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36 j C H A P T E R S I X T E E N They Kill the Enemies They Capture, and Then Eat Them Alittle while after the Governor had arrived in this city of Asunción, the settlers and conquistadors living in the place peppered him with complaints and a general outcry against Your Majesty ’s officials. He ordered all the native Indians of the place, who were vassals of Your Majesty, to gather together. Once they had done this, with the clerics also present, the Governor made an official speech. He said, “His Majesty sent me to show favor to the Indians, to let you know that you must get to know God and become Christians. This will happen through the teaching and training of the clerics I have brought along, as the ministers of the Lord, for that purpose. “You must obey Our Majesty,” he said, “and become his vassals. You’ll be better treated once this happens than you have been and shown more favor.” In addition, the Governor took them to task for eating human flesh. “You have to stop doing this,” he said. “It’s a grave sin and an offense to God.” The padres and the other clerics all chimed in, admonishing the Indians. Then, to leave the tribesmen in a somewhat happier state, they shared out a number of trade goods and trinkets, as well as shirts, other clothes, and bonnets , which did indeed please the Indians. 1 This tribe of Guaranis is a people whose language is understood by all the other tribes in the province. 2 The Guaranis eat the flesh of any other tribe they take to be their enemy if they are at war with them. They will take captives back to their Guarani villages and do many things to please them, with a lot of celebrating, dancing, and singing. This will last until the captive is fattened up, because from the moment of his capture they begin to feed him, and they keep it up, giving him as much as he wants They Kill the Enemies They Capture j 37 to eat. They will also give him their wives and daughters so that he may have his pleasures with them. In regard to the fattening-up business, only the Indians’ wives—and then only the most important of the wives—may take on this sort of responsibility and care. The ladies sleep with the captive. They also dress him up, as is their custom, in a number of ways: they will put feathered contraptions and white beads on him, for instance. The Indians make these latter from bone and white stone, which they hold in quite high esteem. And as a captive gets fatter, dances and songs are his greatest pleasures. Atthisstage,theIndiansputtheirheadstogetherandpickthreeyoung boys of six or seven, whom they will make up and dress. Then they place copperaxesintheirhands.OneoftheIndianswhomeveryonethinksofas the bravest among them carries a sort of wooden spade in his own hands. The Guaranis call it a macana. 3 They take the captive out into the plaza, where they make him dance for an hour. He finishes his dancing, and the man with the macana steps up and gives him a two-handed whack on the back and then another on the shins to knock him down. It may happen that the six-odd blows they give him on the head will not bring him down. It is astonishing to see the great head wounds they inflict, as the wooden spade is tough and heavy, quite black. Using both hands with such a weapon, a strong man could dispatch a bull with a single blow. But our captive is only done in with many whacks. At last, however, he is done in. Then the kids with their axes show up, either the oldest of them or their leader, the chief’s son, and again they give the captive a number of blows on the head until the blood spurts out. As they are doing this, the other members of the tribe tell them to be brave and to show it. “Be ready to kill your enemies,” the tribesmen say. “You need to go off to battle with courage in your hearts. Remember, that man before you there has murdered your own people. Avenge yourselves!” Once the captive is dead, the man who gave him the first blow takes on his name. And from that day on he is known by the dead man...

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