Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Mother
And Her Children Were Bound, And Dragged To The Bank Of The River.
The
monk, seated in his boat, waited the issue of an expedition of which
he shared not the danger.
Had the mother made too violent a resistance
the Indians would have killed her, for everything is permitted for the
sake of the conquest of souls (la conquista espirituel), and it is
particularly desirable to capture children, who may be treated in the
Mission as poitos, or slaves of the Christians. The prisoners were
carried to San Fernando, in the hope that the mother would be unable
to find her way back to her home by land. Separated from her other
children who had accompanied their father on the day in which she had
been carried off, the unhappy woman showed signs of the deepest
despair. She attempted to take back to her home the children who had
been seized by the missionary; and she fled with them repeatedly from
the village of San Fernando. But the Indians never failed to recapture
her; and the missionary, after having caused her to be mercilessly
beaten, took the cruel resolution of separating the mother from the
two children who had been carried off with her. She was conveyed alone
to the missions of the Rio Negro, going up the Atabapo. Slightly
bound, she was seated at the bow of the boat, ignorant of the fate
that awaited her; but she judged by the direction of the sun, that she
was removing farther and farther from her hut and her native country.
She succeeded in breaking her bonds, threw herself into the water, and
swam to the left bank of the Atabapo.
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