1. This province of Cartagena lies westward and fifty leagues below that of Santa Marta, and bordering on that of Cenù as far as the Gulf of Urabà: it comprises about a hundred leagues of seacoast and a large territory inland towards the south. 2.2. These provinces have been as badly treated as those of Santa Marta, distressed, killed, depopulated and devastated, from the year 1498 or 99 until to-day, and in them many notorious cruelties, murders, and robberies have been committed by the Spaniards; but in order to finish this brief compendium quickly and to recount the wickedness done by them elsewhere, I will not describe the details.
1. Great and notorious have been the destruction that the Spaniards have worked along the Coast of Paria, (97) extending for two hundred leagues as far as the Gulf of Venezuela, assassinating the inhabitants and capturing as many as they could alive, to sell them as slaves. 2.2. They frequently took them by violating their pledged word and friendship, the Spaniards failing to keep faith, while the Indians received them in their houses, like fathers receive their children, giving them all they possessed and serving them to the best of their ability. 3.3. Certainly it would not be easy to relate, or describe minutely the variety and number of the injustices, wrongs, oppressions, and injury practised upon the people of this coast by the Spaniards from the year 1510 up to the present day. I will relate but two or three instances from which the villany and number of the others, worthy of punishment by every torment and fire may be judged. 4.4. In the island of Trinidad which joins the continent at Paria, and is much larger and more prosperous than Sicily, there are as good and virtuous people as in all the Indies; an assassin going there in the year 1516, with sixty or seventy other habitual robbers, gave the Indians to understand that they had come to dwell and live in that island along with them. 5.5. The Indians received them as though they were children of their own flesh and blood, the lords and their subjects serving them with the greatest affection and joy, bringing them every day double the amount of food required; for it is the usual disposition and liberality of all the Indians of this new world to give the Spaniards in excess of all they need and as much as they themselves possess. 6.6. In accordance with the Spaniards' wish, they built one great house of timber, where all might live: they needed no more than one in order to carry out what they had in mind and afterwards accomplished. 7.7. When they were putting the straw over the timbers and had covered about the height of two paces so that those inside no longer saw those without, the Spaniards, under pretence of hurrying on the completion of the house, induced many people to go inside; meanwhile they divided, some surrounding the house outside, with their weapons ready for the Indians who should come out, and the others stationing themselves inside the house. The latter drew their swords and threatening the naked Indians with death if they moved, they began to bind them, while some who ran out seeking to escape were cut to pieces with swords. 8.8. Some who got out, wounded, and others sound, joined with one or two hundred natives who had not entered the house, and arming themselves with bows and arrows they retired to another house of the community's to defend themselves; while they defended the door however, the Spaniards set fire to the house, and burnt them alive; they then took the prey they had captured, amounting to perhaps a hundred and eighty or two hundred men, and carried them bound to their ship. Hoisting sail they departed for the island of San Juan, where they sold one half as slaves, and afterwards to Hispaniola, where they sold the remainder. 9.9. When I at the time reproved the captain in the same island of San Juan for such infamous treachery and malice, he replied "Go to, Senor, thus was I commanded, and instructions were given me by those who sent me, that if I could not capture them in war, I should take them under pretext of peace." 10.10. And in truth he told me that in all his life he had found neither father nor mother, if not in the island of Trinidad; such were the good services the Indians had rendered him. This he said to his greater shame and the aggravation of his sins. 11.11. Numberless times have they done these things on this continent, capturing people and making them slaves under promise of safe conduct. Let it be seen what sort of acts these are: and whether those Indians taken in such a way, are justly made slaves. 12.12. Another time the friars of our Order of St.