and loving caresses,
though we had more trouble in quieting the minds of the brother-in-law,
the cacique and the other Indian authorities, who in a moment ran
together at their cries, all with the intention of making war on us,
for they all came with bows and arrows in their hands.

"But as we wished to sow in their hardened hearts the pure grain of
evangelical seed which should have a more fruitful growth than that
which fell among the thistles and thorns, we began as genuine workmen
of Christ to till the soil of their hearts with the loving hoe of
caresses, embracing them joyfully, as one who had fallen in with the
ewe which had been lost for so many centuries, (the influence of our
soft words and the moderation of our prudent acts, resisting all the
weight of their immoderate acts) at which most people were frightened;
and we gave them at the same time some of the Spanish things which we
carried, as necessary and required for attracting their unruly spirits,
for this calmed and quieted them more than the caresses which we had
given them. This entry into the said settlement or village was on the
13th of January, on which my seraphic religion celebrates the vespers
of the holy name of Jesus, and at the very hour of vespers....

"With their spirits now peaceful and happy, they entertained us on that
afternoon and night, with such a confusion of shouts and outcries in
their songs, that, had we not considered that those extravagant signs
of joy were the wild ways of those rural hills and the fashion with
them, our hearts would have suffered some anxiety and sadness, the more
so when we saw before us, those carved, striped and painted faces, made
in the very likeness of the devil."

The Padres Please Other Indians by Means of Little Gifts. "I gave them,
as they came up to the novel sight, some necklaces and other trinkets
and trifles for their wives and daughters, and for the men some knives,
for the desire to possess which all came again, thus obliging me to
give them presents a second time, all which I did with pleasure, one
reason being the abundance of what our benefactors in their kind zeal
had given me, and the other in order to draw them to our Catholic
faith, which comes to them more through the eye than through the
hearing, since they are covetous in the extreme. They approached me to
get what I had remaining in some hampers, in which I carried for the
petty King an entire suit of clothes, in the fashion of th