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j 57 C H A P T E R T W E N T Y- S I X The Governor Breaks His Enemies The Indians were broken and scattered, and the Governor and his men were in hot pursuit. One of the Governor’s cavalrymen found himself closing in on one of the enemy warriors, who suddenly grabbed the neck of the mare on which the horseman rode and pushed home three arrows. He wouldn’t let go until they killed him. Had the Governor not been present during this engagement, our victory would have been very dubious indeed. These Indian people are tall but slight, very courageous and quite strong, and they live a heathen existence. They have no fixed homes, and they support themselves by hunting and fishing. No nation but the Spaniards could ever conquer them. Their custom is to give themselves as slaves to anyone who overcomes them. Their women have a custom, too: if their menfolk have taken one of their enemies prisoner, expecting to kill him, the first woman to see him will set him free. He then will not die, nor will he be a captive. Any captive might like to be such a man, living among these people where they would treat him and love him as though he were one of their own. And yes, it’s true that these Indian women have more freedom than our queen, doña Isabel, our lady, once gave to the women of Spain. 1 But the Governor and his men eventually grew weary of pursuing the enemy, and so they returned to their camp. The Governor got his men into good order and began to march back to the city of Asunción. As they went along their way, the Guaycurues followed them and attacked them several times. This made it hard for the Governor to keep all his own Indians together to prevent any Guaycurues who had escaped the skirmishes from picking them off. Much of this was due to a Guarani custom practiced by the men in his service: if they came into possession of a feather or an arrow or a mat owned by one of their 58 j C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - S I X enemies, they left with it to go back to their own lands, by themselves, without waiting for anyone else. And this was the way twenty Guaycurues killed a thousand Guaranis, picking them off divided from their companions and all alone. The Governor and his men took about four hundred prisoners during that trek—men, women, and children. As the party traveled along its route, the cavalrymen took many deer with their lances. The Indians were amazed that the horses were light and quick enough to catch the deer, and they themselves killed a lot of these with bow and arrow. At four o’clock in the afternoon the hunters all came back to rest in the shade of some large groves of trees, where they slumbered that evening, their sentries posted and their spirits peaceful. ...

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