it appear that they
had done something wrong, for which the Spaniards must punish them
and take vengeance: they themselves, however, merit any most cruel
torture whatsoever, without mercy, because they are so deprived of
mercy and compassion towards those innocent creatures.
24. The Spaniards went to the rock and forced their way up, the Indians
being naked and without arms; then the Spaniards called the Indians
with professions of peace, assuring them that no harm should be done
them, if they did not fight; the Indians at once ceased, whereupon
that most cruel man commanded the Spaniards, to seize all the strong
positions of the rock, and when taken, to surround the Indians.
These tigers and lions surrounded the tame lambs, and disembowelled
and put to the sword so many, that they stopped to rest, so many had
they cut to pieces.
25. When they had rested a little, the captain ordered that they should
kill and throw down from the rock, which was very high, all the
survivors; and so they did. And the witnesses say, that they beheld
such a mass of Indians thrown from the rock, that there might have
been seven hundred men together, who were crushed to pieces where
they fell.
26. To complete their great cruelty, they sought out all the Indians who
had hidden in the thicket, and he commanded all to be put to the
sword; and thus they killed them, and threw them down from the rock.
27. Nor would he rest satisfied with the cruel things that have been
related, but wished to distinguish himself still more and increase
the horribleness of his sins, by commanding that all the Indians,
men and women, save those he kept for his own service, who had been
captured alive (because in these massacres each usually chooses a
few men, women and children for his own use) should be put in a
straw house to which he set fire: some forty or fifty were thus
burnt alive, while others were thrown to fierce dogs that tore them
to pieces and ate them.
28. Another time, this same tyrant captured many Indians in a certain
town called Cota which he visited; he had fifteen or twenty lords
and principal persons torn by dogs; and he cut off the hands of many
men and women, tied them to cords and hung about seventy pairs of
hands along a beam, so that the other India