History of the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas.pdf/104

Exported from Wikisource on September 4, 2024

PADRE FRAY DIEGO DELGADO

81

of the Village attacked the unprepared Spanish Soldiers; the Indians from Tipu were unable to defend themselves: the Itzaex manacled them all and even the Padre Fray Diego himself.”

Delgado and Others are Put to Death. Villagutierre tells in detail how the soldiers must have been armed, because they would not be so foolish as to trust to the honor of natives; they were, however, but thirteen in number. All the soldiers were killed, and their hearts were torn from their breasts, while their heads were set up on stakes around the village. Later they took Fray Diego, cut him up into pieces, and set his head on a stake also. The fate of Cacique Na, whom, no doubt, the Itzas regarded as a traitor to his own race, was no better.

Mirones Sends Ek after Delgado. Meanwhile Mirones had received no word from the men he had sent as an escort to Padre Diego Delgado. He sent two Spaniards from Zaclun with an Indian servant of his who was very cunning and who was to act as an interpreter and guide. His name was Bernardino Ek. These three were to go to Tipu and learn all that they could of the whereabouts of the Padre and the soldiers. On their arrival at that village they were told that Delgado and the rest had gone to the Itzas. The three determined to follow; they did so, and directly they had reached the lake, canoes came in response to a smoke signal and bore them to the island, where they were all shut up in a corral and kept under guard. They made an attempt to escape, Ek leading the way. He succeeded in getting out on the lake in a very bad canoe which he found on the beach, but the two Spaniards found themselves greatly hampered by their bonds and were recaptured. Ek hid in the woods from those who were pursuing him and eventually made his way to Salamanca, where he told all that had happened. A report was sent to Governor Don Diego de Cárdenas in Merida, and Ek himself was sent to Captain Mirones at Zaclun. The latter straightway entered a complaint against Fray Diego for having done anything so foolhardy as to go to the Itzas. The upshot of the report made by Mirones' agent, Juan de Eguiluz, was that the Provincial of the Order of San Francisco in Yucatan sent to Zaclun one Padre Fray Juan

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Table of Contents

Title page

History of the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas.pdf/104

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