1. These provinces(101) have been visited at divers times since the year 1510 or 1511 by three tyrants who imitated the deeds done by the others, and also by two of them in other parts of the Indies seeking to advance to a degree disproportioned to their merit, at the cost of the blood and destruction of their fellow creatures. 2.2. And all three died a bad death, and their families and properties established in human blood, perished, for I am witness of all three, whose very memory is already as extinct in the world as though they had never lived. 3.3. The infamy and horror of their names scandalised all the land because of some massacres they perpetrated: these were not many, however, for God killed them before they did more, for He had reserved till that hour the punishment for the wickedness that I know and saw they committed in other parts of the Indies. 4.4. The fourth tyrant went there recently, in the year 1538, with his plans made and with great preparations. Since three years nothing has been seen or heard of him. 5.5. We are sure, that as soon as he landed he committed cruel deeds and at once disappeared: and that, if he be alive, he and his men have destroyed numbers of people in these three years, if he encountered any on his march, for he is one of the notorious, and experienced ones who, together with his other companions, has done the most harm and wickedness, and has destroyed many provinces, and kingdoms. But we rather believe that God has given him the same end as the others. 6.6. Three or four years after the above things were written, three of the other tyrants returned from the land called Florida; they had accompanied the chief tyrant whom they left dead, and we learned from them what cruelty and unheard of wickedness, these inhuman men committed there against those innocent and harmless Indians, principally during the life of their commander and also after his unhappy death: therefore what I foretold above has not turned out wrong. 7.7. And so many things confirm the rule I laid down at the beginning: that the more they continue to discover, ruin, and destroy both peoples and countries, the more notorious are the cruelties and iniquities they commit against God and their fellow creatures. 8.8. It is already wearisome to us to relate so many, and such execrable, horrible, blood-thirsty operations, not by men, but by ferocious beasts, hence I will not stop to relate any but the following. 9.9. They found large towns full of people who were friendly, intelligent, politic, and orderly. They did great slaughter among them, according to their custom, in order to impregnate the hearts of those people with fear of them. 10.10. They tormented and killed them, loading them like animals. When