Note 42 — Chapter LIX

In this same year, 1604, the provincial sent three religious to the estuary of Lobo and the country of Ytabes,42 in the province of Nueva Segovia. All those Indians are heathen; and though by nature they are very tractable and easy to deal with, simple and free from malice, and concerned with nothing but their agriculture, still the outrages of those who took tribute from them were so great that they enraged the natives and obliged them to take up arms, to the great loss of the Spaniards. As they were few and the multitude of the Indians many, the few, although they were very courageous, came to their death by the hands of the many; or, rather, the unjust came to death by the hands of divine justice, which in this way was pleased to chastise and end their injustices. And as we very seldom reckon rightly, the chastisement which God wrought by the hands of these Indians was attributed by the Spaniards to the courage and valor of this tribe; and thus they were very fearful of them until the holy gospel declared by the Dominican religious changed them from bloodthirsty wolves to gentle sheep—the Lord aiding by manifest miracles to give credit to His faith and to His ministers, to the end that they might be able to do that which without this or similar assistance from the Lord it would have been impossible to achieve. One of the three religious who entered these heathen villages to undertake their conversion said, in giving an account of what happened: “Since the hand of the Lord has been so plainly succoring these Indians by the hands of those religious who dwelt among them, their reformation has been great and marvelous. They have gone from one extreme to the other, almost without any intermediate stage, since the religious took them under their care. Before that they were so free, so completely without God or law, without king or any person to respect, that they gave themselves up freely to their desires and their passions. Evidence of this is found in those wars which they were continually waging among themselves, without plan or order; and in the drunkenness and the outrages of which they were guilty, without regard to God or man. He who was most esteemed among them was the greatest drunkard, because, as he was the richest, he could obtain the most liquor. He who slew the greatest number of men was regarded as superior to all the rest. They married and unmarried daily, with one or many wives. In a word, they were a barbarous race, given up to all sorts of shameless conduct. In spite of all this, when the missionary came among them they were as docile as if they had during all their lives been learning to obey, which is something very difficult even in religious orders. This was true, although the religious instantly laid a general interdict upon all their ancient vices; obliged them to consort solely with their lawful wives; even forced many to abandon their land and their old villages, that they might come where teaching was given them; and, in a word, compelled them to enter all at once, and in a body, into ordered ways of living, in matters both divine and human. They had not a thought of opposing a single command; and this has been achieved without stripes or penalties, but simply by kindness and gentleness. The result has been that those who did not understand anything except killing, and drinking till they could not stand, and running without any restraint after every sort of vice, now never think of doing these things—as I have seen in these first three villages in this district of Ytabes. The day we went among them we found all the men lying about the streets, dead drunk; since that day there has not been one drunk enough to lose his senses. The same reformation has been achieved in all other matters, for they were not compelled to do all this by fear of the Spaniards. Quite otherwise; the Spaniards regarded these Indians as so indomitable and intrepid that, for fear of them, they did not dare go up the river as far as their villages; but after the religious went among them, they were gathered into large villages that they might be more easily instructed in the faith, having been previously scattered among many small ones, like so many farmsteads [in Spain]. There were three villages thus formed: one of about five hundred tributes, named Taban, the church of which was called San Raymundo; and the other two of more than a thousand tributes each—one called Pia, its church Santa Ynes de Monte Policiano, afterwards known as San Domingo; and the last one, named Tuao, the church of which was dedicated to the holy guardian angels because of the incident referred to above. Thus all those people were brought together and united, to reduce them to settlements, and to a civilized mode of life and government; and to the church; but this result was obtained at no small cost to the religious. Of three of them, two immediately fell very sick, and the third still more so, for he died as a result of the illness. This was father Fray Luis de Yllescas, a son of the convent of Sancto Domingo at Mexico, a very humble religious, very obedient and beloved by all. He received the holy sacraments for his departure with great devotion; and went away to enjoy, as may be presumed, the reward of his labors, which had been many in a short time. Yet neither this death nor the failure of health in the rest caused them to withdraw their hands from the work upon which they had begun. On the contrary, the great good which they beheld, wrought by the Lord among these Indians, served as medicines and remedies for the ills from which they suffered; and for their convalescence, though they had no worldly luxuries, that fruit was much better which, more and more every day, was borne by this new plant of the church. From it they recovered health, strength, and new courage to carry on the work which they had begun. To give them still greater spirit, the Lord came to them working miracles. The first mass which was celebrated in the village of Pia took place on St. Bartholomew’s day, the twenty-fourth of August. [Before the end of the month, a sick person who wished to be baptised beheld some fierce and abominable forms which dissuaded him from baptism, and reminded him of the rights and customs of his ancestors, charging him not to change the faith in which his fathers and grandfathers had lived. These dreadful forms were driven away by three persons, clad in black cloaks with white garments beneath. The sick man was often asked if he knew these three persons who had delivered him, and he said “no.” When he was asked if they were religious of our order he also said “no,” because he had never seen any of the religious wearing their cloaks. He always declared that he had been awake and not asleep; and the narrative was accepted as certain. At one time, a religious who was himself in poor health was left in charge of thirteen newly-converted Christians, who were all confined to their beds by sickness. Being unable to give them the care which he desired, he placed upon the abdomen of each of them a little roasted rice-bran, very hot, begging the Lord to make up by His pity for the lack of medicine. When he came back the next day to visit them, all but two were well, and had gone to work in the field; and the others soon recovered. The same treatment given by another Indian or by the sick man to himself had no effect; and thus it is plain that the healing was due to the desire of the Lord to honor and to give authority to the hand which applied the remedy. The Indians themselves observed that, after they had religious, far fewer died than before they had them. In their ancient days of superstition, when a man fell sick he generally died, because he was treated only by the witchcraft of the aniteras, whose sole purpose was to get gold from the sick persons by false promises. The sorcerers did them no good and indeed rather harmed them, since cures came from our worst enemy, the devil; while now the Lord was giving them, by means of the religious, health that was health indeed. One of the religious in this region, father Fray Juan Naya,43 fell ill, and grew worse so rapidly that he was given up as a consumptive. By the advice of another religious, he made a vow to our Lady to serve in that province among the heathen, if she should be pleased to grant him sufficient health for him to carry on this work. He made the vow for seven consecutive years from the day of the Visitation, July 2, 1605. During all this time he had his health; but at the end of the seven years he was attacked by a very severe and dangerous illness, which left him when he renewed his vow for four years more. Similar experiences have been frequent among the religious. It has even happened to some who were not very devoted to this work, and who desired to go to other provinces where the Lord might be served with less severity and with somewhat greater comfort, that they have been afflicted with diseases, which gave place to miraculous health as soon as they made vows to remain and minister to the Indians whom they wished to leave. In this region the Lord manifested His goodness and gave authority to his ministers, curing a sick woman who was at the point of death, by means of the sacrament of holy baptism. In this same village it happened to father Fray Juan Naya that a poisonous snake entered his shoe without any evil effect. An Indian in this same village called upon God in his illness, and, when it did not seem good to the divine Providence to heal him, he called upon the devil whom he had previously served. The Lord punished him with dreadful visions, from which he was delivered upon praying to the Lord for His protection; and he was finally cured, after making his confession. A child was miraculously healed in the town of Pia at the time when father Fray Juan Sancta Ana was vicar there. A woman who did not seem to be dangerously ill prayed so earnestly to be baptized that the father granted her wish. She died almost immediately after, the Lord having shown her a marvelous kindness in causing the religious to baptize her immediately.]