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.
In the battle four men ran away together. They were pursued, one was
killed, and the other three were taken alive. They turned out to be
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