History of Central America, Volume 2, 1530-1800: The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 7Bancroft, Hubert Howe
History
History of Central America, Volume 2, 1530-1800: The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 7
Bancroft, Hubert Howe
Central America -- History
In Honduras slaves were still kidnapped, and sold by ship-loads among
the islands or in Nicaragua, so that in the vicinity of Trujillo, where
formerly were native towns with from six hundred to three thousand
houses, there were in 1547 not more than a hundred and eighty Indians
left, the remainder having fled to the mountains to avoid capture. At
Naco, which a few years before contained a population of ten thousand
souls, there were, in 1536, only forty-five remaining. At a coast town
named La Haga, nine leagues from Trujillo, and containing nine hundred
houses, there was but one inhabitant left, all having been sold into
bondage save the young daughter of the cacique, who had contrived to
elude the slave-hunters.[XIV‑3]
Cruel as was the treatment of the natives in every part of the Spanish
provinces, nowhere was oppression carried to such an extreme as in
Guatemala. Here little distinction was made between the allies and
the conquered races; even the faithful Tlascaltecs, who, after the
conquest, had settled with the Mexican and Cholultec auxiliaries at
Almolonga, being enslaved, overworked, and otherwise maltreated, until
in 1547 there were barely a hundred survivors.[XIV‑4] The natives of
Atitlan, who had never swerved in their allegiance to the Spaniards,
were treated with equal severity. After sharing the hardships of their
military campaigns, they were compelled to supply every year four or
five hundred male and female slaves and every fifteen days a number
of tributary laborers, many of whom perished from excessive toil and
privation. They were required to furnish, besides, a large quantity
of cloth, cacao,[XIV‑5] honey, and poultry; and so grievous were the
burdens laid upon them that even the caciques were impoverished, and
their wives compelled to serve as beasts of burden and tillers of the
soil.
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