force than a handful of wind, to make any thing available to any purpose whatsoever, saving the punishment and obligation which abideth them in the bottom of hell. I pass over the losses and damages which they do to the king, when as they spoil his realms, and bring to nought (as much as in them lieth) all the right which they have in the Indies.  
These are now the services, which the Spaniards have done, and as yet do at this hour unto the aforesaid kings, and sovereign Lords, under the colour of this gallant title, so rightful, and so smoothly garnished.  
This Captain tyrant, with this gorgeous and pretended title, dispatched two other Captains, as very tyrants and far more cruel, and less pitiful than himself, into great realms most flourishing, and most fertile, and full of people, to wit, the realm of Guatimala, which lieth to the seaward on the South side, and the same of Naco, and Honduras, otherwise called Guaymura, which coasteth on the sea on the North side, confronting and confining the one with the other, three hundred leagues distance from Mexico. He sent the one by land, and the other by sea: both the one and the other carried with them a meinie of troupes to serve on horse back and a foot.  
I say the truth, that of the mischiefs which these two have wrought, and principally he which went to Guatimala (for that other died soon after of an evil death,) there might be made a great book, of so many villainies, of so many slaughters, so many desolations, and of so many outrages and brutish unjustices, as were able to affright the age present and to come.  
For certain this man surpassed all the others, present, and gone before, in quantity and in number, as well for the abominations which he committed, as for the peoples and countries which he laid waste and desert. All the which things were infinite.  
He which went by sea committed exceeding pillings, cruelties, & disorders amongst the people on the sea coast: before whom some coming with presents from the realm of Yucatane which is the high way to the aforesaid realm of Naro & Guaimura, towards the which they went: when he came unto them he sent captains, & a many of men of arms through all that land, which went sacking, slaughtering, & destroying as many people as there were to be found, & principally one, who with three hundred more, having mutined and rebelled, and setting himself into the country towards Guatimala, went spoiling and burning all the towns that he found, in killing and robbing the people inhabitants of them. That which he did of a set purpose, in more than an hundred and twenty leagues of the land, to the end, that if any had sent after him, those which should come, should find the country dispeopled and debelled, and that they were so slain of the Indians, in revenge of the damages and spoils by them made. After whom have succeeded sundry others most cruel tyrants, the which with their slaughters and dreadful cruelties, and by bringing the Indians into thraldrome, whom afterwards they sold unto those who carried them with their shippings of wine, garments, and other things, and by reason of the tyrannical servitude ordinary, since the year a thousand, five hundred, twenty four, until the year 1535. have laid waste those same provinces and realms of Naro and Honduras, the which resembled a paradise of pleasures: and were more peopled, frequented, and inhabited, than any country of the world: and now of late we coming a long thereby, have seen them so dispeopled and destroyed, that who so should see them, his heart would cleave for sorrow, ware he never so flinty.  
They have slain within these eleven years, more than two Millions of souls, having not left in more than an hundredth leagues of the country square, but two thousand persons, whom they slay as yet daily in the said ordinary bondage.  
Now let us return to write of the great tyrant and Captain, which went to Guatimala, (who, as hath been said, exceeded all the aforepassed, and is comparable to all those, which are at this day) from the provinces near to Mexico, (according as himself wrote in a letter to the principal tyrant which had sent him) distaunte from the realm of Guatimala 400. leagues, (keeping the way by him traced) & as he went, slu, rob, burned and destroyed all the country, wheresoever he be came, under the shadow of title above mantioned, saying: that they should submit themselves unto them, that is to say, unto men so unnatural, so wicked, and so cruel: in the name of the king of Spain, who was unto them unknown, and of whom they had never heard speak: and the which those nations there esteemed more unjust and more cruel than they his men were. And the tyrants giving unto them no respect of time to deliberace, they fling upon the poor folk, in a manner as soon as the message was done, putting all to fire and blood.   

Of the Province and realm of Guatimala.  
NO sooner arrived he into this said realm: but that he began with great slaughter of the inhabitaunces. This notwithstanding the chief Lord came to receive him, being carried in a lighter, with trumpets and tabours, rejoicings, and disports, accompanied with a great number of the Lords of the city of Vitlatan, head city of the whole realm, doing them also service with all they had, but specially in giving them food abundantly, & whatsoever they demanded besides. The Spanish lodged this night without the city, forasmuch as the same seemed unto them strong, and there might be thereby danger.  
This Captain called to him the next morrow the chief Lord, with other great Lords, who being come as meek sheep, he apprehended them all, & commanded them to give him certain sums of gold. They answering that they had none, forasmuch as the country yielded none: he commandeth incontinent to burn them alive, without having committed any crime whatsoever, and without any other form of process or sentence.  
As the Lords of all these provinces perceived, that they had burned their sovereign Lords, only because they gave them no gold, they fled all to the mountains, commanding their subjects to go to the Spaniards, and to serve them as their Lords, but that they should not discover them, nor give them intelligence where they were.  
With this, lo all the people of the country, presenting them, and protesting to be theirs, and to serve them as their Lords: The Captain made answer that he would not accept of them, but that he would kill them if they told not where were their Lords. The Indians answered, they could not tell aught: but as touching themselves they were content, that they should employ them to their service, with their wives and children: and that they should use their housen, and that there they might kill, or do what so ever them pleased.  
It is a wonderful thing, that the Spaniards went to their villages and borrows, and finding there these silly people at their work, with their wives and children, neither misdoubting any thing they pierced them with their boarspears, and hackled them to pieces. They came to one borrow great & mighty, which held itself more assured than any other, because of their innocency: whom the Spanish laid desolate in a manner all whole, in the space of two hours, putting to the edge of the sword, children, with women, and aged persons, and all those which could not escape by flying.  
The Indians seeing that by their humility, by their presents and patience, they could not pacify nor mitigate the madmoode, and enraged hearts of their enemies, and that without any reason, or show of reason, they were hacked in pieces: and seeing likewise that they were sure to die ere long: they devised to assemble and realye themselves to die all in war, and avenge themselves the best that they could upon, enemies so cruel and devilish: knowing also well enough themselves without weapons, stark naked, weak, and on foot, and such as could by no means prevail or carry away the victory, but that in the end they should be destroyed: they advised between them to dig certain ditches in the midst of the ways, to make their horses tumble into, and piercing their bellies with pikes sharpened and brent at one end, there bestowed of purpose, and covered over so orderly with green turf, that it seemed there was no such matter.  
There fell in horses once or twice: for the Spaniards afterwards could beware of them. But now to avenge them, they made a law, that as many Indians as might be taken alive, should be flung into the same pits. hereupon they cast in women with child, and women new delivered of childbirth, and old folk as many as they could come by, until that the ditches were filled up. It was a lamentable thing to behold the women with their children stabbed with these picks. All beside, they slew with thrust of spears, and edge of sword. They cast of them also to flesh fraunching dogs, which tore them and devoured them. They brent a Lord at a great fire of quick flames: saying, they would herein do him honour. And they persisted in these butcheries so unnatural, about seven years, from the year 24. until the year 31. Let any esteem, what may be the number of people: whom they might have slain.  
Amongst an infinite of horrible acts which this cursed tyrant did in this realm with his bands of soldiers, (for his under captains were no less mischievous and insensate than himself, and withal likewise those that were under them again to serve their turn,) this one was notable: That where as in the province of Cuzcatan, where is at this hour, or near there abouts the city of Saint Saviour, a country very fertile with all the sea coast on the south, containing forty or fifty leagues: and likewise in the City of Cuscatan the mother City of the province, there had been made him a very great entertainment, of more than twenty or thirty thousand Indians attending him, all laden with poultry and other victuals: this Captain arriving, and having received the presents, he commanded that every one of the Spaniards should take of this great number of people, such as should please him, to serve him all the time that they should make their abode there, and that they should constrain them to bear for them, of their carriage all that should be needful.  
Every man took unto him other an hundred, or fifty, or as many as it seemed sufficed him to be well served. These poor lambelike innocentes served the Spaniards with all their power, that there wanted nothing, unless they should do unto them godly honour. Mean while this captain demanded of the Lords very much gold: for they were principally comen for that purpose.  
The Indians answered that they were ready to give them all the gold they had: and laid together a great furniture of batchets of copper and guilt, where with they seruè their own turns, the same resembling gold, as in deed it hath in it some little deal. The Captain causeth to put to the touch: and as he saw it was copper, he said to the Spaniards, now the devil take such a country: let us be gone hence, seeing here is no gold here: and every man put the Indians which he hath retained to serve him, to the hot irons, and so to mark them for slaves.  
That which they did, branding with the kings mark all that they might. I saw the son himself of the principal Lord of this city, to be so branded. The Indians which escaped, with all other of the Country seeing all the mischiefs of the Spanish, began to assemble, and put themselves in arms: whereupon the Spaniards work great discom fitures and slaughters, returning to Guatimala where they builded a city, the which God of a just judgement hath renuersed with three over whelmings falling all three together: the one was with water, the other with earth, and the third with stones, of the bigness of ten or twenty oxen. By such like means all the Lords and the men that were able to bear arms being slain: those which remained, were reduced into the diabolical servitude afore said, being made tributaryslaves or villains regardant, but giving for their tribute sons and daughters, for they will have none other kind of bondimen. And so the Spaniards sending whole ships laden with them to Peru to sell them, with their other slaughters, have destroyed & laid desert an whole Realm of an hundred leagues square or about, a country the most blesseful, and peopled the most that might be in the world.  
For the tyrant himself wrote hereof, that it was more peopled than Mexico: and herein he said the truth. He hath done to death, with his consortes and confrayryes, more than four or five Millions of souls in fifteen or sixteen years space, from the year twenty four, unto the fortieth year: and yet at this hour they slay and destroy those that remain.  
This tyrant had a custom, when as he went to make war upon any City or Province: to carry thither of the Indians already under yoked, as many as he could, to make war upon the other Indians: and as he gave unto a ten or twenty thousand men which he led along no sustenance, he allowed them to eat the Indians which they took: And so by this means he had in his camp an ordinary shambles of man's flesh, where, in his presence they killed and roasted children. They killed men, only to have off from them their hands and their feet, which parts they held to be the daintiest morsels. When the nations of other countries understood of all those unnatural doings, they could not tell what to do for frightfulness.  
He was the death of an infinite sort of the Indians in making of ships, the which he carried from the North sea unto the South, which are an hundred and thirty leagues. He transported after this rate great store of artillery, which he loaded upon the shoulders of these poor folk going naked: whereby I have seen very many fall down in the high way, by reason of their great burdens.  
He undid whole households, by taking from the men their wives and daughters: the which afterwards he dispersed in gifts to his mariners and soldiers to please them withal, who led them along with them in their navies. He stuffed all the ships with Indians, where they died for thirst and hunger. Certainly if I should stand to tell the particularities of these cruelties: I should make a great book thereof, which should astonish the world. He made two navies, either of a great number of ships, with the which he consumed as with fire and lightning flashing from heaven all those people's: O how many poor children hath he made fatherless Orphans. how many men and women widowers and widows, bereaving them also of their children! How many adulteries, whoredoms and rapes, hath he been the cause of! How many hath he of free made villainies: How many anguishs and calamities by him have numbers suffered: How many hath he caused to shed tears, sighs and groanings: Of how many desolations hath he been the occasion in this life, and the means for others to shall into everlasting damnation in the life to come, not only of the Indians which are innumerable, but of the miserable Spaniards, with whose aid he hath served himself in villainies so excessive, and sinews so enormous, and abominations so execrable: I wish in God that he had taken pity of him: and that he had been pleased in so evil an end as he sent him.   

Of new Spain, and Panuco, and Xalisco.  
AFter the exceeding cruelties and slaughters aforesaid, and the others which I have omitted, which have been executed in the provinces of new Spain and Panuco: there came to Panuco an other tyrant, cruel, and unbridled, in the year 1525. Who in committing very many cruelties, and in branding many for slaves, after the manner aforesaid which were all free, and in sending very many ships laden to Cuba, and Hispaniola, where they might best make Merchandise of them, he achieved the desolation of this province.  
And it hath come to pass in his time, that there hath been given for one Mare, eight hundred Indians souls partakers of reason. And this man from this room was promoted to be precedent of Mexico, and of all the province of new Spain, and there were promoted with him other tyrants, to the offices of Auditorshippes: in the which dignities they committed so many ungracious turns, so many sins, so many cruelties, robberies, and abominations, that a man can not believe them to be such. And they set forward also this country into so extreme a desolation, that if God had not kept them by means of the resistance of the religious men of Saint Francis order, and if that there had not been provided with all speed a court of audience, and the king's counsel in those parts friend to all virtue, they had laid waste all new Spain, as they have done the isle of Hispaniola.  
There was a man, amongst those of the company of this captain, who to the end to enclose a garden of his, with a wall: kept in his works eight thousand Indians, without paying them aught, nor giving them to eat, in manner that they died, falling down suddenly, & he never took the more thought for the matter.  
After that the chief Captain which I spoke of, had finished the laying waste of Panuco, and that he understood the news of the coming of the kings court of Audience: he advised with himself to proceed farther into the innermost parts of the realm, to search where he might tyrannize at his ease, and drew by force out of the province of Mexico 15. or 20. Millions of men, to the end, that they should carry the loads and carriages of the Spaniards which went with him, of whom there never returned again two hundred, the others being dead on the high ways.  
He came at the province of Mechuacam, which is distant from Mexico forty leagues, a region as blissful and full of inhabitants, as is that of Mexico. The king and Lord of the country went to receive him with an infinite company of people, which did unto them a thousand services and curtisies.  
He apprehended him by and by, for that he had the brute to be very rich of gold and silver: and to the end, that he should give him great treasures, he began to give him the torments, and put him in a pair of stocks by the feet, his body stretched out, and his hands bound to a stake, he maketh a flashing fire against his feet, and there a boy with a basting sprinkle looked in oil in his hand stood and basted them a little and a little, to the end to well roost the skin. There was in one side of him a cruel man, the which with a crossbow bent, aimed right at his heart, on the other side an other which held a dog snarling, and leaping up as to run upon him, which in less than the time of a Credo, had been able to have torn him in pieces: and thus they tormented him, to the end he should discover the treasures which they desired, until such time as a religious man of Saint Francis order took him away from them, notwithstanding that he died of the same torments.  
They tormented and slew of this fashion very many of the Lords and Cacikes in these Provinces: to the end that they should give them gold and silver.  
At the same time a certain tyrant going in visitation to visit the pouches, and to rob the gods of the Indians, more than for any care he had of their souls, found, that certain Indians had hid their Idols, as those which had never been better instructed by the cursed Spaniards of any better god, he apprehended and detained prisoners the Lords, until such time as that they would give them their Idols: Supposing all this while they had been of gold or of silver: Howbeit they were not so, wherefore he chastised them cruelly and unjustly.  
But to the end he would not remain frustrate of his intent, which was to spoil, he constrained the Cacikes to redeem their said Idols, and they redeemed them for such gold & silver as they could find, to the end, to worship them for Gods, as they had been wont to do aforetime. These be the examples & deeds which these cursed Spaniards do: and this is the honour which they purchase to God, amongst the Indians.  
This great tyrant and Captain passed farther from Mechuacham to the Province of Lalisco, the which was all whole most full of people, and most happy. For it is one of the most fertilest and most admirable country of the Indies, which had borrows coutaining in a manner seven leagues. As he entered this country the L. with the inhabitants, according as all the Indians are accustomed to do, went to receive him which presents & joyfulness. He begun to commit his cruelties & mischievousnes, which he had learned & all the rest had been accustomed to practise, which is to heap up gold which is their god. He burned towns, he took the Cacikes prisoners. and gave them torments. He made slaves all that he took.  
Whereof there died an infinite number tied in chains. The women new delivered of child birth, going laden with the s●uffe of evil Christian●, and being not able to bear their own children because of travel and hunger, were fain to cast them from them in the ways, whereof there died an infinite.  
An evil Christian taking by force a young Damsel to abuse her, the mother withstood him: and as she would have taken her away, the Spaniard drawing his dagger or rapier, cut off her hand, and slew the young girl with flashes of his weapon: because she would not consent to his appetite.  
Amongst many other things, he caused unjustly to be marked for slaves, four thousand, five hundred souls as free as they, men, women, and sucking babes, from of a year and a half old, unto three or four years old: which notwithstanding had gone before them in peace to receive them, with an infinite number of other things that have not been set down in writing.  
Having achieved the devilish wars innumerable, and having in the same committed very many slaughters, he reduced all that country into the ordinary servitude, pestilential and tyrannical, into the which all the tyrant Spaniards which are in the Indies, are accustomed, or pretend to cast those people▪ In the which country, he consented also, and permitted his Stewards and all others to execute torments never heard of before, to the end, to draw from the Indians gold and tribute. His Stewards slew very many of the Indians, hanging them and burning them alive, and casting some unto the dogs, cutting off their feet, hands, head, and tongue, they being in peace, only to bring them into a fear, to the end they should serve him, and give him gold and tributes: all this knowing, and seeing this gentle tyrant, even to come to the whips, baste onads, blows, with other sorts of cruelties wherewith he vexed and oppressed them daily.  
It is said of him, that he hath destroyed and burned in this realm of Xalisco, eight hundred boroughs, which was the cause that the Indians being fallen desperate, and seeing those which remained, how they perished thus cruelly: they lift up themselves, and went into the mountains, slaying certain Spaniards: how be it by good right. And afterwards because of the wickednesses and outrages of other tyrants now being, which passed by that way to destroy other provinces (that which they call discovering) many of the Indians assembled, fortifying themselves upon certain rocks. Upon the which rocks the Spanish have made, and yet at this present, and a fresh do make so many cruelties, that they almost made an end of laying desolate all this great country, slaying an infinite, number of people.  
And the wretched blinderers forsaken of God, and given over into a reprodate sense, not seeing the causes most just which the Indians have by the laws of nature, man, and God, to hew them in pieces, if they had strength and muniments, and so to cast them out of their country: and not seeing the wickedness of their own cause, over and besides so many violents and tyrannies which they have committed in that sort, to move: war a new: they think, speak, and write of the victories which they have over the poor Indians, leaving them in desolation, that it is GOD which giveth the same unto them, as though their wars were achieved rightfully: thus they rejoice, vaune themselves, and give thanks unto God for their tyrannies, as did those tyrants and the eves of whom speaketh the Prophet Zacharie, in the eleventh chapter: verse 4. saying:  
Feed the sheep of the slaughter, they that possess them slay them, and are not grieved, and they that sell them, say, blessed be the Lord, for we are become rich.   

Of the realm of Yucatan.  
THe year one thousand, five hundred, twenty and six, was deputed over the Realm of Yucatan an other caytise governor, and that through the lies and false reports which himself had made unto the king: in like manner as hath the other tyrants until this present, to the end there might be committed unto them offices & charges, by means whereof they might rob at their pleasures. This realm of Yucatan was full of inhabitants: for that it was a country in every respect wholesome, and abounding in plenty of victuals, and of fruits more than Mexico: and singularly exceeded for the abundance of honey and wax there to be found, more than in any quarter of the Indies, which hath been seen unto this present. It containeth about three hundred leagues compass. The people of that country, were the most notable of all the Indies, aswell in consideration of their policy and prudency, as for the uprightness of their life, verily worthy the training to the knowledge of God: amongst whom there might have been builded great Cities, by the Spanish, in which they might have lived as in an earthly Paradise, if so be they had not made themselves unworthy, because of their exceeding covetousness, hard heartedness, and heinous offences: as also unworthy they were of other more blessings a great many, which God had set open in these Indies. This tyrant bean with three hundred men to make war upon these poor innocent people, which were in their houses without hurting any body: where he slew and ransacked infinite numbers. And for because the Country yieldeth no gold, for if it had yielded any, he would have consumed those same Indians, in making them to toil in the mines: to the end he might make gold of the bodies and souls of those for whom jesus Christ suffered death, he generally made slaves of all those whom he slew not, and returned the ships that were come thither, upon the blowing abroad and noise of the selling of slaves, full of people bartered for wine, oil, vinegar, powdered Bacon's flesh, garments, horses, and that, that every man had need of, according to the captains estimate and judgement. He would let choose amongst an hundred or fifty young Damosels: bartering some one of the fairest, & of the best complexion, for a cask of wine, oil, vinegar, or for a york powdered. And in like manner he would let choose out a young handsome stripling amongst two or three hundredth for the aforesaid merchandise. And it hath been seen, that a youth seeming to be the son of some prince, hath been bartered for a Cheese, and an hundredth persons for an horse. He continued in these voinge from the year twenty six, until the year thirty three, which are seven years, desolating and dispeopling those Countries, and killing the people there without pity or mercy, until the time that the news came of the riches of Peru, and that thereupon the Spaniards hied them thither, by occasion whereof this Devilish tyranny ceased for a season. A few days after, his men returned, to do and commit other heinous enormities, as robberies, & wrongful imprisonments, with offences great against God: neither do they cease as yet at this day to do them, but have laid desert and dispeopled all those three hundred leagues, the which were as well replenished and peopled, as hath been said.  
There is no man that can believe, or rehearse the cases particular of the cruelties, which were of them committed. I will only rehearse two or three, coming to my remembrance at this instant. As these cursed Spaniards, went with their mad dogs a foraging by the track, and hunting out the Indian men and women: An Indian woman being sick, and seeing she could not escape their dogs, that they should not rend her as they did others: she took a cord and hanged herself at a beam, having fastened at her foot a child she had of a year old, and she had no sooner done: behold these Curs, which come and dispatch this infaute, how beit that before it died, a Religious man a Friar baptised it.  
When the Spanish parted out of this Realm, one amongst others said, to a son of a Lord of some City of Province, that he should go with him: the boy answered, and said, he would not forsake his Country. The spaniard replied: Go with me, or else I will cut off thine ears. The young Indian persisted in his first saying, that he would not forsake his Country. The spaniard drawing out his dagger, cut off first one, & then his other ear.  
The young man abiding by it still that he would not leave his country: he mangled off also his nose, with the uppermost of his lips: making no more scrupulosity of the matter, then if he had given him but a philip.  
This damnable wretch magnified himself, and vaunted him of his doings villavously unto a reverend religious person, saying: that he took as much pains as he could, to beget the Indian women in great numbers with child, to the end, he might receive the more money for them in selling them great with child for slaves.  
In this realm, or in one of the provinces of new Spain, a certain Spaniard went one day with his dogs on hunting of vevison, or else coneys, and not finding game, he minded his dogs that they should be hungry, and took a little sweet Baby which he bereaved the mother of, and cutting off from him the arms, and the legs, chopped them in small gobbets, giving to every dog his livery or part there of, by & by after these morsels thus dispatched, he cast also the rest of the body or the carcase to all the kennel together.  
By this ye may see how great the dullheartedness of the Spaniards is in that country, and how God hath delivered them up into a reprobate sense; and what account they make of those same nations which are created after the image of God, and redeemed with the blood of his Christ. We shall see here after more notable matter.  
Leaving now the cruelties infinite, and never heard of the like, which in this realm were done by those which call themselves Christians, and such as no judgement of man can sufficiently imagine them: I will conclude with this same: That is, that being now departed the realm all the devilish tyrants, blinded with the covetousness of the riches of Peru, that reverend father, friar james, with four other religious of S. Francis, was moved in spirit to go into this realm to pacify them, and for to preach to them, and to win unto jesus Christ those which might be remaining of the butcheries and tyranuous murders, which the Spanish had been perpetrating seven continual years.  
And I believe that these same were those religious persons, the which in the year 34. certain Indians of the Province of Mexico, sending before them messengers in their behalf, requested them that they would come into their country, to give them knowledge of that one only God, who is God, and very Lord of all the world: and for whose occasion the Indians held a council sundry times, parlementing and informing themselves in their folk motes: to wit, what kind of men those might be, which were called by the special name of fathers and brethren, and what it was that they pretended, and wherein they differed from the Spaniards, of whom they had received so many outrages and injuries: according in the end to admit them with condition, that they should enter themselves alone, and not the Spaniards with them, that which the religious promised them. For it was permitted them, yea, commanded them so to do, by the Viceroy of new Spain, and that there should no kind of displeasure be done unto them by the Spaniards. The Religious men preached unto them the Gospel of Christ, as they are accustomed to do, and as had been the holy intention of the kings of Castille, that should have been done. Howbeit, that the Spaniards in all the seven years space past, had never given them any such notice of the truth of the Gospel, or so much as that there was any other king saving himself, that so tyrannized over them, and destroyed them. By these means of the religious, after the end of forty days that they had preached unto them, the Lords of the country brought unto them, and put into their hands their idols, to the end that they shoult burn them. After also, they brought unto them their young children, that they should catechise them, whom they love as the apple of their eye. They made for them also Churches, and Temples, and houses. Moreover, some other provinces sent, and invited them, to the end that they might come to them also, to preach, and give them the understanding of God, and of him whom they said to be the great king of Castille. And being persuaded and induced by the religious, they did a thing which never yet before hath been done in the Indies. (For whatsoever the tyrants, some of those which have spoiled those Realms, & great Countries, have contrived to blemish and defame the poor Indians withal, they are mockeries and leasings:) twelve or fifteen Lords, which had very many subiecets and great dominion, assembling every one for his own part his people, and taking their advise and consent, of their own voluntary motion, yielded themselves to the subjection, and to be under the domination of the kings of Castille: admitting the Emperor as king of Spain, for their liege Sovereign. Whereof also they made certain instruments, by them consigned, which I keep in my charge, together with the testimonies thereunto of the said religious.  
The Indians being thus onward in the way of the faith, with the great joy, and good hope of the Religious brethren, that they should be able to win unto jesus Christ all the people of the Realm that were the residue, being but a small number of the slaughters, and wicked wars passed: There entered at a certain coast, eighteen spaniard tyrants on horse back, and twelve on foot, driving with them great loads of Idols, which they had taken in the other Provinces of the Indians. The Captain of those thirty Spaniards, called unto him a Lord of the country there abouts as they were entered, and commandeth him to take those idols, and to disperse them throughout all his country, selling every idol for an Indian man, or an Indian woman, to make slaves of them, with threatening them, that if he did not do it, he would bid them battle. That said Lord being forced by fear, distributed those Idols throughout all the country, and commanded all his subjects, that they should take them to adore them, and that they should return in exchange of that aware Indies and Indisses to make slaves of. The Indians being afeard, those which had two children, gave him one, and he that had three gave him two. This was the end of this sacrilegious traffic: and thus was this Lord or Cacick, feign to content these Spaniards: I say not Christians.  
One of these abominable chafferers, named john Garcia, being sick, and near his death, had under his bed two packs of Idols, and commanded his Indish maid that served him, to look to it that she made not away his idols, that there were for Murlimeus, for they were good stuff: and that making bend of them, she should not take less than a slave for a piece one of them with another: and in fine, with this his Testament and last will thus devised, the caitiff died, busied with this deep goodly care, and who doubteth but that he is lodged in the bottom of hell▪  
Let it now be considered, and well weighed, what kind of advancement of religion it is, and what are the good examples of Christianity of the behalf of the Spanish, that sail to the Indies? What honour they do unto God, how they pain themselves to have him known and adored of those nations: what cark and care the have of the doing of it, that by their means the rather the sacred faith should be dispersed, increased, and enlarged in the free passage thereof, amongst those silly creatures? And let it with all be discerned, if the sin of these men be any whit less than the same of jeroboam, Which made Israel to sin, by making two golden Calves for the people, to fall down before, and worship: or otherwise if it be not like to the treason of judas, and which hath caused more offence.  
These be the jests of the Spaniards, which go to the Indies, which of a truth very many times, yea, an infinite sort of times, for covetise, and to scratch gold, have sold and do sell: have reneaged, and do reneage as yet hitherto, and at this present day: Christ jesus.  
The Indians perceiving that, that, which the religious had promised them, was as good as nothing: namely, that the Spaniards should not enter those Provinces: and seeing the Spaniards which had laded thither idols from other places, there to make vent of them, they having put all their idols afore into the hands of the Friars, to the end they should be burned, and to the end the true God should be by them adored, all the Country was in a mutiny, and a rage against the religious Friars, and the Indians coming unto them, say:  
Why have you lied unto us, in promising us by deceits that there should not enter any Spaniards into these Countries? And why have you burnt our gods, seeing the Spaniards do bring us other gods from other nations? Were not our gods as good, as the gods of other provinces? The friars pacified them in the best manner that they could, not knowing what to answer them: and went to seek out those thirty Spaniards, to whom they declared the evil which they had done, praying them to get them thence. That which the Spaniards would not do, but said to the Indians, that those religious men had caused them to come thither themselves of their own accord, which was rightly an extreme maliciousness. In the end the Indians deliberated to kill the religious men: By occasion whereof, the Friars fled away in a night, having advertisement of the case by some of the Indians. But after that they were gone, the Indians better informed of the innocency of the religious men, and of the ungraciousness of the Spaniards, the sent messengers after them, near hand fifty leagues of, beseeching them to come again, and craving pardon of them. The religious, as the servants of God, and zealous for the winning of their souls, believing them, returned to them, and were received as it had been Angels. And the Indians doing them a thousand services, abode with them four or five months. And for because the Spaniards would never depart that Country, and that namely the Viceroy with all that he could do, could not draw them thence, new Spain being far of, howbeit, he had caused them to be proclaimed traitors: And for as much as they never ceased to commit their outrages, and griefs accustomed amongst the Indians, the religious perceiving that sooner or later they should smell of the smoke, and peradventure the evil light upon their heads: and specially that they could not preach unto the Indians with quiet, and assurance of the Indians, & of themselves, by reason of the continual assaults and lewd deportments of the Spanish, they deliberated to leave the realm: which in this manner was destitute of the light and the doctrine: and those souls, abode under the darkness of ignorance, and in the misery they were in, the remedy, and the watering of the knowledge of God being bereaved them, already even at their best, and when as they began to receive it with exceeding willingness: altogether like as if one should withdraw the watering from tender plants, and new set into a dry ground, at a hot time of the year: and this by the cursed ungraciousness of the Spanish.   

Of the Province of Saint Martha.  
THe province of Saint Martha, was a country where the Spaniards gathered gold in all plenty: the land being with the regions adjacent very rich, and the people industrious to draw out the gold. Wherefore also from the year one thousand, five hundred, forty two, infinite tyrants have made thither continually with their ships, overrunning, and ranging along the country, killing and spoiling those the inhabitants, and ramping from them that gold that they had, with speedy return ever to their ships, which went and came oftentimes. And so wrought they in those provinces great wastes, and slaughters, and cruelties horrible, & that most commonly on the Sea coast, and certain leagues within the country, until the year one thousand, five hundred, and three. At what time there went Spanish tyrants to inhabit there. And for as much as the country was exceeding rich as hath been said, there ever succeeded Captains one in another's room, every one more cruel than other: in such sort that it seemed that every one enforced himself, for the mastery in doing of evils and cruelties more heinous than had been done by his predecessor. Wherefore herein is the rule verified that we have given before. The year one thousand, five hundred, twenty and nine, there went a great tyrant, very resolute, with great troops: but without any fear of God, or compassion of the nature of man, who wrought such wastes, and slaughters so great, that he exceeded all others that had gone before him, himself robbing for the space of six or seven years that he lived, great treasures: save after being deceased without confession, and fled from the place of his residence: there succeeded him other murdering tyrants, and thieves, which made an end of the rest of the people, whom the imbrued hands with blood, and the carving swords of the tyruntes his forerunners, could not extyrp.  
They set themselves so forward in the country, in invading and laying desolate very many provinces, with killing, and taking prisoners those people, after the fashion before practised in other Provinces, causing the Lords together with their Subjects to suffer grievous torments, both to make them discover the gold, and the places where gold might be had: surmounting as is said every way in number of mischievous doings, and in the manner of doing, all that had passed before: that from the year one thousand, five hundred, twenty and nine, unto this day, they have reduced into a wilderness in those same quarters more than four hundred leagues of land, which was no less peopled than the other countries which we have spoken of.  
Verily if I had to make a bedrolle of the ungraciousnesses, of the slaughters, of the desolations, of the iniquities, of the violences, of the massacres, and other great insolences which the Spaniards have done, and committed in those Provinces of Saint Martha against God, the king, and against those innocent nations: I should write an history very ample. But that may be done if God spare me life, hereafter in his good time: only I will set down a few words of that which was written in a letter by a bishop of this Province to the king our Sovereign: and the letter beareth date the twentieth of May, 1541. The which bishop amongst other words, speaketh thus: I say, sacred Majesty, that the way to redress this country, is that his Majesty deliver her out of the power of Stepfathers, and give unto her an husband which may entreat her as is reason, and according as she deserveth: otherwise, I am sure hereafter as the tyrants which now have the government, do torment and turmoil her, she will soon take an end, etc.  
And a little below he sayeth: Whereby, your Majesty shall know clearly, how those which govern in those quarters do deserve to be disamounted, and deposed from their government, to the end, that the common weals may be relieved. That if that be not done, in mine advise, they can never be cured of their diseases. His majesty shall understand moreover, that in those regions, there are not any Christians but devils, that there are no servants of God and the king, but traitors to the state, and their king. And in truth the greatest encumbrance that I find in reducing the Indians, that are in war, and to set them at peace, and to lead those which are at peace to the knowledge of our faith, is unnatural & cruel entreaty, which they that are in peace do receive of the spanish, being so deeply altered, & lanced, that they have nothing in more hatred & horror, than the name of christians, the which in all these countries they call in their language, years, that is to say, devils. For the acts which they committed here, are neither of christians, nor of men which have the use of reason: but of devils. Whereof it cometh to pass, that the Indies which do see these behaviours to be generally so far estranged from all humanity, & without and mercy, aswell in the heads as in the members: they esteem, that the christians do hold these things for a law, & that their God, & their K. are the authors thereof. And to endeavour to persuade them otherwise, were to endeavour in vain, & to minister unto them the more ample matter, to deride and scorn jesus Christ & his law. The Indians that are in war, seeing the entreaty used toward the Indians that are in peace: would choose rather to die once for all, then to endure sundry deaths, being under the command of the Spanish. I know this by experience, most victorous Cesar. etc.  
He saith for a surcharge in a chapter a lttle lower, His M. hath in these parts more servants than it supposeth. For here is not one soldier of so many as are of them, that dare not say openly & publicly, that if he rove, rob, waist, stay, or burn the subjects of his M. to the end that they give him some gold, he serveth there in your M. which this title, that he saith, thereof redoundeth to his M. his part. Wherefore, most christian Cesar, it should be good, that your M. gave them to understand, by chastising some severely, that it receiveth no service in aught, whereby God is disobeyed and dishonoured. All the abovesaid are the formal words of the said Bishop of Saint Martha: by the which may be seen clearly, what is done at this day amongst these poor innocent peoples in those countries.  
He calleth the Indians in war, those which saved themselves by flying into the mountains from the slaughters of the mischievous Spaniards. And he calleth the Indians in peace, those which after having lost an infinite of their people, by the massacres, have been thralled into the tyrannical and horrible servitude aforesaid, and whereof in the end they have been fined out, desolated, and slain, as appeareth by that which hath been said by the Bishop, which notwithstanding speaketh but little, in comparison of that which they have suffered.  
The Indians in that country have accustomed to say, if when they are travailed and driven up the mountains laden, they happen to fall down, and to faint for feebleness, and for pain: for at that time they lay on upon them blows with their feet and with their statues, and they break their teeth with the pomelles of their sword, to make them rise, and march on without taking of breath, with these words, out upon thee, what a villainy art thou? they (I say) the Indians, for their parts are wont to say, I can no more: kill me here right. I do desire to die here: and this they say with great sighs, and being scarce able to speak, for having their heart drawn together, declaring a great anguish and dolour. But who were able to give to understand the hundredth part of the afflictions and calamities, that these innocent people do suffer of the cursed Spaniards? God make them to take knowledge of it, that are able and bound to redress it.   

Of the Province of Carthagene.  
THis Province of Carthagene is situate under, and a fifty leagues distant from the same of Saint Martha, towards the West, confining with the province of Ceu, unto the gulf of Araba: which are a hundred leagues all along the Sea side, and is a great country within land towards the South. These Provinces since the year 1498. or 99 until now have been evil entreated, martyred, massacred, desolated like unto that of Saint Martha: and there hath been in these same done by the Spaniards such cruelties, ransackings, and pillagings enormous: as the which to make an end the rather of this brief summary, as also to make way to the rehearsal of their evil doings in other Provinces, I will not stand to touch in particular.   

Of the Coast of Pearls, and of Paria, and of the Isle of the Trinity.  
FRom the coast of Paria, unto the gulf of Venesuela, without forth, which are two hundred leagues: the Spanish have wrought great and strange destructions, rioting upon that people, and taking alive as many as they could, to the end they might sell them for slaves: and oftentimes making them prisoners against the assurance and the promise of friendship made unto them, neither keeping with them their faith plighted unto them, the friendly entertainment which they had receiof those good people notwithstanding: having been entertained and entreated in their houses, as parents and children, using them to serve their turn withal, and enjoying all that they had, and that that they were able to do for them. It cannot be well told, nor particularly expressed, the sundry kinds and grievous vexations, wrongs, hurts, and spoils, which those people endured at the Spaniards hands, from the year 1510. until this present. I will only rehearse two or three acts, by the which it may be judged of the rest, innumerable and excessive, and worthy all torments and fire.  
In the isle of the Trinity, which is far greater and more fertile than the Isle of Scicile, and joineth with the firm land of the coast of Paria, and where the people are the dost disposed, and most inclined to virtue in their kind, of all the Indians, as they went, there a captain Rover in the year, 1510. accompanied with 60. or 70. other p●t●● thieves well appointed: they published among the Indians by proclamations, and other public sonmons, that they should come and dwell and live with them in that I'll. The Indians received them as their own bowels and babes: and as well the Lords as subjects served them with exceeding readiness, bringing them to eat from day to day, as much as might suffice to feed, as many more people. For this is the liberality of all these Indians of the new world, to bestow on the Spaniards of all that they have in great abundance. The Spanish build a great house of timber, in the which the Indians should dwell all together: for the Spanish would have it so, that there should be one only house for all, and no more, to compass that, which they had already premeditate to do, & did it. When they laid the thetch upon the binding slaves or sparres, and had already covered to the height of two men's length, to the end that those that were within might not see those that were without, under colour to hasten forward the work, that it might be the sooner dispatched, they set a great number of people within, the Spaniards dividing themselves, the one part of them being bestowed without, compassing the house round about with their weapons, because of those that might get forth, the other part of them press into the house: Thus laying hands on their sword, they began to threaten the Indians naked as they were, to kill them if they did stir, and then bound them. And those which fled they hewed them in pieces: Howbeit some of the Indies which fled, both of the hurt & not hurt, with others that had not come within the house, took their bows & arrows and assembled themselves in another house, about an hundred or two hundred persons: And as they kept the gate, the Spaniards set fire on the house, & burned them alive. After with their purchase, which might be of an hundred or fourscore persons of them which they had bound: they get them to the isle of saint john, where they sold the one moiety, and thence to the isle of Hispaniola: where they sold the other moiety. As I reprehended the captain for this notable treason, at the same time, and at the same I'll of Saint john, he made an answer: Sir, quiet your self for that matter. So have they commanded me to do, and given me instruction which sent me: that if I could not take them by war, I should take them under countenance and colour of peace. And in truth the Captain told me that in all his life, he never had found father nor mother, but in this Isle of the Trinity, in respect of the friendly courtesies the Indians had showed him. And this he spoke to his own greater confusion and aggravating for the surcharge of his own offences. They have done other things semblable unto these infinite, in this firm land: apprehending the poor people contrary to the safe conduct promised. Let it now be weighed, what manner of doings these are, and whether the Indians in this wise taken, might justly be made slaves.  
At another time, the religious Friars of saint Dominicks order, being determined to go preach, and to convert those nations, who had not the light of the doctrine for to save their souls, as is the case at this day of the Indians: they sent a religious man licentiate in divinity, a man virtuous & holy, with a lay man of his order his companion, to the end he should take a view of the Country, to traverse acquaintance with that people, and search out a place commodious to build monasteries. The religious being arrived: they received them as Angels comen from heaven: and heard with great affection, attention, and willingness such words as the religious at that time were able to give them to understand, more by signs than otherwise, for they knew not the tongue. It came to pass that there arrived there another ship, after that the ship in which the religious men came was departed thence, and the Spanish in this vessel, keeping their devilish custom, by subtlety without the knowledge of the religious, carried away the Lord of the country called Alfonso: were it that Friars had given him this name, or else others. For the Indians love & desire to bear the name of the Christians, desiring incontinent that it may be given them even before they know any thing, that they may be baptised. They induced fraudilently this Don Alfonso to come aboard their ship with the lady his wife, & other people, making semblance to go about to feast them. In the end there entered seventeen persons, together with the Lord and his Lady: the Lord trusting that the religious persons being entered into his Country, would keep the Spaniards from doing any wrong: for otherwise he would never have put himself in the hands of the Spanish. The Indians therefore thus being in the ship, the traitorous Spaniards hoist sails, and away they went to Hispaniola with them, there selling them for slaves. All the Country seeing that their Lord & sovereign Lady were carried away, they run to the religious men, purposing to kill them. The poor men seeing so great a villainy, were of themselves at appoint to die for sorrow: and it is well to be believed of them, that they would rather have given their lives in the quarrel, then to have accorded that any such injury should have been committed: specially considering that was enough to hinder the course begun, so as those poor Heathens should never, neither hear, nor hearing believe the word of God. Howbeit, they appeased the Indians in the best manner they could, saying that they would write to them at Hispaniola by the first ship that went, & would take such care and order in the matter, that their sovereign should be restored them again with those that were in his company. God sent immediately upon a ship thither, no doubt for the greater confirmation of the damnation of those which there governed, and they wrote to the Spanish religious men that were in the Isle of Hispaniola. They cry out, and call heaven and earth to witness against them, both first, & sundry times after: But the judges of the audience, would never give them audience to do them justice, for because themselves had part in the booty of the Indians, which the tyrants had so against all right & reason taken, The two religious men, which had promised the Indians of the country, that their Lord Don Alfonso, with others should come home▪ with the rest within four months, seeing that they came not neither in 4. nor 8. made themselves ready to the death, & to give their life, which they had gauged before they came out of Spain, if need should be, and in that sort the Indians took vengeance on them in killing them justly, notwithstanding that they were innocent: for because that they thought that the religious men had been the occasion of this treason, and for because they saw that, that which they had certified and promised them, took not effect: to wit, that within four months they should have home their Lord: and for that, at that time they knew not, and now as yet they know not in that country, that there is any difference between the religious well disposed: and the tyrants, thieves, and robbers the Spaniards. Those religious men therefore right happy, suffered unjustly, and for the wrong so suffered, there is no doubt but they are very martyrs, and do reign at this day with God in the kingdom of heaven in bliss, who would that by their obedience they should be sent thither, and should have an intent, to preach and spread the holy faith, and save all those souls, and suffer those afflictions, and death itself when it should be presented unto them for jesus Christ his sake crucified.  
another time, by reason of the great tyrannies and execrable acts of the cursed ones, bearing the name of Christians, the Indians slew other two religious men of Saint Dominickes order, and one of Saint Francis. Whereof I ran be a good witness for that I escaped at the time miraculously from the same death, of the which it should be a hard matter to entreat, and would be to amaze men, by reason of the grievousness and horiblenesse of the case. Wherefore I will not lay it abroad (for being too tedious) until his time, and at the day of judgement it shall be more evident, when God shall take vengeance of the thieveries so horrible and so abominable as are done by those which bear the name of Christians against the Indians.  
another time in those Provinces at the Cape of the Codera (as they call it) there was a town, the Lord whereof was named Higueroto, a name either proper to the person, or it may be common to the Lords of the place. This Lord was so bounteous, and his people so virtuous and serviceable, that as many Spaniards as came thither by ship, they found there good entertainment, meat, lodging, all cheering, and refreshing. This said Lord had also delivered many from death of those which were fled thither out of other Provinces, where they had rioted and tyrannized, and come thither sick, and half dead for hunger: whom they refreshed, and afterward sent them away safe, to the isle of Pearls, where there were Spaniards, and might have slain them if he had would, without that ever any should have known it. And shortly to say the Spanish did call the Subjects of Higurroto, the house and harbour of every body. A caitiff tyrant advised himself to outrage that people also, when as they thought themselves sure enough: and getting him to a ship, he had there invited a great number of people to come a board her as they were accustomed to do, and to trust the Spaniards.  
A great number of people being entered into her, men women, and children, he hoist sails, and went to the isle of Saint john, where he sold them all for slaves.  
I came at the same instant to the isle of Saint john, and I saw the tyrant, and understood what he had done. He had destroyed all that township: whereby he did great harm to all other his fellow tyrants, wont to rob, and rove all along those coasts, insomuch as they had in abomination this act so hideous, being bereft thereby of their harbour, and house of retire, as ordinary & familiar unto them as it had been their own home & house.  
I deport me to recount the mischiefs infinite, and cases abominable, which have been used in that country, and are used as yet.  
They have singled out at times from all this coast, the which was very well peopled, unto the Isles of S. john & Hispaniola, above two millions of souls, seized upon by their purchases in thieving and robbing: which also every one of them they have slain not long after, by thrusting them into the minerals and other tormoyls, besides the great numbers there were there already before time, as we have above said. And it is a pitiful thing, and able to make any heart to cleave, were it never so hard, to see all this coast of a country most fertile, to be left all naked and empty of people.  
It is a tried case, that they never convey away their shippings of Indians so rob & purchased, as I have said, but that they cast the third part into the sea, besides those which they slay, when they will sort them to themselves for their chaffer. The cause is, that when as they will by all means attain to the end which they have proposed to themselves: they have need of a great number of people, for to draw a great deal of money, according to the quantity of the slaves: & they prepare but a very small deal of sustenance and water, to serve but a few persons: to the end that those tyrants whom they call purueyghours of the ships should not spend them much. And there is but even scarce enough, save to serve the Spaniards turn which go a roving and robbing: and there is always wanting for the poor Indians. Wherefore also they die for hunger and thirst: and then there is none other remedy but to cast them over the board into the sea. And verily a man among them did tell me, that from the isle of Lucayos, where had been wrought great slaughters in this manner, unto the isle of Hispaniola, which are a threescore, or seventy leagues, there trended a ship all alongst, without that it had either compass or mariners card, being guided only by the track of dead Indians carcases, floating upon the seas, of them which had been cast in.  
And after they be landed in the isle, whither they bring them to make sale of them: it is to make an heart to yearn of whosoever, have he never so little compassion, to behold them naked and famished, fall down and faint for hunger and thirst, women, and aged men, and children.  
Afterwards they soon after they separate them, as it were Lambs, the fathers from the children, and the wives from the husbands, in making troops of them of ten or twenty persons, and so cast lots on them, to the end, those cursed purnueighours should take their share, which are those who do equip or rig, and furnish two or three ships for the navy of those tyrants, pirates, and rovers, robbing by sea & land, seizing upon all they come by, and pulling the poor men out of their own housen. And look when the lot falleth upon the flock where there were among them any old or sick person, the tyrant to whom the same escheated, would say: That the devil take the old graybeard, why dost thou give him me, to the end I should go bury him? And this sick rascal, what have I to do that he should fall out to my lot: to the end, I should be his Physician to cure him? Hereby a man may see, in what estimation the Spaniards have the Indians, and how they accomplish the commandment of God, touching the love of their neighbour, of the which dependeth the law and the Prophets. The tyranny which the Spanish exercise over the Indians, to fish for Pearls, is one of the cruelest and cursedest things that is in the world.  
There is no hell in this life, nor other desperate state in this world, that may be compared unto it: although that the trade of gold finding, be in his kind, very grievous, and very miserable. They let them into the sea, three, or four, or five fathom forth down right under water, from the morning until sunnesette, where they are continually flitting without stint, to pluck oysters, in the which are engendered the pearls. They surge up above the waters, with a net full of oysters to take breath: where standeth ready a Spanish tormentor, in a little cock boat, or a brigantine, and if the poor wretches stay never so little while, to rest themselves: they all to be buffet them with their fists, and draw them by the hair into the water to return to their fishing. Their sustenance is fish, and the same very fish which containeth the pearls, and the bread Cacabi, or some Mahis, which are the kinds of bread of that country: the one of very slender nourishment, the other is not easy to be made into bread, of the which also, they never give them their belly full.  
The beds that they lodge them in a nights, is to set them by the heels, their bodies requoyling on the could ground, in a pair of stocks for fear of running away. Sometimes they are drowned in the sea, and at their fishing and travail of piking of pearls, and never rise up again above the water: because the Bunches and Whirlpools (they call them Tuberones and Maroxos) two kind of monsters of the sea most cruel, which devour a man all whole, and those do kill them and eat them.  
Let it now here be considered, whither in this purchase of Pearls, the commandments of God, touching the love of God, and our neighbours be kept, or not: when they throw those people into danger of bodies and souls. For they slay their neighbours by their covetousness, without that they receive, or faith, or sacraments, or else they prolong them in a state of life so horrible, that they bring them to their end, and consume them in a few days. For it is impossible, that men should be able to live any long season under the water without taking breath, the continual cold piercing them: & so they die commonly, parbreaking of blood at the mouth: because of the kitting together of their chests, or bulk of the breast arising thereof, that they are so continually without breathing under the water, and of the bloody flux, caused by the cold. Their hairs, which by nature are coal black, altar and become after a branded russette, like to the hairs of the seawolves. The salt peeter breaketh out of their shoulders, in such sort, that they seem to be a kind of monsters in the shape of men, or else some other kind of men. They dispatched in ridding about this insupportable travail, or rather to speak rightly, this devilish torment, all the Lucayan Indians which were in the Isles, having savoured this gains, and every Indian was worth unto them a fifty, or an hundred Castillans. They made an open mart of them, notwithstauding it were inhibited them, by the magistrate otherwise unmerciful: for the Lucayens were good swimmers. They also, about these things have slain a number of the people of other provinces.   

Of the river Yuia Pari.  
THere runneth through the province of Paria, a river named Yuia Pari, more than two hundred leagues within land from the head. There entered the same river, an unlucky tyrant, a great many leagues upward, in the year, one thousand, five hundred, twenty and nine with a four hundred men or more: which there wrought great slaughters, burning alive, and putting to the edge of the sword, an infinite sort of Indians, which were in their lands and house● doing hurt to no creature, and therefore secure, and mistrusting nothing.  
In the end he died an evil death, and his Navy was disperaged: albeic that other tyrants there were which succeeded him in his mischievousnesses and tyrannies: and yet at this day thither they go, destroying, and staying, and plunging into hell the souls for whom the son of God shed his blood.   

Of the realm of Venesuela.  
THe year 1526. the king our Sovereign, being induced by sinister informations and persuasions damageable to the state, as the Spaniards have always pained themselves to conceal from his Majesty the damages and dishonours which GOD and the souls of men, and his state doth receive in the Indies: granted and committed a great realm, greater than all Spain, that Venesuela, with the government and entire jurisdiction, unto certain Dutch Merchants, with certain capitulations and conventions accorded between them.  
These same entering the country with three hundred men: they found the people very amiable, & meek as lambs, as they are all in those parties of the Indies, until the Spanish do outrage them. These see upon them without comparison a great deal more cruelly, than any of the other tyrants, of the which we have spoken before: showing themselves more unnatural and fierce, than raging tigers, or wolves, or ramping Lions. For they had the jurisdiction of the whole country, possessing it with more freedom, and using it with a greater care, and starker blind madness of covetise, serving their own turns with all practices and chevisaunees, to get and gather gold and silver, more than all they of whom hath been spoken heretofore: having wholly shaken off all fear of God, and of the king: yea, having forgotten themselves to be men.  
These devils incarnate have said desolate and destroyed, more than four hundred leagues of most fertile land, and therein, of provinces exceeding and wonderful, fair veils, to the breadth of forty leagues, and hournes very great, full of people, and of gold. They have slain, and wholly discomfited great and divers nations, so far forth as to abolish the languages wonted to be spoken, not leaving alive that could skill of them: unless some one or other, who had hid themselves in the caves and bowels of the earth,, flying the dint of the sword, so raging and plaguing. They have slain, destroyed, and sent to hell by divers and strange manners of cruelties and ungodlinesses, more (I supposse) then four or five millions of souls: and yet at this present, they cease not to do the same, by infinite outrages, spoils, add slaughters, which they have committed, and do commit daily unto this present. I will only touch three or four, by the which it may be judged of others, which they used to accomplish their destructions, and disolations above mentioned.  
They took the Lord sovereign of all the province without all cause, only to bereave him of his gold, giving him also the torture: which Lord unbound himself, and escaped from them into the mountains, wherefore also the subjects rose and were in a mutiny, hiding themselves upon the mountains, amongst the hedges and bushes. The Spaniards make after to chase them, and having found them, commit cruel massacres, and as many as they take alive, they sell them in port sale for slaves.  
In divers provinces, yea in all where they became before that they took the Sovereign Lord, the Indies went to receive them with songs, and dances, and with presents of gold in great quantity.  
The payment made them, was, to be put to the edge of the sword, and hewn in pieces. One time, as they went to receive the Spanish in the fashion abovesaid: the dutch Captain tyrant, caused to be put in a thatched house a great number of people, and hackled in pieces.  
And being on high, near the top of the house certain beams which divers had got upon, avoiding the bloody hands and sword of those people (O merciless beasts) the devilish man, sent to put to fire, whereby as many as there were, were burned alive. By this means the country remained very desert, the people flying into the mountains, where they hoped to save themselves.  
They came into another great province, in the confines of the province and realm or Saint Martha, where they found the Indians peaceable in their boroghs, & in th●ir housen, doing their business, they continued a long time with them, eating their store, and the Indians served them, as if they had to receive of them their life and safeguard, supporting their continual oppressions, and usual outragiousnesses, which are intolerable: besides that one Spanish glutton, eateth more in one day, then would suffice an whole household of more than ten Indians. They gave them at that time, a great quantity of gold, of their own good will, over & beside, other services innumerable, which they did unto them. At the end as these tyrants would departed the place, they advised to pay them for their lodging, in this manner.  
The Almain tyrant governor, commanded to take such Indians as they could, with their wives and children, and that they should shut them up within an enclosure, wounded in of purpose, letting them know, that who so would come forth, and be let go free, that he should redeem himself at the pleasure of the unjust governor: in giving so much gold for himself, so much for his wife, and so much for every poll of his children. And yet to press them the more, he commanded to give them nothing to eat, until such time as they had performed the quantity of gold inflicted them for their ransom. Many sent to their housen for gold, and bought out themselves as they were able, and those same were delivered, and went abroad about their business to get their living. The tyrant sent certain Spanish thieves & robbers, to go take them again the second time, after they had been redeemed. They are carried to the perclose, and there wrung with hunger and thirst, to the end, that they should yet once again pay for their freedom. And there were many amongst them, which were taken and ransommed two or three sundry times. Others which had not to give, for because they had all they had, he let them within the toys die for hunger.  
And in this manner hath been destroyed a province very rich of people and gold, the which hath a vale or bourn of forty leagues, where hath been brent a borough of the receit of a thousand households.  
This Tyrant resolved with himself to pierce farther into the country, with a great desire to discover on that side, the same hill of Peru. By occasion of which accursed voyage both he and others carried forth with them, Indians infinite, laden with two or three quintalles weight, and being enchained. If any were weak or weary, fainting for hunger, or traveling, they cut incontinent his head off even with the collar of the chain that yoked them: because they should not need to unhamper the others that went with the same collars about their necks, and so tumbled the head on the one side, and the body on the other. And the load of him that had so failed was distributed and bestowed upon others. To tell of the Provinces, which he hath laid desert, and the towns and places which he hath brent, for all the houses are thatched, and to number the nations which he hath slain, and the cruelties, and murders particular, which he hath committed by the may, it would be a thing scarce credible: howbeit very true and wonderful. In this same very course and steps marched sithence the other tyrants, who came from the said Venesuela, and others of the Province of S. Martha, with the self same holy intention to discover the same sacred golden palace of Peru: and found the whole country in length more than two hundred leagues so burned, dispeopled, & spoiled, having been before most notably peopled and most fertile, as hath been said, that themselves as very tyrants and savage beasts as they were, wondered and stood astonished to see the tracks of the destructions so lamentable, wheresoever he had passed.  
All these things have been given in evidence with the depositions of many witnesses by the Attorney of the council of the Indies, and the evidences are kept amongst the Records of the same council: and yet have they never burned alive, any of those execrable tyrants. And this is nothing of all that which hath been proved, of the great outrages and mischiefs which these have committed. For as much as the ministers of justice, which until this time have him in the Indies, by reason of their great wilful and damnable blindness, have never troubled themselves to examine the offences, spoils, and murders, which have been wrought, and yet presently are wrought by the tyrants in the Indies: save only they will say, because such hath cruelly entreated the Indies, the king hath lost of his revenues so many thousand Castilians in rent, and this little verdict over general and confused, must suffice for the disclaim of so many villainies. And yet that little which they take upon them, they do not aver, nor deviur upon, as they ought to do. For if they had regard of their duty to God and the king, it would be found, that those Almain tyrants have rob the king of above three thousand Castillans of gold. For those provinces of Venesuela with the others which they have laid waste, and dispeopled more than four hundred leagues forthright, as hath been said, is a region the most blissful, and the richest of gold, and was the best peopled of any in the world: in such sort, that they have disturned from the kings coffers, and occasioned the loss in this Realm of above two millions of rent, within seventeen years sithence by past, that these enemies of God and the king have begun to destroy it: neither is there any hope that ever those losses will be repaired as long as the world shall endure: unless it be, that God should miraculously raise as many millions of souls as are deceased. It shall not be out of the way to consider, of what sorts and how excessive have been the damages, dishonours, blasphemies, & infamies, which God & his law hath received: And wherewithal may be recovered & recompensed the loss of so many souls as burn in hell fire through the avarice and cruelty of those tyrants Almains, shall I say, or All●uains?  
Only I will conclude the discourse of their ungraciousness and cruelty herewith. That is, that sithence they entered the country unto this present, that is to say, these seventeen years they have sent by Sea a great number of ships loaden & stuffed with Indians, to make sale of them as slaves at S. Martha, at the Isles of Hispaniola, and of jamaica, and at Saint john's Isle, more than one million: and do send daily, as now this year one thousand, five hundred, forty two: the Court of the Audience royal notwithstanding established, for, and at Hispaniola, right well seeing all this, and dissimuling to see it, yea, favouring and supporting all the matter: as likewise they have had their eyes bended at all the other tyrannies and ransackings infinite, which hath been done in all this coast of this firm land which are about four hundred leagues, the which have been and now are under their jurisdiction, like unto Venesuela, & saint Martha: all which the said court might very well have impeached and remedied. There is none other cause of putting all these Indians under yoke of bondage, save the only perverse, wilfully blind, and obstinate greediness, and insatiable wretchedness of these most covetous tyrants, and all to have, and heap up goods like as hath had all the rest throughout all the Indies, ramping these silly lambs and sheep out of their houses, and carrying their wives and children in the manners of proceeding so cruel and execrable as hath been said, branding them with the kings mark, to make them vendible for slaves.   

Of the Provinces of the firm land, or quarter that is called Florida.  
INto these Provinces went three tyrants at three divers times since the year 1510. or 1511. there to put in ure the acts which others, and two of them from among themselves have committed in other quarters of the Indians: to the end to aspire to high degrees, in no respect convenient to their persons, higher than their merits in the common wealth could conceive, with the blood & destruction of their neighbours: and they are dead all three of an evil death, & their houses likewise have been destroyed with them, the which they had builded in times past, with the blood of mankind, as I can be a sufficient witness of all three, and their memory is now abolished from of the face of the earth, as if they had never been in this world. They left all this Country in disorder, and confusion, and their own manners in infamy and horror, for certain slaughters which they did there, notwithstanding not so many, for as much as God plagued them with death before they could do any more, and kept them from this outrage in this place, for the evils for I know, and have seen that they did in other parts of the Indies.  
The fourth tyrant, that came last in the year. 1538. cunningly advised, and being fully furnished: it is three years since there is no tidings concerning him. We are certain that incontinent after his entry thither: he hath behaved himself cruelly, and since hath been as a man vanished. That if he be alive, he and his mainies have destroyed these three years a great many mighty peoples, if he hath found any in his inquest as he hath gone: for sure he is one of the notoriousest and best experimented amongst them that have done the most hurts, mischiefs, and destructions in many Realms with their consorts: wherefore I believe that God hath given him like end unto the others.  
Three or four years after the writing of the above written, came out of the Florida the head of the petty tyrants which went thither with this captain tyrant, that there left his bones: of whom we understood the cruelties and evils, which there during his life time principailly, and under his conduct & government, and since after his cursed death, the unnatural men have executed against the Indians innocent, and harmful to none, to verify that which I had prognosticate before, they being so excessive, that they have the more confirmed the rule by me set down before at the beginning, that the farther they proceeded to discover, destroy, and to waste countries and lands: the more cruelties and notorious wickednesses they would do against God, and against their neighbours. It loatheth me to recount those acts so cursed, ghastly, and bloody, not of men but of savage beasts: and therefore I would not trouble my head to stand rehearsing those which followed afterwards.  
They found many great nations, and wise common weals well instituted for policy and ordinances. They executed upon them great slaughters after their custom, to the end to imprint in their hearts an awe. They martyred and murdered them, and loaded them with weighty packs like beasts. And when any was forwearied or forespent, to the end they should not need to lose the chain. in the which they were gived in collars, before they come at him that fainted, they pare off the head from the collar brim, the trunk tumbling one way, and the chain another: as we have before recounted to have been used otherwise.  
Entering a borough, where they were received with joy, and the Indians giving them to eat their fill, and giving them of Indians more than six hundred to carry their fardels, carrying the heafte of beasts in their service, and dressing their horses: the tyrants being departed thence, a captain kinsman of the principal tyrant returned to rob the people, being without distrust & without fear, and slew with the thrusts of Lance the Lord and King of the Country, executing besides other cruelties.  
In another borough, forasmuch as it seemed them that they were a little too near neighbours, & stood more on their ward, for the acts villainous and infamous, which they had heard of them: they put to the edge of the sword and lance, young & old, great and little, subject and sovereign, taking to mercy no creature whosoever.  
The head tyrant caused to pair off the nose and lips down to the chin of a great number of Indians, yea, more than 200. (as is said) that they had caused to be sent for from a certain borough, or it may be came of their own good will. And thus in this estate so rueful, and in these sorrows and anguishes of blood streaming down, they sent them away: to the end they might go carry news of the holy works and miracles, which these preachers of the sacred catholic faith, & baptized, had wrought.  
Let it now be judged, what kind of people these were, what love they bear to the Christians, and how they do believe that God is, whom they say to be perfectly merciful and righteous, and that the law and the religion, of the which they make profession, and do vaunt themselves, is without blemish. The mischiefs are exceeding sore & strange, which those ungracious caitiffs, children of perdition there committed. And thus the desperate and unlucky Captain died without confession: and we need not to doubt but that he lieth buried in hell: if algates God of his infinite mercy secretly dispensed in his hidden wisdom hath not prevented him, not dealing with him, after his demerits, in respect of his ungrations lewdness.   

Of the river of la Plata, that is to say, of silver.  
SIthence the year, one thousand five hundred, and two or three and twenty: certain Captains made three or four voyages up the River of Plata, where there are great Provinces and Realms, and nations well ordered and endued with understanding. In general we understood, that they have made there great butcheries and invasions: but like as this Country is far discoasted from the Indies most famous, so we are not able, to quote the notablest points in particular. We doubt no whit notwithstanding, but that they have done and do keep as yet at this hour the same order of proceed as hath been kept, and are in other quarters: for they be the selfsame Spaniards, and there are amongst them of those same, which have traversed in other acts and exploits such as hath been specified. Moreover, their going thither, is to become rich and great Lords as well as others: that which cannot be done without spoiling, robbing, slaying, and extirping the Indians, in manner and order holden by the others.  
After the writing the abovesaid, I have understood, that of a truth, they have wasted and dispeopled great Provinces and Realms in that Country, exercising strange slaughters & cruelties upon these poor people there, for the which they have abled themselves as forward in wickedness, or forwarder than any other, as having the commodity by the greater distance from Spain, to sin the Freer, and by occasion there of have lived the more disordered and farthest off from justice: howbeit that in all the Indies, there hath been no regard of justice, as appeareth sufficiently, by that which hath been above said.  
Amongst an infinite sort of other things we read at the counsel table for the Indies, these also which shall be spoken of hereafter. A tyrant governor gave in command to certain his bands to go assault the Indians, and that if they gave them not to eat they should kill them al. They went armed with this authority. And for because the Indians would give them none as being open enemies, more for fear of the sight of them, as flying from them then for want of liberality, they put to the edge of the sword more than five thousand souls.  
Item a certain number of the folk of the Country came to put themselves into their hands, and presented them their service, whom at adventure they had sent for: and for because they came not so soon, or for because they would after their accustomed fashion, engrave in them an horrible and astonishable terror: the grovernour commanded that they should put them into the hands of other Indians, whom they hold for their enemies: whereupon they came weeping and crying, and beseeching them that they would slay them, themselves, and not deliver them into the power of their enemies, and having no mind to yeede out of their houses where they were, they were cut in pieces, crying, and saying: We come to serve you in peace, and do you slay us? Our blood remain imprinted on this wall, for a witness against you of our unjust death, and your barbarous cruelty. Certes, this was an act of special mark, worthy to be remembered, and much more to be lamented.   

Of the mighty Realms, and large Provinces of Peru.  
IN the year 1531. went another great tyrant with certain other consortes, to the Realms of Peru, where entering with the same title and intention, and with the same proceed as all the rest before gone, forasmuch as he was one of them, which had of long tune been exercised in all kinds of cruelties and murders, which had been wrought in the firm land since the year one thousand five hundred, and ten, he took encouragement to accrue in cruelties, murders, & robberies: being a man without loyalty and truth, laying waste Cities and Countries, bringing them to nought, and utterly undoing them by slaying the inhabitants, and being the cause of all the evils, which ensued in that Country: that I am right well assured, that there is not a man that can recount them and represent them to the eyes of the Readers, as is requisite, until such time that we shall see them and know them at the day of judgement. As touching myself, if I would take upon met, to recount the deformity, quality and circumstances of some one, I were not able to decipher them, according to that which is convenient.  
He slew and laid waste at his first arrival with a mischief certain boroughs, from whom he pillaged a great quantity of Gold. In an Island near to the same provinces, named Pagna, well peopled and pleasant, the Lord thereof with his people received them as it had been Angels from heaven: and six months after, when as the Spanish had eaten up all their provision: They discovered also unto them the corn which they kept under ground for themselves, their wives, and their children, against a dry time and barren: making them offer of all, with teers plentiful, to spend and eat at their pleasure. The recompense in the end which they made them, was, to put to the edge of the sword and lance, a great quantity of those people. And those whom they could take alive, they made them slaves: with other cruelties great and notable which they committed, dispeopling as it were all that I'll.  
From thence they make to the pronince of Tumbala, which is in the firm land, where they slay and destroy as many as they could come by. And because all the people were fled as affrighted by their horrible access, they said that they made an insurrection, and rebelled against the king of Spain. This tyrant had this policy, and kept this order of proceeding, that, unto all those whom he toake, or unto others which presented him with gold or silver, or other things which they had: he commanded them to bring more, until such time as he perceived that either they had no more, or that they brought him no more. And then he would say, that he accepted them for the vassals and lieges of the king of Spain, and made much of them: and would cause it to be proclaimed at sound of two trumpets, that from thence forth they would take them no more, and that they would do them no manner harm at all: setting it down for good and lawful, all that whatsoever he had rob from them.  
And that he put them in fear with news so abominable which he spread amongst them, before he received them into the safeguard and protection of the king, as though that after they were received under the protection of the king, they would not oppress them, rob them, lay them waste and desolate any more, yea and as though he had not destroyed them.  
A few days after, the king & Emperor of those realms, named Atabaliba, came accompanied with a number of naked people, bearing their ridiculous armour, not knowing neither how sword did carve, nor spears did pierce, nor horses did run, nor who or what were the Spaniards: who if the devils had any money, would set themselves in inquest to go rob them. He cometh to the place where they were, saying: Where are these Spaniards? Let them come, I will not stir a foot, till they satisfy me for my subjects whom they have slain, and my boroughs which they have dispeopled, and for my wealth, which they have bereaved me.  
The Spaniards set against him, and slew and infinite sort of his people: they took him also in person, who came carried in a litter born upon men's shoulders. They treat with him, to the end that he should ransom himself. The king offereth to perform four millions of Castillans, and performeth fifteen, they promise to release him: notwithstanding in the end, keeping nor faith nor truth (as they never kept any in the Indies unto the Indians) they laid unto his charge altogether untruly, that by his commandment the people assembled.  
The king answered, that in all the country there moved not a leaf of a tree, without his good will: that if there assembled any people, they were to believe that it was by his commandment, and as touching himself that he was prisoner, and they might slay him.  
All this not withstanding, they condemned him to be brent alive: but at the request of some certain, the Captain caused him to be strangled: and being strangled, he was burned.  
This king understanding his sentence, said: Wherefore will you burn me? What trespass have I done ye? Did not you promise me to set me at liberty, if I gave you the gold? and have I not performed more than I promised? Seeinges you will needs have it so? send me to your king of Spain: speaking other things, to the great confusion and detestation of the great wrongfulnesse that the Spaniards used, whom in the end they burned. Here let be considered the right and title of this warfare, the imprisonment of this prince, the sentence, and the execution of his death, and the conscience, whereby they possess great treasures, as in deed they have rob in those realms from this king and other several lords infinite.  
As touching the innumerable cruelties, and notable, for the mischiefs and enormities withal committed in the rooting out of those peoples by them, who call themselves Christians: I will here rehearse some certain, the which a friar of S. Francis order saw at the beginning, and the same certified under his name and sign: sending them into all those quarters, and amongst others into this realm of Castille, whereof I retain a copy in my keeping in the which it is thus written:  
I Friar Mark, of the order of Saint Francis, commissary over the other friars of the same order in the provinces of Peru, and who was one of the first religious men, which entered into the said provinces with the Spaniards: do say, bearing true testimony of certain things, the which I have seen with mine eyes in that country, namely, concerning the entreating and conquests made over the natural inhabitants of the country: first of all, I am an eyed witness, and have certain knowledge, that those Indians of Peru, are a people the most kind hearted that hath been seen among all the Indians, being courteous in conversation, and friendly unto the Spaniards.  
And I saw them give to the Spanish in abundance, gold, silver, and precious stones, and all that was asked them, and that they had, doing them all kind of service lawful. And the Indians never yielded forth to war, but kept them in peace so long time, as they gave them not occasion, by their evil entreating of them and their cruelties, but contrariwise received them with all amity and honour in their boroughs, in giving them to eat, and as many slaves mankind and women kind, as they demanded for their service.  
Item I am witness, that without that the Indians gave occasion: the Spanish as soon as they were entered the land, after that the great Cacike Atabaliba, had given to the Spanish more than two millions of gold, and had put into their power the whole country without resistance, incontinent they burned the said Atabaliba which was Lord of the whole country.  
And after him they brent his captain general Cochilimaca, who had come to the governor in peace with other Lords. In the like manner, also a few days after they burned a great Lord named Chamba, of the province of Quito, without any fault at all, and without having given the least occasion that might be.  
In like manner they burned unjustly Schappera Lord of the Canaries. Also they brent the feet of Aluis a great Lord amongst all those which were in Quito, and caused him to endure sundry other torments, to make him tell where was the gold of Atabaliba: of the which treasure as it appeared, he knew nothing.  
Also they brent in Quito Cosopanga, who was governor of all the provinces of Quito, which upon the request to him first made by Sebastian of Bernalcasar Captain under the governor, was come to them in peace: and only because he gave them not gold so much as he demanded of him their burned him with very many other Caciks and principal Lord▪ And for aught that I can understand, the intent of the Spaniards was, that there should not be left alive one Lord in the whole country.  
Item I certify, that the Spaniards caused to assemble a great number of the Indians, and socked them up in three great housen, as many as could be pored in, and setting to fire, they burned them all, without that they had done the least thing that might be, or had given to the Spanish the least occasion thereof whatsoever. And it came to pass, that a priest, who is named Ocanna, drew a young boy out of the fire, in the which he burned, which perceiving an other spaniard took from out of his hands the boy, and flung him into the midst of the flames, where he was resolved into ashes together with others. The which spaniard returning the same day to the camp, fell down dead suddenly, and mine advice was he should not be buried.  
Item I affirm, to have seen with mine own eyes, that the Spanish have cut the hands, the noses, and the ears of the Indians, and of their women, without any other cause or purpose, save only that so it came into their fantasy, and that in so many places and quarters, that it should be too tedious to rehearse. And I have seen, that the Spanish have made their Mastiffs run upon the Indians to rend them in pieces. And moreover, I have seen by them brent so many houses, and whole borughes, or towneshippes, that I am not able to tell the number. Also it is true, that they violently plucked the little infants from the mother's dugs, and taking them by the arms, did throw them from them as far as they could: Together with other enormities and cruelties without any cause, which gave me astonishment to behold them, and would be to long to rehearse them.  
Item, I saw when as they sent for the Cacikes and other principal Indians, to come see them in peace, and assurance to them made, promising them safe conduct: and incontinent as they were arrived, they burned them. They burned two whiles I was present, the one in Andon, and the other in Tumbala: and I could never prevail with them to have them delivered from burning, preached I unto them never so much. And in God and my conscience, for aught that ever I could perceive, the Indians of Peru, never lift themselves up, nor never rebelled for any other cause, but for the evil entreating of the other side, as is manifest unto every one, and for just cause: the Spaniards destroying them tyrannously against all reason and justice, with all their country, working upon them so many outrages, that they were determined to die, rather than to suffer much an other time.  
Item I say, that by the report of the Indians themselves, there is yet more gold hidden then is come to light, the which because of the unjustices and cruelties of the Spaniards, they would not discover, neither ever will discover, so long as they shall be so evil entreated, but will those rather to die with their fellows.  
Wherein GOD our Lord hath been highly trespassed agayinst, and the kings Majesty evil served, having been defrauded in that, that his highness hath lost such a country, as hath been able to yield sustenance to all Castille: for the recovery of which country, it will be a matter of great difficulty, dispense, and charges.  
All these hitherto are the formal words of the said religious person: the which are also ratified by the bishop of Mexico, which witnesseth that the reverend father hath to his knowledge affirmed all the above said.  
It is here to be considered, that the good father sayeth, that he saw those things. For that, that he hath been fifty, or an hundred leagues up into the country, for the space of nine or ten years, and that at the very beginning, when there were not as yet but very few of the Spaniards: but at the ringing of the gold, there were quickly gathered and fleeked thither four or five thousand, which shed themselves forth over many great realms and provinces, more than five hundred or six hundred leagues, the which country hath been thoroughly destroyed, they executing still the self same practices, and others more barbarous and cruel.  
Of a verity from that day unto this present, there hath been destroyed and brought to desolation more souls than he hath counted: and they have with less reverence of GOD or the King, and with less plttie than before, abolished a great part of the lineage of mankind.  
They have slain unto this day in these same realms (and yet daily they do slay them) more than four millions of souls.  
Certain days passed, they pricked in shooting with darts of reeds to death a mighty Queen, wife of Eling, who is yet King of that Realm, whom the Spaniards by laying hands upon him compelled to rebel, and in rebellion he persisteth.  
They took the Queen his wife, and so as hath been said, slew her against all reason and justice, being great with child as she was, as it was said only to vex her husband withal.  
If it should be expedient to recount the particularities of the cruelties and slaughters that the Spanish have committed, and yet daily do commit in Peru: without all doubt they should be so frightful, and in so great number, that all that we have hitherto said of the other parts of the Indies, would be shadowed, and it would seem a small matter in the respect of the grievousness and great number hereof.   

Of the new realm of Grenado.  
WIthin the year 1539. there took their flight together sundry tyrants, flocking from Venesuela, from Saint Martha, and from Carthagene, to search for the Perous: and there were also others which came down from Peru itself to assay, to make a glade farther into the country: And they found from beyond S. Martha's and Carthagene, 300. leagues up into the country,, fertile lands, and admirable provinces, full of infinite people, kind hearted like the rest, and very rich, as well of gold as of precious stones, which they call emeralds.  
Unto the which Provinces they gave the name of New Grenado: For because that the tyrant which came first into this country, was a grenado, borne in our country. And for because that divers wicked men and cruel of those which roved over this part, were not orious butchers, making it as occupation to shed man's blood, having the practice and experience of the great felonies aforementioned in most part of the other regions of the Indies: it is the cause why their devilish works have been such, and in so great number, which the circumstances do make appear so monstrous and odious, that they have far exceeded the others, yea all the gests that have gone before, done by others, or by themselves in other Provinces.  
I will recount some one or other of an infinite whereof they are giultie, as done by them within these three years, and which yet they, cease not to commit. That is, that a Governor, for as much as he which rob and slew in the new Realm of Grenado, would not admit him for consort with him to rob and slay as did he: he procured an enquiry, and thereby evidence came in against him with sundry witnesses, upon the fact of his slaughters, disorders, and murders which he had done, and doth as yet unto this day, the process of which enquiry, together with the evidences was read, and is kept in the records of the counsel of the Indies.  
The witnesses do depose in the same enquiry, that the said whole realm was in peace, the Indians serving the Spaniards, giving them to eat of their labour, and labouring continually, and manuring the ground, and bringing them much gold and precious stones, such as are emeralds, and all that which they could and had: the towns, and the lordships, and the people being distributed amongst the Spaniards every one his share: which is all that they study for, for that, that it is their mean way to attain to their last end and scope, to wit gold,  
And all being subdued to their tyranny and accustomed bondage, the tyrant the principal Captain which commanded over that country, took the Lord and King of the country, and detained him prisoner six or seven months, exacting of him gold and emeralds without cause or reason at all. The said king, who was named Bogata, for fear which they put him in, said that he would give them an house full of gold: hoping that he should escape out of the hands of him which tormented him. And he sent Indians which should bring him gold, and by times one after an other, they brought in a great quantity of gold and precious stones. But bec ause the king did not give an whole house full of gold, the Spaniards did kill him: sethence that he did not accomplish that which he had promised.  
The tyrant commanding that this king should be arraigned before himself: They summon and accuse in this order the greatest king of all that country, and the tyrant giveth sentence, condemning him to be racked and tormented, if he do not furnish forth the house full of gold.  
They give him the torture and the strappado with cords: they fling burning sewe● upon his naked belly: they lay on bolts upon his feet, which were fastened to one stake, and gird his neck fast unto another stake, two men holding both his hands, and so they set fire unto his feet: and the tyrant, coming up and down, now and then, willeth him to have his death given him by little and little, if he made not ready the gold. Thus they dispatched and did to death that noble Lord in those torments, during the execution whereof, God manifested by a sign, that those cruelties displeased him, in consuming with fire all the town where they were committed. All the Spaniards to the end to follow their good Capataine, and having none other thing to do, but to hackle in pieces those poor innocents do the like, tormenting with divers and savage torments every Indian, both Cacike or Lord of every people or peoples, with all their flocks, that were committed to their charges: those said Lords with all their subjects serving them, and giving them gold and emerauds as many as they could, and as much as they had: Tormenting them only to the end they should give them more gold, and rich minerals: thus they broiled and dispatched all the Lords of that Country.  
For the great fear of the notorious cruelties, that one of the petty tyrants did unto the Indians, there transported himself unto the mountains, in flying so great cruelty, a great Lord named Daytama, with many of his people. For this they hold for their last remedy and refuge, if it might have prevailed them aught: and this the Spaniards call insurrection and rebellion. Which the Captain head tyrant having knowledge of he sendeth supply of soldiers unto the said cruel man: (for whose cruelties sake, the Indians that were peaceable, and had endured great tyrannies and mischiefs, were now gone into the mountains:) to the end he should pursue them. Who, because it sufficed not to hide them in the entrails of the earth, finding there a great multitude of people, slew and dispatched them, above 500 souls, what men, what women, for they received none to mercy. Also the witnesses depose, that the said Lord Daytaman, before that the Spaniards put him to death, came to the cruel man, and brought him four or five thousand Castillans, the which notwithstanding he was murdered as is above said.  
Another time many Indians being come to serve the Spaniards, and serving them with such humility and simplicity, as they are accustomed to do, reputing themselves assured: behold, the captain of the town where they served, who cometh by night commanding that those Indians should be put to the edge of the sword, when they had supped, and whiles that they were a sleep, taking their rest after the toil which they sustained the day time. And this he did, for that it seemed him necessary to do this massacre, to the end to engrave an awe of himself in the hearts of all the peoples of that country.  
Another time the captain commanded to take an oath of the Spaniards, to wit, how many every one had in his service of the Caciks, and principal Lords, and Indians of the meaner sort: that incontinent they should be brought to the most open place of the city, where he commanded that they should be beheaded: thus were there at that time put to death a four or five hundred souls.  
Moreover these witnesses depose concerning another of the petty tyrants, that he had exercised great cruelties in slaying, & chopping off the hands and noses of many persons, aswell men as women, and destroying very much people.  
Another time the captain sent the self same cruel man with certain Spaniards into the Province of Bogata, to be informed by the inhabitants what Lord it was, that was successor unto the chief Lord, whom he had made to die the cruel death in those torments spoken of before: Who running along the country throughout sundry places, took as many Indians as he could come by: And for that he could not learn of them, what he was that succeeded that Lord, he mangled off some hands, he bid cast others, men and women unto hungry mastiffs, who rend them in pieces. And in this manner have been destroyed very many Indies, and Indesses. One time at the fourth watch of the night, he went to overrun Caciks or governors of the land, with many of the Indians, which were in peace, and held themselves assured (for he had given them his faith, & assurance that they should receive no harm nor damage) upon credit whereof, they were come forth of their holes in the mountains, where they had been hid, to people the plain, in the which stood their city: thus being comen without suspicion, & trusting the assurance made, he took a great number, aswell men as women, and commanded to hold out their hands stretched against the ground, & himself with a woodknife cut of their hands, telling them that he did on them this chastisement, for that they would not confess, where their new Lord was, which had succeeded in the charge of government of the Realm,  
Another time for that the Indians gave him not a coffer full of gold, that this cruel captain required them: he sent men to war upon them: who cut off the hands and noses of men and women without number. They cast others before their dogs being hunger bitten, and used to the feat of feeding on flesh, the which dispatched and devoured them.  
Another time the Indians of that Realm perceiving, that the Spaniards had brent 3. or 4. of their principal Lords, they fled for fear up into a mountain, from whence they might defend themselves against their enemies so estranged from all humanity. There were of them by the testimony of the witnesses a four or five thousand Indians. This above said Captain sent a great and notable tyrant, which exceeded far most of those to whom he had given the charge to ransack and waste, together with a certain number of Spaniards, to the end that they should chastise the Indian rebels: as they would seem to make them for that they were fled from a pestilence & slaughter so intolerable: and as though it appertained unto them, to chastise and punish them as malefactors themselves in deed being worthy of all torment without that any body should have of them pity or compassion, being so devoid thereof, as appeareth by the handling of those poor innocents of that fashion. Well, so it is that the Spanish by force prevailed to get up to the mountain: for the Indians were naked without weapons. And the Spaniards cried peace unto the Indians: assuring them, that they would do them no harm: and that they of their parts should not war any longer. Straight way as the Indians stinted from their own defence, the vile cruel man sent to the Spaniards to take the forts of the mountain, and when they should get them to enclose within them the Indians. They set then like unto Tigers and Lions, upon these lambs so meek, and put them to the edge of the sword, so long that they were feign to breath and rest themselves. And after having rested a certain season, the captain commanded that they should kill and cast down from the mountain, the which was very high, the residue that were alive: that which was done. And these witnesses say, that they saw as it were a cloud of the Indians cast down from the mountain, to the number by estimation of seven hundredth men together, where they fell battered to pieces.  
And to achieve all his great cruelty, they searched all the Indians that were hid amongst the bushes: and he commanded to cut of their heads, at blocks ends: and so they siue them and cast them down the mountain: yet could not he content himself with those said things so cruel but that he would make himself a little better known, augmenting his horrible sins, when as he commanded that all the Indians men and women, which some private persons had taken alive (for every one in those massacres is accustomed to cull out some one or other mankind and womankind, to the end to become his servants) should be put into a strawen house, saving and reserving those, which seemed necessary to be employed in their service, and that there should be put to fire: thus were there burned forty or fifty. He caused the rest to be flung to the carrion kind dogs, which rend them in pieces, and devoured them.  
Another time the self same tyrant went to a City called Cotta, and took there a great number of Indians, and caused to be dismembered by his dogs, a fifteen or twenty Lords of the principal, and cut the hands of a great multitude of men & women: which said hands he hanged one by another on a pole, to the end the other Indians might see that, which he had done unto them. There were so hanged one by another threescore and ten pair of hands. He slysed off beside from many women and children their noses.  
No creature living and reasonable, is able to decipher the mischiefs and cruel dealings of this fellow, enemy of God. For they are without number, never otherwise heard of, nor seen: those, I mean, which he hath done in the land of Guatimala, and all about where he hath become, for there are a good many years passed, in the which he hath been professed in the mystery, to bereave that land, & those people.  
The witnesses say for a surcharge, that the cruel dealings & slaughters which have been committed, and are yet in the said Realm of new Grenado, by the captains themselves in person and by their consents given unto all the other tyrants, wasters, and weeders of the nature of man, which were in his company, and the which hath laid all the country wild & waste, are such and so excessive, that if his majesty do not take some order therein in some time (albeit that the slaughter and discomfiture of the Indians is done only to bereave them of their gold, the which they have none of, for they have surrendered all that which they had) they will in a short time make an end of them so in such sort, that there will be no more Indians to inhabit the land, but that it will remain in a wilderness without being manured.  
Nay, we must note here the cruel and pessilent tyranny of these cursed tyrants, how raging and devilish it hath been, that in the space of two or three years, sithence that this realm hath been first discovered (which as they say both those that have been there, and those which depose as witnesses, was the most peopled of inhabitants, as possibly might be any Country in the world,) they have razed and emptied it with slaughters, declaring themselves so far removed from pity, and the reverent fear of God and the Prince, that the opinion is, without the present succour of his Majesty, to stay these unnatural & devilish tyrannies, there will not remain as much as one man alive, & I verily believe it. For I have seen with mine own eyes that in these parts, they have destroyed and dispeopled in a small time, great countries.  
There are other great Provinces, which bound upon the said Realm, of new Grenado, which they call Popay an and Cali, and three or four others, which contain more than 500 leagues of ground, which they have destroyed and desolated in the same manner, as they have done others, robbing and slaying with torments, and the enormities afore spoken of. For the land is very fertile, and those that come from thence now daily, dot report, that it is a rueful thing to see so many goodly towns burned and said desolate, as they might behold passing up & down that way: so as there, where there was wont to be in one town a thousand or two thousand households, they have not found fifty, and the rest utterly ransacked and dispeopled. And in some quarters they have found two or three hundred leagues of land dispeopled and burned, & great cities destroyed. And finally, by that, that si thence into the Realms of Peru, of the Province side of Quito, are entered far into the Country sore and fell tyrants, as far as to the said Realm of Grenado, & of Popayan, & of Cali by the coast of Carthagene, and Araba, & other accursed tyrants of Carthagene have gone to assault Quito, and moreover, afterwards of the river side of S. john, which is on the south side, all the which have met to join hands together in this exploit: they have rooted out and dispeopled above six hundred leagues of land, with the loss of an infinity of souls, doing still the self same to the poor wretches that remain behind, howsoever innocent they appear to be.  
Thus then is the rule which I set down at the beginning, by them verified: that is, that the tyranny, rage, and ungraciousness of the Spanish, hath always proceeded increasing in their cruelty, unnaturalness, and mischivousnes amongst those so sweet lambs. That which is continued at this present day in those Provinces, amongst other their doings worthy the fire and torment, is this which followeth.  
After the ends of the slaughters and massacres of the wars, they bring the people into the horrible bondage above said, and give them to the commandment of Devils, to one an hundred Indians, to another three hundred. The cemmaunder Devil commandeth, that there come before him an hundred Indians, which incontinent present themselves like lambs. He causing a forty or fifty amongst them to have their heads cut off: saith unto the other there present, I will serve you of the same sauce, if you do not me good service, or if so be, that you go out of my sight without my leave.  
That for the honour of God, all they that have read this piece of work, or shall give it a reading, consider now, whether this act, so hideous, fell and unnatural, do not exceed all cruelty and iniquity, that may be imagined, and whether the Spaniards have any wrong offered them when a man calleth them Devils, & whether were better, to give the Indians to keep to the devils in hell, or the Spaniards which are at the Indies.  
After this I will rehearse another devilish part, the which I cannot tell whether it be less cruel & devoid of manhood, then are those of savage beasts: that is, that the Spanish which are in the Indies, do keep certain dogs most raging, taught and trained wholly to the purpose, to kill and rend in pieces the Indians. That let all those that are true christians, yea, and also those which are not so, behold, if ever there were the like thing in the whole world: that is, to feed those dogs, they led about with them wheresoever they go a great number of Indians in chains as if they were hogs, and kill them, making a shambles of man's flesh. And the one of them will say to another, Lend me a quarter of a villain, to give my dogs some meat, until I kill one next, altogether as if one should borrow a quarter of an hog or mutton. There be others which go forth a hunting in the morning with their curs, the which being returned to eat, if another ask him: How have ye sped to day, they answer, very well: for I have killed with my dogs to day, fifteen or twenty viliacoes. All these Diabolical doings, with others like have been proved in the suits of law, that the tyrants have had one of them against another. Is there any case more ugly or unnatural?  
I will here now deport me of this discourse, until such time, that there come other news of things, in ungraciousness more notorious and remarkable (if it so be, that there can be any more grievous) or until such time as we may return thither to behold them ourselves anew, as we behold them for the space of 42. years continually with mine own eyes: Protesting in a good conscience before God, that I do believe, and I hold it for certain, that the damages and losses are so great, with the destructions and overthrows of Cities, massacres and murders, with the cruelties, horrible and ugly, with the ravens, iniquities and robberies, all the which things have been executed amongst those people, and are yet daily committed in those quarters: that in all the things, which I have spoken and deciphered, as I was able the nearest to the truth: I have not said one of a thousand, of that which hath been done, and is daily a doing at this present, be it that you consider the quality, or be it, that ye consider the quantity.  
And to the end that all Christians have the greater compassion of those poor innocents, and that they complain with me the more their perdition and destruction, and that they detest the greediness, loftiness, and felnesse of the Spanish: that all do hold it for a most undoubted verity, with all that hath been above said, that since the first discovery of the Indies until now, the Indians never did harm unto the Spanish in any place wheresoever, until such time, that they first received wrongs and injuries, being rob and betrayed: but indeed did repute them to be immortal, supposing them to be descended from heaven, and they received them for such, until such time as that they gave it forth manifestly to be known by their doings, what they were, and whereto they tended.  
I will adjoin hereunto this, that from the beginning unto this hour, the Spaniards have had no more care to procure that unto those people should be preached the faith of jesus Christ, then as if they had been cur dogs, or other beasts: but in lain thereof, which is much worse, they have forbidden by express means the religious men to do it, for because that that seemed unto them an hindrance likely to be, to the getting of their gold, and these riches which their avarice foreglutted in. And at this day there is no more knowledge of God throughout the Indies, to wit, whether he be of timber, of the air, or the earth, than there was an hundred years ago, excepting ●ewe Spain, whether the religious men have gone, which is but a little corner of the Indies: and so are they perished, and do perish all without faith, and without sacraments.  
I brother Bartholomewe delas Casas or Casaus, religious of the order of S. Dominicke, which by the mercy of God am come into this court of Spain, to sew that the hell might he withdrawn from the Indes, and that these innumerable souls, redeemed by the blood of jesus Christ, should not perish for evermore without remedy, but that they might know their creator and be saved: also for the care and compassion that I have of my country, which is Castille, to the end that God destroy it not for the great sins thereof, committed against the faith and his honour, and against our neighbours: for certain men's sakes notably zealous of the glory of God, touched with compassion of the afflictions and calamities of others, followers of this court: howbeit, that I was purposed to do it, but I could not so soon have done it, because of my continual occupations, I achieved this treatise and summary at Valencia, the 8. of December, 1542. the force being mounted to the highest type of extremity, and all the violences, tyrannies, desolations, anguishes, and calamities above said, spread over all the Indies, where there are any Spaniards, although they be more cruel in one part than they be in an other, and more savage, and more abominable.  
Mexico and her confines are less evil entreated. In truth, there they can not execute their outrages openly, for that there and not elsewhere, there is some form of justice, as slender as it is. For because that there also they kill them with devilish tributes: I am in good hope, that the Emperor and King of I pain, our liege Sovereign Lord, done Charles the fift of that name, who beginneth to have understanding of the mischiefs and treasons that there have been, and are committed against those poor people, against the will of God, and his own, (for they have always cunningly concealed the truth from him) will root out those evils, and take some order for this new world that God hath given him, as unto one that leaveth and doth justice: whose honour and prosperous estate Imperial, God almighty vouchsafe to bless with long life, for the benefit of his whole universal Church, and to the salvation of his own royal soul. Amen.  
After having couched in writing the premises, I understood of certain laws and ordinances, which his Majesty hath made about this time at Barcellone, Anno. 1542. in the month of November, and the year following at Madrill: by the which ordinances, there is order set down, as the case them seemeth to require: to the end, to cut off the mischeieves and sins which are committed against God and our neighbours, tending to the utter ruin & perdition of this new world. His Majesty hath made these laws, after having held many assemblies of persons of authority, of learning and conscience, and after having had disputations and conferences in valladolid: and finally with the assent and advise of all those others which have given their advise in writing, and have been found nearest approaching unto the law of jesus Christ, and withal free from the corruption and foil of the treasures rob from the Indians: the which treasures have soiled the hands and much more the souls of many, over whom those treasures and avarice have got the mastery, and where hence hath proceeded the blinding, which hath caused so to mar all without remorse. These laws being published, the creatures of those tyrants, who then were at the court, drew out sundry copies thereof (for it grieved them at the hearts: for that it seemed them that thereby there was a door shut up unto them against their ravin and extortion afore rehearsed) and dispersed them into divers quarters of the Indies. Those which had the charge to rob, root out, and consume by their tyrannies, (even as they had never kept any good order but rather disorder, such as Lusifer himself might have held) as they read those copies before the new judges might come to execute their charge, knowing it (as it is said, and that very exediblie) by those who until this time have supported and maintained their crimes and outrages, to be likely that such execution should be used of those laws: they ran into a mutiny in such wise, as that when the good judges were come to do their duties, they advised with themselves (as those which had lost the fear and love of God) to cast off also all shame, and obedience which they own to the king, and so took unto them the name of open and arrant traitors, behaving themselves as most cruel and graceless tyrants: and principally in the realm of Peru, where presently this year 1442. are committed acts so horrible and frightful, as never were the like, neither in the Indies, nor in all the world beside, not only against the Indians, the which all or in a manner all are slain, all those regions being dispeopled: but also betwixt themselves by a just judgement of God, who hath permitted that they should be the butchers one of an other of them. By means of the support of this rebellion, none of all the other parts of this new world would obey those laws: But under colour of making supplication to his Majesty to the contrary, they have made an insurrection aswell as the others. For that it irketh them to leave their estates and goods which they have usurped, and to unbind the hands of the Indians, whom they detain in a perpetual captivity. And there where they cease to kill with the sword, readily and at the instant, they kill them a little and a little, by personal slaveries, and unjust charges and intolerable. That which the king could not hither unto let: for because that they all, great and little, rove and rob, some more, some less●▪ ●ome overtly, and some covertly, and under the pretence of serving the king: dishonour God, and rob the king.    

The Author his words farther to king Philip, then at the time of writing thereof, Prince of Spain.  
THat which followeth hereafter immediately: is a part of a Missive or letter sent, written by one, who himself was a party in these voyages: recounting the works the which a captain did, and consented to the doing in the country, all the way as he passed. And albeit so, that the said missive being put to binding in one book with other papers, the binder either forgot, or lost a leaf or two: notwithstanding, forasmuch as the said missive contained things fearful, even to astonishment, the which one of them that had done them had given me: and that I had them all in my keeping: I thought good to present you therewithal, such as it is now, though without beginning or ending. For that this fragment remaining of the whole, is full of notable points: and therefore being resolved that it should be so printed, trusting that it will cause no less compass on and horror in your highness mind, than the other matters afore mentioned, with a desire forthwith to provide for the redress.  
The Missive.  
He gave licence to put them to the Chain and in bondage: That which they did: and the Captain led after him three or four droves of these persons enchained: and in this doing, he procured not that the country should be inhabited and peopled (as had been convenient should have been done) but robbing from the Indians all their victuals they had, the inbornes of the country were reduced to such an extremity, that there were found great numbers dead of famine in the high ways. And the Indians coming and going too and fro the coast, laden with the carriage of the Spaniards, he was the death by these means of about ten thousand. For not one that arrived at the very coast escaped death: by reason of the excessive heat of the country.  
After this following the same tract and way, by the which john of Ampudia was gone, he sent the Indians which he had purchased in Quito, a day before him, to the end they should discover the bourges of the Indians, and should pillage them, that when he came with his meinie, he might find his booty ready.  
And those Indians were his own mates: of the which such a one had two hundred, such a one three hundred, and such a one a hundred: according to the haggage that every one of them had: which Indians came to yield themselves to their masters with all that they had rob. At doing whereof they committed great cruelties toward young children and women: and so had he used before to do in Quito, in burning the whole country, and namely the garners where the Lords kept their Mahis in provision.  
He suffered to be done great outrages, in slaying the sheep with the which they nourished and entertained for the most part, both the Spanish, and the natural inhabitants of the country. And only to have the brains and the suet he permitted that there should be killed two or three hundred wethers, of the which the flesh was fain to be cast away. And the Indians friends to the Spaniards, and the which went with the Spaniards, only to eat the sheeps hearts, killed a great number, for as much as they eat none other thing.  
And two men in one province, named Purua, killed 25. wethers and sheep fit for carriage like our horse, & the which were worth amongst the Spaniards twenty, and five and twenty ducats a piece, only to have to eat the brains, and the suet. So as by this disorder of exceeding slaughter of beasts, have been lost above an hundred thousand head of cattle. By occasion whereof also, the country came into a great necessity: the native of the land miserably dying of famine. And Quito, which was furnished of so great store of Mahis, that it can not be well spoken, was by this means so assaulted with famaine, that a strike or bushel of Mahis, was raised to the prize of 10. ducats, and a sheep to as much.  
After that the said Captain was returned from the coast, he determined to departed from Quito, and to go seek the Captain john de Ampudia, leaving thereto more than two hundred of foot men and horse men, amongst whom were a great many inhabitants of the city of Quito. Unto those inhabitants the captain gave licence to carry with them the Cacikes, that were escheated them in sharing, with as many Indians as they would. That which they did: and Alfonso Sanches Nuita carried forth with him his Cacike, with more than an hundred Indians besides: and in like manner Peter Cibo and his cousin: and they led out more than an hundred and fifty with their wives: and sundry also sped out their children, because that in a manner every one died for hunger. Also Moran inhabitant of Popaian, carried out more than two hundred persons. And the like did all the rest, citizens and soldiers, every one after his ability: the soldiers craving that they might have licence given them to captive those Indians men and women, which they carried forth: the which was granted unto them until the death of the said captives, and those deceased, to take as many more: for if the Indians were subjects of his Majesty, so likewise were the Spaniards that died in the wars as well as they.  
And after this manner departed the said Captain of Quito, going to a city called Otaba, the which he held at that hour for his share: and demanded of the Cacike, that there should be given him five hundred men to lead to the wars: which were given him with certain principal persons of the Indians. He departed some of those people amongst his soldiers, and led forth the rest with him, some laden, and some chained, and some unbound to serve him, and to bring him meat.  
Thus carried he his soldiers some pinioned in chains, and some in cords. When they departed out of the Province of Quito, they carried out more than six thousand Indians, men and women, and of all those there never returned home into their country twenty persons. For they died all through the great and excessive travel, which they made them endure in those br●●ling countries contrary to their nature. It happened at that time that one Alfonso Sanches, whom the said Captain sent for chieftain over a certain number of men into a Province there, met with a good company of women, and young boys laden with victuals: who stayed waiting for them without moving from the place to give them of that which they had, and having so done, the captain commanded that they should be put to the sharp of the sword. There happened here a mayvailous thing: which was, that a soldier striking an Indesse woman, his sword broke a two in the midst, at the first blow, and at the second blow there remained nought in his hands, but the pommel hauft without that the woman was hurt. And an other soldier, willing to strike another Indesse woman, with asquare dagger he had, the dagger broke at the first chop, the length of four fingers, and at the second, there remained unto him no more save the hauft.  
At the same time the said Captain yeeded forth of Quito, and drew out a great number of the natural inbornes, unmarriing them, and giving their young wives unto his Indians whom he led along, and the others wives he gave to others which remained in the city, for that they were too old.  
There followed out of Quito a woman with a little child in her arms, crying after him, and entreating him, that her husband might not be forced to go with him, for that she had three little children, the which she could not nourish but were ready to die for hunger:  
And as the Captain gave her a churlish answer at her first suit, she returned the second time with greater cries, saying, that her children died for hunger.  
And seeing that the Captain gave her the repulse, and that he would not restore her, her husband: she beat the child's head against the stones, and slew it.  
It came to pass also, that at the time that the said Captain came into the province of Lili, to a town called Palo near unto the great river, where he found the Captain john de Ampudia, which was gone before to discover, and pacify the country: the said Ampudia kept a city by him provided of a garrison in the name of his majesty, and of the marquess Francis of Pizarro: and had set over them for governors ordinary, one Petre Solano of Quennoves, and 8. counsellors, & all the rest of the country was in peace & shared out amongst them. And as he knew that the said captain was in the said river, he came to see him with a great number of the inhabitants of the country, and peaceful Indians, laden with victuals and fruits. Shortly after also all the neighbour Indians came to see him, bringing him food. There were the Indians of Xamundi, and of Palo, and of Soliman, and of Bolo.  
Now because that they brought no Mahis which he would have, he sent a great number of Spaniards with their Indians, to go search for Mahis: commanding them to bring some wheresoever they found any. So went they to Bolo, and to Palo, and found the Indians men and women in their housen in peace: and the said Spaniards with those that were with them, took them and rob their Mahis, their gold and coverings, and all that they had, and bound many.  
The Indians seeing that they entreated them so evil, went to complain unto the said Captain, requesting that all which had been bereft them, might be restored them: But the Captain would restore them none, and forbid them to come at him any more. Notwithstanding four or five days after the Spaniards eftsoons return to fetch Mahis, and to pillage the Indians native of the soil as before time. Wherefore, they seeing that the Captain kept no faith with them: all the Country arose and revolted from the Spanish, whereof ensued great damage, and GOD and the king's majesty offended: and by this means the country remained dispeopled: for that the Olomas & the Manipos their enemies which are mountain people, & warlike, descended daily to take and rob them, when they perceived the city and places of their abode left destitute. And amongst them, he who was the stronger, did eat up his fellow, for all died for famine. This done, the captain came to the city of Ampudia, where he was received for general, and seven days after from thence he departed to go towards the harbour of Lili and Peti, with more than two hundred horsemen and footmen. After this, that said is, the said chief governor sent his captains of one side and other, to bid cruel battle to the native Indians: staying a great number of them as well men as women: burning also their houses, and spoiling their goods. This endured a good many days. And the said captain was gone towards a city named Ye, withal the Indians whom they had taken in Lili, without releasing any one: and being come to the said Ye, he sent incontinent Spaniards to pillage, take and stay all the Indians men and women, that they could take: thus they burned more than an hundred. From this place they go to a City called Tukilicui, from whence the Cacike of the place yeeded forth incontinent in peace, a number of Indians going before him. The captain demanded gold of him and of his Indians. The Cacik told him that he had but a small deal, and that which he had should be given him: & immediately all began to give him all that they had. Whereupon the said captain gave unto every of them a ticket, with the name of the said Indian for a testimonial that he had given him gold: affirming that he which should have never a ticket, should be cast to the dogs to be devoured, because he gave him no gold. Whereupon the Indians for fear that they were put in, gave him all the gold that they were able: & those which had none fled into the mountains and other towns for fear to be slain. By reason whereof perished a great number of the native inhabitants of the country. And shortly after the said captain commanded the Cacike to send two Indians to another city named Dagna, to will them that they should come in peace, and bring him gold in abundance abundance. And coming to another city, he sent that night many Spaniards to take the Indians, and namely of Tulilicui. So as they brought the next morrow above an hundred persons: and all those which could bear burdens, they took them for themselves, and for their soldiers, and put them to the chain, whereof they died all. And the said captain gave the little children unto the said Cacik Tulilicui that he should eat them: and in truth the skins of those children are kept in the house of the said Cacik Tulilicui full of ashes: and so departed he from thence without an interpreter, and went towards the Provinces of Calile, where he joined himself unto the captain john de Ampudia, who had sent him to discover another way, doing both of them great outrages, and much mischief unto the inhabitants of the country where they became. And the said john de Ampudia came unto a City, the Cacik and Lord whereof called Bitacur had caused to make certain ditches to defend himself, and there fell into the same two horses, the one of Antony Rodondos, the other of Marc Marquesis. That of Marcos Marquis died, the other not. For which cause the said Ampudia commanded to take all the Indians men and women that might be: And thereupon took & laid together more than an hundred persons, whom they cast alive into those ditches and slew them, and brent withal more than an hundred houses in the said city. And in that manner met in a great City, where without summoning (the Indians being at peace, and without any spokesman to go between them,) they slew with their spears a great number of them, making on them mortal war. And as it is said, soon after they were met, the said Ampudia told the Captain what he had done in Bitaco, and how he cast so many into the ditches: and the said captain answered, that it was well done, and that he for his part had done as much at the river of Bamba when he entered the same, which is in the Province of Quito, and that he had flung into the ditches more than two hundred persons, and there they stayed warring on all the country. Soon after he entered into the Province of Bitu, or Anzerma: in making cruel war with fire and blood till they came as far as unto the salt houses. And from thence he sent Francis Garcia before him to pillage, who made cruel war on the natural inhabitants of the Country as he had done before him. The Indians came unto him two and two, making signs, that they demanded peace on the behalf of the whole Country: alleging that they would afford him, all that he could reasonably demand, were it gold, or women, or victuals, only that they would not kill them, as indeed it was a troth. For themselves afterwards confessed it to be so. But the said Francis Garcia, bid them get them packing: Telling them moreover that they were a sort of drunkards, and that he under stood them not, and so returned he to the place where the said Captain was, and they made a complot, to overrun all the Province, making cruel war on all the Country, in spoiling, robbing, and slaying all: and with the soldiers, which he brought with him drew thence more than two thousand souls, and all those died in the chain. Before departing the place which he had peopled, they slew more than five hundred persons. And so returned to the Province of Calili. And by the way if any Ind or Indesse were weary, in such sort that they could not pass any further, they did incontinently head them, paring it off from the shoulders even with the chain, to the end not to take the pains to open the lock thereof: and to the end that others which went the same way should not make wise to be sick, and by this means died they all: and in the high ways were left all those people which he made his purchase of out of Quito, & of Pasto, and of Quilla Cangua, and of Para, and of Popayan, and of Lili, and of Cali, and of Anzerma, and a great number of people died. Also immediately upon their return unto the great City, they entered into it, staying all that they could: taking in that day more than three hundredth persons.  
He sent from the Province of Lili, the said Captain john de Ampidia, with very many soldiers unto the lodgings and peopled places of Lili: to the end that they should take all the Indes and Indesses they could: And that they should bring them unto him to serve for loading: for because that all those which he brought him before time from Anzerma & from ali, were dead, which were great numbers. And the said john de Ampudia brought more than a thousand persons, and siue very many. The captain thus took as many as he needed to serve his turn, and gave the rest unto the soldiers, which confined them to the chain in which they died. So dispeopling the said city of Spaniards and inbornes of the country, both in so great a number, as appeareth by the fewness of the folk, that are remanent: he departed thence to go to Popayan, & left in the way a spaniard named Martin Aguirr, who was not able to follow the rest. And being come to Popayan, he placed there a garrison, and began to root out and rob those Indians there, in the order that he had kept elsewhere. And he erected there a mint royal, melting all the gold he could come by, with all that, that john de Ampudia had before he came unto him, and without keeping any other audit or reckoning, and without giving any part to any soldier, taking the whole to his own use, except a little as came in his head to give unto such as had lost their horses. And this done, bereaving the king's Majesty of his fift part, said he went to Custo, there to give in his account and audit unto the governor. But in deed he went to Quito, taking by the way very many Indians, men and women, which all died by the way, or at the place at Quito. Over and beside that, he altered the coin royal of the mint, which he had made. Here is to be remembered a word, which this man spoke of himself, as one not ignorant of so many evils and mischiefs, which he wrought. Fifty years hence, those the which shall pass by this way, and here speak of these things, shall say, This way went a Tyrant  
Your highness may know and be well assured, that these entries and assaults made unto these realms, and this manner of visiting the Indians, which lived in security in their regions, and the ungraciousness which he did in those same, have been practised and executed by the Spaniards, which have always followed the same train and manner of doing, from the time that they first began to discover unto this present day, throughout all the I●de●.   

To the Reader.  
AMong divers the remedies by Friar de lat Casas Bishop of the royal town called Chiapa, propounded in the assembly of sundry prelate's named Parsons, by his majesties commandment gathered together in the town of Valladolid the year of our Lord 1542 for order and reformation to be observed in the Indies: the eight in order was this ensuing, which consisteth upon twenty reasons & motions, whereupon he did conclude, That the Indies ought not to be given to the Spaniards in Commendam, fee farm, or vasselage, neither under any other title whatsoever: if his majesty will according to his desire ease them of such tyrannies and losses as they do sustain, delivering them as it were out of the Dragon's throat: lest they do wholly consume and slay them, & so all that world remain desert & void of the natural me habitants, wherewith we have seen it replenished.  
THe eight remedy, is among all other principal and most in force, as without which all the rest are to no purpose, for that they all have relation thereunto, as every motion to his proper end, in whatsoever toucheth or is of any importance unto your Majesty, which no man can express: in as much as thereupon dependeth at the least the whole loss or preservation of the Indies. And the remedy that I speak of is this, that your Majesty do determine, decree, con●●d, & solemnly in your sovereign courts ordain by pragmatical sanctions & royal statutes that all the Indies as well already subdued, as heerea●●●● to be subdued, may be inserted, reduced, and incorporate into the royal crown of Castille & Leon, to be holden in chief of your majesty as free subjects & vassals, as they are. Likewise that they be not given in commendan unto the Spaniards: but that it stand as an inviolable constitution, determination and royal law, that they never, neither at this time, neither hereafter in time to come, may be alienated or taken from the said royal crown, neither that they be given, commanded, demised in see farm, by depost, commandment or alienation, either under any other title or manner what soever, and be dismembered from the royal crown, for any whatsoever the service or desert of any, either upon any necessity that may happen, or for any cause or colour whatsoever that may be pretended. For the inviolable observation, or establishment of which law, your majesty shall formally swear by your faith, and on your word and royal crown, and by all other sacred things, whereby Christian Princes do usually swear, that at no time neither yourself, neither your successors in these 10. Dominions, or in the Indies so fair as in you shall he, shall revoke the same: and you shall further set down in express words in your royal will and testament, that this decree be ever kept, maintained, and upholden: also that so far as in yourself or in them shall lie, they shall confirm and continue the same: And for porofe of the necessity hereof, there be twenty reasons to be alleged: out of which twenty we have drawn and put in writing so many as may seem to serve to our purpose.  

Extract out of the second reason.  
THe Spaniards through their great avarice and covetousness to get, do not permit any religious persons to enter into their towns and holds which they possess, alleging that they receive double loss by them. One and the principal is, that religious persons do keep the Indieses occupied when they gather them togethar to their Sermons, so as in the mean time their work is omitted, while the Indians being 〈◊〉, laboure●: yea, it hath so fallen out, that the Indians being in the Church at the Sermon, the spaniard coming in in the face of all the people, hath taken fifty, or a hundred, or so many as he hath needed to carry his baggage and stuff, and such as would not go, he hath l●den with stripes spurning them forth with his feet, thereby to the great grief both of the Indians and of the 〈…〉 persons troubling & molesting all that were present, & so defeating them all of the benefit of their salvation. Their other hindrance that they say they do sustain, is, that after the Indians are taught & become Christians, they take upon them as masters, pretending more knowledge than they have, & therefore will not be so serviceable as afore.  
The Spaniards require no more of the Indians but authority to command them, and that they worship them as Gods.  
The Spaniards openly and of set purpose, do hinder the course of the gospel, and keep the Indians from Christendom.  
Sometime it falleth so out, that a town or borrow is given between three or four Spaniards, to one more, to another less, so as sometime one hath for his portion the husband, another the wise, and the third the children as they were swine. Thus do they possess the Indians. One appointeth them to labour a piece of land: another sendeth them to the mines loaden like beasts: another hireth them by two and two as they were moils to carry burdens thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred or two hundred miles out right. And this have we seen to be a daily use: hereof cometh, it that the Indians cannot hear God's word, or be instructed in Christian faith: they make them of free men very strange bondslaves. They have subverted and dispersed great towns, and a whole world of people, so as they have not left any houses standing together, no not so much as the children with the fathers. The Spaniards make no more account, neither have any more regard of converting the Indians, then if all those reasonable souls should perish with the bodies, and were not hereafter to receive immortal life, glory, or pain, no more than beasts.   

Out of the third reason.  
THe Spaniards are charged to instruct the Indians in our holy catholic saith: whereupon on a time when we examined john Colmenere of S. M●r●he, a fantastical ignorant, and foolish man, who had gotten a great town in commendam, and had a charge of souls, he could not 〈◊〉 how to bless himself: and ask him what doctrine he taught the Indians committed to his charge, he said, he gave them to the devil: also that it was enough for him to say Per signim sanctin Cruces. How can the Spaniards that travail to the Indies, how noble or valiant so ever they be, have any care of the souls, when the most of them are ignorant of their Creed and ten commandments, & know not the matters pertaining to their own salvation, neither do travail to the Indies for any other purpose but to satisfy their own desires and covetous affections, being for the most part vicious, corrupt, unhonest, and disordinate persons: so as he that would way them in an equal balance, & compare them with the Indians, should find the Indians without comparison, more virtuous and holy than them. For the Indians what infidels soever they be, do nevertheless keep them to one and their own wife, as nature and necessity teacheth, and yet we see some spaniard have fourteen or more, which Gods commandements do forbid. The Indians devour no man's goods, they do no man wrong: they do not vex, trouble, or slay any, where themselves do see the Spaniards commit all sins, iniquities, and treacheries, that man can commit against all equity and justice, To be brief, the Indians do not believe any thing, but do mock at all that is showed them of God, being in truth fully rooted in this opinion of our God, that he is the worst, the most unjust and the most wicked of all Gods, because he hath such servants: also concerning your majesty, they think you the most unjust and cruel of all kings, because you do both send thither and keep here such evil subjects, supposing that your majesty doth feed upon human flesh and blood. We know these things to be very new and strange to your highness, but yet there they be very usual and ancient. Many like matters which with our eyes we have seen might we speak of, but they would be offensive to your majesties ears, and would beside fear men, forcing them to wonder that ever God stayed so long from plaguing Spain in the bottomless pit. This title, to give the Indians to the Spaniards in commedan, was never invented to any other end but only to find occasion to bring them into bondage. One Spaniard being Lord, or having the charge of some town or village, will do more harm by his example and wicked life, than a hundred good religious persons can do good by edifying or converting.   

Out of the fourth reason.  
THe Spaniards having authority to command, or particular interest in the Indies, can not by reason of their great covetousness abstain from afflicting, troubling, disquieting, vexing, or oppressing the Indians, taking away their goods, lands, wives, or children, and using among them many other kinds of iniquity, for the which they can have no redress, sanction, or warrant at your majesties chief justice, because the Spaniards do make them afraid: yea sometimes do kill them, lest they should complain, as we have had certain notice: and thereupon it is evident, that they can have no rest or quiet, to tend to matters pertaining God, but do sustain a thousand lets, anguishes, torments, sorrows, afflictions, heavinesses, and cares, hating your Majesty, and abhorring God's law, which they find so heavy, bitter, and intolerable: as also your majesties yoke and dominion so insupportable, tyrannous, worthy to be rejected and cast off, that they curse God and fall into desperation, attributing to him all the aforesaid evils, because that under the colour and title of his law, they do receive such mishaps, which he doth bear withal, and doth not correct or chastise those which boasting to be his servants, do put them to all this. They do night and day mourn after their gods, thinking them to be better than ours at whom they sustain such harms, while contrary wise of their own they reap there so many commodities: and there is nothing that troubleth them so much as the Christians.   

Out of the fifth reason.  
WE can show to your Majesty, that the Spaniards have within 38. or 40. years slain of just account, above 1●. Millions of your subjects. I will not say how mightily this world of people might have multiplied. This country being the fertilest, whether for cattle, or mankind, that is in the world: the foil being for the most part, more temperate and favourable to humane generation. All these innumerable 〈◊〉, and all these people have the Spaniards slain, to the end to 〈◊〉 sway, govern, & command over the rest & when in injust wars they have slain them, then do they use the rest who 〈◊〉 ●aue withstood them, in drawing gold & silver, yoking them together like beasts, to make them carry their burdens, 〈…〉 burdening them withal that they can gain, and 〈…〉 one to them, so that they may 〈…〉 but the truth, and yet do leave out much unspoken o● th●t 〈◊〉 world knoweth: and whosoever would otherwise persuade your Majesty, or would endeavour to excuse those offences, we will even by force of the truth, dr●ue him to knowledge 〈…〉 guilty of treason, & that he is partaker in these murders & robberies committed in the Indies, or else 〈◊〉 so to be.  
What plague of pestilence, or mortality could there have fallen from heaven that had been able to consume or make waist about 2500 leagues of flat country replenished with people, and would not have left either travailer or inhabitant?   

Out of the sixth reason.  
THe Spaniards only for their temporal commodity, have blemished the Indies with the greatest infamy, that any man even among the most horrible and villainous persons in the world, could be charged withal, & whereby they have sought to take them out of the degree of mankind: namely that they all were polluted with the abominable sin against nature: which is a wretched and false slander. For in all the great Iles. Hispaniola, S. Io●●, Cuba, & Lama●●a: Also in the 60. Isles of 〈◊〉 which 〈…〉 inhabited with an infinite number of people, the same was never thought upon, or once mentioned, as ourselves 〈…〉 who made diligent inquisition & search, ever from the beginning. Moreover, through all Peru, there is no such 〈◊〉 neither is there any one Indian thoughout the whole realm that crime, neither generally throughout all the Indies saving that in some other part there is a voice of a few: for whose 〈…〉 all that world is not to be 〈◊〉. We may say as much of the eating of man's flesh, which likewise those places that I have named are free of: although that in other places they do it in deed. They be also charged with their idolatry, as if for being idolaters, men should take upon them to punish them, & not refer them to God only, against whom they sin, whiles they have both lands & dominions several to themselves, which they hold not of any other than their natural Lords: besides that our ancestors were also idolaters before the faith was preached unto them, & that all the world was gathered to Christ. The Spaniards have purposely, & effectually hindered the teaching of the law of God and jesus Christ: with all other virtues among the Indians, & driven away the religious persons out of towns and fortresses, lest they should see and disclose their tyrannies: yea, they have by their evil example, infected & corrupted the Indians, teaching them many odious behaviours and vices, which before they knew not, as blaspheming the name of jesus Christ, practising of usury, lying, & many other abominations wholly repugnant to their nature. Again, to commit the Indians to the Spaniards, or to leave them in their hands, is undoubtedly as much as to give or leave them to these that will destroy & bring them to nought, as well in body as soul.  
The Spaniards having fraudulently persuaded K. Ferdinand, he suffered the Indians to be transported out of the Isles of Lucayos into Hispaniola, and so contrary to all reason, either natural or divine, dispossessed them of their own houses and lands, whereby there perished above 50000. souls: so as in above 50. Isles, whereof some were greater than the isle of Canary, which before were replenished with people man Ant heap, afterward there were to be found not above eleven persons as ourselves can testify. To let your Majesty 〈…〉 dealing of the inhabitants of the said 〈…〉 the slaughters, cruelties, and spoils that 〈◊〉 Spaniards, these good christians made among them, 〈…〉 make your royal ears to gloe, and your 〈…〉, and to yourself to departed. That the Spaniards have warred upon the Indians, that they have killed them, taken away their wives, children, 〈◊〉, and kindred. also that they have rob them of all their goods, is already sufficiently proved, as also the country being utterly dispeopled and desert, doth show it: the world crieth out upon it: the Angels do bewail it, and God himself doth daily teach it us by the great punishments that he layeth upon us.   

Out of the seventh reason.  
THe Spaniards do suck from the Indians the whole substance of their bodies, because they have nothing el●e in their houses. They make them spit blood: They exhibit them to all dangers: They lay upon them sundry and intolerable travails: and more than all this, They load them with torments, beatings, and sorowing: To be brief, they spoil and consume a thousand manner of ways.  
To put the Indians into the Spaniards hands, is, to give the child's throat to a frantic and mad man when he hath the razor in his hand: or it is as much as to deliver men into the power of the furious or capital enemies, who long time have very desirously waited to put them to death. It is as a man should commit a fair young virgin to the guiding of a young man snared, transported, and doting in her love, whereby she should be spoiled and deflowered, unless she were miraculously preserved. To be brief, it were as good to throw them among the horns of wild Bulls, either to deliver them unto hunger starved Wolves, Lions, and Tigers, and as much good should they get by any laws, precepts, or threats made to the said hungry beasts, for the forbidding of them to devour them, as much do we say and affirm will any laws, threats, or precepts, stay the Spaniards, when they have authority over the Indians from murdering them for their gold. Yea by great and long experience that we have, we do certify our highness, that notwithstanding you should command to set up a G●bbet before every Spaniards gate, and swear by your Crown, that for the first Indian that should be miss or slain, you would have them all hanged, yet would they not for fear thereof abstain from slaying the Indians, in case your Majesty should grant or give them supreme power and authority over them, or otherwise howsoever.   

Out of the eight reason.  
BEsides all that the Indians do endure in serving and pleasing the spaniard, there is yet a butcher or cruel hangman, to keep them in awe appointed in every town and place, and is termed Estanciero or Calpisque: who hath authority to lay his claws upon them, and to make them labour, and do what the Lord Commander, or chief thief will. So as if in hell there were no other torment, yet were this incomparable. This hangman whippeth them, he ladeth them with stripes, he basteth them with scalding grease, he afflicteth them with continual torments and traveles, he forceth & deflowereth their daughters and wives, dishonouring and abusing them: he devoureth their hens which are their greatest treasure, not because themselves do eat them, but that of them they offer presents and service to their greatest Lord and chief tyrant: he vexeth them with innumerable other torments and griefs: & lest they should complain of so many injuries and miseries, this tyrant putteth them in fear, saying: that he will accuse them, and say that he see them commit idolatry. To be brief, they must please and content above twenty disordinate and unreasonable persons: so as they have four Lords and masters. Your Majesty, their Cacique, him that hath them in commendam, and the Estanciero of whom I last spoke, which Estanciero is to them more grievous to bear then a quintal of lead, among which we may also in truth add all the Mochachos and Mores, that do serve the commander and master, for they all do molest, oppress, and rob these poor people.   

Out of the tenth reason.  
IT is greatly to be feared, lest God will lay Spain desolate, even for those horrible sins that this nation hath committed in the Indies, whereof we do evidently behold the scourge, and all the world doth see & confess that already it hangeth over our heads, where with God doth afflict & show that he is highly offended in those parts through the great destruction and waist of those nations, in that of so great treasures as have been transported out of the Indies into Spain (the like quantity of gold and silver, neither K Solomon, neither any other worldly prince ever had, saw, or heard of) there is none left, besides that of that that was here before the Indies were discovered, there is now none to be found, no never a whit. Hereof it cometh that things are thrice dearer than they were, the poor that have want do suffer great miseries: and your majesty can not dispatch matters of great importance.   

Out of the eleventh reason.  
SO long as Lares bore sway and ruled, that was ix. years, there was no more care of teaching or bringing the Indians to salvation, neither was there any more labour employed, or once thought of, to that purpose, then if they had been trees, stones, dogs, or cats. He wasted great towns and fortresses, he gave to one Spaniard 100 Indians, to another fifty, to another more or less, as every man was in liking or favour, and as it pleased him to grant. He gave children, & old men, women with child, and in childbed, men of countenance and commons, the natural Lords of the towns and countries, he parted them among those to whom he wished most wealth and commodity, using in his letters of command this speech following: To you such a man, are given so many Indians with their Cacique, them to use in your mines and affairs. So as all, great and small, young and old, that could stand on their feet, men, women with child, or in childbed, one or other, travailed and wrought so long as they had any breath in their bodies. He gave leave to take away married men, and to make them draw gold, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or eighty leagues, or farther. The women remained in farm houses and granges, in great labours about gathering of great heaps for the making of the bread that they do eat, which is, to heap together the earth which they do dig, and raise four handful high, and twelve foot square, that is a giants labour, namely to dig the hard earth, not with mattocks or shovels, but with In other places they spin cotton, and do such other work, as are most meet for gain and raising of coin, so that the man and wife should not see one another in 8. or 10. months or a whole year. And at their meeting they were so worn with labour and hunger, that they had no mind of cohabitation, whereby their generation ceased, & their poor children perished, because the mothers through hunger and travail had no milk wherewith to nourish them: This was a cause that in the isle of Cuba, one of us being there, there perished in the space of three months for hunger 7000, children, some desperate women strangled and killed their own children, others finding themselves with child, did eat certain herbs thereby to lose their fruit, so that the men died in the mines, the women perished in the farm houses, their whole generation in a short space decayed, and all the country lay desolate. The said governor, to the end without release to keep them in continual labour, still gave them away, and yet besides their great labours he suffered them rigorously, & very austerely to be misused. For the Spaniards that had them in command, appointed certain hangmen over them, some in the mines whom the termed Miniero, other in the farms, that were called Estanciero: unnatural and pitiless persons that beat them with slaves and cords, boxing them, pricking them with needles, and still calling them dogs: neither did they ever show any sign of humanity or clemency, but all their dealings did consist of extreme severity, rigour, and bitterness, so as in troth it might be thought great cruelty so to entreat or govern the very moors, being the cruelest of all others, for all the damage that they have done to the Christians: where the Indians are more treatable, courteous gentle, and obedient, than any other nation in the world. Farther, when because of these Estancieroes and Minieros, together with such labours as they put them unto, some of them fled into the mountains, as making full account to be killed, the Spaniards chose certain officers whom they termed Alguazil del Campo, that should pursue and hunt them out of the mountains.  
The governor had also in the Spanish towns and forts, certain of the most honourable and principal persons about him whom he called Visitors, unto whom also besides their other ordinary portions that he had given them, he gave in respect of their offices 100 Indians to serve them. These in the towns were the greatest executioners, as being more cruel than the rest, before whom Athuaziles del campo brought all such as had been taken in this chase. The accuser, he that had them in command, was present, and accused them, saying: This Indian or those Indians are dogs, & will do no service, but do daily run to the mountains, there to become loiterers & vagabonds: And therefore required they might be punished. Then the visitor with his own hands bound them to a pale, & taking a pitched cord, in the Galleys called an Eel, which is as it were an iron rod, gave them so many stripes, & bet them so cruelly, that the blood running down divers parts of their bodies, they were left for dead. God is witness of the cruelties committed among those lambs: I am persuaded that of the thousand part I can not rehearse one, neither can any other tell it as it ought. The labour that they were put unto, was to draw gold, whereto they had need have men of iron. For they must turn the mountains 1000 times upside down, digging and hewing the rocks, and washing, and cleansing the gold itself in the rivers, where they shall continually stand in the water until they burst, and rend their bodies even in pieces. Also when the Mines peradventure do flow with water, then must they also besides all other labours, draw it out with their arms. To be brief, the better to comprehend the labour that is employed about gathering gold and silver, it may please your Majesty to consider, that the heathen Emperors (except to death) never condemned the Martyrs to greater torments, then to mining for metal: sometimes they were kept a whole year at the mines: but afterward perceiving how many perished there, they decreed that they mine for gold but five months, which was forty days in melting, during which time they took some rest.  
And what was their rest? They during those forty days, made heaps of that which they should eat, that is, they digged the earth, and cast it on heaps as is aforesaid, which labour doth exceed, dressing of vines, or tilling of the earth. Throughout the year they never knew holiday, neither might be suffered from labour little or much. Besides that during all this toil, they never had sufficient food, no not of Cacabi which is the common country bread, and being made of roots doth but smally nourish except there be some fish or flesh to eat withal. Moreover, they gave them of that country pepper, and Aies, which be roots like unto navetes, roasted or sodden. But some spaniard, peradventure meaning to seem liberal in their diet would weekly kill a hog for 50. Indians, whereof the Aliniero would consume two quarters, and part the other two among the Indians, giving daily to every man as great a piece as the jacekins do give of holy bread in their Churches. Some there were that through nigardliness wanting meat to give them, would send them two or three days abroad into the fields and mountains, to feed where they might satisfy themselves with such fruit as hang on the trees, and then upon the force of that which they brought in their guts, would force them to labour two or three days more without giving than any one morsel to eat. For the love of God therefore, let your Majesty think what substance or strength those bodies naturally so delicate and feeble, and now almost consumed and oppressed with these travails, could gather of this food: also how it were possible for those that lived so sorrowful, heavy and woeful alive, in such labour without food should live long. The governor commanded they should be paid their day wages and expenses for any labour or service that they should do to the spaniard, and their wages was three blanks every two days, which in the year amounted to half a Castelin, that is worth 225 marvedis: wherewith they might buy a Comb, a looking glass, and a pair of blue or green beads. Yea, many years they had nothing at all paid them, but hunger and stripes did so abound, that the Indians regarded none of this, neither sought any more but even once to get a good meals meat, or to die for all, as wishing to forsake so desperate a life. He deprived them of their liberty, suffering the Spaniards to keep them in such bitter bondage and prison as no man that had seen it, would or could once think for: not leaving them any thing in this world free to use at their pleasures: yea, notwithstanding the beasts have some time rest, and be suffered to feed abroad in the fields, yet would not these Spaniards that we speak of, grant the Indians any time or leisure so to do: but the governor himself would force them to an absolute, perpetual, forced, & unwilling bondage. For they never had their free will to do any thing at all of themselves, because the Spaniards covetousness, cruelty and tyranny, was still forcing them to some labour, not as captives, but as beasts, that are led bound to do whatsoever man will appoint. Again, if at any time they were suffered to departed to their houses to rest them, than should they there find neither wife, children, nor food: as also although they had there found any meat, yet should they not have had time to make it ready: so that there was no remedy but death. Thus grew they into sickness through long and grievous travails, and that was soon caught among them as being (as is aforesaid) of a very delicate and tender complexion, & much against their nature it was to be thus suddenly, contrary to their wont, & unmercifully put to such labours, & to be beaten with staves, & spurned at, besides the calling of them at every word Villacoes, & upbraiding them, that they counterfeated sickness like loitering losels, because they would not labour. When the Spaniards perceived the sickness increase, so as there was no profit or service to be looked for at their hands, than would they send them home to their houses, giving them to spend in some 30 40. or 80. leagues travail, some half dozen of Radish or Refortes, that is a kind of navet root, & a little Cacabi, where with the poor men travailed not far before they should desperately die, some went 2 or 3. leagues, some 10. or 20. so desirous to get to their own home there to finish their hellish life that they suffered, that they even fell down dead by the ways: so as, many times we have found some dead, others at death's door, others groaning & pitifully to their powers pronouncing this word, hunger, hunger. Then the governor seeing that the Spaniard had in this wise slain, half or two 3. parts of these Indians, whom he had given them in command, he came a fresh to draw new lots, and make a new distribution of Indians: still supplying the number of his first gift, and this did he almost every year.  
Pedrarias entered into the firm land, as a wolf that had long been starved doth into a flock of quiet and innocent sheep & lambs: & as God's wrath and scourge, committing infinite slaughters, robberies, oppressions & cruelties, together with those spaniards whom he had levied, and laid waist so many towns and villages, which before had been replenished with people, as it were an● hills, as the like was never seen, heard of, or written by any that in our days have dealt in histories. He rob his majesty & subjects with those whom he took with him, and the harm that he did amounted to above four, yea six millions of gold: he laid above 40. leagues of land desert, namely from Darien, where he first arrived unto the province of Nicaraga, one of the fruitfullest, richest and best inhabited lands in the world. From this cursed wretch sprang first the pestilence of giving the Indians in command, which afterward hath infected all those Indies where any Spaniards do inhabit, and by whom all these nations are consumed: so that from him and his commands, have proceeded the certain waste and desolation that your majesty have sustained in these so great lands and dominions since the year 1504  
When we shall say that the Spaniards have wasted your majesties, and laid you desolate seven kingdoms bigger than Spain, you must conceive that we have seen them wonderfully peopled, and now there is no body left, because the Spaniards have slain all the natural inhabitants by means aforesaid, and that of the towns & houses there remaineth only the bare walls: even as if Spain were all dispeopled, and that all the people being dead, there remained only the walls of cities, towns and castles.   

Out of the 13. reason.  
YOur majesty have not out of all the Indies one marvedi of certain perpetual & set rent, but the whole revenues are as leaves and straw gathered upon the earth, which being once gathered up do grow no more: Even so is all the rent that your majesty hath in the Indies, vain & of as small continuance as a blast of wind, & that proceedeth only of that the spaniards have had that Indi in their power: and as they do daily slay and roast the inhabitants, so must it necessarily ensue that your majesties rights and rents do waste and diminish.  
The kingdom of Spain is in great danger to be lost, rob, oppressed and made desolate by foreign nations, namely by the Turks and moors, because that God who is the most just, true, and sovereign king over all the world, is wrath for the great sins and offences that the Spaniards have committed throughout the Indies, by afflicting, oppressing, tyrannous dealings, robbing and slaying such and so many people without law or equititie, and for the wasting of such and so large lands in so short a space, whose inhabitants had reasonable souls, and were created and framed to the image and likeness of the sovereign trinity, and being gods vassals, were bought with his most precious blood, who keepeth account, and forgetteth not one of them: but had chosen Spain as his minister and instrument, to illuminate and bring them to his knowledge, and as it had been for a worldly recompense, besides the eternal reward, had granted her so great natural riches, and discovered for her such & so great fruitful and pleasant lands, and with all such artificial treasure, together with so many incomparable mines of gold, silver, stone, and precious pearl, with infinite other commodities, the like whereof were never seen ne heard of: all which notwithstanding, she hath showed herself so unthankful, in yielding evil for so many benefits which she had received. And God ordinarily useth this rule in executing his justice & punishment, that is, that he chastiseth sin with the same, or with that which is quite contrary to that wherewith the sin is committed.  
The destructions, griefs, violences, injuries, cruelties, and murders done and committed against those people, are so great, horrible, public & evident, that the tears, lamentations & blood of so many innocent persons do ascend to the high throne of heaven, & do not return before they have sounded in that very ears of God, from whence they after descend, and straying over the face of the earth do ring in the ears of all foreign nations, so horrible and inhuman as may be: whereupon ensueth among the hearers great offence, horror, abomination, hatred and infamy toward the kings and commons of Spain, whereof in time to come may ensue great damage.   

Out of the said Bishop and authors protestation.  
THose losses and detriments that by these occasions the crown of Castille and Leon, together with the rest of spain have sustained, as also such other spoils and slaughters as hereafter will be committed throughout the whole Indies, both the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the dumb publish, and the wise shall judge. Further in as much as our life is short, I do take God to witness with all the Hierarchies and thrones of Angels, all the saints of the heavenly court, and all the men in the world: yea, even those that shall hereafter be borne, of the certificate that here I do exhibit? also of this the discharge of my conscience, namely that if his majesty granteth to the Spaniards the aforesaid devilish and tyrannous partition, notwithstanding whatsoever laws or statutes shall be devised, yet will the Indies in short space be laid desert and dispeopled, even as the isle of Hispaniola is at this present, which other wise would be most fruitful and fertile: together with other the Isles & lands above 3000. leagues about, besides Hispaniola itself and other lands both far and near. And for those sins, as the holy scripture doth very well inform me, God will horribly chastise, and peradventure wholly subvert and root out all Spain. Anno, 154●.   

The Prologue of Bishop Bortholomewe de las Casas or Casaus, to the most mighty Lord and Prince of Spain, Don Philip our good Lord.  
MOst high and mighty Lord, of late I was moved and by the kings most vigilant counsel for the Indies, upon their zeal and honour that they bear to our Lord God; as also hearty loyalie, wherewith they be adorned for his majesties service, forced in writing to set down such matter as to your person by mouth I have heretofore reported: namely, what I thought touching the title and claim that the kings of Castille do make to the sovereign and universal principality over the Indians: notwithstanding, some did arise, who misliking that I dealt and travailed with his majesty and your highness, about the discomfitures and losses compassed and performed against the people of those countries, and reported that in as much as I did so far detest and with such bitterness and sharpness did abhor them: as also I will still do, so long as I live, I do call in doubt, and somewhat diminish the said royal title and right.  
In which deed, as a testimony what I did think, and in truth according to God and his holy law do still hold, I exhibited 30. propositions, devoid of all other proof then what each of them in itself did contain, the one of necessity following the other, because I was driven to send them to his majesty under pretence of the great counsel that then was holden.  
Afterward proceeding and persisting in desire to serve god by 〈◊〉 felling some men's slanders, who either for want of comprehending the truth, or else having some other purposes & contrary meanings, do presume under a feigned and counterfeit kind of service to the kings (who of themselves naturally are endued with courteous & simple minds and hearts, judging & measuring all other by themselves) to present unto them, a poisoned, bitter, & peradventure a mortal drink which doth not only waste kingdoms & common wealths, in procuting their careful calamities & dolorous destruction. but also do bring even the kings own persons to the pit of manifest danger & irreparable detriments and losses. With which frandulous counsels they do infect so much as in them lieth, the good & godly affections of kings, and do subvert all the princes virtuous devices & studies. Hereof did sometime that most mighty king Artaxerxes otherwise termed Assuerus complain, as appeareth in the book of Hester. I have so endeavoured myself (most mighty Lord) that now I have set in hand the proof of the said 30. propositions & some more, comprehending the whole in this brief summary, which is taken out of a greater volume, wherein every article is more particularly expounded: herein setting in sight only the 17. and 18. proposition, because the whole substance of this matter may be reduced to these two propositions as to the principles & ends.  
The title here of should in my opinion have been: A probatorie treatise of the sovereign Empire, and universal principality, which the kings of Castille have over the Indies: As presupposing that it is manifest & proved, in that the Apostolic sea hath granted it, and that there needeth no other opening of the reasons whereupon the grant of this empire consisteth.  
I purpose in this treatise chief to discharge my conscience, using that mean which it seemeth that God's providence hath appointed me. My great age (for I am above 50.) being the cause of my large knowledge and eye experience of the Indian affairs, also to give notice of that which passed in these parts, as also what was to be done, ever referring myself to the like desire that the disorders that I have there seen practised might be redressed. And the rather because those that hinder this redress & are most hurtful to those lands, are such as being devoid of truth & justice, do indevout by counteseating and mingling that which is false & untrue, and withal seeming to do it for your majesties service, especially colouring your right to this new world, are in truth altogether withstanders of your service & weal, either spiritual or temporal (as every true christian & wise man will grant) The other benefit that I hope to obtain and reap by this treatise, is, that I shall detect and unfold those men's errors, who rashly dare affirm that the right and principality of the kings of Castille over the Indians is, or should consist of arms and great force, entering upon them even as Nemrod who was the first hunter and oppressor of mankind did ever, and establish his principality, as the holy scripture testifieth: either as great Alexander and the Romans, and all other cotable and famous tyrants, do lay the foundation of their Empires: also as the Turk doth now adays invade, trouble, and oppress christendom: and yet have not any of them once approached the spanish tyrannies.  
How far those men that do pronounce such a sentence do evil service, and offend the sincertie and love of the king of Castile's justice, is here very easy to be judged.  
Who for proof of their matters do commit error upon error, and so do heap together other things both absurd, wicked and unworthy to be once heard from these men which be taken either for Christians or for reasonable persons. For usually such as stray from virtue and truth, in excusing one fault, or maintaining one error, do run headlong into many. Others there are that do colour them with fairer & honester titles, who also deserve to be rejected, reproved, & laughed at: as those that say, because we have more wit, or that we border nearest up on them, either for that the Indians are infected with such and such vices, we may subdue them: with other like colours wherewith they be so far from upholding or confirming that which they ween to strengthen and fortify, that finally they lay all in the dust. To the end therefore that his majesty may be certified of all aforesaid, and as a most Christian and just prince, may discern between the pure and corrupt: also between right & wrong, and withal that he may know who serveth him faithfully, and those that hang upon him only to satisfy their own affections: and for their private profit do invent and devise new titles for his Indies, which be neither probable nor of any effect, & so do hope to come to do their duties before that I were able. Further for that offering this treatise to your highness, his majesty shall be served thereby, sith himself shall have such lets there as he goeth, I do most humbly beseech your highness in his name to accept it: also to examine, discern, and understand it with such wisdom and clemency as you hold of his majesty, and as himself would do, seeing it is so, that God's providence hath appointed your highness to inherit, as we do hope the same right in the empire & principality of them: beside if it seem necessary to be published in other places out of this realm I will, if your highness so command me, put it in latin: & although it should not deserve to bed dispersed either in latin or otherwise, yet were not the loss great, in that I caused it to be printed only to the end your highness might with more ease read the same, whose glorious life and royal estate, the Lord increase and prosper, Amen.   

The sum of the disputation between Friar Bartlemewe de las Casas or Casaus, and Doctor Sepulueda.  
DOctor Sepulueda the Emperor's chronographer having information, & being persuaded by certain of those Spaniards, who were most guilty in the slaughters and wastes committed among the Indian people, wrote a book in Latin in form of a Dialogue very eloquently, and furnished with all flowers, and precepts of Rhetoric, as in deed the man is very learned and excellent in the said tongue, which book consisted upon two principal conclusions: The one, that the Spaniards wars against the Indians, were as concerning the cause and equity that moved them thereto, very just: also that generally the like war may & aught to be continued. His other conclusion, that the Indians are bound to submit themselves to the Spaniards government, as the foolish to the wise: if they will not yield, then that the Spaniards may (as he affirmeth) war upon them.  
These are the two causes of the loss and destruction of so infinite numbers of people: also that above 2000 leagues of the main land, are by sundry new kinds of Spanish cruelties and inhuman dealings been left desolate in the islands: namely by conquests and commands as he now nameth those which were wont to be called Partitions.  
The said Doctor Sepulueda coloureth his treatise, under the pretence of publishing the title which the kings of Castille and Leon do challenge in the government and universal sovereignty of this Indian world, so seeking to cloak that doctrine which he endeavoureth to disperse and scatter as well in these lands, as also throughout the kingdoms of the Indians. This book he exhibited to the royal counsel for the Indies, very earnestly and importunately lying upon them for licence to print it, which they sundry times denied him in respect of the offence, dangers, & manifest detriment, that it seemed to bring to the commonwealth.  
The Doctor seeing that here he could not publish his book, for that the counsel of the Indies would not suffer it, he dealt so far with his friends which followed the emperors court, that they got him a patent, whereby his Majesty directed him to the royal counsel of Castille, who knew nothing of the Indian affairs: upon the coming of these letters the court and counsel being at Aranda in Duero, the year 1547. Friar Bartholomewe de las Casas or Casaus, Bishop of the royal town of Chiapa, by hap arrived there, coming from the Indians, and having intelligence of Doctor Sepulueda his drifts and devices, had notice also of the contents of his whole book: but understanding, the authors pernitions blindness, as also the irrecoverable losses that might ensue upon the printing of this book, with might & main withstood it, discovering & revealing the poison wherewith it abounded, and whereto it pretended.  
The Lords of the royal counsel of Castille, as wise and just judges, determined therefore to send the said book to the Universities of Salamanca & Alcala, the matter being for he most part therein Theologically handled, with commandment to examine it, and if it might be printed, to sign it: which Universities after many exact and diligent disputations, concluded, that it might not be printed, as containing corrupt doctrine. The Doctor not so satisfied, but complaining of the Universities aforesaid, determined, notwithstanding so many denia●les and repulses at both the royal counsels, to send his treatise to his friends at Rome, to the end there to print ●●, having first transformed it into a certain Apology written ●o the Bishop of Segovia, because the same Bishop having perused the treaty and book aforesaid, had brotherly and charitably as his friend by letters reproved and counseled him. The Emperor understanding of the impression of the said book and Apology, did immediately dispatch his letters patents, for the calling in and supression of the same, commanding likewise to gather in again all copies thereof throughout Castille, for the said Doctor had published also in the Castilean language a certain abstract of the said book, thereby to make it more common to all the land: and to the end also that the commons, and such as understood no latin, might have some use thereof, as being a matter agreeable and toothsome to such us coveted great riches, and sought ways to climb to other estates, then either themselves, or their predecessors could ever attain unto without great cost, labour, and cares, and often times with the loaf and destruction of divers.  
Which when the Bishop of Chiapa understood, he determined also to write an apology in the vulgar tongue, against the said doctors summary, in defence of the Indies, there in impugning and undermining his soundations, and answering all reasons, or whatsoever the doctor could allege for himself, therein displaying & setting before the people's face the dangers, inconveniences and harms in the said doctrine contained.  
Thus as many things passed on both sides, his Majesty i● the year 1550. called to Valadolid, an assembly of learned men, as well Divines as Lawyers, who being joined with the Royal counsel of the Indies should argue, and among them conclude, whether it were lawful without breach of Justice, to levy wars, commonly termed conquests, against the inhabitants of those conneries, without any new offence by them committed their infidelity excepted.  
Doctor Sepulued a was summoned to come and say what he could, and being entered the counsel chamber, did at the first session utter his whole mind. Then was the said Bishop likewise called, who for the space of five days, continually did read his Apology: but being somewhat long, the Divines and Lawyers there assembled, besought the learned and reverend father Dominicke Soto his majesties confessor, and a dominican Friar, who was there present, to reduce it into a summary and to make so many copies as there were Lords, that is fourteen, to the end they all having studied upon the matter, might afterward in the fear of God say their minds.  
The said reverend father and Master Soto, set down in the said summary, the doctor's reasons, with the Bishop's answers to the same. Then had the doctor at his request a copy delivered him to answer: out of which summary he gathered twelve against himself, whereto he made twelve answers, against which answers the Bishop framed twelve replies.   

Doctor Sepulueda his prologue to the Lords of the assembly.  
MOst worthy and noble Lords, sith your Lordships and graces have as judges for the space of five or six days heard the Lord Bishop of Chiapa read that book, whereinto he hath many years laboured to gather all the reasons that either himself, or others could invent to prove the conquest of the Indies to be unjust, as seeking first to subdue barbarous nations before we preach the Gospel unto them, which have been the usual course correspondent to the grant made by Pope Alexander the sixth, which all kings and nations have hitherto taken & observed: it is meet, and I do so desire you, that I who take upon me to defend the grant and authority of the Apostolic sea, together with the equity and honour of our kings and nation, may have the like grant, and that it may please you diligently to give me audience, while briefly and manifestly I do answer his objections and subtleties: so do I hope in God, and the truth which I take upon me to defend, that I shall plainly set before your eyes, and show you that all that is spoken on the contrary part before so noble and wise judges, who are not any way to be suspected of preferring whatsoever may be alleged before truth and equity which are of such importance, doth consist only upon frivolous and vain reasons. I will therefore, cutting off my speech come to the purpose. For it is small honour or courtesy to use tediousness among such persons, being occupied in weighty affairs, namely, in the government of the common wealth.   

The Bishop of Chiapa his prologue to the Lords of the assembly.  
MOst worthy and noble Lords, right reverend and learned fathers, hitherto in whatsoever I have read, or in writing exhibited in this so notable and honourable assembly, I have generally spoken against the adversaries of the Indian inhabitants of our Indies that lie in the Ocean sea, not naming any, although I know some, who openly do seek to write Treaties thereof, and frame their ground upon an excuse and defence of such wars as were, are, and yet may be prosecuted against those people, which have been the occasions of so much mischief, so many overthrows, losses, and subversions of such and so great kingdoms, together with many towns and infinite numbers of souls. Also that they subduing of those nations by wars before they have by preaching heard of the faith or name of jesus Christ, is a martyr conformable to our Christian law: also that such wars are just and lawful, whereof it seemeth that the reverend and worthy Doctor Sepulu●da hath now opened and declared himself the principal uphoulder and defender, in that he answereth to those reasons, authorities, and objections, that be to the contrary: which in detesting the said wars, and to the end to show that the same being by another name called conquests, are wicked and tyrannous, I have drawn into this our Apology whereof I have read part unto your excellencies and lordships.  
And seeing he hath sought to disclose himself, and feared not to be taken for the author of so execrable impiety, which do redounded to the slander of the faith, the dishonour of the name of Christianity, and the damage as well spiritual as temporal of the most part of mankind: I thought it very meet, as it is, so openly to impugn it, and for cutting off of the poisoned canker which he seeketh to disperse abroad in these countries, to the destruction and subversion of the same, to set myself as an adversary and party agaynll him.  
Wherefore I beseech your noble lordships graces and fatherhoodes, to way this so weighty and dangerous matter, not as any peculiar cause, for I pretend no farther, but to defend it according as becometh a Christian, but as appertaining to God his honour, the universal Church, and the estate as well temporal as spiritual of the kings of Castille, who are to give account of the loss of souls already perished, and hereafter to perish, unless the gate be shut up against this heavy course of wars, which Doctor Sepulueda endenoureth to justify. Also that this honourable assembly admit no Sophistry by him used to cover and cloak his hurtful opinion, whereby he showeth a pretence to colour and defend the authority by him called Apostolic, and the Empire, which the kings of Castille and Leon have over these judians. For no Christian can lawfully and honestly confirm and defend the authority termed Apostolic, either the sovereignty of any Christian king by unjust wars, by filling hills and valyes with innocent blood, either with the infamy and blaspheming of Christ and his faith:  
But the Apostolic sea is rather by such means defamed and looseth her authority, the true God is dishonoured, and the true title and right of a king is lost and perisheth, as every wise and Christian man may easily gather by that which Doctor Sepulueda himself hath propounded.  
This title and right is not founded upon the entry into those countries, and against those people to rob, slay, and tyrannosly to rule over them, under pretence of preaching the faith, as those tyrants entered & have done, who by an universallmassa cre and slaughter, have murdered such a multitude of Innocentes: But it consisteth of a peaceable, loving, and gentle preaching of the Gospel, and of an unfeigned introduction and foundation of faith, and of Christ's principality. Yea who so ever goeth about to give our Kings and Lords any other tide, whereby to obtain the sovereignty and principality over those Indians, is stark blind, offendeth God, is a traitor to his king, and an enemy to the Spanish nation, whom he abuseth and most perniciously deceiveth, seeking to replenish hell with souls.  
Lest therefore any of your Lordships graces or fatherhoods should stay upon these damnable humours, it were mee●● as becometh most christian & wife men: yea; and very expedient to put to silence so hurtful and abhomnable an opinion. And although in our Apology, we may seem to have satisfied, and at large answered whatsoever may be brought in defence of the said Apology, yet because the doctor hath once again propounded his defences, by parting father Sotoes' summary into twelve objections, reason willeth me to reply and show that his objections are frivolous, and to no purpose.   

Out of which replies, here followeth the abstract of two that stand us in st●●●●.  
THe report is unture that the Indians did yearly sacrifice in now Spain ●0000 persons▪ either one 100 or 50. For had that been so, we could not now have found there so much people: and therefore the Tyrants have invented it, thereby to excuse and justify their tyrannies also to detain so many of the Indians as escaped the oppression and desolation of the first vintage, in bondage and tyranny. But we may more truly say, that the Spaniards during their abode in the Indies, have yearly sacrificed to their so dearly beloved and reverend Goddess Covetousness more people, than the Indians have done in a 100 years. This do the heavens, the earth, the elements, and the stars both testify and bewail: the tyrants, yea, the very ministers of these mischiefs cannot deny it. For it is evident how greatly these countries as out first entry swarmed with people, as also how we have now laid it waste, and dispeopled the same: we might even blush for shame, that having given over all fear of God, we will yet nevertheless seek to colour and excuse these our so execrable demeanours: considering that only for getting wealth and riches, we have in 45. or 48. years, wasted and consumed more land than all Europe, yea and part of Asia, do in lengih and breadth contain, robbing and usurping upon that with all cruelty, wrong, and tyranny, which we have seen well inhabited 〈…〉 people among whom there have been slain and destroyed 20. millions of souls.   

In the last and twelfth reply as followeth.  
THE Spaniards have not entered into India for any desire to exalt God's honour, or for zeal to christian religion, either to favour, and procure the salvation of their neighbours, no neither for their prince's service, whereof they do so vainly brag: but covetousness hath brought them and ambition hath alured them to the perpetual dominion over the Indies, which they as tyrants and devils, do covet to be parted among them: and to speak plainly and flatly, do seek no other but to expel and drive the kings of Castille out of all that world and themselves seizing thereupon, by tyranny to usurp and take upon them all royal sovereignty.   
FINIS.   

Imprinted at London at the three Cranes in the vintry by Thomas Dawson, for William Broome. 1583.