Voices in Time

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Holy Catholic Caesarian Majesty,

While I was engaged in the conquest and pacification of the natives of this province, some Indians who were natives of other provinces beyond these had told me that in their country there were much larger villages and better houses than those of the natives of this country, and that they had lords who ruled them who were served with dishes of gold and other very magnificent things; and although I did not believe it before I had set eyes on it—because it was the report of Indians and given for the most part by means of signs—yet as the report appeared to me to be very fine and that it was important it should be investigated for Your Majesty’s service, I determined to go and see it with the men I have here. I started from this province on the twenty-third of last April for the place where the Indians wanted to guide me.

After nine days’ march, I reached some plains so vast that I did not find their limit anywhere that I went, although I traveled over them for more than three hundred leagues. And after seventeen days’ march, I came to a settlement of Indians who are called Querechos, who travel around with these cows, who do not plant, and who eat the raw flesh and drink the blood of the cows they kill—and they tan the skins of the cows, with which all the people of this country dress themselves here. They could not give me any account of the country where the guides were taking me. I traveled five days more, as the guides wished to lead me, until I reached some plains—with no more landmarks than as if we had been swallowed up in the sea—where they strayed about because there was not a stone, nor a bit of rising ground, nor a tree, nor a shrub, nor anything to go by. While we were lost in these plains, some horsemen who went off to hunt cows fell in with some Indians who are called Teyas; they have their bodies and faces all painted, are a large people like the others, of a very good build. They eat the raw flesh just like the Querechos, and live and travel around with the cows in the same way. I obtained from them an account of the country where the guides were taking me, which was not like what I had been told, because they made out that the houses there were not built of stones, with stories, as my guides had described it, but of straw and skins, and a small supply of corn there.

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