The story Figueroa recounted from Esquivel.

This account was all given by Figueroa, according to the relation he received from Esquivel, and from him through the others it came to me; whence may be seen and understood the fate of the armament, and the individual fortunes of the greater part of the people. Figueroa said, moreover, that if the Christians should at any time go in that direction, it were possible they might see Esquivel, for he knew that he had fled from the Indian with whom he was, to the Mariames, who were neighbors. After Figueroa had finished telling the story, he and the Asturian made an attempt to go to other Indians farther on; but as soon as they who had the Christians discovered it, they followed, and beating them severely, stripped the Asturian and shot an arrow through his arm. They finally escaped by flight.

The other Christians remained, and prevailed on the Indians to receive them as slaves. In their service they were abused as slaves never were, nor men in any condition have ever been. Not content with frequently buffeting them, striking them with sticks, and pulling out their beard for amusement, they killed three of the six for only going from one house to another. These were the persons I have named before: Diego Dorantes, Valdivieso, and Diego de Huelva: and the three that remained looked forward to the same fate. Not to endure this life, AndrÉs Dorantes fled, and passed to the Mariames, the people among whom Esquivel tarried. They told him that having had Esquivel there, he wished to run away because a woman dreamed that a son of hers would kill him; and that they followed after, and slew him. They showed Dorantes his sword, beads, and book, with other things that had been his.[125]

Thus in obedience to their custom they take life, destroying even their male children on account of dreams. They cast away their daughters at birth, and cause them to be eaten by dogs. The reason of their doing this, as they state, is because all the nations of the country are their foes; and as they have unceasing war with them, if they were to marry away their daughters, they would so greatly multiply their enemies that they must be overcome and made slaves; thus they prefer to destroy all, rather than that from them should come a single enemy. We asked why they did not themselves marry them; and they said it would be a disgustful thing to marry among relatives, and far better to kill than to give them either to their kindred or to their foes.

This is likewise the practice of their neighbors the Yguazes, but of no other people of that country. When the men would marry, they buy the women of their enemies: the price paid for a wife is a bow, the best that can be got, with two arrows: if it happens that the suitor should have no bow, then a net a fathom in length and another in breadth. They kill their male children, and buy those of strangers. The marriage state continues no longer than while the parties are satisfied, and they separate for the slightest cause. Dorantes was among this people, and after a few days escaped.

Castillo and Estevanico went inland to the Yguazes. This people are universally good archers and of a fine symmetry, although not so large as those we left. They have a nipple and a lip bored.[126] Their support is principally roots, of two or three kinds, and they look for them over the face of all the country. The food is poor and gripes the persons who eat it. The roots require roasting two days: many are very bitter, and withal difficult to be dug. They are sought the distance of two or three leagues, and so great is the want these people experience, that they cannot get through the year without them. Occasionally they kill deer, and at times take fish; but the quantity is so small and the famine so great, that they eat spiders and the eggs of ants, worms, lizards, salamanders, snakes, and vipers that kill whom they strike; and they eat earth and wood, and all that there is, the dung of deer, and other things that I omit to mention; and I honestly believe that were there stones in that land they would eat them. They save the bones of the fishes they consume, of snakes and other animals, that they may afterwards beat them together and eat the powder. The men bear no burthens, nor carry anything of weight; such are borne by women and old men who are of the least esteem. They have not so great love for their children as those we have before spoken of.[127] Some among them are accustomed to sin against nature. The women work very hard, and do a great deal; of the twenty-four hours they have only six of repose; the rest of the night they pass in heating the ovens to bake those roots they eat. At daybreak they begin to dig them, to bring wood and water to their houses and get in readiness other things that may be necessary. The majority of the people are great thieves; for though they are free to divide with each other, on turning the head, even a son or a father will take what he can. They are great liars, and also great drunkards, which they became from the use of a certain liquor.[128]

These Indians are so accustomed to running, that without rest or fatigue they follow a deer from morning to night. In this way they kill many. They pursue them until tired down, and sometimes overtake them in the race. Their houses are of matting, placed upon four hoops. They carry them on the back, and remove every two or three days in search of food. Nothing is planted for support. They are a merry people, considering the hunger they suffer; for they never cease, notwithstanding, to observe their festivities and areytos. To them the happiest part of the year is the season of eating prickly pears; they have hunger then no longer, pass all the time in dancing, and eat day and night. While these last, they squeeze out the juice, open and set them to dry, and when dry they are put in hampers like figs. These they keep to eat on their way back. The peel is beaten to powder.

It occurred to us many times while we were among this people, and there was no food, to be three or four days without eating, when they, to revive our spirits, would tell us not to be sad, that soon there would be prickly pears when we should eat a plenty and drink of the juice, when our bellies would be very big and we should be content and joyful, having no hunger. From the time they first told us this, to that at which the earliest were ripe enough to be eaten, was an interval of five or six months; so having tarried until the lapse of this period, and the season had come, we went to eat the fruit.

We found mosquitos of three sorts, and all of them abundant in every part of the country. They poison and inflame, and during the greater part of the summer gave us great annoyance. As a protection we made fires, encircling the people with them, burning rotten and wet wood to produce smoke without flame. The remedy brought another trouble, and the night long we did little else than shed tears from the smoke that came into our eyes, besides feeling intense heat from the many fires, and if at any time we went out for repose to the seaside and fell asleep, we were reminded with blows to make up the fires. The Indians of the interior have a different method, as intolerable, and worse even than the one I have spoken of, which is to go with brands in the hand firing the plains and forests within their reach, that the mosquitos may fly away, and at the same time to drive out lizards and other like things from the earth for them to eat.

They are accustomed also to kill deer by encircling them with fires. The pasturage is taken from the cattle by burning, that necessity may drive them to seek it in places where it is desired they should go. They encamp only where there are wood and water; and sometimes all carry loads of these when they go to hunt deer, which are usually found where neither is to be got. On the day of their arrival, they kill the deer and other animals which they can, and consume all the water and all the wood in cooking and on the fires they make to relieve them of mosquitos. They remain the next day to get something to sustain them on their return; and when they go, such is their state from those insects that they appear to have the affliction of holy Lazarus. In this way do they appease their hunger, two or three times in the year, at the cost I have mentioned. From my own experience, I can state there is no torment known in this world that can equal it.

Inland are many deer, birds, and beasts other than those I have spoken of. Cattle[129] come as far as here. Three times I have seen them and eaten of their meat. I think they are about the size of those in Spain. They have small horns like the cows of Morocco; the hair is very long and flocky like the merino's. Some are tawny, others black. To my judgment the flesh is finer and fatter than that of this country. Of the skins of those not full grown the Indians make blankets, and of the larger they make shoes and bucklers. They come as far as the sea-coast of Florida, from a northerly direction, ranging through a tract of more than four hundred leagues; and throughout the whole region over which they run, the people who inhabit near, descend and live upon them, distributing a vast many hides into the interior country.

[Buckingham Smith introduces the following translation from the Letter (Oviedo, pp. 594-598) as throwing important light on the occurrences related in the foregoing chapter. F. W. H.]

"Thus ended the account of Figueroa, without his being able to add more to it, than that Esquivel was about there in the possession of some natives, and they might see him in a little while; but a month afterwards, it was known that he no longer lived, for having gone from the natives, they had followed after and put him to death. Figueroa tarried a few moments, long enough to relate the sad news. The Indian who brought him would not permit him to remain. Asturiano, the clergyman, and a young man being the only ones who could swim, accompanied them for the purpose of returning with fish which they were promised, as likewise that they should be brought back over that bay; but when the Indians found them at their houses, they would neither bring them nor let them return; on the contrary, they put their houses into their canoes and took the two Christians with them, saying that they would soon come back....

"The eight companions remained that day to appease their hunger, and the next morning they saw two Indians of a rancho coming over the water to place their dwellings on the hither side. The purpose was to live on blackberries that grow in some places along the coast, which they seek at a season they know full well, and although precarious, they promise a food that supports life. They called to the Indians, who came as to persons they thought lightly of, taking some part of what they possessed almost by force. The Christians besought the natives to set them over, which they did in a canoe, taking them to their houses near by, and at dark gave them a small quantity of fish. They went out the next day for more, and returned at night, giving them a part of what they had caught. The day following they moved off with the Christians and never after were the two seen whom the other Indians had taken away.

"At last the natives, weary of seeking food for their guests, turned away five, that they should go to some Indians who they said were to be found in another bay, six leagues farther on. Alonzo del Castillo went there with Pedro de Valdivieso, cousin of AndrÉs Dorantes, and another, Diego de Huelva, where they remained a long time; the two others went down near the coast, seeking relief, where they died, as Dorantes states, who found the bodies, one of whom, Diego Dorantes, was his cousin. The two hidalgos and the negro remaining in that rancho, sufficed for the use of the natives, to bring back-loads of wood and water as slaves. After three or four days however, these likewise were turned off, when for some time they wandered about lost, without hope of relief; and going naked among marshes, having been previously despoiled one night of their clothing, they came upon those dead.

"They continued the route until they found some Indians, with whom AndrÉs Dorantes remained. A cousin of his, one of the three who had gone on to the bay where they stopped, came over from the opposite shore, and told him that the swimmers who went from them had passed in that direction, having their clothes taken from them and they much bruised about the head with sticks because they would not remain; still though beaten and stripped, they had gone on for the sake of the oath they had taken, never to stop even if death stood in the path, before coming to a country of Christians. Dorantes states that he saw in the rancho where he was, the clothes belonging to the clergyman and to one of the swimmers, with a breviary or prayer book. Valdivieso returned, and a couple of days afterwards was killed, because he wished to flee, and likewise in a little time Diego de Huelva, because he forsook one lodge-house for another.

"The Christians were there made slaves, forced with more cruelty to serve than the Moor would have used. Besides going stark naked and bare-footed over the coast burning in summer like fire, their continual occupation was bringing wood and water on the back, or whatever the Indians needed, and dragging canoes over inundated grounds in hot weather.

"These natives eat nothing the year round but fish, and of that not much. They experience far less hunger however, than the inhabitants inland among whom the Spaniards afterwards lived. The food often fails, causing frequent removals, or otherwise they starve.... They have finger nails that for any ordinary purpose are knives, and are their principal arms among themselves....

"The Spaniards lived here fourteen months, from May to the May ensuing of the year 1530, and to the middle of the month of August, when AndrÉs Dorantes, being at a point that appeared most favorable for going, commended himself to God, and went off at mid-day.... Castillo tarried among that hard people a year and a half later, until an opportunity presented for starting; but on arriving he found only the negro; Dorantes, finding these Indians unbearably cruel, had gone back more than twenty leagues to a river near the bay of EspÍritu Sancto, among those who had killed Esquivel, the solitary one that had escaped from the boats of the Governor and Alonzo Enrriques, slain, as they were told, because a woman had dreamed some absurdity. The people of this country have belief in dreams, their only superstition. On account of them they will even kill their children; and this hidalgo Dorantes states, that in the course of four years he had been a witness to the killing or burying alive of eleven or twelve young males, and rarely do they let a girl live....

"AndrÉs Dorantes passed ten months among this people, enduring much privation with continual labor, and in fear of being killed...."