ABSTRACT
The condition of the Indians of this country of Guatemala is as sad, and as much to be pitied as of any Indians in America, for that I may say it is with them, in some sort, as it was with Israel in Egypt. Though it is true there ought not to be any comparison made betwixt the Israelites and the Indians, those being God’s people, these not as yet; nevertheless the comparison may well hold in the oppression of the one and the other, and in the manner and cause of the oppression, that being with bitterness, rigour, and hard bondage, and lest they should multiply and increase too much. Certain it is, these Indians suffer great oppression from the Spaniards, live in great bitterness, are under hard bondage, and serve with great rigour; and all this because they are at least a thousand of them for one Spaniard. They daily multiply and increase, in children and wealth, and therefore are feared lest they should be too mighty, and either rise up of themselves, or join themselves to any enemy against their oppressors; for both which fears and jealousies they are not allowed the use of any weapons or arms, no not their bows and arrows, which their ancestors formerly used, so that as hereby the Spaniards are secured from any hurt or annoyance from them as an unarmed people, so may any other nation that shall be encouraged to invade that land be secure also from the Indians, consequently the Spaniards’ own policy for themselves against the Indians may be their greatest ruin and destruction, being a great people and yet no people; for the abundance of their Indians would be to them as no people, and they themselves (who out of their few towns and cities live but here and there, too thinly scattered upon so great and capacious a land) would be but a handful for any reasonable army; and of that handful very few would be found able or fitting men, and those able men would do little without the help of guns and ordnance; and if their own oppressed people, blackamoors and Indians (which themselves have always feared) should side against them, soon would they be swallowed up both from within and from without. And by this it may easily appear how ungrounded they are, who say it is harder to conquer America now than in Cortez his time, for that there are now both Spaniards and Indians to fight against, and then there were none but bare and naked Indians. This I say is a false ground, for then there were Indians trained up in wars one against another, who knew well to use their bows and arrows, and darts, and other weapons, and were desperate in their fights and single combats, as may appear out of the histories of them; but now they are cowardized, oppressed, unarmed, soon frighted with the noise of a musket, nay with a sour and grim look of a Spaniard, so from them there is no fear. Neither can there be from the Spaniards, who from all the vast dominions of Guatemala are not able to raise five thousand able fighting men, nor to defend so many passages as lie open in several parts of that country, which the wider and greater it is might be advantageous to an enemy, and while the Spaniard in one place might oppose his strength, in many other places might his land be overrun by a foreign nation; nay by their own slaves the blacka-moors who doubtless to be set at liberty would side against them in any such occasion; and lastly, the Creoles who also are sore oppressed by them, would rejoice in such a day, and yield rather to live with freedom and liberty under a foreign people than to be longer oppressed by those of their own blood.
