I do not deny that the Abipones have been savage, inhuman, and ferocious, but only against those whom they believed to be their enemies. Before peace was established, they afflicted all Paraguay, for many years, with fire, slaughter, and rapine; but this they looked upon as the privilege of war, and indeed a thing to be gloried in, because they always found or suspected the Spaniards their enemies. They thought they were only repelling force by force, and returning injuries for injuries, slaughters for slaughters; which they deny to be wrong or dishonourable; seeing the same so frequently done, in time of war, by the Spaniards to the Portugueze, and by the Portugueze to the Spaniards. Led by their example, they insisted upon it that they should not be called assassins, and thieves, but soldiers, whose duty it is to offend their adversaries, and defend themselves and their possessions to the utmost of their power. The heads of the Spaniards severed from their shoulders, they called their trophies, and preserved as testimonials of their valour. The innumerable herds of cattle, the thousands of horses, in short whatever they took from the Spaniards, they called booty justly obtained in war. They always disown the name of robbers, in the plea that all the cattle of the Spaniards, by right, belongs to them; because, born on lands which the Spaniards forcibly wrested from their ancestors, and which, in their opinion, they at this day unjustly usurp. To eradicate these errors, we all ardently strove to instil into their ferocious minds an affection and friendship for the Spaniards; but our efforts were not crowned with success. Although they burnt with hereditary hatred to the Spaniards, yet, in their very manner of killing them, they displayed a sort of humanity. They inflicted death, but thought it unworthy of them, after the mortal blow, to torture, excruciate, tear, and mangle them, like other savages; though they were wonderfully solicitous about cutting off their heads, by displaying which they thought to testify their valour to their countrymen at home. They generally spared the unwarlike, and carried away innocent boys and girls unhurt. They used to feed infants, torn from their mothers' breasts, with the juice of fruits and herbs, during a long journey, and carried them home uninjured. If ever mothers, or their children, were slain, it was done by youths thirsting for the blood of the Spaniards, or by grown men enraged at the deaths of their countrymen whom the Spaniards had slain.