Of the customs of these Indians, of their arms, and of the ceremonies they perform; and who the founder of the city of Antioquia was.

THE inhabitants of these valleys are brave amongst themselves, and much feared by their neighbours. The men go naked and barefooted, and merely wear a narrow band fastened to a girdle round the waist. Their hair is worn very long. Their arms are darts, long lances of black palm, slings, and two-handed clubs, called Macanas.[205] The women wear a mantle from the waist downwards of bright coloured cotton cloth. The lords, when they marry, make a sort of sacrifice to their gods. They assemble in a house to the number of about twelve, where the prettiest girls have already been assembled, and choose those they desire most. The son of the chosen woman inherits the lordship, and if there is no son, the son of the lord’s sister inherits. These people border on a province called Tatabe, which is thickly inhabited by rich and warlike Indians, whose customs are the same as those of their neighbours. Their houses are built over very large trees, and are made of many stout poles, each house having more than two hundred of them, and the coverings of these great houses consist of palm leaves. Many Indians live in one house, with their wives and children. These nations extend to the westward as far as the South Sea, and to the east they border on the great river of Darien. All their country is mountainous, very rugged, and fearful to pass through. Near this country they say there is that grandeur and wealth of the Dabaybe which is so celebrated in Terra Firme.[206] In another part of the country, over which Nutibara is lord, there are some Indians living in a certain valley called Nore, which is very fertile. Near this valley is now built the city of Antioquia. In ancient times there was a large population in these valleys, as we judged from the edifices and burial places, of which there are many well worth seeing, being so large as to appear like small hills.

These Indians, though they speak the same language as those of Guaca, were always engaged in wars with them, so that the number of both nations has greatly diminished, for they eat all those that are captured, and place their heads before the doors of their houses. They go naked like the others, except that the chiefs sometimes cover themselves with a long mantle of coloured cotton. The women are covered with small mantles of the same material. Before passing on, I wish to relate a truly strange and wondrous thing. The second time that we returned through these valleys, when the city of Antioquia was founded near the hills which overhang them, I heard it said that the lords or caciques of the valley of Nore collected all the women they could find from the land of their enemies, took them home, and used them as if they had been their own. If any children were born, they were reared with much care until they reached the age of twelve or thirteen, and, being then plump and healthy, these caciques ate them with much appetite, not considering that they were of their own flesh and blood. In this way they had many women solely to bring forth children, which were afterwards to be eaten: and this is the greatest of all the sins that these people commit. I saw myself what occurred between one of these chiefs and the licentiate Juan de Vadillo, who is now in Spain, and if he is asked respecting what I now write, he will say that it is true. It is that, when I and my comrades entered these valleys, a chief named Nabonuco came to us peaceably, and brought with him three women. When night came on, two of them laid down on a mat, and the other across it to serve as a pillow. The Indian then made his bed on the bodies of these women, and took another pretty woman by the hand. When the licentiate Juan de Vadillo saw this proceeding, he asked the Indian chief why he had brought that other woman whom he held by the hand. The chief replied, in a gentle voice, looking him in the face, that he was going to eat her. On hearing this, Vadillo was astonished, and said, “What! are you going to eat your own wife?” The chief, raising his voice, replied, “Yes, truly; and I will also eat the child she bears me.” This happened in the valley of Nore. I have heard this licentiate Juan de Vadillo sometimes say, that he had heard from some old Indians, that when the natives of Nore go to war, they make slaves of their prisoners, and marry them to their own relations and neighbours, and that the children thus born are eaten; and that afterwards, when these slaves are too old to have any more children, they eat them also. In truth, as these Indians have no faith, I am not astonished at this.

Owing to these wars, when we discovered the valleys, we found so many human heads at the doors of the chiefs’ houses, that it seemed as if each one had been a butcher’s shop. When one of the chiefs dies, the people mourn for many days, cut off the hair of his wives, kill those who were most beloved, and raise a tomb the size of a small hill, with an opening towards the rising sun. Within this great tomb they make a large vault, and here they put the body, wrapped in cloths, and the gold and arms the dead man had used when alive. They then take the most beautiful of his wives and some servant lads, make them drunk with wine made with maize, and bury them alive in that vault, in order that the chief may go down to hell with companions.

This city of Antioquia is situated in a valley between the famous, notable, and rich rivers of Darien and of Santa Martha, for these valleys are between the two Cordilleras.[207] The position of the city is very good, with wide plains, near a small river. Many other rivers flow near it, which rise in the Cordilleras, and many springs of sweet and limpid water. All the rivers are full of very fine gold, and their banks are shaded by many kinds of fruit-trees. Antioquia is surrounded by extensive provinces, inhabited by Indians, very rich in gold, who use small scales to weigh it; but they are all great eaters of human flesh, and when they take each other prisoners, they show no mercy. One day I saw in Antioquia, when we founded it in some hills where Captain Jorge Robledo first fixed the site (which was afterwards changed by Captain Juan Cabrera to the site where the city now stands), while walking in a field of maize, four Indians close to me, who met another, and killed him with their clubs. They then drank his blood and eat his entrails by mouthfuls. They have no arrows, nor do they use any other arms than the above. I have never seen any temple or house of worship, except that which was burnt in the valley of Guaca. They all talk with the devil; and in each village there are two or three old men who are adepts in the evil art of conversing with him, and they announce what he desires to be done. They do not entirely attain to a belief in the immortality of the soul. The water and all that the earth produces is referred to nature, although they well know there is a Creator, but their belief is false, as I shall relate presently.

The city of Antioquia was founded and settled by the Captain Jorge Robledo, in the name of his Majesty the Emperor Charles, King of Spain and of the Indies, our lord, and by order of the Adelantado Don Sebastian de Belalcazar, his governor and captain-general of the province of Popayan, in the year of the nativity of our Lord 1541. This city is in 7° of the equinoctial,[208] on the north side.[209]