CHAPTER XCVI

    How the Indians who escaped front the hands of the Spaniards returned to take counsel, and resolved, with much boldness, to go forth again and fight them, and of the death of Diego de Rojas.

IN a former chapter we related how the Indians of a village where the captains Diego de Rojas and Felipe Gutiérrez were encamped, had come and fought with them; and that although more than two hundred were killed, and as many more wounded, yet they sent messages to all the districts announcing how few the Spaniards were, and ordering the natives to assemble and to attack them vigorously, as it would be easy to kill them all and their horses. The Indians were told to anoint the points of their arrows with a very poisonous herb they have, for it was known by experience that no one who was wounded by it ever escaped death, and that for the liberty of their country and that they[332] might not be under greater subjection than their forefathers, they ought not to fly from death if it should face them. Moreover, should any of them be captured by the Spaniards, they were on no account to reveal the antidote [to the arrow poison], for if that secret were made known neither they nor any number of people who might join them could prevail against the valour of the Spaniards or the fierceness of the horses. As all desired to see the foreigners who had invaded their provinces driven out again they assembled as large a force as they could and after they had offered their accustomed sacrifices and invoked the devil to their aid, marched in the direction where the Spaniards were encamped.

Diego de Rojas and the other captains had decided to stay there a few days, until they could receive information about the country ahead of them. When the Indians approached them, the Spaniards saddled their horses and rode towards them to give battle. As it is our Lord God's will and pleasure that those unknown countries, so distant from Spain, shall be opened up and His glorious standard of the Cross be known there, He almost miraculously protects the Christians; that they may find a way before them until they reach the extremity of the land, where there is little left before seeing the sun complete its course around the world. So it was that, though these Indians came armed with arrows tipped with the poison we have mentioned, God watched over His Christians. But no special favour was needful on that day, as a single volley sufficed for the Indians' dispersal, and after a number of them had fallen the conflict ceased. Diego de Rojas then sent Pedro López de Ayala with forty horsemen to explore the country ahead. The Indians, undismayed by their losses, fought on continuously during the next two days, and Diego de Rojas doing his duty as a famous captain in the midst of the fray, was wounded in the leg by an arrow. After having[333] chased and overtaken the Indians who had wounded him, they retired to the camp. Diego de Rojas thought little of his wound, as it was so small. But, since the herb was so poisonous, it began to work. Diego de Rojas felt ill, and there being a woman in the camp, who served Felipe Gutiérrez, she came to nurse him. After she had given him certain things to eat, Diego de Rojas became worse, and some of his servants said that he had been poisoned by order of Felipe Gutiérrez. Believing this to be true Diego de Rojas drank a great quantity of oil.

The captain Felipe Gutiérrez, when informed of this suspicion, declared his innocence. He assured Diego de Rojas, and all who might disbelieve him, that he never had any such evil thought, and that no one would regret the loss of his companion so much as himself. When the poison arrived near the heart, Diego de Rojas, seeing himself so near death, requested Felipe Gutiérrez to appoint in his place Francisco de Mendoza, whom he loved as if he were his son. Felipe Gutiérrez answered that although, under the authority they held from Vaca de Castro, this could not be done, the command should, after Rojas' death, remain vested in the two, and that he was delighted to please him.

After this, Diego de Rojas died during a violent fit of retching. He was a native of the city of Burgos: a valiant man, liberal, anxious always to do what was right. In war he was always cautious, at all times watching and patrolling like any other soldier. It is believed that if he had lived these regions would have been completely explored. His death was due to the poison in the herb, for which a plant of such virtue as an antidote was afterwards discovered, that the poison lost its strength, and the wounded were cured by means of it.