ABSTRACT
As soon as the seven men who wished to return to Cuba had calmed down, we set out with the force of horsemen and foot soldiers already mentioned, and slept that night at the town of Cempoala. Two thousand Indian warriors divided into four commands, were all ready to accompany us, and on the first day we marched five leagues in good order. The next day, a little after dusk 1 we arrived at some farms near to the town of Cingapacinga, and the natives of the town heard the news of our coming. When we had already begun the ascent to the fortress and houses which stood amid great cliffs and crags, eight Indian chieftains and priests came out to meet us peacefully and asked Cortés with tears, why he wished to kill and destroy them when they had done nothing to deserve it; that we had the reputation of doing good to all and of relieving those who had been robbed, and we had imprisoned the tax gatherers of Montezuma; that these Cempoala Indians who accompanied us were hostile to them on account of old enmities over the land claims and boundaries, and under our protection they had come to kill and rob them. It was true, they said, that there was formerly a Mexican garrison in the town, but that they had left for their own country a few days earlier when they heard that we had taken the other tax gatherers prisoners, and they prayed us not to let the matter go any further, but to grant them protection. When Cortés thoroughly understood what they had said through our interpreters, Doña Marina and Aguilar, without delay he ordered Captain Pedro de Alvarado, and the quartermaster Cristovól de Olid, and all of us comrades who were with him, to restrain the Indians of Cempoala and prevent them from advancing; and this we did. But although we made haste to stop them, they had already begun to loot the farms. This made Cortés very angry and he sent for the captains who had command of the Cempoala warriors, and with angry words and serious threats, he ordered them to bring the Indian men and women and cloths and poultry that they had stolen from the farms, and forbade any Cempoala Indian to enter the town, and said that for having lied and for having come under our protection merely to rob and sacrifice their neighbours, they were deserving of death, and that our Lord and King, whose servants we were, had not sent us to these countries to commit such indignities, and that they should keep their eyes wide open in order that such a thing did not happen again, otherwise he would not leave one of them alive. Then the Caciques and captains of the Cempoalans brought to Cortés everything they had seized, both Indian men and women and poultry, and he gave them all back to their owners and with a face full of wrath he turned [to the Cempoalans] and ordered them to retire and sleep in the fields—and this they did.
