The Kingdom of Yucatan

1. In the year 1526, by lying and deceiving and by mak­ing offers to the King, as all the other tyrants have done till now to obtain offices and positions, so as to rob, another unhappy man95 was elected governor of the king­dom of Yucatan.

2.2. This kingdom possessed a dense population, be­cause the country is very healthy and abounding much more than Mexico in provisions and fruit: and honey was particularly abundant, more so than in any other part of the Indies thus far discovered.

2.3. The said kingdom has a circumference of about three hundred leagues. Its people were famous among [pg 363] all those of the Indies for prudence and cleanliness, and for having fewer vices and sins than any other; and they were very willing and worthy of being brought to the knowledge of God. A great town might have been built there by the Spaniards where they might have lived as in a terrestrial paradise had they been worthy; but, on account of their great avarice, stupidity and grave sins they were not; just as they have not been worthy to possess the many other countries that God has disclosed to them, in the Indies.

4.4. This tyrant, with three hundred men whom he brought with him, began by making cruel war on those good and innocent people, who kept within their houses without offending any one; and they killed and destroyed countless people.

5.5. The country produces no gold, and if it had he would have used up the people by working them in the mines; to coin gold therefore out of the bodies and souls of those for whom Jesus Christ died, he made slaves indifferently of all whom he did not kill; many ships were attracted thither by the news that slaves were to be had, all of which he sent back loaded with human beings whom he sold for wine, oil, vinegar, pork, clothing, horses and whatever else he and his men thought they needed.

6.6. He selected the most beautiful maid from fifty or a hundred, and gave her to him who chose her, in ex­change for an aroba of wine, or oil, or for a pig: and similarly a handsome boy, chosen from among two hundred or three hundred, for the same amount. One boy, who seemed to be the son of a prince was given in exchange for a cheese; and a hundred people for a horse.

7.7. He continued with these operations from the year 1526 to 1533 which were seven years, ruining and depopu­lating those countries, and killing those people without pity, till news of the riches of Peru reached the place [pg 364] and the Spaniards left him, and that hell ceased for some days.

8.8. Afterwards, however, his ministers returned to commit more great evils, robbery, wickedness, and great offence against God: and neither have they ceased at the present time. Thus have they almost entirely depopulated all those three hundred leagues that were, as has been said, so densely peopled.

9.9. No one could believe, neither could the particular cases of cruelty that were done here, be related. I will only tell of two or three, that I remember.

10.10. On one occasion these wretched Spaniards set out with fierce dogs to hunt Indians, both women and men, and an Indian woman who was too ill to escape, took a cord and, so that the dogs should not tear her to pieces as they tore the others, she tied her little son of one year to one foot, and then hanged herself on a beam; she was not quick enough before the dogs came up and tore the child limb from limb, although a friar baptised it before it expired.

11.11. When the Spaniards were leaving the kingdom, one of them asked the son of a lord of a certain town or province to go with him; the child answered, that he did not wish to leave his country: the Spaniard replied, “come along with me, or I will cut off your ears”; as the boy said that he would not, the man seized a dagger and cut off one of his ears, and then the other; and on the boy still saying that he would not leave his country, he slit his nostrils, laughing as though he were only giving him a pinch.

12.12. This lost soul lauded himself, and shamelessly boasted before a venerable monk that he tried his best to get many Indian women with child, because when they were pregnant he got a better price on selling them for slaves.

13.13. In this kingdom, or possibly in a province of New Spain, a Spaniard went hunting game, or rabbits, with his dogs; one day, not finding anything to hunt, it seemed to him that the dogs were hungry, so he seized a little child from its mother and cut off its arms and legs with a dagger, giving each dog its portion and when they had eaten these pieces he threw that little body on the ground for all of them together.

14.14. Consider only the inhumanity of the Spaniards in these parts and how God has let them fall into repro­bate appetite; consider of what account they hold these people who are created in God's image and redeemed by His blood. But we shall see worse things below.

15.15. Leaving the infinite and unheard of cruelties perpetrated by those who call themselves Christians, in this kingdom where there is no justice worth speaking of, I will conclude with this only: that when all the infernal tyrants had left, eager for and blinded by the riches of Peru, Fray Jacomo proceeded, with four monks of his Order of St. Francis, to that kingdom, to pacify it, and to preach and bring to Jesus Christ the remnant of people left from the infernal harvesting and the tyrannical massacres committed by the Spaniards during seven years; and I think that these monks went there in the year thirty-four.

16.16. They sent ahead certain Indians from the pro­vince of Mexico as messengers, to inquire whether the natives were satisfied that the said monks should enter their country, to bring them news of the one only God, who is God and true Lord of all the world.

17.17. They [the Indians] assembled many times and consulted about the thing, having first made many in­quiries as to what sort of men these were, who called themselves fathers and brothers, and as to what they laid claim; and in what they were different from the [pg 366] Christians from whom they had suffered so many offences and such injustice.

18.18. They resolved at last to receive them, on the condition that they came alone with no Spaniards. The monks promised this because the Viceroy of New Spain had granted them this privilege and had given orders that no more Spaniards except the monks were to be allowed to enter the country, nor should the Indians suffer any harm from the Christians.

19.19. The friars, as is their custom, preached to those people the gospel of Christ, and the holy intentions of the king of Spain towards them. With such love and pleasure did they receive the doctrine and example of the monks, and so greatly did they rejoice over the news of the kings of Castile, of whom in all the past seven years the Spaniards had never given them information nor that there was any king other than he, who tyran­nised and destroyed here, that after the monks had preached there forty days, the lords of the country brought and consigned to them all their idols that they might burn them.

20.20. And afterwards they gave them their own chil­dren, whom they love more than the light of their eyes, that they might train them. And they built them churches, monasteries and houses: and friars, were invited to other provinces, to preach and bring the natives to the knowledge of God and of him whom they called the great king of Castile.

21.21. And, persuaded by the monks, the Indians did a thing never done again up to the present day; and all that some of those Tyrants pretend about those king­doms being destroyed by the friars, is falsehood and lies.

22.22. Twelve or fifteen lords, each ruling many vassals and large territories, assembled their people and, after taking their votes and consent, subjected themselves [pg 367] of their own will to the dominion of the kings of Castile, receiving the Emperor, as King of Spain, for their supreme and universal sovereign; and they made some sinas, like signatures, which I have in my possession, together with the attestations of the said friars.

23.23. Just when this growth of faith inspired the friars with great joy and hope of drawing to Jesus Christ the still numerous people of that kingdom who survived the murders and unjust wars, eighteen Spanish tyrants on horse entered a certain part of the country with twelve others on foot, which makes thirty, and they brought with them many loads of idols taken from the Indians in other provinces.

24.24. And the captain of the said thirty summoned a lord of the country where he had entered, and told him that he must take those loads of idols and distribute them throughout his country, trading each idol for an Indian man or woman, to make them slaves; he threat­ened to make war on the chief if he refused.

25.25. Forced by fear, the said lord distributed the idols throughout all this territory and commanded all his vassals that they should accept and adore them, and give him Indian men and women as slaves for the Spaniards. In alarm, the Indians who had two children gave one of them, and those who had three gave two; and in this way they concluded that sacrilegious com­merce and the lord, or prince satisfied the Spaniards.

26.26. One of these impious and infernal bandits, called Juan Garcia, when ill and near death, had under his bed two loads of idols and he commanded an Indian woman who served him, to be very careful not to exchange those idols for fowls, but each one for a slave because they were very valuable. And finally with this testament and occupied with this thought the unhappy man died. And who doubts that he is buried in hell?

27.27. Consider therefore of what profit are the religion and the examples of Christianity of the Spaniards who go to the Indies; what honour they procure for God; how they work that he may be known and adored by those people; what care they take that His holy faith be sown, grow and expand in those souls. And judge whether this be a less sin than Jeroboam's qui peccare fecit Israel by making two golden calves, for the people to adore. Or whether it equals that of Judas or causes more scandal.

28.28. These then are the deeds of the Spaniards who go to the Indies; in their desire for gold they have numberless times sold, and do sell, and have forsworn Jesus Christ.

29.29. When the Indians saw that the promise the monks made them that the Spaniards should not enter those provinces did not come true, and that the same Spaniards brought their idols from other countries to sell, after they had given all their own gods to the monks to be burned, so that they might adore the one true God, they became tumultuous and the whole country was enraged with the friars, to whom they said:

30.30. Why have you lied and deceived us saying that Christians could not enter this country? And why have you burnt our gods when your Christians bring gods from other provinces to sell to us? Were perhaps our gods not better than those of other nations?

31.31. The friars having nothing to reply, calmed them as best they could. They sought out the thirty Span­iards, telling them the harm they had done and beseech­ing them to depart, but they would not go; on the contrary they gave the Indians to understand, that it was the friars themselves who had made them come there,—which was the height of all malice.

32.32. At last the Indians determined to kill the friars; [pg 369] being warned by some Indian, the latter escaped one night. And when the friars had left, and the Indians perceived their innocence and virtue and the malice of the Spaniards, they sent messengers a distance of fifty leagues after them, praying them to return, and asking their pardon for the anxiety they had caused them.

33.33. The friars, being servants of God and zealous for those souls, gave them credence, and returned to the country where they were received like angels, the In­dians rendering them a thousand services; and they stayed there four or five months longer.

34.34. As that country was so distant from New Spain, the Viceroy's efforts to expel those Christians from it were fruitless, and they persisted in remaining there although he had them proclaimed traitors; and because they never ceased their outrages and habitual oppres­sion of the Indians, it seemed to the monks that, sooner or later the natives would become disgusted with such perverse works, and that perhaps the evil consequences would fall on them, especially as the evil deeds of the Spaniards constantly disturbed the Indians and prevented them from preaching to them in tran­quillity. They therefore determined to abandon the kingdom.

35.35. Thus the country was left without the light and help of doctrine; and those souls were abandoned to the obscurity of ignorance and misery, in which they for­merly were. The Indians were deprived, till better times should come, of assistance and the diffusion of the knowledge of God, which they had been already receiv­ing with eagerness; it was just as though we were to deprive plants of water a few days after planting them: and this was brought about by the inexpiable fault and consummate malice of those Spaniards.

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