Which the Spaniards no sooner perceived, but they, mounted on
generous Steeds, well weapon'd with Lances and Swords, begin to
exercise their bloody Butcheries and Stratagems, and overrunning their
Cities and Towns, spar'd no Age, or Sex, nay not so much as Women with
Child, but ripping up their Bellies, tore them alive in pieces. They
laid Wagers among themselves, who should with a Sword at one blow cut,
or divide a Man in two; or which of them should decollate or behead a
Man, with the greatest dexterity; nay farther, which should sheath his
Sword in the Bowels of a Man with the quickest dispatch and expedition.
They snatcht young Babes from the Mothers Breasts, and then dasht out
the brains of those innocents against the Rocks; others they cast into
Rivers scoffing and jeering them, and call'd upon their Bodies when
falling with derision, the true testimony of their Cruelty, to come to
them, and inhumanely exposing others to their Merciless Swords,
together with the Mothers that gave them Life.
They erected certain Gibbets, large, but low made, so that their feet
almost reacht the ground, every one of which was so order'd as to bear
Thirteen Persons in Honour and Reverence (as they said blasphemously)
of our Redeemer and his Twelve Apostles, under which they made a Fire
to burn them to Ashes whilst hanging on them: But those they intended
to preserve alive, they dismiss'd, their Hands half cut, and still
hanging by the Skin, to carry their Letters missive to those that fly
from us and ly sculking on the Mountains, as an exprobation of their
flight.
The Lords and Persons of Noble Extract were usually expos'd to this
kind of Death; they order'd Gridirons to be placed and supported with
wooden Forks, and putting a small Fire under them, these miserable
Wretches by degrees and with loud Shreiks and exquisite Torments, at
last Expir'd.
I once saw Four or Five of their most Powerful Lords laid on these
Gridirons, and thereon roasted, and not far off, Two or Three more
over-spread with the same Commodity, Man's Flesh; but the shril
Clamours which were heard there being offensive to the Captain, by
hindring his Repose, he commanded them to be strangled with a Halter.
The Executioner (whose Name and Parents at Sevil are not unknown to
me) prohibited the doing of it; but stopt Gags into their Mouths to
prevent the hearing of the noise (he himself making the Fire) till that
they dyed, when they had been roasted as long as he thought convenient.
I was an Eye-Witness of these and and innumerable Number of other
Cruelties: And because all Men, who could lay hold of the opportunity,
sought out lurking holes in the Mountains, to avoid as dangerous Rocks
so Brutish and Barbarous a People, Strangers to all Goodness, and the
Extirpaters and Adversaries of Men, they bred up such fierce hunting
Dogs as would devour an Indian like a Hog, at first sight in less
than a moment: Now such kind of Slaughters and Cruelties as these were
committed by the Curs, and if at any time it hapned, (which was rarely)
that the Indians irritated upon a just account destroy'd or took away
the Life of any Spaniard, they promulgated and proclaim'd this Law
among them, that One Hundred Indians should dye for every individual
Spaniard that should be slain
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