Each village was composed of ten, twenty, or thirty families, united nearly always by ties of kinship. It was difficult to bring these villages together because they carried on wars continually, and they lived in such a state of discord that it was impossible to govern them; moreover they were so barbarous and fierce that they recognized only superior power. They governed through fear. He who wished to be most respected sought to inspire fear by striking off as many beads as possible. The one who committed the most assassinations was thus assured of the subordination of all. They made such a glory of it that they were accustomed to wear certain ornaments in order to show to the eyes or all the murders they had committed. When a person lost a relative either by a violent or a natural death he covered his head with a strip of black cloth as a sign of mourning and could take it off only after having committed a murder, a thing which they were always eager to do in order to get rid of the sadness of mourning, because so long as they wore the badge they could not sing or dance or take part in any festivity. One understands then that deaths became very frequent in a country where all deaths were necessarily followed by one or more murders. It is true that he who committed a murder sought to atone for it by paying to the relatives of the deceased a certain quantity of gold or silver or by giving them a slave or a Negrito who might be murdered in his place.