The following incident, related by Oviedo, will illustrate the severe and repulsive measures which were practised towards the Indians at this early period. “In 1528, the treasurer, Alonzo de Peralta, and a man named Zurita, and the brothers Ballas, left the city of Leon, each to visit the villages and Indians belonging to him. They never returned, having been destroyed by their own vassals. Hereupon Pedro Arias de Avila sent out soldiers to bring in some of the malefactors. They arrested seventeen or eighteen _caziques_ whom Pedro Arias caused to be strangled by dogs. The execution took place in the following manner, on Tuesday, the 16th of June of the same year, in the public square of Leon. Each cazique was armed with a stick, and told to defend himself against the dogs, and to kill them if he could. Five or six young dogs were first set upon them, which their masters wished to train, as they were yet without experience. They ran baying around the Indian, who easily kept them off with his stick; but the moment he thought himself conqueror, a couple of mastiffs, or well-trained hounds, were sent against him, who threw him in a moment. The other dogs then fell upon him, biting and choking him, tearing out his entrails, and devouring him, as it were. In this manner the eighteen were soon disposed of. They were from the valley of Olocoton, and its vicinity. When the dogs were satiated, the dead bodies remained in the same place, it being forbidden to carry them off, under penalty of being served in like manner; otherwise the Indians would have taken them away. They were thus left in order to frighten the natives; but on the second day the stench of the dead bodies became insupportable. And on the fourth, it was so horrible that, being compelled to pass there in going to the house of the governor, I begged him to give permission to have them carried away; which he did the more readily, since his house was situated near the square.”