"Did Narvaez do very bad things to the poor Indians, mamma?" asked Elsie. "Yes, indeed!" replied her mother; "in his treatment of them he showed himself a most cruel, heartless wretch. Wilmer, in his 'Ferdinand De Soto,' tells of a chief whom he calls Cacique Ucita, who, after forming a treaty of peace and amity with Pamphilo de Narvaez, had been most outrageously abused by him--his aged mother torn to pieces by dogs, in his absence from home, and when he returned and showed his grief and anger, himself seized and his nose cut off." "Oh, mamma, how very, very cruel!" cried Elsie. "Had Ucita's mother done anything to Narvaez to make him treat her so?" "Nothing except that she complained to her son of a Spaniard who had treated a young Indian girl very badly indeed. "Narvaez had shown himself an atrociously cruel man. So that it was no wonder the poor Indians hated him. How could anything else be expected of poor Ucita when he learned of the dreadful, undeserved death his poor mother had died, than that he would be, as he was, frantic with grief and anger, and make, as he did, threats of terrible vengeance against the Spaniards? But instead of acknowledging his cruelty and trying to make some amends, as I have said, Narvaez ordered him to be seized, scourged, and sadly mutilated. "Then, as soon as Ucita's subjects heard of all this, they hastened from every part of his dominions to avenge him upon the Spaniards. Perceiving their danger the Spaniards then fled with all expedition, and so barely escaped the vengeance they so richly deserved. "But to go back to my story of De Soto--he had landed a few miles from an Indian town which stood on the site of the present town of Tampa. He had with him two Indians whom he had been training for guides and interpreters; but to his great disappointment they escaped. "The Spaniards had captured some Indian women, and from them De Soto learned that a neighboring chief had in his keeping a captured Spaniard, one of the men of Narvaez. "After Narvaez landed he had sent back to Cuba one of his smaller vessels--on board of which was this Juan Ortiz--to carry the news of his safe arrival to his wife. She at once sent additional supplies by the same vessel and it reached the bay the day after Narvaez and his men had fled, as I have already told you, from the vengeance of the outraged Ucita and his indignant subjects. "Ortiz and those with him, seeing a letter fixed in a cleft of a stick on shore, asked some Indians whom they saw to bring it to them. They refused and made signs for the Spaniards to come for it. Juan Ortiz, then a boy of eighteen, with some comrades, took a boat and went on shore, when they were at once seized by the Indians, one of them, who resisted, instantly killed, and the rest taken to the cruelly wronged and enraged chief Ucita, who had made a vow to punish with death any Spaniard who should fall into his hands.