We Also Heard That Miranda
Struck From The West End Of The Sierra Ventana, In A Direct
Line To The Island Of Cholechel, Situated Seventy Leagues Up
The Rio Negro.
This is a distance of between two and three
hundred miles, through a country completely unknown.
What other troops in the world are so independent?
With
the sun for their guide, mare's flesh for food, their saddle-
cloths for beds, - as long as there is a little water, these
men would penetrate to the end of the world.
A few days afterwards I saw another troop of these banditti-like
soldiers start on an expedition against a tribe of
Indians at the small Salinas, who had been betrayed by a
prisoner cacique. The Spaniard who brought the orders
for this expedition was a very intelligent man. He gave
me an account of the last engagement at which he was present.
Some Indians, who had been taken prisoners, gave
information of a tribe living north of the Colorado. Two
hundred soldiers were sent; and they first discovered the
Indians by a cloud of dust from their horses' feet, as they
chanced to be travelling. The country was mountainous and
wild, and it must have been far in the interior, for the
Cordillera were in sight. The Indians, men, women, and children,
were about one hundred and ten in number, and they
were nearly all taken or killed, for the soldiers sabre every
man. The Indians are now so terrified that they offer no
resistance in a body, but each flies, neglecting even his wife
and children; but when overtaken, like wild animals, they
fight against any number to the last moment. One dying Indian
seized with his teeth the thumb of his adversary, and
allowed his own eye to be forced out sooner than relinquish
his hold. Another, who was wounded, feigned death, keeping
a knife ready to strike one more fatal blow. My informer
said, when he was pursuing an Indian, the man cried out
for mercy, at the same time that he was covertly loosing the
bolas from his waist, meaning to whirl it round his head and
so strike his pursuer. "I however struck him with my sabre
to the ground, and then got off my horse, and cut his throat
with my knife." This is a dark picture; but how much more
shocking is the unquestionable fact, that all the women who
appear above twenty years old are massacred in cold blood!
When I exclaimed that this appeared rather inhuman, he
answered, "Why, what can be done? they breed so!"
Every one here is fully convinced that this is the most
just war, because it is against barbarians. Who would
believe in this age that such atrocities could be committed in
a Christian civilized country? The children of the Indians
are saved, to be sold or given away as servants, or rather
slaves for as long a time as the owners can make them
believe themselves slaves; but I believe in their treatment
there is little to complain of.
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